A large subplot involves Stan, who wants to become Loretta. I can’t imagine audiences today being hapoy with this:
Stan: “I want to be Loretta.”
Judith: “Why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?”
Stan: “I want to have babies.”
Reg: “You want to have babies?”
Stan: “It’s my right as a man.”
Reg: "But you can’t have babies! You don’t have a womb! “Where is the fetus going to gestate? Are you going to keep it in a box?”
Stan:“Don’t you oppress me!”
Judith: “We’re not oppressing you, Stan. Look, you can’t have babies, which is no one’s fault, not even the Romans. But we will fight for your right to have babies!”
Reg: “What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies?”
Palin’s character: “It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression!”
Reg: “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”
That’s from memory, so it might not be exactly right. But it’s close.
I imagine quite a few people now would find that exchange offensive.
While the scene is played for laughs, I don’t see Loretta as the butt of the joke. Reg is the pompous fool who is normally wrong about everything, and here he is the only one who doesn’t support Loretta. Everybody else seems to want to be as supportive and respectful as they can be. The only people it would offend are the type that get upset by trans people and pronouns.
Also, both Cleese and Palin have written autobiographical books that are very funny (Cleese) and very interesting (Palin). Idle hasn’t. His autobio is little more than disappointing braggy namedropping. In my opinion.
Probably so… I’m just looking at it from the standpoint of how many voice roles like Waddlesworth in “102 Dalmatians” would Idle have to do in order to produce the same amount of income as Cleese got for being Q in “Die Another Day”, to compare things they did in the same year (2000).
There was a story last year, about a planned stage revival of Life of Brian, helmed by John Cleese. Cleese got a bit of publicity over some tweets he made about how he was refusing to remove the “Loretta” scene/character, despite being pressured to cut it from “everyone” else involved in the show. I haven’t heard any complaints about the scene from actual trans people, though. Cleese is pretty far into the “old man yelling at clouds” stage of his career, so I take his recounting of the reaction the scene got from the other people in the play with a grain of salt.
He’s like 20 years or more into that stage of his career. I think he delights in being a cranky old man. I saw him several years ago doing a Q&A after a screening of Grail.
Well, I’ll certainly take Eric Idle bitching a little bit about the state of his finances over John Cleese and his cringeworthy takes on “cancel culture” and “wokeness” and such. I liked Michael Palin better than both of them combined anyway. Here’s to hoping that Palin doesn’t turn out to be a secret Donald Trump worshipper or cannibal or anything like that. I’d be pretty crushed.
I believe Palin’s pretty universally regarded by his peers as the nicest and perhaps the most natively talented of the Pythons. John Cleese apparently joined specifically to work with him - jointly they were considered the two biggest “gets” on the college humor scene when the troop was forming.
Probably does enjoy biting the heads off live kittens, though. Everyone has some sort of flaw .
One of the news articles about Idle pointed me towards a podcast he did; I listened to about half of it, mainly because I’ve read/watched so much Python history over the years that none of the origin story tales are new or interesting to me (“How did you all get together originally?” snooooore). The Loretta scene in Life of Brian was brought up, though. The podcast host was gay, and mentioned how that scene was possibly the first trans character she’d seen onscreen. I know one gay interviewer doesn’t speak for the entire LGBTQ+ community, but she didn’t have any issue with it (It should also be noted that Loretta’s concerns are adopted into the PFJ’s manifesto by the end of the film). Idle pointed out that Graham Chapman was openly gay at a time when homosexual acts were still illegal in the U.K., and that gay characters in sketches were “funny characters who were gay” rather than “targets of mockery for being gay.” YMMV on that one, but by and large I can dig it.
The thing that ticked me off about the interview though (and I’ve talked about this here on the board before), is how the host said “The humour on the show really holds up today,” and Idle agreed and I guess there was once again a tacit understanding to not address all the blackface characters that pop up throughout the run, including Idle himself, playing a Steppin Fetchit-syle servant in “The Attila The Hun Show.”
If he didn’t do that, the birds would muscle up the bars and Voom!
I just rewatched all 4 season of the original series on Netflix, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s pretty unacceptable today. The blackface characters, a character named Mrs. "N*-Baiter, the occasional sexual assault played for laughs, etc.
The show used to be on cable, but I have no idea what’s happening anymore. I watch a local sports team, and Turner Classic Movie, and mostly archives from YouTube.
I know John Cleese does the anti-woke old man bit, but he’s also very anti-Donald Trump, and pro Joe Biden. I just think his generation and others weren’t really clear about distinguishing laughing at versus laughing with, and many of them still don’t care.
According to Cleese the other three Pythons are happy with Holly Gilliam and the work she is doing. Palin is not talking directly but according to Cleese he wanted it known that he was happy with Holly as well.
I have no way of knowing Idle’s lifestyle. It does seem strange that he is so poor that he is desperate for money. Cleese has made it clear that the reason why he had to keep working is as because of his third wife. He lost a lot in that divorce. Idle was married before but was divorced long enough ago that it’s not an issue. He’s been married for 40 something years to his current wife.
He sold a house in L.A. last year that he listed for $6.5 million that he had purchased in 1995 for $1.5 million. You have to be very careful when rich old folks start talking about how poor they are. A MUCH more likely assumption is his net worth still reads as very rich, but his steady income has dropped off sharply to the point where he perhaps has to liquidate an asset or two. But that doesn’t mean he is poor, it just means he is less rich and resents it.
I used to be able to live a lavish lifestyle on residuals without having to worry about finances is very, very different from I have to work at the age 80 if I want to stay out of a cut-rate nursing home. I’m confidant Idle is nowhere near even spitting distance of middle-class, he just doesn’t like the idea of potentially downsizing and having a shrinking net worth.
From the outside it appears unfair to criticize Holly Gilliam for what is more easily explained by the current residual model of streaming services and a shrinking fan base.
Now I’m starting to imagine a “mirror universe” version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, this time with the players trying to one-up each other on the financial gambits they’ve been taking to keep living in the style they’re accustomed to…
…
And, bloody 'ell Eric, trying to deal with the income streams drying up and investments turning out to not have been quite enough is what most of us fans are doing right now, too.
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