Comic-genius. Epic-battler of film accountants and studio heads. Inspired madman. Director Terry Gilliam has been called all kinds of things, but it’s mostly his friends who do the talking. Especially the friends he spent years with, working on “Monty Python.”

If there’s one image that sticks out from all the wildly-fanciful issues/44/images of the Python films, it’s the biblical crucifixion scene from Life of Brian. Several wretched victims nailed to crosses break into a cheery chorus of “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life.” It’s black comedy—as wicked as it gets—with a point sharp enough to draw blood. And Terry Gilliam has crusaded like a knight to keep making his points, in film after film.

After cutting his directorial teeth on four Python features, Gilliam struck out on his own with 1981’s Time Bandits. The film’s surreal, mythic beauty and rollicking adventure transported theatergoers; Gilliam’s been considered an A-list director by Hollywood standards ever since.

His Orwellian sci-fi fantasy, Brazil, won a cult following, and was nominated for a place on the American Film Institute’s prestigious list of 100 Greatest Movies. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was cinematically gorgeous, but suffered budget overages that plunged Gilliam into studio hell. He seemed divinely rescued by The Fisher King in 1991, starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams. The film was a hit both financially and critically, and scored supporting actress Mercedes Ruehl an Oscar.

Gilliam’s enigmatic oeuvre has been described by The New Yorker as “characterized by a taste for outrageous fantasy, a contempt for conventional behavior, an interest in the curious affinities between people and reptiles and a distinct liking for dwarfs, giants and men with shaved heads.” His latest non-Python films are Twelve Monkeys, featuring Bruce Willis and Brad Pit, (which earned Pitt an Oscar nomination), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.

On the afternoon that we spoke, Gilliam expelled riffs of anger, hope and bemusement on the craft of screenwriting, Hollywood domination of world culture, Scientology and the God of Irony.

Terry Gilliam (TG): I just finished, hopefully, the final draft of Good Omens, based on a book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen. Way back when the book was first out, they approached me about directing, but unfortunately they took a lot of money from an American production company and it never got made. So it floated around for years and finally caught up with me again when I was out of a job. I wrote it with Tony Grisoni, who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with me, and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Elayne Taylor (MM): Tell me about your writing process.

TG: The trick is pulling the structure together—what’s it going to look like?
We changed the end because I never liked it. Books are books and films are films, they’re two different things. The question used to be “Why even waste time adapting a book? Why not write something original? Change the names, and nobody will know I’m stealing.” But this one’s too obvious. I can’t do that with this one.

MM: What is your relationship with Hollywood like?

TG: I still seem to be an A-list director, despite my best efforts. I burn bridges as often as I can and they still come and talk to me. I’ve actually made more money than a lot of film directors without my reputation. So it’s never the end as long as you make money. After The Fisher King, which was an enormous success made by studio rules, Richard La Gravenese and I wanted to option a Philip K. Dick book, A Scanner Darkly, and the studio wouldn’t do it. We just wanted to option the book and write the script and they said no. So I don’t try to figure it out anymore. Any time I want to make a film I just come over [from England] with a couple of big carpetbags and say ‘give me some money’ and see what happens.

MM: Do you call yourself a satirist?

TG: No, I’m a satyrist. I want to have cloven hooves and leap around amongst the greenery, pop out and grab young virgins.

MM: Let’s not go there, Terry. Let’s keep the “a” vowel short. As in s-a-t-i-r-e.

TG: I’m trying to make people laugh at reality. If not laugh, then at least see the straw reality is made of.

MM: Who do you consider your brothers in satire?

TG: The Coen Brothers sometimes get there. Danny DeVito. It’s pretty lonely out here. Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker, creators of South Park]. They are supreme at the moment and way ahead of anything I’m doing. They’re serious satirists. I loved the South Park movie and I was convinced they couldn’t make it work with their shitty, little animations. I said they couldn’t hold the audience with it and they did. They’re great songwriters. They’re the Rogers and Hammerstein of the 21st century. I’m envious, because at the height of my success I only had two assistants helping me with the animation and they have 60 or 90 people doing their work.

MM: What’s occupying your mind most these days?

TG: Where do I get $60 million for this film I want to do? Actually, I’m most concerned about Hollywood’s domination of world culture. There’s a world of people who make films out there, showing aspects of life. But when was the last time you saw a film from Tunisia? When was the last time you saw a film from Czechoslovakia? Americans have the marketing machinery to dominate the world, and marketers don’t love films, they just make money. So the world becomes smaller—reduced—from the vision of just a few thousand people. In Hollywood, the decision-makers are just a few hundred people. That’s why I live in England and not in this country. I can’t live here. It’s easier to see the world from England.

MM: What’s wrong with America?

TG: Language is becoming more and more euphemistic. Politicians won’t say one word when they can use 20. It’s a symptom of trying to pretend that things are under control. Don’t believe it, not for a minute. Brazil dealt with that… these smiling masks that people wear in America, pretending to be helpful, but it’s just an illusion. We know things are not under control. America has developed a strata of guides and helpers who won’t think. It’s a new kind of fascism. [Like] the Hitler youth, [now it’s] the Disney youth, [with their] vacuous smiles. It’s not like that in Europe, because Europe’s been through too many wars and remembers. But America doesn’t believe in history. The philosophy is, “This is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m not happy with the present, and only tomorrow holds hope. The present is a neurosis I’m trying to solve.” It’s great for a consumer economy, which means the rest of the world does the grunt work.

MM: What about your spiritual life?

TG: I am not a Scientologist. They’re all about how to succeed in business, win friends and influence people. I’m a pagan. I have no idea if there’s an afterlife but I think we get recycled.

MM: Kind of like a pagan-Buddhist?

TG: Exactly. I went to college on a Presbyterian scholarship. I wanted to be a missionary, but I found it too limiting. I believe that when we die, we re-form. What people need is a belief in things larger than the individual. In terms of worship, I worship the God of Irony. That’s the only God that I know exists. MM

Terry Gilliam’s Acceptance of the Filmmakers Alliance Vision Award

by Terry Gilliam

I came out here to meet A group of starving and struggling independent filmmakers called Filmmakers Alliance. I’m sure the amount of money you spent to fly me and my wife out here could have made several films, so I hope I’m worth it. And I apologize for keeping your films from being made.

I hate speechifying, so I may ramble a bit if you don’t mind. I’ve been talking all day, trying to plug this extraordinary organization because for people to band together, for support and morale, is really important. Judge each other, rather than let the executives do it who run this tiny little town that dominates the world’s culture.

I have to go back a bit. You’re looking at a product of Panorama City up here. I didn’t grow up in London or New York. I still haven’t, hopefully—grown up, that is. But I so desperately wanted to be in the movie business. I wanted to direct films from way back when, but I didn’t know how. I hated the studio system and I didn’t want to fetch coffee and work my way up.

I made a smart decision early on when I quit working at the Chevrolet assembly plant on Van Nuys Boulevard: I decided to never ever work for money again in my life, but to take jobs for joy and pleasure. Yet, here we are in a town that [revolves around making money] and divides and separates people with managers, agents, business managers and lawyers. All these people that can live off you, for years to come if you’re lucky. Or, in my case, they don’t live off me because I don’t make any money and haven’t for many years. So I apologize to my agent, lawyer, and all those people whom I am not keeping in the style they have grown accustomed to.

The other decision I made was to be in control of whatever I did—total control. It actually destroyed my career for years, because it closed almost every door that was available to me. Luckily, I stumbled onto cartoons and eventually I got where I wanted to go. I was very lucky to be part of [Monty] Python, because we were a little gang. We gave each other support and criticism and, together, we were unstoppable.

I have been extraordinarily lucky to get where I got, because when we made Holy Grail, Terry Jones and I had never directed a film before. People were dodging taxes in London. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Elton John were all trying to get out of punitive tax situations. So they gave us money and off we went. We learned on the job. And from day one it was a disaster. But somehow we got through five weeks of filming. When I look back, I realize there is no way we could ever make that film again. It was very unique and special to be allowed control of what we did and to make our own mistakes. That is the key thing. It’s the one thing I fight for and I hope you continue to fight for.

Make your own mistakes, not the mistakes of some studio executive who’s worried about his career. Every film I’ve made has been a product of my mistakes. Luckily I’ve been surrounded by good people who pick me up all the time. When I’m being stupid and egomaniacal and convinced of the rightness of my own ways, they point out the truth of that situation. Again, that is what’s important about the Filmmakers Alliance. Pick each other up. Don’t be polite about it. Be brutal to each other, be tough. Making films is a great privilege. Speaking to large numbers of people is a great privilege. You’ve got to be very tough on yourself and co-workers to try to be the best. I say time after time that the director might be in the way of a good film, so fire me if necessary.

What’s so wonderful is to work with people who all come together to make something greater than all of them, greater than any individual. In some way we do have an effect and we do occasionally change the world. In The Fisher King, I directed a waltz sequence in Grand Central Station. Now, on New Year’s, an orchestra plays there and people waltz for real. Somehow the fantasy became reality. Maybe it was always real but nobody saw it.

What I want to do is make films that astonish people, that astound people, and I hope you want to do that too. It’s easy to make money. It’s easy to make films like everybody else. But to make films that explode like grenades in people’s heads and leave shrapnel for the rest of their lives is a very important thing. That’s what the great filmmakers did for me. I’ve got issues/44/images from Fellini, from Bergman, from Kurowsawa, from Buñuel, all stuck in my brain. All these bits of shrapnel have formed whatever I am, in front of you now. And those are the kind of films I think you should aspire to. This industry is always looking, desperately, for talent that will do its bidding. Don’t do it. Never, ever. Do your own bidding. Be driven from within.

I’m trying to cut through the bureaucracies that surround executives who try to dignify what they do. I was talking to the head of a studio a couple of years ago and I asked her, “What do you do?” She said, “We make films.” I said, “No you don’t, you stop films from being made. When you consider the number of scripts that arrive on your doorstep each day, how many do you make?” I don’t think she appreciated that.

I’ve worked very hard to burn bridges in this town, but no matter how hard I tried, I failed. I still get offers of work. So I don’t know where to go. I’m counting on you people to help burn bridges as well. Make your own bridges. Good luck in the future and thank you for this award thing, whatever it is. It’s a real nice thing. This will clean my toilet brilliantly. Thank you very much.

For more info about FA and events call 310-281-6093 and visit www.filmmakersalliance.com