TERRY GILLIAM
I HAVEN’T HAD DEALINGS WITH HOLLYWOOD FOR A WHILE. IT JUST BECOMES TIRESOME TO LISTEN TO THE INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD
In Cannes 2018, Terry Gilliam arrived with The Man Who Killed Don Quixote finally complete. And what happened? Legal fights with former producer Paulo Branco almost derailed the closing night screening and caused Amazon Studios to pull out of releasing it. Worse still, Gilliam had just suffered a perforated medullary artery. Just his luck after 25 years of trying to get Quixote made.
Thankfully, the 78-year-old Gilliam is fighting fit when TF catches up with him a year later. Well, almost. The Minnesota native, who formally renounced his US citizenship in 2006, has just been playing with his granddaughter. “I’m exhausted… she’s obviously trying to kill me and make room for herself!” he giggles, something he does with huge frequency.
Gilliam is back talking about where it all began. Fifty years ago, a giant pink foot splatted for the first time on our screens as Gilliam’s animations for Monty Python’s Flying Circus were unleashed. It wasn’t his first TV gig – he’d met fellow Pythons Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Jones on children’s show Do Not Adjust Your Set – but the groundbreaking BBC sketch comedy was the perfect platform for his surreal worldview.
By 1975, Gilliam had graduated, codirecting with Jones the group’s first feature, medieval romp Monty Python And The Holy Grail, before picking Palin for the lead in his first solo effort, Jabberwocky, two years later. This blend of dark fairytale, fantasy and humour would come to characterise the Gilliam style in everything from Time Bandits to The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen to The Brothers Grimm.
Yet for all his successes – he was nominated for an Oscar for co-scripting his 1985 Orwellian masterpiece Brazil – Gilliam has experienced more than his share of disappointment and disaster. Huge fights with studios on multiple projects. The collapse of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote mid-shoot. The death of Heath Ledger during The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus. The list goes on.
Nevertheless, Gilliam’s “pig-headed” qualities have served him well, right back to his time with Python, as the American outsider. “We weren’t frightened of anything,” he remembers. “There was a time when people were less timid about what
