CROSS YOUR ENTHUSIASM (7)
By:
October 24, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… creators switching art forms and/or careers! Series edited by Adam McGovern.
GEORGE HARRISON, FILM PRODUCER
“I thought a lot about whether to do ‘My Sweet Lord’,” one can hear George Harrison muse in Martin Scorsese’s 2011 documentary. “I was sticking me neck out on the chopping block. But at the same time I thought, ‘Well, nobody’s saying it! I wish somebody else was doing it… ’Cause everything should be represented, in a way. If everybody’s just going ‘Be-bop baby,’ you know, OK…’” Released in 1971, Harrison’s gospel-inflected, Veda-inspired refusal to engage in narrow religious sectarianism became the first no. 1 single by an ex-Beatle.
A great friend-maker, Harrison met Eric Idle four years later at a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In 1978, the Pythons’ next film abruptly lost its funding because an EMI Films honcho (who’d also been involved in the termination of the Sex Pistols’ EMI contract) believed that the Pythons would spark public outrage with their absurdist comedy about a Judean schlemiel who exhorts those who mistake him for the Messiah that “You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves!” Upon hearing this, Harrison put his Oxfordshire estate up for collateral and funded his friend’s movie all by himself. ’Cause everything should be represented, in a way.
“I read the script, loved it, and then I wanted to see the film,” Harrison explained. Idle would joshingly describe George’s beau geste as “the most anybody’s ever paid for a cinema ticket.”
Monty Python’s Life of Brian was indeed controversial; it was also a global smash hit. During the next 10 years HandMade Films, the production company that Harrison and his business manager, Denis O’Brien, had hastily cobbled together, would go on to produce some of my all-time favorite British independent films: The Long Good Friday (1980), a gangster movie satirizing Thatcher-era values; Terry Gilliam’s fantasy adventure Time Bandits (1981); and Bruce Robinson’s brilliant cult classics Withnail and I (1987) and How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989). For Python and Bob Hoskins completists, The Missionary and Privates on Parade (both 1982) are well worth watching; so are Mona Lisa (1986) and The Raggedy Rawney (1988, w. and d. by Hoskins). Over other HandMade productions, particularly 1986’s Hollywood-ish Sean Penn and Madonna vehicle Shanghai Surprise, we will pass in silence.
Unlike O’Brien, who’d turn out to be an egomaniac and con man, Harrison was hands-off with HandMade. Too much so, by all accounts: If he’d pulled on his Paul McCartney pants and bossed people around, once in a while, everything might have gone better… and HandMade might still be around. However, he remained true to his ethos. If a British movie maker wanted to stick their neck out, saying something other than the cinematic equivalent of “Be-bop baby,” then the quiet Beatle would provide the funding… and get out of the way.
CROSS YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | James Scott Maloy on DAVID LEE ROTH, EMT | Lynn Peril on HEDY LAMARR AND GEORGE ANTHEIL, INVENTORS | Crockett Doob on LARS ULRICH, TENNIS ACE | Mimi Lipson on DANIEL DAY-LEWIS, COBBLER | Mariane Cara on BRIAN MAY, ASTROPHYSICIST | Carlo Rotella on CURTIS COKES, FIGHTING ACTOR | Josh Glenn on GEORGE HARRISON, FILM PRODUCER | Crystal Durant on SKUNK BAXTER, DEFENSE CONSULTANT | Adrienne Crew on HENRY ROLLINS, PUNK POLYMATH | Deborah Wassertzug on JOHN LURIE, DISRUPTOR | Heather Quinlan on HARRY NILSSON, COMPUTER GENIUS | Adam McGovern on JOSEPHINE BAKER, SPY | Douglas Wolk on RICHARD McGUIRE, GRAPHIC-LIT INNOVATOR | Jake Zucker on SYDNEY POLLACK, CHARACTER ACTOR | Rani Som on RACHEL POLLACK, SEEKER | Jeff Lewonczyk on ANDY WARHOL, FORMER ANDY WARHOL | Nikhil Singh on ADOLF HITLER, FORMER PAINTER | Holly Interlandi on ADAM JONES, DIRECTOR | Jonathan Pinchera on PETER CAINE, CONSPIRACY STAR | Miranda Mellis on EVE KOSOVSKY SEDGWICK, ACADEMIC WEAVER | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on BRENT SPINER, SINGING NOVELIST | Christopher-Rashee Stevenson on QUENTIN TARANTINO, CRITIC | Sangamithra Iyer on MADHUR ANAND, LITERARY ECOLOGIST | Marlon Stern Lopez on GREG GRAFFIN, HARDCORE ZOOLOGIST | Pichchenda Bao on WENDELL BERRY, FARMING POET.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!