Monty Python's Life of Brian/Trivia


 * Banned in China: The film was banned in many areas when it came out. When it was banned in Norway for "blasphemy", Swedish theatres advertised it as "The film so funny they banned it in Norway."
 * Never Heard That One Before: In Norway, it is quite impossible to even mention the film title "Life of Brian" without someone pointing this out.
 * Deleted Scene: A few well-known ones, in fact.
 * Enforced Method Acting: When the guards hold their laughter before Pilate, in the scene where Brian is brought before him. The extras had been told not to laugh or they would be fired so Michael Palin was deliberately teasing them into trying to fight the urge to laugh (you can see their flat-out despair when trying not to).
 * A small one, but in the scene where the crosses are being carried up the hill, the guard (apparently named Parvus) hits Eric Idle's annoying character. It was supposed to be only a tap and not meant to hurt, but the actor was annoyed with him that day and whacked him instead. Eric's brief look of surprise is genuine.
 * Executive Meddling
 * A rare positive example. The original production company canned this movie at the last minute, fearful that the religious subject matter would offend people. So ex-Beatle George Harrison stepped in, paid a few million pounds, and more or less let the Pythons do whatever they wanted... for the sole reason that he was a huge Python fan and wanted to see their next movie. Eric Idle later described it as "the most expensive movie ticket ever purchased."
 * The one thing they did cut to avoid offending people was a Jewish Nazi-esque character named Otto, who wore a combination Star of David/swastika and wanted to make Israel a racially pure Jewish nation. He shows up at the end as the leader of the "suicide squad" that tries to help the crucified convicts by pointlessly killing themselves on the ground under the crosses.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!
 * Guess who played Jesus in this movie. It was Admiral Piett.
 * Spike Milligan makes a cameo appearance (he just happened to be around when they were filming... in Tunisia).
 * One of the guards who finds it wisible when Pontius Pilate mentions his gweat fwiend Biggus Dickus is Hugh Abbott MP.
 * George Harrison has a brief cameo as "Mr Papadopolous", who owns "The Mount".
 * Off-the-Shelf FX: The spaceship prop's "exploding" mechanism was powered by exploding cigars and a lightbulb filament (DVD commentary).
 * Prop Recycling: The film reused the sets from Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth.
 * Throw It In
 * The scene of all the people trudging uphill to listen to the Sermon on the Mount. It was getting late in the day and the extras all started to leave during a lull in filming and had to be herded back, and it was Eric Idle who noticed that it looked really good and said to turn the cameras on.
 * Also, the lone man in the individuals scene, who plaintively comments "I'm not!"? Yeah, that was this trope. He ended up getting a pay raise to speaking actor for his improv.
 * Apparently, now iconic song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" started life as something Eric Idle sang while everyone was hot and bored up on the crucifixes between takes.
 * Trope Namer
 * Blessed Are the Cheesemakers
 * Do You Want to Haggle?
 * We ARE Struggling Together!
 * Uncle Pennybags: "St. George of Harrison" saved Life of Brian after EMI decided it was too sacrilegious and refused to finance it. (He said he did it because he wanted to see the film.)
 * What Could Have Been
 * Actor IS the Title Character: The Pythons practically begged George Lazenby to make a cameo as Jesus, for the sole purpose of advertising,