“Monty Python” star and British comedy legend John Cleese has lashed out on the press in recent days for allegedly reporting that he might be removing a politically incorrect scene from future adaptations of his movie “Lifetime of Brian” to avoiding offending the trans community.
In recent statements on Twitter, Cleese claimed that a reporter had “misreported me” when claiming the entertainer was planning to chop the famous “Loretta” scene for an upcoming stage adaptation of the classic religious satire film.
He corrected the reports, claiming that he was merely illustrating what others had advised him to do with the doubtless controversial scene. He declared he has “no intention” of removing it.
The scene in query includes a male character from the 1979 British comedy telling his associates that he desires to be woman named “Loretta” and demands the right to bear a baby. Flabbergasted, Cleese’s character within the film tells the person that the notion is ridiculous, while one other male colleague offers that all of them merely advocate for his right to childbearing as a symbolic way of standing as much as “oppression.”
“I would like to be a girl… It’s my right as a person,” the character claims in a scene obviously played for laughs. He adds, “I would like to have babies… It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.” After Cleese’s protest, the character snaps, “Don’t you oppress me!”
Several days ago The Every day Mail reported that the scene from the classic movie “had to come back out” of the script for a future adaptation, in line with the comedian.
The British outlet cited Cleese’s comments he gave at a recent show noting the controversy of the scene. Describing a recent read-through of “Lifetime of Brian” with several actors, he said, “At the tip, I said to the American actors: ‘What do you think that?’ They usually said: ‘We love the script, but you possibly can’t try this stuff about Loretta nowadays.’”
He added, “So here you might have something there’s never been a criticism about in 40 years, that I’ve heard of, and now impulsively we will’t do it since it’ll offend people. What’s one speculated to make of that?”
While the outlet and others reported that as evidence the scene could be cut, Cleese hopped on Twitter to make clear that his comments were only a reiteration of what he was advised, not what he had done, or intended to do.
He wrote, “Just a few days ago I spoke to an audience outside London. I told them I used to be adapting the Lifetime of Brian in order that we could do it as a stage show (NOT a musical ). I said that we’d had a table-reading of the newest draft in NYC a 12 months ago and that each one the actors – several of them Tony winners – had advised me strongly to chop the Loretta scene. I actually have, after all, no intention of doing so.”
He then called out the media for leaving out the context surrounding his claims, saying, “‘So someone within the audience had called a journalist and misreported me. Amazingly not one of the British media called to envision.”
