"Aberystwyth, Wales, 1979." "From a distant land, came a story of faith and religion that would shock and divide a nation." "A story so shocking, it would change the destiny of this small town for nearly three decades." "Until one would rise to power, follow their destiny, and change the course of history." "All in the name of the one, true Messiah." "He's not the Messiah." "He's a very naughty boy." "Ooh, right." "Sorry, what was the name again?" "ALL:" "Brian!" "Yes, Brian, of course, sorry." "So this is the story of how Monty Python's comedy classic," "The Life Of Brian, the number one comedy film of all time, came to be banned in Aberystwyth for over 30 years." "And how that ban was finally lifted in the most unusual circumstances." "Erm, cue titles." "Our story begins in Britain in the early 1970s, which, looking back, was a very different place." "There were strikes, economic hardship, a Cold War, and let's not mention the haircuts, the clothes and the side-burns." "In fact, there wasn't much to smile about, except a very unusual comedy show." "Monty Python's Flying Circus." "Its brilliant, irreverent, surreal silliness left no part of the establishment un-satirised, and completely revolutionised TV comedy." "The series, Monty Python's Flying Circus, had begun in 1968, and ran for just over five years, but made household names of the Pythons." "Our chief weapon is surprise." "Surprise and fear." "Fear and surprise." "Our two weapons are fear and surprise." "John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle," "Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam." "They're unique comedy developed a huge cult following, which remains to this day." "It's a comedy that doesn't see anything as out of bounds." "I know it was something that my parents didn't like, but I did, which kind of made it more rebellious." "It sort of just destroyed all the sappy comedy, the kind of more lightweight comedy, the more jump in the air and have fun comedy." "And it just put a machine gun to all of that." "They're first original film was Monty Python And The Holy Grail, which was based upon the Arthurian legend." "# Arthur, King Arthur" "# That legendary king #" "Then, in 1977, the team reunited to make their next project." "Originally titled, Jesus Christ, Lust For Glory, it was clear The Life Of Brian was going to be their most controversial project to date." "When we started thinking about it, I can remember thinking," ""I bet you we're going to get some religious nutcases" ""taking pot shots at us."" "But then, as we went on, and it became clear what it was about," "I kind of relaxed a bit, because I thought, it obviously wasn't about questioning belief, it's about the priesthood really." "Flames lit." "The Life Of Brian, the story of an ordinary man mistaken as a Messiah, was intended to lampoon the religious fervour of New Testament era Judea." "Shooting took place in Tunisia in the summer of 1978, and during production, the stars seemed unconcerned about the controversial subject matter of the film." "We had no idea what it was going to be like." "No idea at all." "We seem to be involved in making history, and what we intend to do is put a sort of modern consciousness on it." "You get sort of suburban attitudes in AD 33, and it's about how they're complaining, and grumpy and unpleasant." "Cut." "That's fine." "Enough." "Cut." "As philosophers, we're pretty nth rate." "I mean, we're not very high powered as philosophers or social critics." "So our only claim to people's attention is that we can sometimes make them laugh." "But within that context, we have attitudes, I suppose." "It's our revolution." "We can all do it together!" "Among the cast, alongside the Pythons, was an unknown young Welsh actress, Sue Jones-Davies, who was cast in the film, much to her surprise." "I think somebody had dropped out, because they felt it wasn't feminist enough, because she takes her clothes off." "Let me explain." "Your son is a born leader." "Those people out there are following him." "I was just a jobbing actress, and because I had the same agent as Cleese, I was put forward." "It was chance." "Life is just chance." "If I'd been with another agent, I wouldn't have heard about it." "But I heard about it and I was sent, and I went on the bus." "I remember going, I can't remember the bus number, but I remember reading the script and I was in fits of laughter." "The conductor said, "What are you doing?"" "And I said, "I'm on my way to this audition and it's so funny."" "And he said, "Good luck." I got off and went for the audition and eventually found out I'd got the part." "More of Sue later." "1979, and as Margaret Thatcher comes to office in the UK," "The Life Of Brian opens first in America, and immediately provokes complaints and outrage from a range of religious groups for its supposedly blasphemous portrayal of the life of Jesus Christ." "Actually, the first people to protest against the film was the New York Association of Rabbis." "That was a surprise because, you know, rabbis complaining about this film?" "I wasn't aware it was going to be quite that controversial because you don't see the whole picture." "You do a scene and you're not seeing the overall finished product, so the bits you were doing, we just thought they were fun." "I suppose I was a bit naive to think it wasn't going to be controversial." "The Python team were suddenly embroiled in a controversy that would make the film infamous the world over." "Religious leaders across the globe condemned the film, urging it to be banned, and cinemas showing the film to be picketed." "The Monty Python team have taken horrible advantage of the Bible in practically every way you can think of, culminating in the crucifixion scene, which they transform into a song and dance act." "You can see why people are angry." "# Always look on the bright side of life #" "I think they thought, here's a comedy film," "Monty Python and Jesus is bound to be an incendiary combination." "It must be blasphemous." "They're mocking everything we know about." "This was from people who hadn't really seen the film." "I think we'd been a bit smarter thanthey thought." "At the height of the controversy, two of the Pythons appeared on a late night BBC 1 chat show to defend the film." "With us tonight, another one third of Monty Python," "John Cleese and Michael Palin." "They provided one of the most memorable TV debates of all time." "That was when I went on with John and talked to Bishop Mervyn Stockwood and Malcolm Muggeridge." "We actually explored the idea of doing a comedy film about Jesus, with all the jokes about someone trying to book a table for 12 at the Last Supper." ""Saturday night, I'll do you three fours."" ""Come in tomorrow "No, it has to be tonight." And all those jokes." "But the more that we read about Jesus and the background to his life, it was quite obvious there was very little to ridicule in Jesus's life." "And therefore, we were on to a loser." "They treated us like idiots, you know." "I wasn't vicar of the university church for nothing." "I'm familiar with undergraduate humour." "And I'm also governor of a mentally deficient school." "There's nothing in this little squalid number that could possibly affect anybody because it's too 10th-rate for that." "I know you're going to say Brian isn't Jesus, but that's rubbish." "That's unfair." "A lot of people looking in will think we have ridiculed Christ, physically." "Christ is played by an actor, Ken Colley." "He speaks the words from the Sermon on the Mount." "He's treated respectfully." "The camera then pans to the back of the crowd to someone who shouts, "Speak up" because they cannot hear him." "It that undermines one's faith in Christ..." "Of course it doesn't undermine it." "I started off by saying that this is such a 10th-rate film that I don't believe it'd disturb..." "You started with an open mind." "AUDIENCE LAUGHS AND APPLAUDS" "You have succeeded in reducing something which has inspired the greatest art into something which is presented in terms of the lowest art." "That's where they got it completely wrong." "We had been thoughtful about it because we'd read up and taken it quite seriously." "The film was based on things that we'd read about the period." "There was Messiah fever in Judea at the time, so lots of people were being mistaken for Messiahs." "I'm not the Messiah." "I say you are, Lord, and I should know" " I've followed a few." "All you've done is to make a lot of people on a cross singing a music hall song." "I mean, it's so disgusting, when you think of it." "You keep making the assumption that we are ridiculing Christ and Christ's teaching." "And I say that we are not." "The message is..." "What are the words?" ""Work it out for yourself."" "Don't let anyone tell you what to do." "I thought, yes, this is what I would've said about religion or people's beliefs that are a bit, to me, misguided or..." "Again, there's the spirit of what religion's about or belief's about, and there's these awful things that are put on top of it that have nothing to do with love, compassion and treating each other well." "So I felt, yes, right on!" "I kind of went with the whole of it." "But many people did not share Sue's view of the film." "Today, it seems odd a movie could be so contentious." "But why did The Life Of Brian and its subject matter rankle so many people?" "It's very difficult for a non-Christian to understand how a Christian would respond to a film like that." "It clearly was going to be offensive to Christians." "A Christian has a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and it's a bit like if you had your husband and your wife scandalously treated in the media, and everybody was encouraged to laugh at that." "And more than that, you were told you should be laughing as well, that you were a narrow-minded bigot if you didn't." "That gets across how Christians would feel about it." "I don't think it's personal offence so much as concern about the bigger picture." "I think it crossed that line into using the iconography." "That's very much the case." "It took the crosses on the hill, the desert, the camels." "That's why people get upset." "Childhood images are disrupted and made fun of them." "That's profound violation to a lot of people." "Beyond their reasoning, almost." "It's a gut instinct that says it's wrong." "Even though you can argue the pros and cons of the film, you can't argue with a genuine reaction." "In fact, so many at the time took offence, it forced some authorities into taking drastic measures to prevent The Life Of Brian from being shown." "In extraordinary circumstances, 11 town councils across the country chose to ban the film." "One of the first to implement a ban was Aberystwyth." "Its council voted that the film would not be shown in the town." "Should councils have these powers?" "Someone must have the right, so perhaps the council should, yes." "I think it's up to you to choose." "You're free to walk out if you find it offensive or anything." "You have a right to choose yourself." "We understand there was at one time a group of county councillors who actually sat and watched the film and decided it wouldn't be a good idea to show such a film." "Especially Aberystwyth, of all places." "That town of loose living and fun." "I was 16 years old when The Life Of Brian came out and I was a young Swansea schoolboy then." "And it was banned in Swansea as well." "It wasn't just banned in Aberystwyth, it was banned in Swansea, banned in east Devon, parts of Surrey." "It was banned in the whole of Norway, for some reason." "This wasn't just the story of one town, it was all over the place." "And it was really very odd." "I remember it vividly." "When you're 16, especially during those years when you're wearing Anti-Nazi League badges and things like that, it was one of the only proper moments of censorship." "So, for a while, the film was never shown in public in Aberystwyth." "It was a real surprise." "Aberystwyth, of all places." "London, yes." "Coach trips were organised or people got on the train and they went to Cardiff for the weekend just to see the film." "Partly because it was Monty Python but actually because it had been banned." "It was a funny old time." "In an ordinary sort of Swansea background upbringing, if felt like your most militant action, really." "Harmless, when you look at it now, but it felt like a powerful thing to do." "We were 16 and voting." "And that was how things stayed for almost 30 years." "The people of Aberystwyth were banned from seeing The Life of Brian on the big screen." "This was until an unlikely figure took office in October 2008." "There was a little bit of press interest that this famous film star was going to become a town councillor." "Friends suggested I put my name forward to be a town councillor, and I said, "Alright then." So I did." "And I got elected and you know..." "Then somebody who was the mayor dropped out because she wasn't happy with things that'd happened, so somebody suggested I put myself forward." "I wasn't sure, but I did." "And here we are." "The first blow has been struck." "And so fiction became reality when Judith from the People's Front of Judea became the 36th Mayor of Aberystwyth." "And after only a few weeks in office, she discovered her past was about to catch up with her." "I was lying on my sofa after a long day's work and I was watching Richard and Judy, as one does, and who was on it but John Cleese." "He was talking about his films and all the rest of it and he happened to speak about The Life Of Brian." "And he said, "You realise it's still banned in some towns in Wales?"" "It got me thinking." "I knew Sue Jones-Davies appeared in the film." "It'd make a great story if it was indeed banned in Aberystwyth." "I went through all the necessary research and as far as we were aware, at that time." "The local BBC reporter rang me up and said," ""Do you realise you're a mayor of a town" ""of which the film you starred in, or was in, has banned it?"" "And I said, "No, I didn't know that"." ""I've looked into it," he said, "and it was banned."" "I thought it was a fantastic story." "It just made it that Sue was the mayor of the town." "The story I wrote initially sparked off a Facebook campaign and a student who was running that campaign went to the National Library of Wales here in Aberystwyth, did some research through some old newspapers and discovered that it was indeed shown in '81." "Is this some kind of joke?" "But we're not really sure why it was shown in '81 and not in '79 when the film was released." "Not many people even knew it had been shown." "We thought it'd been banned for 30 years and the ban was still in place." "And eventually so many people came up to me in the street and said," ""Go for it, Sue." "Show it again." So we did." "Just this extraordinary sequence of affairs that Sue has been in the film and ends up Mayor of Aberystwyth and hopefully the film can now be released in Aberystwyth." "We hope mayors all over the country who are still resisting the film will take Sue's example and go forward and unban it." "It kicked off the idea with Sue that it would be a good idea to almost borrow this legend and use the situation to generate public enthusiasm as a fundraiser for her mayoral charity." "Sue told us she'd got permission to show the film and she'd like to do a special event here and we said yes." "We sorted the dates out and she said, "Shall I ask Terry?"" "And that happened." "Terry asked Michael and it all snowballed and got completely out of hand, really." "It sort of turned into this big, big special event that none of us envisaged it would be." "But it's quite exciting!" "And so the plan was formed." "On the 28th March 2009, the university arts centre would screen The Life Of Brian for the first time ever in Aberystwyth." "Well, apart from a few days in 1981." "But there were still people in the town who thought the ban should stand, including the vicar, Canon Start Bell." "The film, at its root, is poking fun at Christ, and we don't want that to happen." "I don't think the film should be shown." "Why should the ban be removed?" "There have been people who've said, "This should not be shown."" "But one of the people had never seen the film and some of the others were people who wrote to the town clerk, saying," ""This is appalling." "We will never visit Aberystwyth again."" "But that's countered by all the people who've said," ""We'll come now if you show it."" "So I think our side's winning!" "The day of the big event." "What do the people of Aber feel about the screening?" "It's great." "It's marvellous." "Why not?" "It's a good, fun film, and more of it, I say." "I can't understand why it's banned." "I've got it taped and watch it regularly." "Have you ever seen The Life Of Brian?" "The Life Of Brian?" "No, sir." "Because Julia is actually..." "Is she the...?" "Mayor." "She's in it." "Yes, that's right." "Naked, no less." "I reckon that's why they banned it." "Do you think that's why?" "That's why, yes." "Why was it banned?" "Because it's quite embarrassing for the mayor." "No, I don't know." "I don't know." "What was it?" "I do know." "Hang on." "Was it religion or something?" "It was banned in Aberystwyth for many years." "Why?" "They thought it was blasphemous." "They thought it was..." "Violent?" "I don't think it's blasphemous." "I think the deeper sense affirms what Christianity, the teachings of Jesus says because it shows we live in a very dysfunctional society with war, people starving, our abuse of animals." "Monty Python shows how insane the world is." "I think this is a chapel sort of place, isn't it?" "So it affected chapel sort of people." "We're more liberated nowadays than they were back in those days." "The film wouldn't be so much of a deal for most people now." "What's your favourite bit of the film?" "My favourite bit of the film is..." ""Ooh, you lucky bastard!"" "HE LAUGHS" ""Blessed are the cheese makers." You see?" "I do love the film." "Let's hope the congregation will be great." "Everybody'll go and join it so as it brings the thing back into life." "So, as dusk falls across the bay of Ceredigion, it seems the town and people of Aberystwyth are ready to make history and make peace with the Pythons." "Hello, Mayor." "Arise, Sir Terry." "Thank you so much." "As I say, this is a bit overwhelming." "I see your mayoral chain." "Polish it up." "We forgot ours." "I was hoping you'd have worn them but never mind." "Very nice of you both to come." "On their shoulders!" "Lift her up." "It seems the interest in the film is as huge as ever." "It's the biggest thing to hit Aberystwyth since..." "Well, it's huge, and the press can't get enough of Sue and the boys." "Oh, that's better." "I'm very pleased to be here." "I've never been to Aberystwyth." "30 years ago, did you ever think one of your co-stars would become Mayor?" "We were hoping she would but..." "It was in the contract." "It's taken a very long time." "What's it like reuniting with these two tonight?" "It's great." "They look exactly the same as they did then." "In a way, it's kind of more relevant nowadays because religion has come back on the political agenda." "I'm sure if Jesus himself was a good public speaker, he probably knew how to make people laugh and about comedies." "Odd idea that religion should not be funny." "That sort of crept in in the intervening 2,000 years." "Most of the people who reacted against the film were the people who hadn't seen it." "There was a Councillor Pinney in Devon who banned the film and when it was pointed out to him that he hadn't seen the film, he said, "You don't need to see a pigsty to know it stinks."" "The Middle West in America still won't let Life Of Brian be shown." "They seem to be terrified of it." "So, you know, that keeps it going." "People are interested." "Why is something still getting people excited?" "What are you looking forward to most tonight?" "The screening or...?" "The beer." "But soon it's time to face the crowds of fans as the charity gala screening gets underway." "And it's a sell-out as the saints and sinners come together for this worthy cause." "Proceeds of the night's event go to the British Heart Foundation and the Truthout charity, raising over £3,000." "Brilliant!" "Sue Jones-Davies, Terry Jones and Michael Palin." "AUDIENCE CHEERS" "(IN WELSH) I'd like to thank you all for coming here this evening." "And a special welcome to Terry and Michael." "I'm really delighted they were willing to come." "I'm so pleased we've given them a real Aberystwyth welcome." "AUDIENCE CHEERS" "As you can see, I'm dressed for the occasion!" "LAUGHTER" "Especially with my bling!" "So, as the surreal opening credits roll by, the ban is finally lifted." "All in all, then, it's a happy ending to our story." "And as this audience enjoys the show, it seems the film still has the power to outrage, offend, but most of all, make us laugh at ourselves." "That's probably why we still love The Life Of Brian more than ever." "For those involved, why do they think it's still relevant today?" "The worst thing would be if the film had been ignored and people'd said, "It's a nice comedy film." That's it." "It was talked about and there were things worth talking about in it." "You hope your comedy is going to be relevant and it obviously is." "Really what it's about is taking responsibility for your own actions." "And that is what most people duck." "They'd rather, "You tell me what to do"" "because it means you have to be grown up." "And I think being grown up for most people is hard." "They don't want it." "They'd rather their parents, religion or society to tell them what to do." "And the message to me is that we all have to take responsibility." "It's great seeing Sue again." "That's been terrific." "And I just want to see this whole change in Aberystwyth that will happen after the film has been released." "People will be saying, "Can we say more?"" "They'll be wanting to see The Holy Grail next!" "# And always look on the bright side of life..." "It's going to be dangerous on the streets of Aberystwyth afterwards." "There's going to be such loose living." "We're going to be locked up in our rooms." "Yes." "# For life is quite absurd and death's the final word" "# You must always face the curtain with a bow" "# Forget about your sin Give the audience a grin" "# Enjoy it, it's your last chance... #"