Introduction
Finally, two years after its release Terry Gilliam’s latest film Tideland will be coming to cinemas in Italy. The main character, a ten year old girl, has to carry the burden of her parents drug habit and therefore, escapes into an imaginary world. These are two common elements in Gilliam’s movies. He often tells his stories from a child’s point of view, which obviously leads to an imaginary, fantastic vision of the world, rather than a realistic one. In fact, Gilliam himself often states that he is a child imprisoned in an adult body. Most of his films have a strong visionary style, thus leading to a fantastic reinterpretation of the world, rather than a realistic one. Enchanted sequences, in which baroque elements fill the scene, with the purpose of expanding the sense of time, thus leading the audience to an oneiric suspension. Another peculiar part of Gilliam’s style is a sharp figurative eclecticism with a post-modern touch. Therefore, beauty and ugliness, ancient and modern elements, are present without any hierarchical order. His trademark topics are often absurd, visionary, grotesque and anything but politically correct, not to mention his animation work for the British comedy group Monty Python. In fact, Gilliam wrote some of the group’s most popular sketches, not to speak of the numerous cartoons, special effects and animations, for Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This popular television show aired for four seasons and is to be considered the start of the director’s career, which is marked equally by luck and endless struggle.
Terry Gilliam was born in the United States in 1940. In 1968 he moves to London, in order to avoid the draft for the Vietnam war. After many years with Monty Python, he launches his career as a director with Time Bandits in 1981. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life is released in 1983 and two years later Gilliam does Brazil which is generally considered his masterpiece. The movie is based on George Orwell’s novel 1984. Its main character, Sam Lawry lives in a grey monotonous world, in which everything is controlled by the Department of Information and where neither individual thought nor actions are tolerated. While a group of “terrorists” try to overthrow the totalitarian system, Sam goes on a journey to escape the dull reality of his daily life. The picture displays a hallucinating, frightening vision of a possible society in the future. The movie’s success allows Gilliam to turn his attention to more ambitious projects, such as The Adventures of Baron Münchausen (1989). The film is about the fantastic adventures of the cavalry officer at war against the Turkish. The baron is in company of four friends, all of which have supernatural powers. In their adventures they travel to the moon, to the centre of the earth, meet the gods and even death. Unfortunately, the movie turns into a production disaster, and even though it is eventually finished, turns out to be a flop at the box office.
After the movie’s disappointing intakes Gilliam does a movie full of humoristic verve, mixed with the neurosis and the drama of the post-modern era. The Fisher King is a paradoxical yet humorous story about the strange friendship between a successful ex-radio dj and an ex-history teacher who has become a homeless person and is obsessed with the legend of the holy grail. Once again the director proves his talent with an incredible photography that mixes imaginative shots with the raw reality of New York city where the film is set. In 1995 Gilliam does Twelve Monkeys. The film is considered his first science fiction movie, even though it is a lot more visionary and less commercial than many other pictures of this genre. A sturdy prison inmate travels in time to save humanity from a virus that has eliminated almost all human beings and forced those surviving to take refuge in the subsoil. The encounter with the people from the past is not only interesting from a narrative point of view, but also allows Gilliam to express his delirious poetry, which becomes more and more hallucinating.
In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) the director shows us his vision of what is left of the American dream in the 1970s, from the point of view of the two main characters, a journalist and his lawyer, who head out to Sin City, equipped with every drug that exists. The movie is received very well, especially because of its strong irony and the way it deals with the clichés on drugs and their revolutionary impact on the cynical, self destructive America of that particular era.
With his next project Gilliam attempts to do a movie based on the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Cervantes, only to find out, like many other directors had before him, that it seems to be virtually impossible to do a film on Quixote. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote faces every possible production problem one can imagine. At one point the director is left without actors, and equipment. In the end the investors abandon the project and the film is never finished. However, the tragedy is captured in the documentary Lost in La Mancha, which was originally supposed to be a promotion film for the actual movie. It gives us an insight on the exhausting work in the film industry and the desperation of a director who sees his project evaporate. It takes Gilliam five years to recover from the defeat and to take on a new project.
In 2005 he does The Brothers Grimm, a mainstream Hollywood production, which is loosely based on the biography of Jack and Will Grimm and the low budget production Tideland.
We met Terry Gilliam in Montone (Perugia), where he has a summer residence. His visit coincided with the Montone Umbria Film Festival which he founded eleven years ago. Naturally, he has become the event’s godfather and sincerely enjoys the fact that «people can look each other in the eyes and talk about cinema. The festival is a magic event and I am proud to be part of it». After the town key was given to director Ken Loach we had a chance to talk with Terry about cinema but not only cinema.
Many of your movies reflect on the “society of the future”, a society in which the individual is oppressed by bureaucracy, governmental and institutional power. Are you convinced that this process will eventually take away the liberty of the common human being?
What I am really interested in is the growing bureaucracy, governmental control, but also the increasing power of corporations. The increasing control has a sort of a “Big Brother” effect. For instance, in London we have about 2500 video cameras, which are supposed to protect us from international terrorism and so on. We are probably the most photographed people in the western world! So they are supposed to protect us, but what they really do is invade our privacy and therefore the liberty and freedom of the individual. But in my opinion these mechanisms, will sooner or later collapse. Take the Soviet Union: they had an incredible system of controlling their citizens. People spying on people, gathering an enormous amount of information but in the end the whole system simply collapsed. So I am not too worried about the growing control of bureaucracy.
In your work you often use metaphors and images that derive from a fantasy world. What is the meaning behind that?
I think it comes from my background as a cartoonist, so you see things in a grotesque, exaggerated way. All my fantasy elements are really just extensions of reality but taken to more extreme versions, so they are more beautiful, they are more ugly. I think it is easier for an audience to deal with certain ideas if they are disguised in costumes or other settings. Then you can actually talk about things without being didactic. Not because it is less polemical, but fantasy, just as Mary Poppins said, is the sugar that makes the medicine go down.
But don’t you think that this kind of fantastic poetry, as an extension of reality, may have the opposite effect, almost to the extent that the audience doesn’t get the message of the movie?
No, I think it is a failure to create a misunderstanding. If poetry is doing the job properly it should increase the understanding…
… maybe I didn’t explain myself properly. Have you ever thought that your way of expressing the ideas in your films may be misunderstood, maybe even to the extent that the audience doesn’t get the deep message of the picture? For instance in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas you criticise that particular era, the expectations and the fact that they were never reached. The exaggerating way in which you display these ideas may not help the audience to grasp that message.
I understand what your saying, but I would rather seduce people in, so it is not like I am giving them a message. If they have a good time some of the ideas stay in their head and maybe they will start thinking about them and maybe a year later they will look at the movie and see: “Oh there’s more there!”. Otherwise, I become didactic, I become a teacher and that is boring! I think in all of my films I try to tell important things but I try to disguise them in an entertaining way so people are not aware thy are being corrupted by my ideas.
In your movies you frequently approach reality from a child’s point of view. Do you think that this perspective helps us understand the world?
I don’t know, all I can do is encourage people to think as freely as a child does, or as freely as a lunatic does. To try to escape the pressure, the kind of reality that is imposed by the media. The thing that I am most concerned about now is teaching people to be alone, and not be frightened to be alone. Because now were “connected” twenty four hours a day and you cannot escape. It is almost impossible to have your own thoughts now, because not only are we connected to our TV, the radio, we are connected to our friends who keep talking and making noise. That is why I come to my house here in Italy. There is no TV, no telephone “Niente”!! There are trees, there are rocks, the sky that’s it! So I have to be alone and I have to start thinking about what I really think. Do you know White Noise by Don DeLillo? It’s exactly like that, we are constantly surrounded by white noise and you cannot think. So maybe what we have to do is encourage people not be frightened to be alone.
You often had numerous problems during the production of your movies, from The Adventures of Baron Münchausen to Tideland and The Brothers Grimm, not to mention the project on Don Quixote, which you never managed to finish. Is it really that difficult making movies nowadays, or does it only occur to you?
I think the difference is that I just allow people to make films about me making films, so more people see the kind of things I go through, which is exactly what every other filmmaker is going through. It is very difficult making movies. Mine have just been documented more than most people’s. Maybe it is also because the films I am trying to do are more ambitious than the budget I have, or the reality that I am working in. So I am living a little bit more on the edge than other filmmakers.
It is very touching seeing you during the shooting. You seem convinced to finish the movie even though all the actors are gone, there is no set and no money left. I truly seems like you yourself have become Don Quixote and are fighting against the windmills. Are there any news on the project?
After years we finally got the rights and the script back. As for the actors, Johnny Depp will be in the movie, but Jean Rochefort cannot ride a horse anymore.
You did your last two movies The Brothers Grimm and Tideland contemporaneously. What was it like working on two projects at the same time?
It was interesting because with The Brothers Grimm I reached a point where I was having a disagreement with the Weinstein Bros. And rather than fight I walked away and did Tideland. And I gave them the film. Then we finished Tideland they called me up and said would I finish the movie my way. It was actually very enjoyable editing two films at the same time because you get frustrated with one and then you run down and work on the other one.
What do like better low budget or mainstream films?
They are both the same to me, because whether it is a low budget or a mainstream movie they are films that I believe in, that I am passionate about, and basically obsessed about. It is usually easier to get less money than to get more money, but if I can get Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt or Bruce Willis I will do the big ones.
Time is an important element in most of your movies: time and space in Time Bandits, the real time in Twelve Monkeys, memory in The Fisher King, the hallucinated time in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. What is time for you?
I don’t understand time. It does not exist for me. It is the most ironically bizarre thing, when I am having a bad time, time is very long and slow. When I am having a good time, there is no time left. So time for me is irony.
(translation by Dominic Sell)
Interview given on July 4, 2007.
