Monty Python's Life of Brian

Corrected entry: When the men (and lady) are crucified, you can see throughout the whole scene a small-sized platform of which the actors are standing on.

Correction: Of course you can. Roman executioners were very, very good at putting people to death in extremely painful and long, drawn out ways. One of their favourites was to supply small platform for the crucifixion victim to stand on (or a small seat to sit on) while they were nailed to the cross. This prevented them dying from asphyxiation as their arms became to exhausted to bear their weight, and as a result they could take a couple of days to die in agony. Bundle of laughs, those Romans.

Corrected entry: The centurion and the soldiers assisting with the crucifixion stress they are in a hurry because they have one hundred and forty people to crucify. They leave, and there are no more people waiting to be crucified, but there are less than twenty people crucified in the final scene.

Correction: They could well have other people to crucify in another area of the city limits. Just because they did not crucify them there does not mean they did not have more to do elsewhere.

Mad Ade

Corrected entry: At the End when Brian is on the cross, After talking to him, the People's Front of Judea walk away but then stop and turn back. After singing "For he's a jolly good fellow" they clap, watch it in slow mo. For a split second, they are still clapping when the Romans approach. You see the actors that have replaced Cleese and Co.

Baz94

Correction: You can only see this if you use slow motion and freeze frame, invalidating it per the rules of this site.

Corrected entry: When Brian sells the 2 bags of "Otters noses" to the guys from the PFJ in the arena, notice that the PFJ don't actually PAY for them.

Baz94

Correction: That's because Brian gets so excited when they start talking about revolution, that he forgets the payment. And when he is allowed to join the Resistance... well, if he remembered, he probably would consider it a favour to his leaders.

Twotall

Corrected entry: When the yellow space ship crashes, the man with the turban turns to his right to see it. When the camera zooms out, the crashed ship is on his left.

rabid anarchist

Correction: You do not see what direction he is first facing, but when the ship crashes he is facing it, so he would have had to look to the right to see it coming if he was in the same spot.

Corrected entry: When Michael Palin is threatening the guards who are laughing at his friend Biggus, he walks up to one and gets right in his face. The guard pulls some very funny faces and if you look closely at the side of Michael's face, you can see he is trying hard not to laugh. To his credit, when he turns around, he has managed to pull himself together admirably.

Correction: In various shots Palin changes voice tones and dialogue delievery to try to make the guards laugh (although he is upset by their laughing). Although it appears like he starts to break into laughter himself, he gets serious again when he hears the two guards behind him laugh, so naturally his smile stops quickly. Palin's character's actions are realistic.

Corrected entry: When Brian is taken to see Pontius Pilate, the centurian says "Only one survivor sir". Well, that's not true seeing as Loretta and Francis were down in the sewer when everyone except Brian were killed. And in the next scene involving the PFJ, Loretta and Francis are alive. (00:38:26)

Correction: The centurian could not know about Loretta and Francis if they were still in the sewer. By the time the soldiers searched it, they would have been long gone. Therefore, from his point of view, what he says is correct.

umathegreatstationarybear

Correction: Presumably you're referring to the fact that Graham Chapman is uncircumcised and is playing a Jewish man. Brian Cohen was the illegitimate son of an anonymous Roman legionnaire and a prostitute. As his parents did not marry in the faith they would hold no kettubah - a certificate signed by a Rabbi solemnizing the Jewish marriage. Technically Brian is not Jewish, despite his claims to be a 'Red Sea pedestrian'. Besides, as the son of a prostitute with a non-Jewish father he would be an apostate, denied Jewish religious ritual such as a bar mitzvah and - more relevant to this issue - the bris, or ritual circumcision.

Corrected entry: The song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" once had a real-life application. On May 4, 1982, during the Falklands War, the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sheffield was fatally struck by an anti-ship missile launched from an Argentine Air Force jet. As the crew gathered on deck for rescue, they struck up an impromptu chorus and started singing this song.

Correction: Some one singing a well known song at another time or in other circumstances can hardly be considered a piece of movie trivia.

Mad Ade

Revealing mistake: When the blind man is telling Brian he can see again and falls down in the pit, you can see the white mattress that he lands on. (01:01:10)

More mistakes in Monty Python's Life of Brian

Boring Prophet: There shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment. At that time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock.

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Trivia: The film was initially banned in Norway, for fear that it might offend some people's religious sensibilities. In neighboring Sweden, it was billed as "The film so funny it was banned in Norway"

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Question: When Brian is about to be crucified, soldiers arrive with news of his release. The soldiers ask for Brian, and everybody shouts "I'm Brian." Is this a parody of the "I'm Spartacus" episode in the Kirk Douglas/Stanley Kubrick film of "Spartacus"? If so, would this support my feeling that Life Of Brian is primarily a parody of classical/biblical 'epic' films?

Rob Halliday

Answer: Actually, no, the primary goal of "Life of Brian" was not to parody biblical films. Terry Gilliam has stated that the "important" objective of the movie was "to offend a lot of people," particularly "Jews and Christians, because they're easy to push around." Gilliam further said that, at the same time, they were "very cautious not to offend Muslims, because they're the dangerous ones." Both Gilliam and John Cleese have also said that, while the Pythons took care to avoid blasphemy (not directly mocking Jesus of Nazareth, with whom the Pythons had no quarrel), they fully intended that the film be heretical (in defiance of Catholic Church doctrine and dogma). Make no mistake, "Life of Brian" is not supposed to be a lighthearted parody of biblical films; it's supposed to be a sharp stick in the eye to the Roman Catholic Church.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: The scene is a parody of the scene in "Spartacus" (although they are saying "I am Brian" for completely different reasons.) However, the film is meant to be a satire on religion itself and not a parody of epic films. The Pythons did a lot of research to try and accurately portray 1st century Judea, which is why it may look like a biblical epic, but I can't recall any biblical epics they parodied. At the time it was considered blasphemous, and not a parody, and banned in several areas in the UK and some countries. Although the Pythons argued it's not blasphemy but heresy.

Bishop73

Answer: You are indeed correct. It is a parody of the "Spartacus" scene but mostly of religion.

raywest

Perhaps not so much a parody of "Spartacus" as a tribute to Stanley Kubrick. Monty Python writer Terry Gilliam was very much a fan of Kubrick films and became friends with Kubrick in the 1980s. Gilliam claimed that Kubrick had even spoken with him about making a sequel to Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" (with Gilliam as director). Chances are, the "Spartacus" allusion was part of Gilliam's contribution to the "Life of Brian" screenplay, a tip-o-the-hat to Stanley Kubrick.

Charles Austin Miller

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