We all have favorite Monty Python lines. My single favorite, I think, is in this scene from The Life of Brian…and oddly enough, it's one of the few memorable Python lines not uttered by John Cleese, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman or even Terry Gilliam, for God's sake. It's spoken by an actor named Terence Bayler, who played multiple supporting roles in the film.
What's more, the line wasn't even written by Cleese, Jones, Idle, Palin, Chapman or Gilliam. It was the inspired idea of Mr. Bayler, himself. My pal Kim "Howard" Johnson is the world's foremost authority on All Things Python and he was there when it was filmed. I asked him in an e-mail last night if I had the story straight and he sent this…
As I remember, everyone was in place and we'd started rehearsing the scene, Terry J coaching the crowd to speak in unison. I wasn't quite close enough to John and Terry B to be certain of precisely what happened (and it's been a few years now!) — but it seems to me that Terry B made the comment, just talking loudly enough for John to hear. John liked it and mentioned it to Terry J and the others, and it was in. Simple as that.
Everyone who works on a film as an extra or bit player has a fantasy about coming up with something like this…something that gives you a speaking part or a more prominent speaking part. Here it is actually happening…Terence Bayler inventing and getting to deliver what is to me the funniest line in one of the funniest movies ever made.
This is a 44 second excerpt that ends with Mr. Bayler's brilliant line. That line, by the way, is "I'm not."