Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning Of Life’ In Cannes: In 1983, The World’s Most Serious Film Festival Went For Something Completely Different…
20.05.2024 - 08:19
/ deadline.com
Terry Gilliam has been to Cannes with three of his own films since 1983, but one of his favorite memories of the festival takes him back to that very first time, at the 36th edition, as the co-writer and co-star of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Along with Graham Chapman and the film’s director Terry Jones, he’d emerged from the Carlton hotel’s iconic entrance, then bedecked with promotion for the upcoming Bond movie Octopussy, to encounter a camera crew. Jones started grabbing people at random, shouting, “WHO EES MONTY PYTHON???” in a ridiculous foreign accent, and got so carried away that, when they reached the hotel’s famous terrace, he accidentally did it to Gilliam too.
The crowd loved it, and the day only grew stranger. Out on the Carlton’s jetty, they gave an interview to British news channel ITN, with Jones hiding behind Graham Chapman’s back while Gilliam ate After Eight mints from the box. Chapman deferred every question to Jones, who finally insisted that the film was made for the benefit of the world’s fish population. Why? “Well, we’re trying to achieve the widest possible audience,” he explained. “There are huge shoals of fish in the ocean, and we thought that if we could break through to that kind of audience, we’d be onto a money spinner, didn’t we?”
Here they were, at the film festival where Bergman, Fellini and Kurosawa were revered as gods, with a film that even fellow Python member Eric Idle described as “gross”, “nasty”, “violent”, and “unnecessarily grotesque”. The experience, the night before, of a black-tie audience watching the Citizen Kane of gross-out comedy had been indelible. But the moment that registered the most strongly with Gilliam was completely left-field.
“In the midst of all