Post by sherlew (Ret) on Oct 11, 2009 8:32:14 GMT -6
[I've only included part of the article since it's so long. It starts with Mr. Gilliam's latest film which opens this Friday, how he was able to work around Heath Ledger's sudden death, and goes on to mention some of the other films he's made.
It also includes his childhood and early days as a film maker and also includes his meeting the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus.]
For the entire article, click here.
Terry Gilliam interview for 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’
When Heath Ledger died in the middle of shooting Terry Gilliam’s 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus', the director must have felt his reputation as a disaster-magnet had come back to haunt him. But who else could summon Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to step into the breach?
By Jessamy Calkin
Published: 3:40PM BST 09 Oct 2009
Money has always been an issue with Terry Gilliam. He needs it. And right now, sitting in London’s Dorchester Hotel, he is surrounded by it. 'I mean, we’re not in an ordinary place here, we’re in a place where there’s more money than sense,’ he says gleefully.
Sixty-eight now, he looks grizzled and clever, handsome in a slightly clapped-out way. He takes another swallow of his margarita ('I find it increases my vocabulary’) and gestures theatrically around the room. 'I mean these people have got’ – dramatic whisper – 'so much money, they are so rich… But as long as we keep the rich happy, I’m happy. Because when they’re unhappy, the rich, they just do unpleasant things.’ He laughs. 'Like wipe out the economic system. They were hunting for happiness by gambling everything. And they failed. And now, hopefully, they’re being punished. But not sufficiently.’
Gilliam makes no secret of the fact that he thinks the people in charge of the money in Hollywood are fools, but to an extent he is dependent on them because he has a mighty vision; he doesn’t make small-budget, well-behaved, independent films. Most of his films are successful one way or another ('they always make money eventually’), but commercial success, to Gilliam, is purely a means to an end. 'For me, the only reason to try and make my films successful is that it will be more likely that I’ll get the next project off the ground,’ he says.
He has never had any trouble attracting the 'talent’ – actors, they all want to work with him – and the talent attracts money. In theory. With his new film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, he didn’t think he would have any trouble raising the finance because of its cast: Heath Ledger, Oscar-nominated for Brokeback Mountain, had just finished playing the Joker in The Dark Knight, which was clearly going to be huge.
'I thought this one would be a piece of cake, to get �25 million with Heath Ledger on board,’ Gilliam says. 'You would think that there’s intelligent life in Hollywood. But then you discover that there’s just fear. People are frightened of making decisions or even having – I hate to use the word “vision”, but they lack all of that. Hollywood is run by Goldman Sachs and not by entrepreneurs or studio people. It’s the bankers who look at the numbers, and Tideland, my previous film, made very little money, and Heath did even worse with a film called Candy. And that’s what they look at. Somehow the whole place has been taken over by middle management, like the rest of the Western world. And bureaucracy has settled in very comfortably.’ He giggles disarmingly, the famous high-pitched, faintly psychotic Terry Gilliam giggle, like Muttley in Wacky Races having inhaled helium.
They found the money eventually, though not from America. Luckily there are enough people who like what Gilliam does. 'It’s always down to one or two individuals who like it, and in some cases have made good money off previous attempts on my part.’ Inevitably, the budget was tight. 'But we did it, it was all fine. I thought, great, now we’re up and running. We started shooting,’ he sighs. 'Then there was a little hiccup.’
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a voluptuous, gothic, sprawling, glorious, ambitious, chaotic, gorgeous feast of a film. Dr Parnassus, played by Christopher Plummer, is 1,000 years old, his immortality secured in a series of Faustian pacts with the devil (Tom Waits). With his daughter, Valentina (lucky Lily Cole, who gets to tango with Tom), travelling actor Anton (Andrew Garfield) and sidekick dwarf (Verne Troyer), he tours with his very uncontemporary travelling show around contemporary London, offering to take his audience – usually late-night drunks and shoppers – through the mirror of his Imaginarium, while he goes into a trance and they get a taste of their ultimate dreams. In order to avoid handing Valentina over to the devil on her 16th birthday, as arranged, Parnassus has engaged the devil in one last wager – the first to five souls. Enter Heath Ledger as Tony, an enigmatic, charming, worryingly insincere character who has, apparently, lost his memory.
Ledger first worked with Gilliam on The Brothers Grimm in 2005, after Gilliam had learnt about him from his long-time collaborator the cinematographer Nicola Pecorini. They became good friends.
'I loved working with Heath on Brothers Grimm, he was fantastic,’ Gilliam says. 'He went through an interesting time after Brokeback Mountain because he was so inundated with the big time. I would ask him about certain roles and he would say yes, and then no, so I learnt not to put any pressure on him because everyone else was. I didn’t actually ask him about this one, I waited until he asked me.’
The shoot began in London in late 2007. Ledger was struggling in his personal life: he had recently split up with the actress Michelle Williams and was fighting with her lawyers over custody of their beloved two-year-old daughter, Matilda. Already suffering from chronic insomnia, he was exhausted after the Batman shoot and was fighting off pneumonia. But he threw himself into the work, ad-libbing a lot of the dialogue, and helping the other less experienced actors – Cole especially, as it was her first major role.
In early 2008 the cast and crew took a week’s break before resuming in Canada, where they would film the special effects and events on the other side of the mirror. Ledger flew to New York for a week. On January 22 he was found dead in his apartment in New York, the cause of death being 'the abuse of prescription medications’ – presumed accidental, a mixture of sleeping tablets and painkillers. It was the combination of drugs that killed him rather than the quantity. He was 28.
Gilliam was working in the art department when his daughter Amy, one of the film’s producers, called him into her office and showed him the ABC website with the news that Ledger was dead. As well as dealing with their grief, the crew had to be immediately practical. Initially Gilliam thought he would have to shut the film down, as did the insurance company. It was Pecorini who kept pushing. But then Gilliam had an idea: Johnny Depp, a long-term friend and collaborator, was also a good friend of Ledger’s. 'I just called him, as a friend, to say, “We’re f***ed.” Johnny said, “Whatever you want, I’ll be there.” Johnny has a huge heart.’ As it transpired, Depp’s commitment meant everything, because without it the money would have been withdrawn and the film closed down.
But Gilliam still didn’t know what he was going to do. 'Not a clue,’ he says. 'Zero. Zip. Nothing. Number one, there’s no way anybody could replace Heath. I also knew that an actor who was even close to having his skills would be tied up doing something else. So I said, OK, we’ll get three people because he goes through the mirror three times.’
So he started calling. 'And suddenly there’s Jude Law and there’s Colin Farrell. It was three good friends who came to the rescue, out of love and friendship and respect for Heath. How that was going to work, I still didn’t know.’ There was also a feeling that nobody wanted the Joker to be Heath Ledger’s last role.
But Johnny Depp’s huge heart could not get him out of the fact that he was owned by the Michael Mann film Public Enemies, which was about to start shooting. It was only because Public Enemies was delayed by a week that Gilliam managed to get him at all, and even then for only one day.
'Providence intervened,’ Gilliam says of the delay. 'I had to be incredibly pragmatic after Heath died. It wasn’t easy. But there was a sense of freedom: I would think, let’s try that because if we don’t do something we’re dead in the water, and if we try that it might work, it might not. Heath took a certain responsibility off my shoulders by not turning up for work.’
Gilliam says he was surrounded by a committee of people all trying to find a way through it. On top of everything else, they were in mourning. 'This was a deeply loved human being, and he’s not there any longer. Except he was there, on the screen. We’d go into the editing-room every day and say, Heath, you bastard, you really stuck me in the shit here. It was a misery, but turning Heath into the bad guy was a nice way of grieving. But, oh shit, look how good he was!’ Gilliam groans. 'Johnny, Jude and Colin, they all did their job brilliantly, but what we’ll never know is what the effect of the film would have been if Heath had played all of it: when the audience suddenly realises how horrible he is – what would that have been like? Because there’s something so sweet about Heath.’
Nicola Pecorini agrees. 'It actually worked really well with the three of them – why didn’t we think of that before?’ he says. 'But I had a glimpse of what Heath wanted to do on the other side of the mirror, and it would have been fantastic, and now we’ll never see it.’
['The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ opens this Friday.]
It also includes his childhood and early days as a film maker and also includes his meeting the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus.]
For the entire article, click here.
Terry Gilliam interview for 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’
When Heath Ledger died in the middle of shooting Terry Gilliam’s 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus', the director must have felt his reputation as a disaster-magnet had come back to haunt him. But who else could summon Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to step into the breach?
By Jessamy Calkin
Published: 3:40PM BST 09 Oct 2009
Money has always been an issue with Terry Gilliam. He needs it. And right now, sitting in London’s Dorchester Hotel, he is surrounded by it. 'I mean, we’re not in an ordinary place here, we’re in a place where there’s more money than sense,’ he says gleefully.
Sixty-eight now, he looks grizzled and clever, handsome in a slightly clapped-out way. He takes another swallow of his margarita ('I find it increases my vocabulary’) and gestures theatrically around the room. 'I mean these people have got’ – dramatic whisper – 'so much money, they are so rich… But as long as we keep the rich happy, I’m happy. Because when they’re unhappy, the rich, they just do unpleasant things.’ He laughs. 'Like wipe out the economic system. They were hunting for happiness by gambling everything. And they failed. And now, hopefully, they’re being punished. But not sufficiently.’
Gilliam makes no secret of the fact that he thinks the people in charge of the money in Hollywood are fools, but to an extent he is dependent on them because he has a mighty vision; he doesn’t make small-budget, well-behaved, independent films. Most of his films are successful one way or another ('they always make money eventually’), but commercial success, to Gilliam, is purely a means to an end. 'For me, the only reason to try and make my films successful is that it will be more likely that I’ll get the next project off the ground,’ he says.
He has never had any trouble attracting the 'talent’ – actors, they all want to work with him – and the talent attracts money. In theory. With his new film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, he didn’t think he would have any trouble raising the finance because of its cast: Heath Ledger, Oscar-nominated for Brokeback Mountain, had just finished playing the Joker in The Dark Knight, which was clearly going to be huge.
'I thought this one would be a piece of cake, to get �25 million with Heath Ledger on board,’ Gilliam says. 'You would think that there’s intelligent life in Hollywood. But then you discover that there’s just fear. People are frightened of making decisions or even having – I hate to use the word “vision”, but they lack all of that. Hollywood is run by Goldman Sachs and not by entrepreneurs or studio people. It’s the bankers who look at the numbers, and Tideland, my previous film, made very little money, and Heath did even worse with a film called Candy. And that’s what they look at. Somehow the whole place has been taken over by middle management, like the rest of the Western world. And bureaucracy has settled in very comfortably.’ He giggles disarmingly, the famous high-pitched, faintly psychotic Terry Gilliam giggle, like Muttley in Wacky Races having inhaled helium.
They found the money eventually, though not from America. Luckily there are enough people who like what Gilliam does. 'It’s always down to one or two individuals who like it, and in some cases have made good money off previous attempts on my part.’ Inevitably, the budget was tight. 'But we did it, it was all fine. I thought, great, now we’re up and running. We started shooting,’ he sighs. 'Then there was a little hiccup.’
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a voluptuous, gothic, sprawling, glorious, ambitious, chaotic, gorgeous feast of a film. Dr Parnassus, played by Christopher Plummer, is 1,000 years old, his immortality secured in a series of Faustian pacts with the devil (Tom Waits). With his daughter, Valentina (lucky Lily Cole, who gets to tango with Tom), travelling actor Anton (Andrew Garfield) and sidekick dwarf (Verne Troyer), he tours with his very uncontemporary travelling show around contemporary London, offering to take his audience – usually late-night drunks and shoppers – through the mirror of his Imaginarium, while he goes into a trance and they get a taste of their ultimate dreams. In order to avoid handing Valentina over to the devil on her 16th birthday, as arranged, Parnassus has engaged the devil in one last wager – the first to five souls. Enter Heath Ledger as Tony, an enigmatic, charming, worryingly insincere character who has, apparently, lost his memory.
Ledger first worked with Gilliam on The Brothers Grimm in 2005, after Gilliam had learnt about him from his long-time collaborator the cinematographer Nicola Pecorini. They became good friends.
'I loved working with Heath on Brothers Grimm, he was fantastic,’ Gilliam says. 'He went through an interesting time after Brokeback Mountain because he was so inundated with the big time. I would ask him about certain roles and he would say yes, and then no, so I learnt not to put any pressure on him because everyone else was. I didn’t actually ask him about this one, I waited until he asked me.’
The shoot began in London in late 2007. Ledger was struggling in his personal life: he had recently split up with the actress Michelle Williams and was fighting with her lawyers over custody of their beloved two-year-old daughter, Matilda. Already suffering from chronic insomnia, he was exhausted after the Batman shoot and was fighting off pneumonia. But he threw himself into the work, ad-libbing a lot of the dialogue, and helping the other less experienced actors – Cole especially, as it was her first major role.
In early 2008 the cast and crew took a week’s break before resuming in Canada, where they would film the special effects and events on the other side of the mirror. Ledger flew to New York for a week. On January 22 he was found dead in his apartment in New York, the cause of death being 'the abuse of prescription medications’ – presumed accidental, a mixture of sleeping tablets and painkillers. It was the combination of drugs that killed him rather than the quantity. He was 28.
Gilliam was working in the art department when his daughter Amy, one of the film’s producers, called him into her office and showed him the ABC website with the news that Ledger was dead. As well as dealing with their grief, the crew had to be immediately practical. Initially Gilliam thought he would have to shut the film down, as did the insurance company. It was Pecorini who kept pushing. But then Gilliam had an idea: Johnny Depp, a long-term friend and collaborator, was also a good friend of Ledger’s. 'I just called him, as a friend, to say, “We’re f***ed.” Johnny said, “Whatever you want, I’ll be there.” Johnny has a huge heart.’ As it transpired, Depp’s commitment meant everything, because without it the money would have been withdrawn and the film closed down.
But Gilliam still didn’t know what he was going to do. 'Not a clue,’ he says. 'Zero. Zip. Nothing. Number one, there’s no way anybody could replace Heath. I also knew that an actor who was even close to having his skills would be tied up doing something else. So I said, OK, we’ll get three people because he goes through the mirror three times.’
So he started calling. 'And suddenly there’s Jude Law and there’s Colin Farrell. It was three good friends who came to the rescue, out of love and friendship and respect for Heath. How that was going to work, I still didn’t know.’ There was also a feeling that nobody wanted the Joker to be Heath Ledger’s last role.
But Johnny Depp’s huge heart could not get him out of the fact that he was owned by the Michael Mann film Public Enemies, which was about to start shooting. It was only because Public Enemies was delayed by a week that Gilliam managed to get him at all, and even then for only one day.
'Providence intervened,’ Gilliam says of the delay. 'I had to be incredibly pragmatic after Heath died. It wasn’t easy. But there was a sense of freedom: I would think, let’s try that because if we don’t do something we’re dead in the water, and if we try that it might work, it might not. Heath took a certain responsibility off my shoulders by not turning up for work.’
Gilliam says he was surrounded by a committee of people all trying to find a way through it. On top of everything else, they were in mourning. 'This was a deeply loved human being, and he’s not there any longer. Except he was there, on the screen. We’d go into the editing-room every day and say, Heath, you bastard, you really stuck me in the shit here. It was a misery, but turning Heath into the bad guy was a nice way of grieving. But, oh shit, look how good he was!’ Gilliam groans. 'Johnny, Jude and Colin, they all did their job brilliantly, but what we’ll never know is what the effect of the film would have been if Heath had played all of it: when the audience suddenly realises how horrible he is – what would that have been like? Because there’s something so sweet about Heath.’
Nicola Pecorini agrees. 'It actually worked really well with the three of them – why didn’t we think of that before?’ he says. 'But I had a glimpse of what Heath wanted to do on the other side of the mirror, and it would have been fantastic, and now we’ll never see it.’
['The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ opens this Friday.]