Terry Gilliam recently spoke movingly about his namesake and Monty Python colleague Terry Jones. The latter has been suffering with dementia and Gilliam said: “You see a friend, somebody you know really well, kind of disappearing … It’s really sad because there’s nothing one can do about it.”

The pair co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail before Jones took on sole directing duties with Life of Brian and the troupe’s final movie The Meaning of Life (1983). While not as acclaimed as its predecessors, perhaps as a result of its sketch format, The Meaning of Life still contains some of the funniest scenes ever committed to film.

The writing process was far from easy. The two previous Python films had employed loose structures but retained a narrative of sorts. With their final film, Michael Palin has said they opted to “give it the loosest structure, the meaning of life” since they had lots of material but no obvious through line. John Cleese believes the film was “a bit of a cock-up” and the other Pythons have also suggested it was not up to their previous big-screen efforts. Despite this, it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival and has several iconic moments.[ . . . ] Read More at: Movies You Might Have Missed: Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life