Thanks, Eric Idle! "Jesus Christ: A Lust for Glory" -- now there's a movie I would have paid to see

Did you know that, "according to one study," "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" -- the weirdly infectious ditty Eric Idle concocted for the climactic cluster crucifixion of Monty Python's Life of Brian, and which he a-sings and a-whistles here in an attempt to cheer up the downhearted Brian (Graham Chapman) -- is "the most requested song at British funerals, edging out 'My Way' "?

by Ken

If we must have our celebrities permanently in motion, on a rotating basis, in an unstoppable international whirligig of media whoring, and apparently we must, then we can at least cherish such moments of grace as this, when one of the lesser whores-of-the-moment is a Python, as is the case now, at least in the Big Apple, where Eric Idle has been preparing to unleash his oratorio Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy), written with John Du Prez and based on the classic Python film Life of Brian, on the New York public, and at no less than Carnegie Hall. A flacking Python, after all, is apt to be way more entertaining than most any other specimen.

If nothing else, it's just nice to see and hear the 71-year-old gadfly. And now I'm inspired to share a story, which you've probably heard but I hadn't, that Eric shares with The New Yorker's Michael Schulman in a "Talk of the Town" interview, "Jester," in the December 22 issue.

The story concerns Life of Brian, which tells the confusing story of a confused lad -- a long, long way from the sharpest tack among the youth of biblical Judea -- who if things had worked out differently just might have been the Messiah. (Well, somebody had to be. But it wasn't Brian.)

To Schulman, Eric owns up that the picture was "my fault."

“We were here opening ‘Holy Grail,’ and a journalist said, ‘What’s your next film?’ And I said, ‘Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.’ ” After concluding that “you can’t send up Christ,” he went on, the Pythons invented Brian Cohen, a Judean nincompoop mistaken for the Messiah.

It's worth remembering, as Eric does in the New Yorker piece, that when Life of Brian was being rolled out, "The night before it opened in New York, a thousand rabbis came to protest it."

Artistic history is littered with projects that were contemplated and perhaps pursued but never brought to fruition. Somewhere in the upper reaches of that list I'm not slotting in Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory. And somewhat farther down on the list is that epic tale of sectarian protest A Thousand Rabbis.

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