Q&A: Director Terry Gilliam

On April 10, Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, one of the most infamously tortured productions in movie history, will finally complete its long, strange trip to the theater. You’ll actually be able to buy a ticket and go see it, although for one night only, before it will become immediately available on Amazon and iTunes. Gilliam started working on the movie in ’89, and began filming it with Johnny Depp in 1998 before production was halted after a series of near Biblical trials—a herniated disc, massive flooding, shaky European financing, etc. The movie’s Quixotic journey to a wide release has been such a poetic instance of life mimicking art that a well received documentary, Lost in La Mancha, was finished and released in 2002, more than a decade before people will finally get to see TMWKDQ itself. 

Gilliam, now 78, was born in Minneapolis and raised in Medicine Lake, before his family moved to California when he was 12. He hasn’t been back to Minnesota since a visit to the Walker in 1998. He’s the only American-born member of Monty Python, where he drew on his cartoonist background for the antique-looking animated interstitials that wove together episodes of Flying Circus. He began his directing career alongside fellow Python Terry Jones with 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He followed Grail with a 40-year filmography that’s been marked by both visionary breakthroughs—Brazil, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys—and one of the wildest box office flops of all time: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

When reached by phone at his country house outside of London, Gilliam alternated between enthusiasm and frustration, with the state of cinema and the process of finishing Quixote, and just with the world in general. He punctuated both moods with his distinctive tee-hee-hee giggle.

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It seems to me, one of the things this movie is about is what movies can do to artists who work in movies. At one point, Toby [played by Adam Driver] asks the sky, “Who the fuck wrote this?” as if he’s trapped in his own narrative.

Yeah, it's about the siren call of the cinema. It's about all it does to people. I mean, this is a fairly late version of the script. It's partly based on my experience with making Holy Grail in a little village in Scotland. And what it did to so many people lives is how it altered them, changed them. Some for the better and for many, for the worse. I mean, marriages broke up. People followed us back to London. I don't know. It can do things to people. And I think I liked what it did, because Toby makes his little film rather innocently. "Oh, it will be great to give some local people a little village." And he's really fucked their lives up. And that sense of responsibility is what I suppose I was feeling, when I thought about what happened on Holy Grail. As for Toby, he’s the creator of another Frankenstein story in a way. He’s stuck with his own creation.

That Holy Grail shoot was seminal for not only you, but for all of the Pythons. Years ago, we talked about the dynamic on that shoot: how as directors, you and Terry [Jones] separated yourselves as the leaders, and that added a new dynamic to some already toxic dynamics: the Cambridge vs. Oxford thing, the tall people vs. the short people…

Films are dangerous things! I mean, part of what's going on also in the story is that Quixote, the original one, as written by Cervantes, goes crazy because he reads all these books on chivalry and knighthood. And that's what movies are now for people. People don't read the way they used to read, but the power of movies, how you go out and [think], "Ah, this is what the world could be, oh."

What frightens me about at the moment, it's so much about superheroes, or freaks who have incredible powers, rather than films about real people, what they can do if they're driven far enough, or go crazy enough, or whatever, or if they believe in something enough. And we're getting further and further away from reality, is what's bothering me. And I think cinema should always have at least one foot in the real world.

I think maybe the best cinema, the best paintings, the best books, are a reflection on themselves. Paintings that are about the light and the paint on the canvas. Films where the actors are shown to be aware they are actors. All of this art has to do with imagination, which starts with seeing something that isn't there. So what is the difference between imagination and delusion? I mean, you've been through the looking glass with this one.

I don't know. It's probably the same thing. It's just that's one produces slightly more interesting results possibly. I mean, it's very funny. I was just looking at this program last night about art brut, as it’s called by the French, and surrealism. And at that point [in art history], they suddenly discovered the artistic worth of a lot of people in mental institutions, and it became this whole new opening of what you can put on canvas, what you can say, and the freedom, in a sense, you get when you're totally mad.

Right.

So it doesn't necessarily mean you'll do great work, and imagination doesn't mean you'll do great work, but a bit of madness, I think, is essential. I mean, all of us who make things, when we're in the process of making it, whether you're a painter, a sculptor, a filmmaker, musician, you do go slightly mad. That's just part of the process. I mean, I always find when I'm making a film, that I really don't think I'm making it. I'm merely the hand that's writing. The film is actually creating itself, and I'm just holding on for dear life, is what it really feels like.

I agree, man. Sometimes when I'm writing stories, it's like the outline will go out the window after the second paragraph, you know?

Exactly. It's such an extraordinary thing, and that's why those of us who can create things, I think we're really privileged that we get to lose ourselves in our imagination, or whatever our imagination creates, which then takes us over. I don't know. I can't think of any better way to live your life.

There’s a line in the movie when the character Angelica [played by Joana Ribeiro] tells Toby, “An artist must be cruel.” What does that mean?

I like that line. [Laughs]

I suppose she means an artist has to be willing to subject others to their pursuit of the truth, or just subject others to their delusions. But in some ways, this movie was also sadomasochistic. Were you being cruel to yourself, just trying to get it finished after all these years?

I've always thought I'm some kind of Job, and I'm almost beginning to believe there is a God, and he hates me. It's either that, or it's the myth of Sisyphus, where I'm stuck pushing that fucking rock up that mountain, which then rolls back on me every time. It's one of those. I'm either Job or Sisyphus. I don't know which one.

Whether it's Munchausen, or the legal problems with Brazil, I mean, but now, in 2018, there's all these alternative means of distribution and several more ways. The studios aren't really the gate holders anymore. But why do you think you're still having issues 40 years in?

It's like it never changes. Every time I go with a new idea, and go to pitch a movie, especially when I left Hollywood to do so, you'd come into the meeting, and they say, "God, Terry, it's so great to meet you. I’ve just loved everything you've done." Oh, and then they get very specific about what they like. But then I start talking about the new idea, and they go a bit quiet. “Well, this isn't like the other one…”

Okay.

How many films do I have to make? How many films do I have to make that are successful and still go through the same thing? I don't know.

So this is because you want to keep making something new?

They want the same old thing again, because they're comfortable when it repeats. It just feels that way. And I just want to keep pushing what one does. I find what I do is very similar to all the other things I've done, but people don't see it that way for whatever reason. What I do want to do is things that are bigger than most current budgets, because now, if you're not making Star Wars, or Avengers, or any of those, you really need to do a film for less than $10 million. It's almost that bad now. There's nothing in the middle. And like Quixote was close to $20 million, and that's a bad number. It's just a bad number. What happened in this instance, the final bit of the money, which is $3.5 million, that we couldn't seem to ever get for so many years, was given to us by a lady, who late in life, came into some money. And she'd seen Lost in La Mancha, and she just wanted to see this film finished.

Who was she?

Alessandra Lo Savio. She has a company called Alacran. And it was just magical, because it had so many years. We had X amount of money, but there was never enough. And this went on, and on, and on. And suddenly, my daughter, Amy, who's one of the producers, she met her, and they talked, and suddenly, bingo.

Wow.

The great thing is, her great dream was to go up the red carpet in Cannes, and that’s the one thing I was able to give her. [Giggles.] I even danced with her on the red carpet.

That was scary, right up until the moment when the movie screened, wasn't it?

Yeah. Well, right, because we got into all these legal machinations of a guy who was, for a brief moment, a producer.

He was involved for four months. He didn't raise even half the money we needed, and he pulled the plug at the last moment. And luckily, those of us who were still attached to it, somehow managed in the next six months to get the thing together. But then we go to Cannes, and suddenly he's saying, "We can't show it at Cannes." So over the course of a week, three court cases come up, and we won them all, and bingo, we were in the festival. And it was an extraordinary kind of ending, because we were the closing film. And at the end, the credits start rolling, and there was a 20 minute standing ovation.

Wow.

It was embarrassing. It was so extraordinary. And apparently, it set a record for closing films in Cannes, as far as standing ovations. So there's a certain quality about this film, that magic is floating around the edge of it despite all the pain and all the brickbats that are beating at us all the time.

Is it more difficult to be happy with something that’s changed so much over a longer time, or are you more satisfied because it was such a saga to get it made?

I think that, yeah, the longevity of its birth made a better film. I think the script got more interesting as it went on. And the cast, our final cast, is the best, really, we could have had. It's changed a lot over the years, and I really want it to be fresh all the time. I don't want to be the same thing I started 20 years ago. The hardest part was at the start of the first couple weeks of shooting, because I was so terrified of other people's expectations of what the movie was gonna be, because other people's imaginations. I have no idea what they would make of it, but people have been waiting for it for so long. And that was the hardest part. It took me almost two weeks before I really settled into just dealing with the daily problems. At a certain point, you can't think beyond what's in front of you, and what you gotta deal with, and you just fly.

So you weren't tempted to compare Johnny Depp to Adam Driver, or to Pryce to Rochefort?

I mean, that's always been the problem in the casting, because Jean Rochefort and Johnny, I thought were perfect. But in a sense, that's how the script kept changing, because I couldn't have them. And so, it became something different from the script we had then. And I think it's a better film, because I think our script got more interesting as it went on, especially when the process of making a film creates problems, which changes characters, makes some go mad, some become whores practically, and the lines are turned inside and out. And that, I thought, was just more interesting. Most people have never read Cervantes, the book. I hadn't when I first said I wanted to make the film.

And what's so extraordinary about the second book, is that Quixote, beaten at the end of the first book, is sitting in bed, and Sancho comes and starts talking about all these adventures that he's been reading about the two of them when they were in the first book. And Quixote says, "Nonsense. We didn't do that."

And he actually goes on the road to prove that all these other Quixotes, these stories of Quixotes, were not his. He's about proving who he is, and not these fake Quixotes that have basically had developed as a result of the success of the first book. That book was a huge success, and soon there are all these other fake Quixotes being written.

So meta.

But Cervantes dealt with it head on, and it's extraordinary. The second book is amazing.

In the course of promoting the film before Cannes last spring, you got in trouble for some of your comments about the #MeToo movement. But isn’t your film addressing some of the concerns of that movement? In many ways, Angelica is a victim of Toby’s vision as a filmmaker.

Exactly. The difference is that the girls in this film, Angelica and Jacqui [played by Olga Kurylenko] these are girls who take responsibility of what happens in their lives. And what happened was good and bad. All sorts of things happened. But Angelica isn't complaining about the fact she's ended up basically just a kept woman by a Russian oligarch, who's been an asshole. She says, "Well, it's better than staying in the village." I think that was part of my problem with whatever I said about the MeToo thing. It wasn't even about that.

I was being interviewed about an opera I had just done in Paris, and it got diverted then. But I really reached a point, and that was part of what's going on in the movie, is you can say these girls, and many people in the film, are victims of Toby's little movie. But no, their lives were changed, but they then made choices along that route. And I'm so tired of the era of victims that we seem to be living in, that nobody's really responsible, and monsters roaming the world taking advantage of everybody, I think. There are monsters roaming the world, but there's also people making choices.

Were you surprised that Ellen Barkin tweeted at you?

Oh, Ellen, I mean, she's ridiculous. In all the interviews that was going on, I thought Ellen was actually the cleverest, because the idea of never get in a lift with Terry Gilliam. Innuendo is so much more powerful than saying anything. And the tale ... I'm not gonna bother to even to tell you. My wife knows it, and it's so ridiculous. I don't know what got into Ellen, but I think she's a great actress, but she's probably not a happy person these days.

Directors are responsible for so many people, and when things don't work out, or when things are torturous, do you think about what happens to the people under your charge?

That's what I worry about all the time. I try to make the whole experience ... It's gonna be very difficult, but we're gonna have a lot of fun along the way. That's my approach to it. And I'll push people beyond what they think their limits there, and they’re invariably surprised by, "Oh, I didn't think we could actually do that." Well, yes.

And the main thing for me, is to make sure all the people we work with, that their effort, their work, is up on screen at the end. I mean, it's no good just giving people a rough ride, and then cut it out of the movie. But the reality is, I get really good people to work with, because it's normally great fun working on my movies.

Last time we talked you told me you found a comedic home in Britain—that you found a sensibility that felt like yours. And I was just thinking about when you originally left Minnesota and Medicine Lake, and wound up moving to Los Angeles. You spent your childhood here, but do you remember what it was like leaving Minnesota? Do you remember any of your time here?

Oh, yes, I do. What I remember is going to the toilet in the Biffy at the bottom of the garden in the middle of the winter.

Oh, man.

We had a two holer. We were really rich! I even put a bathrobe on, because we didn’t have an indoor toilet, for making that little trek in the middle of the winter. I have no bad memories of it. That's what's weird. I mean, you're a kid, that's normal. It's just what the world was like then, and you do it.

Living in Medicine Lake was great, because we were in the country basically. Yeah, dirt road. There's a swamp across the street. Medicine Lake is just another couple hundred yards away. Eventually, when we got our indoor toilet, the biffy was turned into a tree house that my dad and I built. So nothing is wasted. And in the winter, you'd go out on the lake. He'd drive his car, and we'd get in a big tire inner tube, with a rope connected to the back of the car, and he would whiplash us around the lake, zipping around in the car, we were flying. It was wonderful stuff. And I remember eating frog legs at a restaurant on Lake Minnetonka. It was a really good childhood, because we didn't have television, that was the other good thing. We had the radio, and I think that's where most of my visual sense comes from, radio, because you've gotta invent everything, the way things look. Television... it was only, I think, when I was about 11, the neighbors had a television. What I remember watching was Ernie Kovacs and also the Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks. I just loved living in the country. I think I still am. Well, when I came to England, I was referred to, by a guy whose wife I was living with, as a monosyllabic Minnesota farm boy.

When did you begin your Quixotic journey of being an artist?

I never thought I was an artist. At best, I was a cartoonist. That was about as good as I was going to get. And I just always drew. I just drew things and invented things. So I always actually run away from that term, artist, because it's so laden with pretension. I prefer to be a craftsman, a maker of things, that's all.

That does sound a little Minnesotan. Did you start drawing here?

Yeah, I always drew as a kid. I just drew. Actually, I've still got some of the drawings, strange Martians. I'm not sure. They seem to be alien Martian types, but were crossed with household appliances, like vacuum cleaners and things. The concept of mutation was big in our lives.

Once you left and moved away, you said one of the reasons that you had to leave America in general is because it was a bad time in the '60s. And you were like, "If I was gonna stay here, I was gonna become a bomb throwing terrorist."

I was so angry at the Vietnam War. The Civil Rights movement was a positive thing, but why the Civil Rights movement was necessary, was just the evil shit that was going on. I mean, when I was student body president of Birmingham High School out in L.A., I used to get inundated, and I think all student politicians got all this stuff, and it's from the John Birch Society. And it was anti-communist stuff, and it was all about pictures of black guys who had been seen with a white girl, and they're hanging on a branch of a tree dead. My father was from Tennessee, and his father was a minister in Arkansas, so I knew the South. And people, as long as everybody stayed in their place, it was the most civilized nice place. But if you choose to not sit in the back of the bus, right?

Right.

You got yourself beaten up, lynched, or whatever. It was horrible. It was like the dream of America was just shattered as I got older and saw what really was going on, and feeling, "I just gotta get out of this place." And I did.

Now that we live in the age of Trump, do you sometimes wish that you would've made Brazil even darker, because it doesn't quite live up to our dystopic reality?

I don't think I could ever have dreamed of Trump. I mean, I do know when George W. Bush was president, and Dick Cheney was running the show, I was in the States promoting not sure what film. And I said I was seriously considering taking Bush and Cheney to court for the illegal and non-authorized remake of Brazil. Cheney was nasty bit of work. Bush was a bit of a clown and an idiot. But Trump is ... I mean, for years, before Trump got elected, I thought, "The demagogue is coming. I think the way politics are moving, what is going on, there will be a demagogue soon." And we got one.

Do you see something monstrous about us, monstrous about society? What will your next vision be, now that you've finally gotten Quixote out of your system?

That's the thing that's worrying me. I don't have anything in my head anymore. It's like I have been beating these ones for a while, and finally, I got them out, and I do not know what to say, or do anymore. In England, we've got Brexit, and you're watching the political class just running around in circles. It's like watching a toilet flush. It just spirals down. And so, we got that here, and you got Trump in America. And it's like Pandora's box has been opened, and it's out. And I don't know how to satirize it, because it's beyond satirization. It's so absurd and ridiculous what is going on. And you think, "Look at the Republicans, how craven they are, hiding behind Trump." And it's just embarrassing. So I mean, I'm now very frustrated, because I don't know what to get angry at, because I'm probably angry at too many things, and I can't focus my anger.

Don Quixote kind of had one last adventure, one last “sally” I think Cervantes called it. You're 78 years old, but you're up for another sally aren't you?

Even though I haven't reached my birth date, I sort of marvel when I see that I'm in my 79th year, and I still think I'm about 28, 29. I don't get it, except for the guy that I see in the mirror in the morning. He's a real old fart. I mean, I've gotta do one or two more. I'm not dead yet.

I think like Don Quixote, make sure you don't go sane, and you'll be fine.

Yeah, I'm hoping to grow up one day before I die. That would be interesting.

When's the last time you went to a movie and laughed?

There's definitely moments in Buster Scruggs, the Coens. Out of the six episodes, I'd say ... like, even four out of six had, I thought, some really funny stuff there. But there's not that much out there that is really making me laugh. I mean, luckily, Life of Brian is being re-released this year. It's 40 years on. And so, hopefully, a few people will go out and see it, and see how prescient it is. There's so much in there that is about right about now, and it's hysterically funny.

Do you ever miss your Python friends?

Nah, we know each other too well. And when we were doing Python, it was a really special time to have that kind of freedom, and then six people all just went for it, and it was a good time. But it's long ago, folks. It's our 50th year this year.

Do you feel any affinity with the Coen Brothers because they're from Minnesota?

I love them. I think they are so good, and I've loved all their films, because they really take chances. They try things. They've got great sense of humor, timing. Their sense of absurdity is there. I mean, it's always been funny, because I'm just a little Protestant boy from Minnesota. The Coens and Bob Dylan, two, or three great people, were the Jewish people, which we didn't even know when we were kids, that Jews existed in Minnesota. And that really intrigues me, because their humor is very specific. Well, I think Dylan became a Christian at some point, or I think that lasted for about a year, then he drifted back to something else. Both the Coen brothers love movies probably more than I do, and they really love the form of a movie. So their movies are all shaped much more than mine are, in a cinematic, or a movie story sense. But I think they're brilliant, and I just always look forward to their films, because they are unique.

I know your family moved to California, but when was the last time you were in Minnesota?

I came back to the Walker Art Center [in 1978] when I had made I made Jabberwocky. And I had to do a presentation there, and it was quite wonderful. Because as a kid, I was taken to the Walker Art Center. I mean, I remember doing some little drawings there. I must have been 11 years old. So it was kind of nice coming back. And the next time I came back, was when I was casting for Baron Munchausen, and Sarah Polley seemed to be somehow in Minnesota at that point, as was John Neville, at that point. So that was the last time I've been in Minneapolis.