Terry Gilliam’s turns 70 this year and he is, quite simply, the most daring and successful surrealist to work in the Hollywood mainstream. Not since Bunuel, a couple of French directors and Jim Jarmusch, has there been a film-maker quite like him.  In the world of commercial film, Gilliam is like an absurdist warrior who has, for years, confronted the absurdity of the commercial film industry in Hollywood. The amazing thing is how often he has won that battle in the face of unlikely odds.

Writer-director Terry Gilliam

Looking back over his work, Gilliam seems like a contemporary Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, touched by “a fine madness”, something that mass audiences fail to understand and often do not appreciate. The great irony of Gilliam’s career is that the one film he failed to finish was about Don Quixote, in which Johnny Depp was to star. Sadly, bouts of catastrophic weather, plus a string of accidents and cash-flow problems closed that production down. It appears, however, that he is currently busy on his second attempt at telling the story of “the Knight of the Woeful Countenance”. His most recent film “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” was also plagued by misfortune. The central character, Tony was being played by Heath Ledger, who died of a drug overdose two-thirds of the way through the production schedule. The character Tony was in every scene of the film and Ledger’s death left the film in limbo, with the possibility of a catastrophic loss of millions of dollars.  Gilliam, however, was able to bring Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell into the film by re-writing the plot in such a way that these three actors could all play Tony, the character Heath Ledger had been playing. Gilliam’s ingenious imagination enabled him to re-write the script by creating interesting and credible plot twists that explain why Tony kept changing his looks.

Heath Ledger

It was not a perfect solution but, at least, Gilliam could finish the film. At the Toronto Film Festival in 2009, Terry Gilliam was interviewed by a panel of film journalists. In the transcript of that discussion, released to the media by the festival office, offered great insight into the way Gilliam salvaged the film. He began by talking about the impact of the financial recession on Hollywood and presented an image of the production system reeling from the shock. “Five years ago” said Gilliam “producers were happy to pay $200-million to make “Transformers” but things have changed. Will those same producers spend $300-million for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 4’? Or the $200-million they want for ‘The Lone Ranger’? I don’t know if the can, but directors who are trying to fund projects now have to face this gauntlet of terrified executives who have no money. Their money disappeared overnight. Isn’t that amazing? It’s like God died. It’s like, a Nietzsche moment – ‘God is dead’, but actually it’s the money that’s dead” said Gilliam.

Johnny Depp

“In Hollywood now”, Gilliam continued, “you can make a film for $200-million or $2-million, and there’s nothing in between. I mean, the $20-million film, the kind of movie is almost impossible to fund. It’s really hard to get the money for that kind of film. Our budget for ‘Parnassus’ was $25-million and we only got it because ’Brokeback Mountain’ had made Heath Ledger was the hottest thing going - everybody wanted Heath, but Heath was turning everything down. Then, in the summer of 2008, when "The Dark Knight" came out, Heath Ledger was going to be the biggest star on the planet. It was so obvious – but even with Heath on board, we couldn’t get any money out of Hollywood. So it’s a UK-Canadian co-production, tied in with European sales and there’s no American money in the film,” said Gilliam.

But that was not the only problem. Gilliam’s last three films did not attract audiences. “The Brothers Grimm” (2005) starring Heath Ledger and Matt Damon was a box-office failure. Gilliam’s next film “Tideland” (2006) (which featured Jeff Bridges as a decomposing corpse) fell into oblivion, opening in just nine U.S. theaters, earning less than $70,000. During that debacle, Gilliam says, he walked the streets of New York holding a cardboard sign that read “Film Maker needs Studio Funding. Family to Support. Will Direct For Food." It was a grim joke, but it was also typical of the Gilliam process. He has never followed - nor even consulted -the commercial interests of the marketplace.  He scored a few big hits - "Time Bandits," "The Fisher King” and "12 Monkeys” but he also massive flops like "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” but still he just kept on working to his own unique vision.

Jude Law

That tenacity in support of his vision, says Gilliam, came from his childhood which was spent in a country setting on the banks of Medicine Lake, outside Minneapolis. His father was a carpenter and the family lived in a small summer cottage even when the fierce Antarctic winter storms blew in. The family had no TV and Gilliam said “There’s something about living in the country, where you have to make your own toys and create your own world. Nature is infinitely fascinating. There was a swamp across the street, a forest behind the house, a lake off to the right and a cornfield the other direction. They were like four potential universes for me," said Gilliam.

He also remembers being raised on fantasy stories: Grimm fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen, Hardy Boys stories and radio serials. "You were just sitting in this Antarctic place with these great voices and sound effects on radio and I was enchanted by the old traditional illustrations in my books” he said. He loved to design illustrations and one of his first jobs was working at “Mad” magazine, alongside its co-founder Harvey Kurtzman. The absurdist tone of that magazine is echoed in all his work, especially in Gilliam’s “Monty Python” films and his subsequent work.  “I want people to be astonished; I want more people to use their imagination, to be free from the kind of closed world that the media presents as reality” Gilliam says. “I have always reached a much smaller audience than I would like and that’s unfortunate, but the great thing about that smaller audience, is that they’re passionate and they’re the ones that might end up doing something more wonderful.”

“The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus” is a perfect example of Gilliam’s style. It starts in contemporary London, and through the streets lined with glass skyscrapers, comes an old-fashioned caravan, a traveling theatre from ages past, in which it offers an impromptu show. There’s a pretty lady Valentina (Lily Cole) doing tricks and a performing dwarf called Percy (Verne Troyer). There’s the handy-man Anton (Andrew Garfield) and finally there is the aged Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer). His “Imaginarium” is an anachronism in modern London but it soon becomes obvious that this is no ordinary sideshow. On the stage of the Imaginarium is a mirror that is a magical portal and any reckless or careless person who dares to look in the mirror is pulled into a dark fantasy-world where their worst nightmares come true. It’s a fascinating contrast, the glittering modern metropolis and the dark magical world that lurks in the mirror.

The trigger for the story is the discovery of a young man Tony (Heath Ledger) who is found, close to death, hanging from a noose under a bridge over the Thames. He is rescued and revived in the Imaginarium, where he begins a most extraordinary adventure.  As Gilliam says, “When we started filming we did not have a script. Actually we didn’t even have a story, just a couple of ideas to work with” he said. “Then little by little, I said, ‘Let’s make it kind of a compendium of what I’m good at.’ So I kept thinking of ‘Fanny and Alexander’ and ‘Amarcord’, because those we could see the moments when those directors relaxed a bit. Bergman’s film was no longer spiritually dark and tormented and he did not show things in stark black-and-white, but in rich colour. The same was true of Fellini in “Amarcord”. "Directing” Gilliam said, “is like making a painting. There are a lot of people working with me who can do things better than I can, but ultimately I’ve got to have my fingers in every little bit of it – choosing the colours, the costumes and the sets, playing games with the actors" Gilliam said. "I wanted it to be painterly and fantastical," Gilliam explained. "I didn’t want it to feel like anything naturalistic.  But looking back I must say the solutions I’ve come up with in dealing with the limitations we had to face in ‘Parnassus’ have often led me to things better than my original ideas."

The biggest limitation on this film was Heath Ledger’s death in January 2008 which was one of those tragedies that ultimately enhanced the film, Gilliam said. He was still mourning the loss of his friend, as he struggled to find imaginative ways to work around Ledger’s absence. “It created a set of problems. The Johnny Depp-Colin Farrell-Jude Law idea was a workable solution to Heath’s not being able to finish the film. I cut and changed several of his scenes, and the other actors improved the film. It was like Heath was forcing me to make the film better than it would have been if he’d been around to finish it," Gilliam said and he now credits Ledger as the film’s unofficial co-director. “I loved Heath”, said Gilliam. “I thought he was a sensational actor and he was just getting better and better. I mean, the first time I saw him in "The Four Feathers", he just leapt off and I said, ‘That is a movie star. An old-fashioned one’, because he’s manly, and he’s strong. He was like, 19 or 20 when he did that” said Gilliam. 

“The year after "Brokeback Mountain" was a strange year for him, because he hadn’t enjoyed all the publicity, and all the bullshit, he hated it” said Gilliam. “So there was a year of Heath saying, ‘What do I do? I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go back to what I used to do’”. So it was a difficult year for Heath and what finally happened was that Heath was plays The Joker, and he was working on ‘Batman Forever’ in London. I took him to our special effects company. I was showing my storyboards for ‘Parnassus’ one day to the effects guys, talking about them and in the middle of this presentation, suddenly Heath sends a little note over. It read ‘Can I play Tony?’ I said, ‘Are you serious?’ and Heath said, ‘Yes, I want to see this film’ and that was that”, Gilliam said. “When we started shooting it was like Heath was on fire. He was flying and was enjoying this character so much, because the character is a chameleon, so you can do everything and anything with him. He was surprising us with new and wondrous things. I said, ‘Just let it ride. This is good’.

Colin Farrell

After Heath Ledger’s death, Gilliam had to improvise and he came up with the idea of creating alter egos for the parts of the film he still had to shoot.  “Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell have an energy very close to what Heath’s energy was” Gilliam said. “I was only going to call on friends of Heath’s. I didn’t want anybody else to be involved and when Colin Farrell was on set he said that there were days he thought he was channeling Heath” said Gilliam. “I had already spent three years I’ve been on this film, and when you’ve been with it every day of your life, and when you get on the set and an actor surprises you with something you didn’t intend, you I don’t fight it. I love it. I mean, if it goes to an area I don’t think it should go, I will pull it back, but not before I give space for it,” Gilliam said. “Working with good actors is breathtaking, they’re brave people and I think my skill is encouraging them to be bold. I’m a good audience. I laugh when they’re funny, and I cry when they’re tragic. I just want to make them feel so comfortable that they will take chances they might not normally take, and they trust me. They know that I’m not going to expose them when they fall on their face” he said.

Apart from the Heath Ledger issues, Gilliam also did a brilliant bit of casting when he hired Christopher Plummer for the role of Dr. Parnassus, the mysterious, aged man who runs what looks like a shabby, broken-down side-show but on stage there is a mysterious magic mirror which is a portal into a fantasy world. The jeering, boorish spectators who mock his “Imaginarium” all get a rude awakening when they enter a different world through the enchanted mirror, where they see their own lives as they have never seen them before. Parnassus is also a victim of his own ambitions and of the mirror. As we see in the film, he truly is immortal but he is living the consequences of his own reckless choice. In a flashback we see his encounter with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) who is a mask for the Devil himself. Long ago Dr. Parnassus, in an act of pride, signed a contract with Mr. Nick, and now the Devil has come to collect his due which is Valentina, the daughter of Dr. Parnassus.

“I worked with Christopher Plummer on ‘12 Monkeys’ and he was great,” said Gilliam. “Then I saw ‘The New World’, the Terry Malick film and I thought, ‘Chris, you look just beautiful. Come on, do my movie’. So I wrote him a note, and he said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ I mean, I needed somebody like that. I wanted a great, great actor, because even I am not convinced whether Parnassus is telling the truth, or if he’s just a con man. I never knew and I still don’t know but I knew Chris would give it all the gravitas that we needed for the role”. The result is a rich and strange film in which Plummer is superb as Dr, Parnassus, a man who draws a young man into his haunted world, to confront all the aspects of himself – con-man, lover, liar, hero and thief. Heath Ledger could have played them all, but after his untimely death, the other actors – Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law – stepped in to complete a story that is unlike any other movie you are likely to see in this – or any year.

 
Terry Gilliam - Select Filmography

Terry Gilliam was the only American member of the famed “Monty Python” comedy ensemble Terry Gilliam directed all the “Python” films: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), “Life of Brian” (1979) and “The Meaning of Life” (1983). Gilliam also made “Jabberwocky” (1977) “Time Bandits” (1981) “Brazil” (1985) “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1988) “The Fisher King (1991) “12 Monkeys” (1995) “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998) “The Brothers Grimm” (2005).