Discworld and Member Articles
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After seven years, director Terry Gilliam is back in the game
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Written by terrypratchettbooks.org
Sunday, 21 August 2005 |
BY LISA ROSE
Star-Ledger
Terry Gilliam is a filmmaker of grand ambition but limited output.
In the past three decades, the former Monty Python animator has completed only eight features, his perfectionism slowing his productivity. More often than not, the quality of the films usually compensates for the long wait between releases. Gilliam's catalog includes such unique visual-satirical fantasias as "12 Monkeys," "The Fisher King," "Brazil" and "Time Bandits."
The Minnesota native has been off the box office radar since 1998's poorly received "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." The ensuing years were spent developing films that never came to fruition for various reasons
The 2003 documentary "Lost in La Mancha" chronicles the surreal chain of events that halted production on his "Don Quixote" update. Other coulda-been projects include an adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's novel "Good Omens," a new twist on "A Tale of Two Cities" with Liam Neeson, and a television sequel to "Time Bandits." "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was briefly on Gilliam's directorial plate but he lost the gig to Chris Columbus.
The filmmaker's seven-year dry spell ends Friday with the release of "The Brothers Grimm," a whimsical adventure that depicts the story-collecting siblings (Matt Damon, Heath Ledger) as con men who find themselves battling the supernatural. Two weeks after "Grimm" bows in theaters, another new Gilliam effort, "Tideland," will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Two debuts within such a short time span is unprecedented for him.
"I'm just being perverse," says Gilliam, unwinding with a whiskey sour at an Upper East Side hotel bar. He punctuates the remark with a helium giggle and a spin of the snack bowl on the table. "The idea that after a such a long gap two films come out in the same year, it makes me smile."
He may be smiling now, but the circumstances that led to the cinematic double-shot weren't pleasant. "The Brothers Grimm" has been delayed in release for nine months so visual effects could be fixed and the structure reshuffled.
While technicians were tweaking "Grimm," Gilliam rechanneled his energy into "Tideland," an indie adaptation of a novel by cult author Mitch Cullin.
The movie, shot in Saskatchewan, centers on a preteen girl (newcomer Jodelle Ferland) whose vivid daydreams help her cope with the behavior of her drug addict father (Jeff Bridges). It is being shown in Toronto to lure distributors.
The PG-13 "Grimm" is Gilliam's most family-oriented picture since "Time Bandits." "Tideland," meanwhile, skews towards a narrower demographic with nightmare imagery and a disturbing storyline.
If viewers were to make a double feature of the two, Gilliam cautions, "See 'Grimm' first. Let them have a good time before we throw them into the deep end."
Jeff Bridges, who played a shock-jock in "The Fisher King," reinvents himself as a junkie rocker in "Tideland."
"(Gilliam) has a very free imagination," says Bridges. "There's nothing you feel you can't do as an actor. The audience can always be surprised going to a Terry Gilliam film. You think you might have him figured out, but he's going to give you some new treats."
Throughout his career behind the camera, Gilliam has specialized in fables that contrast transcendent delusion and dystopian reality.
In a way, his movies comment on his struggles to get them into theaters. Ever since his high-profile clash with studio bosses over the ending of 1985's "Brazil," the specter of creative strife has loomed over his epics. He went famously over-budget on "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and most recently locked horns with Harvey Weinstein during the production of "Grimm."
"I enjoy making films 51 percent of the time and I hate making films 49 percent of the time," laughs Gilliam, 64, who lives in London with his wife, Maggie and three children. "One is just a little bit better than not making films."
He wouldn't have it any other way. In his mind, there's a correlation between angst and art.
"Everything in this business conspires to make you bitter and twisted and tough," says Gilliam. "I've always tried to keep a toughness on one side and complete vulnerability on the other. To me, if you get a thick skin, you might as well give up directing."
Gilliam doesn't mince words describing the challenges he faced with "Grimm." He says he was hesitant to make the film because he didn't care for the original script (screenwriter Ehren Kruger was unavailable for comment).
"The basic shape of the story was right, but it didn't have magic or the true sense of fairy tales or characters who were fun to be with."
Gilliam and his writing partner, Tony Grisoni, finessed the screenplay, amplifying the humor and incorporating references to such Grimm staples as "Snow White," "Cinderella" and "The Frog Prince."
Writer's Guild regulations prevented Gilliam and Grisoni from getting screenplay credit. The organization's rules specify that when a director makes changes to a script, the new material must amount to substantially more than 60 percent of the story.
"Credits lie on films," says Gilliam. "They're bull----. It's the Writers Guild that dictates who gets writers' credit. It has nothing to do with reality. Most of the things in the film aren't in the script."
The tumult continued into preproduction, as MGM backed out because of the escalating budget. Gilliam promptly found a new home at Dimension Films, a Miramax affiliate that specializes in the horror genre. Reportedly costing $80 million, "Grimm" is Dimension's biggest production to date.
Gilliam knew that working under the supervision of Miramax's Harvey Weinstein was unlikely to be smooth sailing, given the mogul's reputation for micromanaging.
"The embarrassment of doing 'Fisher King' and '12 Monkeys' was that I had a really easy ride in Hollywood," Gilliam jokes. "I wasn't arguing with studios. I was just arguing with myself. I guess that made me get like, 'Grrrr, I need an enemy.' I define myself by who I'm fighting."
He fought and lost several fights with the studio. His choice to play the romantic heroine was Samantha Morton, but the higher-ups insisted he find a more conventionally attractive actress. Lena Headey, a British performer with a long résumé of TV and indie credits, was hired in Morton's place.
Headey says she was "terrified" to step on the set with Gilliam.
"Everything matters to Terry. There's palatable tension because he's a deeply passionate filmmaker. Everything has to be right and beautiful and complex. I haven't been with filmmakers that yell at you. He likes to shout, he likes to be loud. Well, I don't know if he likes shouting, but he does it."
The production was almost shut down because of a disagreement over a prosthetic nose Gilliam wanted Damon to wear. He says the actor looked like a young Marlon Brando with the added bump.
"I like taking (movie stars) and letting them be something very different," says Gilliam. "Actors love it because it's an escape from having to be that character that the public wants them to be. I don't direct them so much as provide extra space to play in. Studios get very nervous about this. They want to hand out the same Big Mac each time, but I want to turn the Big Mac inside out."
It's easy to see a connection between the bureaucracies Gilliam mocks in his films and studio conglomerates. He's never held Hollywood in high regard, nor any other establishment for that matter.
"He has a strong social political sense of the world," says David Morse, who played a bioterrorist in "12 Monkeys." "The disparity between the way people live on one end and the other, he feels a kind of responsibility. He'd see people living on the streets and he wanted to get that in the movie somehow."
Gilliam's penchant for acerbic social commentary links back to the underground comics he read as a youngster. His favorite was Mad, a groundbreaking publication launched by Harvey Kurtzman in 1954. The comic book-turned-magazine featured parodies of pop culture icons and illustrations dense with visual puns.
Inspired by Kurtzman's work, Gilliam edited a humor magazine titled Fang while studying political science at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He sent copies of Fang to Mad's headquarters in New York, hoping to land a job there someday.
After graduation, he left for the Big Apple and lucked into a gig with Kurtzman. He served as assistant editor on Help!, which published early work by R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. Gilliam still remembers his job interview.
"I met Harvey at the Algonquin Hotel where the (literary) Round Table once was. I walked in, and there's all the cartoonists, my heroes working on the first episode of 'Little Annie Fanny' for Playboy. It was like I walked into Valhalla and all the gods were there."
One of Gilliam's long-time friends and former collaborators is "Good Morning America" movie critic, Joel Siegel. During the mid-1960s, the two penned a collection of illustrated short stories, "The Cocktail People" (now out of print).
When Gilliam moved back to Los Angeles, he briefly worked with Siegel at an advertising agency, devising imaginative campaigns for canned soup. Siegel says that even in those early days, his friend had "a terrific sense of style." "When he was living in Laurel Canyon, his house was on a cliff so steep, it was like a foot and a half of house was on actual ground and the rest was hanging over the cliff. To get to his driveway, he had a funicular. You could see that personal style in the car he drove, the way that he dressed."
Gilliam relocated to London in 1967, moving there with his British girlfriend. "She wanted to go home and I was totally disillusioned with America at that point," Gilliam says. "The war was on. I was angry. I said, 'If I stay here any longer, I'm going to start throwing bombs.'"
John Cleese, with whom Gilliam had worked on Help!, got him work as an animator on the comedy show, "Do Not Adjust Your Set," which featured future Monty Python players Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Jones. Deadlines didn't allow time for him to hand-draw designs, so he recycled pictures from library books and greeting cards.
His flair for odd juxtaposition earned him a place in the six-member Python troupe. "Monty Python's Flying Circus," which aired on the BBC from 1969 until 1974, featured Gilliam's animated segments between skits. The scenery-squishing foot, emblematic of the group's free-association comedy, was his handiwork. He also acted in some episodes, most notably portraying Cardinal Fang in the "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" sketch.
Gilliam graduated from animator to feature filmmaker when the group collaborated on the Arthurian farce "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
Gilliam co-directed the saga with Terry Jones on location in Scotland for a meager budget of $500,000. The team battled unpredictable weather, malfunctioning equipment and the occasional rogue farm animal.
"We had so much energy, we just said 'F--- it all' and kept moving," says Gilliam. "It was like the barbarians had arrived. Genghis Khan and his hordes had turned up. We swept in there and grabbed everybody because we had no money. The locals worked on it. Marriages broke up, people were pregnant. It's legendary now."
After "Holy Grail," Gilliam splintered from Python to make his own movies. His solo directorial debut, "Jabberwocky," didn't make much of a dent at the box office, but audiences embraced his next effort, 1981's "Time Bandits," to the tune of then-blockbuster $42 million in ticket sales.
With the clout of a crossover hit, Gilliam got Universal to back his pet project, "Brazil," a sci-fi fever dream in which a lonely clerk (Jonathan Pryce) conjures fantasies of superheroics to escape his Orwellian surroundings.
Universal was displeased with the picture's enigmatic conclusion and refused to distribute it unless Gilliam re-edited a more upbeat ending. Thanks to grassroots publicity and the support of film critics, the picture debuted, darkness intact, after more than a year in limbo.
Although Gilliam's subsequent movies have varied in plot and setting, all of them hinge on a fantasy-reality schism, a la "Brazil." He creates bedtime stories for nihilists, tales in which "happily ever after" has its caveats.
"I try to keep this child's-eye view of the world which, is always more interesting," he says. "But the worst part of growing old is everything conspires to tell me it's not like that."
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