by Paul Fischer
Terry Gilliam
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Terry Gilliam is a man who can best be described as suffering from an excess of joie de vivre. With a history of directing visually outstanding films whose story runs heavily into fantasy and the fantastic, Gilliam is perhaps the prime choice to helm the film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's story of the drug addled journalist Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. |
We spent an hour with Gilliam recently, and probed his mind for what little we could find there, discussing the star psyches of Johnny Depp (who plays Duke) and 12 Monkeys' star Brad Pitt, and covered territory all the way back to his days as the American member of Monty Python's Flying Circus. As with our last outing with the director, we both found ourselves collapsing into fits of giggling laughter and hysterics. So, in keeping with the theme of Fear and Loathing, we started flashback style, in the past, and covered as much ground as we could
CrankyCritic:
What moment for you defines the end of the 60s?
Terry Gilliam: I suppose when I left America. America didn't notice
it but for me it was rather an important event
CrankyCritic:
What were your thoughts on the whole drug culture of that time?
Terry Gilliam: I didn't like drugs. I was terrified of them. I've
never taken acid. I've never taken the vast majority of drugs that are
used by our heroes in this film. Drugs were interesting only because,
for a lot of people, it was a way of experimenting. Nobody knew what the
stuff was doing except that it was "expanding you consciousness".
There's good and bad sides to that. It was a time when people were going
out, where now it's just the opposite. You're not supposed to talk about
it. It's about ducking down and "maybe it'll all go away and maybe
somebody else will deal with all these difficult problems so I don't have
to get involved and I can carry on my career and raise my family".
CrankyCritic:
Isn't that what Thompson did, though, by taking drugs? He was ducking
reality?
Terry Gilliam: I don't know if he ducked reality. I think he faced
it in a different way or he recreated it in a way that was far more interesting.
I think the book is Thompson not going to Vietnam and being a war
correspondent. It's going to the heart of the American dream - Las Vegas
- and bombarding himself with every known drug and creating, in a sense,
this weird kind of battlefield within him. When we did the voiceovers
for the film, as Johnny was doing it I said it sounded like Martin Sheen
in Apocalypse Now. We actually worked to stop that from happening
but, the way Thompson wrote, when Johnny started doing it, there it was.
We were in Apocalypse Now again. I think there's a direct comparison
there, for better or for worse.
CrankyCritic:
You turned the project down a decade ago. This time out, you signed on
at the last minute.
Terry Gilliam: Yeah. The fact that Johnny Depp was involved and
it was "Fear and Loathing" intrigued me. I was intrigued by
the idea of working fast. It's good to pretend you're a young filmmaker
again. To go out and work with very little just see if we could do it.
And that's what we did. It was a hateful experience. (big laughs) Gonzo
filmmaking. It's a bit closer to going back and doing television.
CrankyCritic:
And speaking of television, a couple of months ago the remaining Pythons
got together...
Terry Gilliam: And started another rumor
CrankyCritic:
Have you talked about another Python movie?
Terry Gilliam: We've been talking about it for a year. Every time
we get together we get very excited as some kind of comic critical mass
is achieved there and it starts exploding. Then we separate. So I don't
know. The talk is of a new stage show more than anything else at the moment.
But nothing is resolved. I don't know if it'll happen or not.
CrankyCritic:
Is it tough to jump back to something like that when you're so used to
directing?
Terry Gilliam:
CrankyCritic:
The last time we talked, we surfed the net together for Python sites.
Are you surprised at how well culture moved into cyberspace?
Terry Gilliam: Not surprised. I think its heartening. It's the
People's Wall in Beijing. Everybody can say whatever they want and it's
free and open and governments hate that. They always do and they always
will because governments are about control. That's why I think the web
is great. It's also boring because everybody has got something to say
and most people have very little interesting to say, but that's not the
point. The point is that they have the availability to go and blab or
whatever they do. I love the freedom of finding information on it. There's
somebody writing somewhere about everything. I don't know how long it'll
have the freedom it has at the moment.
CrankyCritic:
Let get to the mechanics of extracting the story from Thompson's novel
Terry Gilliam:: An unfilmable book, so I've been told.
CrankyCritic:
Where the Buffalo Roam flopped mightily a couple of years ago.
Was there anything daunting about trying to deal with Thompson on a first
word basis?
Terry Gilliam: Well, not really because the whole enterprise was
foolhardy. Everything you're doing is leaving out something that's really
good. Everything we've taken; all the lines come from Hunter's words rather
than inventing stuff. The frustrating thing is trying to be truthful to
it and please Hunter and all the people who worship the book because I
hated all those people
CrankyCritic:
Johnny Depp shaved his head. Benecio Del Toro put on 40 pounds. How did
you get them to give up a movie star's vanity?
Terry Gilliam: I don't know. I do it because they're these young
good looking actors and I have to make them less good looking than me.
<> The people who come on board the projects I do have got to be actors.
They've got to be the characters, whatever that takes. In 12 Monkeys,
Brad [Pitt] put on the contact lenses and did his hair. He wanted to uglify
himself. He wanted to escape from the blonde bimbo trap that was being
set for him. I think Johnny [Depp] is an interesting character because
he's a star, but only so far. He'll always try to disguise himself to
be something else. When he first saw the film, there were a couple of
moments when he saw himself up on screen and he didn't want to see himself.
He wanted to see Raoul Duke and that sent him into a real spin. That's
what most actors set out to be, immersed in a part. Somehow success encourages
them not to do that. Johnny is one of the rarer ones that's maintained
his actor-ness.
CrankyCritic:
Is there one of your pictures that seems more "you" than the
others
Terry Gilliam: No. I don't watch them. Occasionally I get caught
going to a retrospective of my work and I try not to look. I did happen
to watch Brazil about five years ago in France and I thought "well
everybody tells me that this is a great film". Well, it's not as
good as they told me it was going to be
CrankyCritic:
Will we see any more animation out of you?
Terry Gilliam: Nope. That was another guy that did that. Same name,
different guy.
CrankyCritic:
That was the guy who got stomped by the Monty Python foot.
Terry Gilliam: That's right. It's funny when I look at that stuff.
I look at it like a stranger would, like "That was me? I could do
that kind of stuff? I can't do that now!" My mind doesn't even work
quite the same way now.
CrankyCritic:
Good amazement or bad?
Terry Gilliam: Well, a bit of both. Some of it is just fantastic
and others ... I don't know how I came to that way of thinking. I don't
see me in it. That's the way it should be, I think. You go on. I want
to keep doing new things. I'm glad in a sense that I keep changing, developing,
I don't know if it's developing in a good or bad direction but it's development
of some sort.