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Terry Gilliam
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Terrence Vance Gilliam (born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British writer, filmmaker, animator and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several well-regarded films including Brazil (1985), Twelve Monkeys (1995), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).
He is the only "Python" not born in Britain, but gained British citizenship in 1968.
iam was born in Medicine Lake, Minnesota.
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Terrence Vance Gilliam (born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British writer, filmmaker, animator and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several well-regarded films including Brazil (1985), Twelve Monkeys (1995), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).
He is the only "Python" not born in Britain, but gained British citizenship in 1968.
Biography
Early life
Gilliam was born in Medicine Lake, Minnesota. His father was a traveling salesman for Folgers 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 bout of pneumonia. Gilliam attended Birmingham High School where he was class president, senior Prom King, was voted "Most Likely to Succeed", and got straight A's. During high school, he discovered Mad magazine, which was then edited by Harvey Kurtzman; this later influenced his work.
Following 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.
Later life
Gilliam has been married to the British make-up and costume designer Maggie Weston (who worked on Flying Circus, many of the Python movies and Gilliam's movies up to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) since 1973. The two have had three children, Amy (b. 1978), Holly (b. 1980), and Harry (b. 1988), who have also appeared in several of Gilliam's films.
In 1968, Gilliam obtained British citizenship and held a dual American and British citizenship for 38 years. In January 2006, he renounced his American citizenship. In an interview with Der Tagesspiegel he described the action as a protest against U.S. President George W. Bush, but in an earlier interview with The Onion AV Club he also indicated that it was related to concerns about future tax liability for his wife and children. As a result of renouncing his citizenship, Gilliam is only permitted to spend 30 days per year in the United States, fewer than ordinary British citizens. Gilliam also maintains a residence in Italy near the Umbria-Tuscany border. He has been instrumental in establishing the annual Umbria Film Festival, held in the nearby hill town of Montone.
Career
Animations
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.
Monty Python
Gilliam was a part of Monty Python's Flying Circus since its offset, at first credited as an animator (his name was listed separately after the other five in the closing credits), later as a full member. His cartoons linked the show's sketches together, and defined the group's visual language in other media (such as LP and book covers, and the title sequences of their films).
Besides doing the animations, he also appeared in several sketches, though he rarely had any main roles and did considerably less acting in the sketches. He did however have some notable sketch roles such as Cardinal Fang of the Spanish Inquisition, "I Want More Beans!" and the Screaming Queen in a cape and mask singing "Ding dong merrily on high."
More frequently, he played parts that no one else wanted to play (generally because they required a lot of make-up or uncomfortable costumes, such as a recurring knight in armour who would end sketches by walking on and hitting one of the other characters over the head with a plucked chicken) and took a number of small roles in the films, including Patsy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the jailer in Life of Brian.
Gilliam's surreal 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.
Directing
Gilliam went on to become a motion picture writer and director.
His films are usually highly imaginative fantasies. Most of Gilliam's movies include plot-lines 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 comedy and often end with a dark tragicomic twist.
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 Brazil, and in The Fisher King 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 focal length or less, and extremely deep focus.
Production problems
Gilliam has made a few extremely expensive movies beset with production problems. After the lengthy quarreling 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, as it saw no wide domestic release due to financial issues at Columbia Pictures, which was in the process of being sold at the time.
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's 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. Despite the cancellation, the story behind the whole production was filmed by a second crew hired by Gilliam to document the process. This production story was made into the documentary Lost in La Mancha. In recent years, both Gilliam and the film's co-lead, Johnny Depp, have expressed interest in reviving the project. However, the insurance company involved in the failed first attempt withheld the rights to the screenplay for several years. The production was finally restarted in 2008.
Gilliam has attempted twice to adapt Alan Moore's Watchmen comics into a film. Both attempts (in 1989 and 1996, respectively) were unsuccessful. Most recently, unforeseeable problems again befell a Gilliam project when actor Heath Ledger died in New York City during the filming of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Gilliam's reputation for production problems has been sufficient for the satirical newspaper The Onion to run a news article entitled "Terry Gilliam Barbecue Plagued By Production Delays."
Gilliam has encountered some successes though. His first successful feature, Time Bandits (1981), earned more than eight times its original budget even just in the US, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) was nominated for four Academy Awards (and won, among other European prizes, three BAFTA Awards), The Fisher King (1991) (his first film to not feature a member from Python) was nominated for five, and Twelve Monkeys went on to take over US$168 million worldwide whilst The Brothers Grimm, despite a mixed critical reception, grossed over US$105 million worldwide. However, according to Box Office Mojo, his films have grossed an average of $26,009,723.
Recurring actors in Gilliam-directed films
Gilliam has shown a propensity to work with particular actors in numerous productions. These include all of his fellow Monty Python alumni (Chapman, Cleese, Idle, Jones, and Palin), as well as Jeff Bridges, Johnny Depp, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Jeter, Simon Jones, Heath Ledger, Charles McKeown, Derrick O'Connor, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, Jack Purvis, Peter Vaughan, Jim Broadbent, and Robin Williams.
Gilliam and Harry Potter
J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, is a fan of Gilliam's work. Consequently, he was Rowling's first choice to direct Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2000. Warner Brothers refused to consider Gilliam as director, instead selecting Chris Columbus for the job. Recently, Gilliam stated in relation to this episode, "I was the perfect guy to do Harry Potter. I remember leaving the meeting, getting in my car, and driving for about two hours along Mulholland Drive just so angry. I mean, Chris Columbus' versions are terrible. Just dull. Pedestrian."
Despite the rumors, Gilliam has stated that he will never direct any Potter film.
The Secret Tournament
In 2002, Gilliam directed a series of television advertisements called The Secret Tournament. The advertisements were part of Nike's World Cup campaign and featured a secret three-on-three tournament between the world's best players inside a huge tanker ship, with the Elvis Presley song A Little Less Conversation playing during the advertisements. The advertisements were hugely popular and critically acclaimed.
Slava's Diabolo
In 2006, Gilliam directed the stage show Slava's Diabolo created and staged by Russian clown artist Slava Polunin. The show combines Polunin's clown style, characterized by deep non-verbal expression and interaction with the audience, with Gilliam's rich visuals and surrealistic imagery. The show premiered at the Noga hall of the Gesher theater in Jaffa, Israel.
Future projects
Gilliam has several projects in various states of development, including an adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's comic fantasy novel Good Omens. Other projects Gilliam has been trying to get off the ground since the 1990s are an adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (starring Mel Gibson), an adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (which has been adapted into movies several times before), and a script entitled The Defective Detective that Gilliam has co-authored with Richard LaGravenese (who wrote Gilliam's The Fisher King before).
It was rumoured that Gilliam may direct - or be involved in the production of - the animated band Gorillaz' movie. In a September 2006 interview with Uncut magazine, Damon Albarn was reported saying "... we're making a film. We've got Terry Gilliam involved.". However, in a more recent interview with Gorillaz-Unofficial, Jamie Hewlett, the co-creator of the band, stated that since the time of the previous interview, Damon's and his own fixation on the film had lessened. In an August 2008 Observer interview, Gorillaz band members Albarn and Hewlett revealed the nature and title of the project, Journey to the West, a movie adaptation of the opera of the same name based on a 16th-century Chinese adventure story also known as Monkey. In January 2008, while on set of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Gilliam stated that he was looking forward to the project, "But I'm still waiting to see a script!"
After regaining the rights to the screenplay of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote Gilliam restarted pre-production in 2008, with Johnny Depp still attached to the project. The film will be reshot completely, and Rochefort's role will be recast. Michael Palin reportedly entered talks with Gilliam to step in for Rochefort and play Don Quixote. Main production start is planned for 2009.
On 23 January 2007, Gilliam announced that he had been working on a new project with writing partner Charles McKeown. One day later, the fansite Dreams reported that the new project was entitled The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. On 3 October 2007, Dreams confirmed that Gilliam's next project will be Imaginarium, slated to star Christopher Plummer and Tom Waits, and scheduled for release in 2009. Production began in December 2007 in London.
On 22 January 2008, production of the film was disrupted following the death of Heath Ledger in New York City. Variety reports that Ledger's involvement had been a "key factor" in the film's financing. Although production was suspended indefinitely by 24 January, Gilliam has now completed principal photography, the major task now being the completion of the visual effects. The director has stated his intention to dedicate the film to Ledger. In February 2008 actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell reportedly signed on to continue Ledger's role, transforming into multiple incarnations of his character in the "magical" world of the film.
On January 24, 2009, it was announced that Gilliam would direct a project entitled Zero Theorem, produced by Richard D. Zanuck, and set to star Billy Bob Thornton. With a screenplay by Pat Rushin, the film is about a reclusive computer genius who is working on a project which deals with the absurdity of the meaning of life. Filming is set to start on May 1, 2009.
Filmography
Awards, nominations and honours
- Brazil (1985)
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
- 3 BAFTA Awards Best Costume Design, Best Make Up Artist, Best Production Design
- 3 Silver Ribbons awarded by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design
- 4 Academy Awards nominations Best Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Makeup
- 4 Saturn Awards nominations Best Costumes, Best Fantasy Film, Best Make-Up, Best Special Effects
- Hugo Award nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation
- The Fisher King (1991)
- Twelve Monkeys (1995)
- Berlin Film Festival Reader Jury of the "Berliner Morgenpost" - 3rd Place
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
- The Brothers Grimm (2005)
- Venice Film Festival Official Selection
- Tideland (2005)
- An asteroid, 9619 Terrygilliam, is named in his honor.
- Gilliam was given the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 2009 for his contribution to film.
External links
Interviews
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