"So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." JFK, June 10, 1963.
(UPDATED JANUARY 31, 2020) Fans, friends, and family got together recently to celebrate the 50th anniversary of British comedy troupe Monty Python, as well as the 40th anniversaries of both Monty Python's beloved classic film The Life Of Brian and HandMade Films, the production company set up by Beatle George Harrison to tell the tale of Brian, Jesus' less successful neighbor.
Sixteen of the 23 HandMade films for which Harrison served as executive producer, will be screened at a special festival called The (Other) HandMade's Tale, brought to us by the Mods and Rockers (which is marking its 20th anniversary) at the Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. George Harrison loved Los Angeles, and lived there off and on, so it was appropriate for some of his friends and fans to gather October 7th to kick off the anniversary celebrations at the mmhmmm bar at The Standard Hotel on Sunset. Pete Townshend, Kathy Bates, Tim Rice, and Peter Asher were among the guests at the party hosted by Martin Lewis, founder/producer of the Mods And Rockers and instigator of the Python/HandMade celebrations, Mike Medavoy (who got Warner Brothers to buy the American distribution rights to Brian), and Python producer John Goldstone. Goldstone, with Python's Eric Idle, got Harrison to fund the film with a $5 million mortgage of Harrison's beloved Friar Park estate in the UK. Eric Idle called it "the most anybody's ever paid for a cinema ticket in history").
Tim Rice, Peter Asher, Mike Medavoy, and Martin Lewis
The tale of HandMade Films is told in the new documentary, also presented at the festival, called An Accidental Studio, directed by Bill Jones (son of the late Monty Python Terry Jones) and Ben Timlett.
Trailer for "An Accidental Studio"
Harrison's cameo in Life Of Brian
The story of George, Eric, and "Life of Brian", as told by Python's John Cleese to Seth Meyers in 2018:
Many people who worked with George over the years attended the party at The Standard, including drummer Jim Keltner and HandMade executive Linda Arias (George's sister-in-law). Also attending were some relatives of well-known fans and friends of Harrison and/or The Pythons, such as Rebecca Brando (daughter of Marlon Brando), Terry Gilliam's brother Scott Gilliam, and artist George DiCaprio, father of the actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio. George DiCaprio is working on a documentary about his late friend, psychedelic pioneer Timothy Leary. DiCaprio, a painter and underground comic artist, got to know Leary after he moved to Los Angeles, where he spent most of his final twenty years and where he died in 1996. (A docu-drama about Leary, starring Woody Harrelson, is also currently in the works by another team.)
George DiCaprio George DiCaprio spoke of his love for the legendary British radio comedy The Goon Show (1951 - 1960, featuring Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan), the kind of humor which inspired Monty Python, The Rutles, and is also reflected in The Beatles' comic sensibility in A Hard Day's Night, their hilarious early press conferences, and their Christmas Fan Club records.
Ravi Shankar, Peter Sellers, George Harrison Video: George Harrison Talks About Peter Sellers Heroes Of Comedy: The Goons DiCaprio said his son sent his regrets on not being able to attend, since he had such great respect for both George Harrison and Monty Python. DiCaprio recalled that he and his son knew several Python scenes and skits by heart, and used to crack each other up performing them and singing Monty Python songs together. He even offered a bit of this classic at the party:
Pete Townshend and Martin Lewis
Among the high-profile guests was The Who's Pete Townshend, a long-time friend of Martin Lewis. The Who are currently touring the U.S., and will release a new album in December. Townshend came to the party with his wife, composer Rachel Fuller.
Party goers were fortunate to see a casual chat between the creators of the two greatest British rock operas of all-time: Tim Rice - Jesus Christ Superstar and Pete Townshend - Tommy. Of course Tim Rice is also known for Evita, The Lion King, and so much more. Several guests stopped by to thank them for the music they grew up on.
Kathy Bates and Pete Townshend Other notable guests included actor Kathy Bates (currently in Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell), Rhino co-founder Harold Bronson, screenwriters Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais, director Peter Medak, and producer/manager Peter Asher - also of Peter and Gordon fame. (CNN's excellent new Linda Ronstadt documentary features Peter Asher speaking extensively about his work as Linda's producer and manager.)
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (Technical glitches prevent us from sharing the ThisSmallPlanet video for "Guitar Gently Weeps". It was an excellent performance and can be found elsewhere on social media.) The Band: The Springtimers
Kathleen "Bird" York, the lead singer of The Springtimers, the all-star band assembled specially for the occasion, appeared in the HandMade Film Checking Out with Jeff Daniels. The film was produced by George, who did one of his Hitchcock-like cameos in the film as a janitor. Bird is an actor, singer, songwriter, and screenplay writer. She appeared as Andrea Wyatt on The West Wing (2000 - 2006), and as Officer Johnson in Crash (2004), for which she also composed and sang the Oscar-nominated theme song "In The Deep".
Laurence Juber, is a guitarist and a film/TV composer and arranger who played in the last incarnation of Paul McCartney's Wings. He has just released a new solo album.
Laurence Juber and Pete Townshend
The extraordinary keyboardist Greg Phillinganes also has a new album out.
Nathan, Pete, and Greg at the party Greg and bass player Nathan East toured with Harrison, as well as Eric Clapton and Phil Collins, among many other high-profile musicians.
The legendary drummer Jim Keltner completed the line-up. In the 1970s, he became the go-to drummer for both Harrison and Lennon when Ringo wasn't available. He appeared on one of my favorite albums of all-time: The Traveling Wilburys, featuring Harrison, Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and ELO's Jeff Lynne. Keltner appeared with The Wilburys in the video for "The End Of The Line" George Harrison had a strong presence at the party. His music playing on the sound system, and George-themed videos were being projected in the lobby from various concerts, including the memorial Concert For George. Some attendees had attended the memorial concert (and a few had performed at it) and many were taken away by the memories of what George had meant to them, and still means to them, especially on a night like this.
Looking at the big picture, HandMade is widely credited with having revitalized the British film industry at a crucial time in the 1980s and with helping launch and sustain the careers of actors and filmmakers such as Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Neil Jordan, and Bob Hoskins (pictured here with Harrison). Harrison made several cameosin HandMade films, including a role as a nightclub singerinShanghai Surprise, for which he recorded five new songs. The film starred Madonna and then-husband Sean Penn but was a box-office disappointment.
The Monty Python comedy troupe consisted of John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, and Eric Idle. Neil Innes is sometimes called "the seventh Python". Monty Python's Flying Circus ran on BBC television from 1969 - 1974 (and, starting in 1974, on some PBS stations in the U.S.). They are best known, perhaps, for the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as well as 1979's Life of Brian. Eric Idle and Neil Innes famously parodied The Beatles as The Rutles, starting in 1978, with Harrison's enthusiastic support.
It might be hard for us today to imagine the controversy stirred by Life Of Brian at the time - some thought it was blasphemous and excessively irreverent toward Christianity - but this video with Tim Rice (who was at The Standard party) and Python members reminds us of what they were up against at the time:
Martin Lewis expressed his belief at the party that George Harrison also doesn't get sufficient credit for how his 1971 Concert for Bangladesh inspired the plethora of benefit concerts for political and social issues that proliferated in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s – such as 1985’s Live Aid. By way of example, he cited Harrison’s 1971 charity concert as the primary inspiration for the “Secret Policeman’s Ball” series of benefit shows, albums and movies he produced for Amnesty International starting in 1976.
The first minute of this mini-doc underscores how Harrison's pioneering Bangladesh concert inspired other benefit shows:
Ultimately the message of Monty Python and their friend and patron George Harrison is contained here:
Agency Photos by Adriana Barraza/WENN Casual Photos & Videos By Michael Donnelly/ThisSmallPlanet.com
Terry's son, Bill Jones, co-produced several film and video projects with his father - including Terry's last feature film Absolutely Anything.
Bill, with his longtime creative partner Ben Timlett, directed and produced the aforementioned documentary An Accidental Studio, which tells the entire tale of HandMade Films... including its immaculate conception at the hands (and naughty bits!) of Monty Python and George Harrison!
Actor Bob Hoskins, left, was joined in 1987 by ex-Beatle George Harrison, cofounder of HandMade Films, when the British movie academy named Hoskins best actor for his role in HandMade’s drama “Mona Lisa.”
Once upon a time, a couple of desperate English filmmakers embarked on a quest to find a champion, and to their everlasting surprise, discovered one where they might have least expected it.
It was the late-1970s, and producer John Goldstone and Monty Python’s Flying Circus founding member Eric Idle trekked across the Atlantic with caps in hand to scramble together the money to make “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.” EMI Films had summarily backed out of the project, leaving Goldstone, who also produced the troupe’s debut feature film, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” and the Pythons flummoxed about what to do.
“Eric and I came to New York, and then we came out here and started going through everybody we knew,” Goldstone, 76, said this week from his home of more than a decade in Oxnard. “We went to Mike Medavoy, at United Artists at that time, and he said he would put up half the money, but that we’d have to get the other half from others.”
Enter a Beatle to the rescue: guitarist, singer and songwriter George Harrison.
“Eric said George had always been a huge Python fan, and Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam had become friendly with him,” Goldstone said. “So Eric said ‘Why don’t we see whether George could help?’ We went to his house in the Hollywood Hills, and I can’t remember if we had sent him the script or if he had read it, but he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it.’ And that was it.”
Through Harrison’s manager, Denis O’Brien, a boutique company, HandMade Films, was set up to handle the financing. HandMade was created initially with the sole goal of seeing “Life of Brian” to completion. Harrison put his English estate, Friar Park, up as collateral against a bank loan for about $2 million that covered the other half of the film’s overall $4-million production budget, Goldstone said.
“We went to Denis and said ‘We want the same deal we had with EMI, which gave us full control and the final cut,’” Goldstone recalled. “He said ‘Fine — OK,’ and that was kind of that. It was terribly straightforward.”
The unlikely side effect was not just that “Life of Brian” was indeed completed and became a global hit commercially, but that HandMade Films continued to produce other projects and became an important force in British cinema during the 1980s.
The company made enough films to merit its own celebratory festival, dubbed The (Other) HandMade’s Tale Film Festival, which opens Thursday, Oct. 10, and runs through Oct. 20 at Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. It is organized by English producer, humorist and Beatles authority Martin Lewis under the umbrella of the ongoing Mods & Rockers Film Festival, which is marking its 20th anniversary this year.
HandMade Films’ 1982 comedy ‘The Missionary’ starring Monty Python’s Michael Palin and actress Maggie Smith. (HandMade Films)
That’s just one of several anniversaries “The (Other) HandMade’s Tale” series is acknowledging: This year is the 50th anniversary of the Python troupe, which also included John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Terry Jones, and the 40th anniversary both of “Life of Brian” and the creation of HandMade Films.
Among the projects earning a spotlight are additional Python pictures including Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits” (1981), “Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl “and Michael Palin’s “The Missionary” (both 1982) as well as Malcolm Mowbray’s “A Private Function” (1984) and director Neil Jordan’s acclaimed early film “Mona Lisa” (1986).
The latter film earned a best actor BAFTA award for relative newcomer Bob Hoskins, who had established his star credentials a few years earlier with “The Long Good Friday,” which was distributed by HandMade and also featured a breakout performance from Helen Mirren.
Various principals will take part in Q&A sessions before or after many of the screenings, which begin tonight with “An Accidental Studio,” a documentary about HandMade Films by Terry Jones’ son Bill Jones and his film collaborator Ben Timlett.
Monty Python’s John Cleese, top, appeared in director Terry Gilliam’s 1981 adventure-fantasy “Time Bandits,” made for George Harrison’s HandMade Films company.
(HandMade Films)
Lewis will extend the festival briefly into November with a strategically timed screening of HandMade’s 1986 flop musical “Shanghai Surprise” starring Madonna and her then-new husband Sean Penn, to coincide with her residency at the Wiltern Theatre. It will screen Nov. 18 — one of Madonna’s nights off during the Wiltern run — at the Laemmle NoHo theater in North Hollywood, and tickets go on sale Monday, Oct. 14. Lewis has invited her to be guest of honor for what he believes to be the film’s first major L.A. screening since it premiered in 1986.
Goldstone, Medavoy and Lewis co-hosted a private reception Monday night in Hollywood that drew several of Harrison’s friends, family members and associates including the Who’s Pete Townshend and his wife, composer Rachel Fuller, actress Kathy Bates, lyricist Tim Rice, producer-talent manager-musician Peter Asher and Harrison’s sister-in-law and former HandMade executive Linda Arias.
Lewis also pulled together an ad-hoc band consisting of musicians who played with Harrison on different projects: guitarist Laurence Juber, bassist Nathan East, keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, drummer Jim Keltner and singer Bird York, who teamed on performances of four of Harrison’s best-known songs.
But the surviving Python members were MIA for various reasons. Lewis noted that Palin recently had heart surgery and is unable to attend the festival. Idle had to cancel a recent appearance in England because of an unspecified “family emergency” and also is not expected to attend. Gilliam, the troupe’s lone American member, renounced his U.S. citizenship years ago in political protest and is precluded from visiting more than 30 days a year, a number he’s already used up in 2019. Terry Jones is battling dementia and makes few public appearances.
English musician Neil Innes, sometimes referred to as “the seventh Python” because of his close association with the comedy ensemble, spoke about Harrison and HandMade in a separate interview. He was a friend and confidant of Harrison through his membership in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, a collective of art student-musicians that played around England roughly at the same time as the Beatles.
Innes, also known for his role as one of the Rutles, the Beatles sendup band created on the Python spinoff TV show “Rutland Weekend Television” and featured on “Saturday Night Live,” is currently emceeing a tour for the Bootleg Beatles. He acted and played music in various Python projects but was aced out of a more prominent onscreen role in “Life of Brian” because of the financing imbroglio.
“I was so looking forward to playing the soldier who was trying not to laugh at Michael Palin [as Pontius Pilate] because I knew I could take him on,” Innes, 74, said from his home in southwest France.
“Because of EMI pulling out its money and George stepping in, it was delayed six months, and by that time I was doing a British television series called ‘The Innes Book of Records,’” Innes said. “I got a call from the [HandMade] film office because they had done the credits early on and I had already been given this huge credit. They said, ‘You’d better get down here and do something.’ So I ended up being the Samaritan being chased by gladiators and having a heart attack,” he said with a laugh. “It didn’t really stretch my talent.
“I wish I could [be] there” in the States for the HandMade Festival, Innes said, adding that he is supportive of the effort because “A lot of people don’t know that side of George, who was much more of a Renaissance man than people think. He had a feeling for all kinds of things and by golly, we all sure miss him.”
After turning out nearly two-dozen films through the 1980s, HandMade was sold to new owners in the early 1990s. But Innes underscored the important role HandMade played in sustaining British cinema during turbulent years.
“There were not many victories at that time,” he said, “so it was great when HandMade went on to make more films. ‘The Long Good Friday’ was another one. George stepped in and rescued that,” another case of EMI Films getting cold feet, Goldstone said, when producer Sir Lew Grade considered the gangster film too violent.
HandMade distributed it to much acclaim, and followed it by producing “Mona Lisa.”
“I think some American suits wanted to have Bob Hoskins’ voice dubbed,” Innes recalled, “but George resisted it. HandMade Films was a real player. More people should know about the film-connoisseur Beatle.”
'The OTHER Handmade's Tale' Film Festival
Where:Ahrya Fine Arts, Beverly Hills
When: Thursday through Oct. 20
Tickets: $13 general admission; select screenings more
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