The Terry Gilliam Page
A journey into the loony & brilliant world of Terry Gilliam, film maker, animator. A true original. From his Monty Python days to his cult movies like Brazil Gilliam has always done it his way. Although not always the ideal role model, this man’s determination and unique creative vision have left a serious imprint in my mind. A long time admirer of his work, I was lucky enough to photograph Terry in Bangkok last year and have toyed with the idea of writing a page on him and his work ever since. So here it is…
Gilliam, photographed in Bangkok. © Cedric Arnold / realfeatures.com
First of all, let’s clear something up here. For those of you who thought he was British like the rest of Monty Pyphon: he’s not British! Wait, no.. he is now. He relinquished his US citizenship in 2006, he’s now actually British (He had dual citizenship for ages). Is that a fitting and confusing enough start to this page? I think so.
Well, Terry Vance Gilliam was born American anyway, in Medicine Lake (Medicine Lake?) Minneapolis, Minnesota, 22 November 1940. His father was a traveling salesman before becoming a carpenter. Gilliam has two siblings: a sister two years younger, and a brother ten years younger.
The family moved to California because of his sister’s asthma, and Terry Gilliam enrolled into Birmingham High School. He became class president and senior Prom King, was voted ‘Most Likely to Succeed’, and got straight A’s in school. During high school, he discovered Mad magazine, which was then edited by Harvey Kurtzman; this would later influence his work.
When Gilliam graduated from high school, he attended Occidental College, at first studying physics, then switching to fine arts before finally majoring in political science. Gilliam contributed to the college magazine, Fang, becoming the editor during his junior year and turning it into a tribute to Kurtzman, to whom he later sent copies. While in college Gilliam was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. After finishing college, Gilliam worked briefly for an advertising agency before Kurtzman offered him a job at Help! magazine.
Animations:
Gilliam’s classic Monty Python opening credits
Television is bad for your eyes…
Stills form animations done for Monty Python
Terry Gilliam started his career as an animator and strip cartoonist; one of his early photographic strips for Help! featured future Python cast-member John Cleese. Moving to England, he animated features for Do Not Adjust Your Set, which also featured future Pythons Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Gilliam was a part of Monty Python from its formation, at first credited as an animator (his name was listed separately after the other five in the closing credits), later as a full member. He was the principal artist-animator of the surreal cartoons which frequently linked the show’s sketches together, and defined the group’s visual language in other media. He also appeared in several sketches, and played side parts in the films.
Gilliam’s animations for Monty Python have a distinctive style. He mixed his own art, characterized by soft gradients and odd, bulbous shapes, with backgrounds and moving cutouts from antique photographs, mostly from the Victorian era. The style, a type of cutout animation, has been mimicked repeatedly throughout the years: the children’s television cartoon Angela Anaconda, a series of television commercials for Guinness stout, the “Children’s Television Sausage Factory” openings that inspired opening animator Barry Blair of Nickelodeon series You Can’t Do That On Television!, John Muto’s animation in Forbidden Zone, and the television history series Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives.
Write the stuff off as just plain silly if you like. But, if you’re one of these boring people who didn’t laugh when first seeing the Flying Circus’ opening credits, well you probably won’t be reading this page anyway…
Film Directing
Gilliam went on to become a motion picture writer and director, serving up offerings such as the now cult classic Barzil
Brazil Trailer
Tideland, described as “Gilliam, at his most unrestrained”! I think they wanted to say: “Gilliam at his most weird” - I’ll need to watch that one again! The documentary that comes with the DVD is fascinating…
His films are usually highly imaginative fantasies. Most of Gilliam’s movies include plotlines that seem to occur partly or completely in the characters’ imaginations, raising questions about the definition of identity and sanity. He often shows his opposition to bureaucracy and authoritarian regimes. He also distinguishes ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ layers of society, with a disturbing and ironic style. His movies usually feature a fight or struggle against a great power which may be an emotional situation, a human-made idol, or even the person himself, and the situations do not always end happily. There is often a dark, paranoid atmosphere and unusual characters who formerly were normal members of society. His scripts feature black humour and often end with a dark twist (cf. tragicomedy).
His films have a distinctive look, often recognizable from just a short clip; Roger Ebert has said “his world is always hallucinatory in its richness of detail.” There is often a baroqueness about the movies, with, for instance, high-tech computer monitors equipped with low-tech magnifying lenses in one film, and in another a red knight covered with flapping bits of cloth. He also is given to incongruous juxtapositions of beauty and ugliness, or antique and modern. Most of his movies are shot almost entirely with extremely wide lenses of 28 mm or less, and extremely deep focus, enhancing the weirdness of the scenes and charracters. (See the closeups of Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys, or Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas…)
An extract from 12 Monkeys:
Production problems, natural Disasters, bad luck and fights with Hollywood
Gilliam has made a few extremely expensive movies beset with production problems. After the lengthy quarrelling with Universal Studios over Brazil, Gilliam’s next picture, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, cost around US$46 million, and then earned only about US$8 million in US ticket sales.
In the mid-1990s, Gilliam and Charles McKeown developed a script for Time Bandits 2; the project never came to be, as several of the original actors had died. He also attempted to direct a version of Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities, which collapsed due to disagreements over its budget and choice of lead actor.
In 1999, Gilliam attempted to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, budgeted at US$32.1 million, among the highest-budgeted films to use only European financing; but in the first week of shooting, the actor playing Don Quixote (Jean Rochefort) suffered a herniated disc, and a flood severely damaged the set. The film was canceled, resulting in an insurance claim worth US$15 million. (Gilliam’s reputation in this regard has been sufficient for the satirical newspaper The Onion to run a news article entitled “Terry Gilliam Barbecue Plagued By Production Delays”.) Although the film was canceled, the story behind the whole production was filmed by a second crew hired by Gilliam to document the process. (This was as sort of an insurance for Gilliam, learned from previously canceled productions.) This production story was made into the documentary Lost in La Mancha.He has attempted twice to adapt Alan Moore’s Watchmen comics into a film. Both attempts (in 1996 and 2000, respectively) were also unsuccessful.
Lost in La Mancha
Gilliam has also helmed some unqualified successes, however. The Fisher King (1991) was nominated for five Academy Awards, Twelve Monkeys grossed over US$168 million worldwide, and The Brothers Grimm has grossed over US$105 million worldwide.
Gilliam quotes:
On reasons for relinquishing his US citizenship: “Have people forgotten I made Brazil? George W, Cheney, and company haven’t. I’m thinking of suing them for the illegal and unauthorized remake of Brazil.”
On Hollywood: “Hollywood is run by small-minded people who like chopping the legs off creative people. All they want to do is say no.”
On his style / films: “I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don’t care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response.”
“I just like the fact I can make a film which might give comfort to some people who think they are the only crazy person in the world and suddenly they see there are two crazy people in the world.â€
Terry Gilliam’s Filmography:
- Tideland (2005)
- The Brothers Grimm (2005)
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
- Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail (1996) (VG)
- Twelve Monkeys (1995)
- The Fisher King (1991)
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
- Brazil (1985)
- The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983)
- The Meaning of Life (1983) (segment “The Crimson Permanent Assurance”)
- Time Bandits (1981)
- Jabberwocky (1977)
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
… aka Mønti Pythøn ik den Høli Gräilen (International: English title: subtitle) - The Miracle of Flight (1974)
- Storytime (1968)