Gilliam on Gilliam

by Terry Gilliam; Edited by Ian Christe

• ISBN13: 9780571202805
• ISBN10: 0571202802
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2000-06-15
• Publisher: Faber & Faber

Summary

Every Terry Gilliam film creates its own unique world, fuelled byobsession and fantasy, yet realized with meticulous craftmanship and dark humour. From the medieval mock-epic Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the mythic, paranoid worlds of The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam has pursued a totally personal, uncompromising vision. This has led to legendary battles with studios and financiers, notably over The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brazil, which is now widely considered a classic.Gilliam is a famously candid commentator on his own work, and in these specially recorded interviews he reflects on how his Midwestern childhood and early career as an animator prepared him to undertake his extraordinary adventures in cinema.

Author Biography

Ian Christie is the co-editor of Scorsese on Scorsese and the author of Arrows of Desire: The Films of Powell and Pressburger.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Poems Unlimited	vi
Acknowledgements	x
Minnesota, Magic and the Movies	1	(15)
Alice and the assembly line; Mad at the Algonquin and filming Joyce; army life, escape to Europe and disillusion in Disneyland	16	(20)
Late Swinging London; animation as stream of consciousness; a programme called Monty Python; and the Holy Grail on a shoestring	36	(28)
Jabberwocky and the joy of real actors; in the footsteps of Zeffirelli for Life of Brian	64	(23)
Handmade Time Bandits and unlikely heroes; The Crimson Permanent Assurance comes aboard	87	(24)
1984½ becomes Brazil, with the aid of ducts and De Niro; and what happened next	111	(41)
Bernini, Dore and light filtering through the pines of Cinecitta while Munchausen hovers between life and death	152	(38)
Knights errant and distressed damsels in Manhattan: The Fisher King	190	(26)
The Defective Detective in development hell; A Tale of Two Cities untold; Twelve Monkeys unleashed; early cinema as The Last Machine and the art of Spellbound	216	(27)
An unexpected rendezvous with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; and still The Defective Detective	243	(24)
Filmography	267	(21)
Index	288