‘Grimm’ outlook
Terry Gilliam is a filmmaker of grand ambition but limited output.
In three decades, the former Monty Python animator has completed only eight features, his perfectionism slowing his productivity.
More often than not, the quality of the films compensates for the long wait between releases. Gilliam’s catalog includes such unique visual-satirical fantasias as “12 Monkeys,” “The Fisher King,” “Brazil” and “Time Bandits.”
He’s been off the box office radar since 1998’s poorly received “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” The ensuing years were spent developing films that never came to fruition for various reasons.
The 2003 documentary “Lost in La Mancha” chronicles the surreal chain of events that halted production on his “Don Quixote” update. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was briefly on Gilliam’s directorial plate but he lost the gig to Chris Columbus.
That seven-year dry spell ends today with the release of “The Brothers Grimm,” a whimsical adventure that depicts the story-collecting siblings (Matt Damon, Heath Ledger) as con men who find themselves battling the supernatural.
Two weeks from now, another new Gilliam effort, “Tideland,” will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“The idea that after a such a long gap two films come out in the same year, it makes me smile,” says Gilliam, unwinding with a whiskey sour at a hotel bar on New York City’s Upper East Side.
He may be smiling now, but the circumstances that led to the cinematic double-shot weren’t pleasant. “The Brothers Grimm” has been delayed in release for nine months so visual effects could be fixed and the structure reshuffled.
While technicians were tweaking “Grimm,” Gilliam rechanneled his energy into “Tideland,” an indie adaptation of a novel by cult author Mitch Cullin.
The movie, shot in Saskatchewan, centers on a preteen girl (newcomer Jodelle Ferland) whose vivid daydreams help her cope with the behavior of her drug addict father (Jeff Bridges). It is being shown in Toronto to lure distributors.
Ever since his high-profile clash with studio bosses over the ending of 1985’s “Brazil,” the specter of creative strife has loomed over Gilliam’s epics. He went famously over budget on “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” and most recently locked horns with Harvey Weinstein during the production of “Grimm.”
“I enjoy making films 51 percent of the time and I hate making films 49 percent of the time,” laughs Gilliam, 64, who lives in London with his wife, Maggie and three children. “One is just a little bit better than not making films.”
Gilliam doesn’t mince words describing the challenges he faced with “Grimm.” He says he was hesitant to make the film because he didn’t care for the original script.
“The basic shape of the story was right, but it didn’t have magic or the true sense of fairy tales or characters who were fun to be with,” he says.
Gilliam and his writing partner, Tony Grisoni, finessed the screenplay, amplifying the humor and incorporating references to such Grimm staples as “Snow White,” “Cinderella” and “The Frog Prince.”
The tumult continued into preproduction, as MGM backed out because of the escalating budget. Gilliam promptly found a new home at Dimension Films, a Miramax affiliate that specializes in the horror genre. Reportedly costing $80 million, “Grimm” is Dimension’s biggest production to date.
Gilliam knew that working under the supervision of Miramax’s Weinstein was unlikely to be smooth sailing, given the mogul’s reputation for micromanaging.
“The embarrassment of doing ‘Fisher King’ and ‘12 Monkeys’ was that I had a really easy ride in Hollywood,” Gilliam jokes. “I wasn’t arguing with studios. I was just arguing with myself. I guess that made me get like, ‘Grrrr, I need an enemy.’ I define myself by who I’m fighting.”
He fought and lost several battles with the studio. His choice to play the romantic heroine was Samantha Morton, but the higher-ups insisted he find a more conventionally attractive actress. Lena Headey, a British performer with a long resume of TV and indie credits, was hired in Morton’s place.
Headey says she was “terrified” to step on the set with Gilliam.
“Everything matters to Terry,” she says. “There’s palatable tension because he’s a deeply passionate filmmaker. Everything has to be right and beautiful and complex.
“I haven’t been with filmmakers that yell at you. He likes to shout, he likes to be loud. Well, I don’t know if he likes shouting, but he does it.”
The production was almost shut down because of a disagreement over a prosthetic nose Gilliam wanted Damon to wear. He says the actor looked like a young Marlon Brando with the added bump.
“I like taking (movie stars) and letting them be something very different,” says Gilliam. “Actors love it because it’s an escape from having to be that character that the public wants them to be. I don’t direct them so much as provide extra space to play in.
“Studios get very nervous about this. They want to hand out the same Big Mac each time, but I want to turn the Big Mac inside out.”
Gilliam has never held Hollywood in high regard, nor any other establishment for that matter.
“He has a strong social political sense of the world,” says David Morse, who played a bioterrorist in “12 Monkeys.” “The disparity between the way people live on one end and the other, he feels a kind of responsibility. He’d see people living on the streets and he wanted to get that in the movie somehow.”
Gilliam’s penchant for acerbic social commentary goes back to the underground comics he read as a youngster. His favorite was Mad, a groundbreaking publication launched by Harvey Kurtzman in 1954. The comic book-turned-magazine featured parodies of pop culture icons and illustrations dense with visual puns.
Inspired by Kurtzman’s work, Gilliam edited a humor magazine titled Fang while studying political science at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
After graduation, he left for New York and lucked into a gig with Kurtzman. He served as assistant editor on Help!, which published early work by R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton.
One of Gilliam’s longtime friends is “Good Morning America” movie critic Joel Siegel. During the mid-1960s, the two penned a collection of illustrated short stories, “The Cocktail People” (now out of print).
When Gilliam moved back to Los Angeles, he briefly worked with Siegel at an advertising agency, devising imaginative campaigns for canned soup.
Gilliam moved to London in 1967 with his British girlfriend. “She wanted to go home and I was totally disillusioned with America at that point,” he says. “The war was on. I was angry. I said, ‘If I stay here any longer, I’m going to start throwing bombs.’ “
John Cleese, with whom Gilliam had worked on Help!, got him work as an animator on the comedy show “Do Not Adjust Your Set,” which featured future Monty Python players Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Jones. Deadlines didn’t allow time for him to hand-draw designs, so he recycled pictures from library books and greeting cards.
His flair for odd juxtaposition earned him a place in the six-member Python troupe. “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” which aired on the BBC from 1969 until 1974, featured Gilliam’s animated segments between skits. The scenery-squishing foot, emblematic of the group’s free-association comedy, was his handiwork. He also acted in some episodes, most notably portraying Cardinal Fang in the “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” sketch.
Gilliam graduated from animator to feature filmmaker when the group collaborated on the Arthurian farce “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
He co-directed the saga with Terry Jones on location in Scotland for a meager budget of $500,000. The team battled unpredictable weather, malfunctioning equipment and the occasional rogue farm animal.
“It was like the barbarians had arrived,” Gilliam says. “Genghis Khan and his hordes had turned up. We swept in there and grabbed everybody because we had no money. The locals worked on it. Marriages broke up, people were pregnant. It’s legendary now.”
After “Holy Grail,” Gilliam splintered from Python to make his own movies. His solo directorial debut, “Jabberwocky,” didn’t make much of a dent at the box office, but audiences embraced his next effort, 1981’s “Time Bandits,” to the tune of a then-blockbuster $42 million in ticket sales.
With the clout of a crossover hit, Gilliam got Universal to back his pet project, “Brazil,” a sci-fi fever dream in which a lonely clerk (Jonathan Pryce) conjures fantasies of superheroics to escape his Orwellian surroundings.
Universal was displeased with the picture’s enigmatic conclusion and refused to distribute it unless Gilliam re-edited a more upbeat ending. Thanks to grass-roots publicity and the support of film critics, the picture debuted, darkness intact, after more than a year in limbo.
Although Gilliam’s subsequent movies have varied in plot and setting, all of them hinge on a fantasy-reality schism, a la “Brazil.” He creates bedtime stories for nihilists, tales in which “happily ever after” has its caveats.
“I try to keep this child’s-eye view of the world which is always more interesting,” he says. “But the worst part of growing old is everything conspires to tell me it’s not like that.”