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Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning Of Life’ In Cannes: In 1983, The World’s Most Serious Film Festival Went For Something Completely Different…
Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning of Life’ in Cannes: 1983 was the year the world’s most serious film festival fell for 'something completely different.'
Cleese, already tired of having to submit his ideas for group discussion, now wanted guarantees of financial stability, so his ears pricked up when the Pythons’ then-manager, Dennis O’Brien (Harrison’s partner in Handmade), told them that if they moved fast on a new movie project they would “never have to work again”. Loosely inspired by Spanish-Mexican Surrealist director Luis Buñuel, The Meaning of Life starts in a hospital delivery room and ends with the cast reunited for a Christmas party in the afterlife — an RKO-style song-and-dance number led by Chapman’s flamboyant emcee. By the time The Meaning of Life was finally finished, the various members of the group had all successfully begun to flex their non-Python identities; Gilliam, Idle and Jones had ambitions in film, Palin in television (both fiction and documentary), and Chapman in literature, after publishing his candid memoir, A Liar’s Autobiography, in 1980.
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