The first question you have to ask about Terry Gilliam is, what was a nice
boy from Minneapolis doing in a troupe of British collegiate performers,
the sort of insular society that you ordinarily have to be born into (and
most certainly have to be a British collegian to be part of)?
The answer goes back to New York in the early 1960's, where Harvey Kurtzman,
the original editor of Mad Magazine, had broken off to start a series of
his own magazines. A young cartoonist named Gilliam wound up doing work
for Help!, where the pay was so good that he was reduced at one point to
living in Kurtzman's attic. But along the way he met a British collegian
(aha!) named John Cleese, and when he went off to Europe with his ill-gotten
gains to do what young men do in Europe when they quit their jobs, Cleese
helped make the introductions that got him writing work on a TV show called
"Do Not Adjust Your Set" and later on Marty Feldman's show "Marty!"
(not to be confused with the Paddy Chayefsky play, nor is Ernest Borgnine
to be confused with Marty Feldman), both of which used assorted combinations
of future Pythons among their writers and performers.
"Do Not Adjust Your Set" and "Marty!" also used, for
the first time, Gilliam's animations-- though their surreal and interruptive
nature never quite meshed with the more traditional sketch comedy of those
programs. At last, in 1969, it was decided to let all those bright, annoyingly-full-of-their-own-ideas
young men have their own show, and "Monty Python's Flying Circus"
was born, Gilliam's bizarre animations being exactly the glue needed to
hold together the anarchic non-structure of the program. Indeed, it was
the stream-of-consciousness nature of Gilliam's animations that convinced
the other members that the entire show could have that sort of aimless,
non-sequitur feel.
THE MOVE INTO FEATURE ANTS, THAT IS, FILMS
Three seasons of Python followed and in 1975, the Pythons decided to make
a true feature film (there had been an earlier filmed anthology of sketches).
Two Pythons, indeed, Two Terrys (as they were known) expressed interest
in directing-- Gilliam and Terry Jones. For a jolly satirical spoof of the
Arthurian legend, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" had a surprisingly
consistent artistic vision of the medieval era as nasty, brutish and full
of ants, a view carried on in Gilliam's little-seen solo directing debut,
"Jabberwocky" (1977), starring Michael Palin as a medieval lad
who winds up fighting the beast of Lewis Carroll's invention.
In 1981 Gilliam's "Time Bandits" helped him escape the Python
mantle and establish a name as a promising director. A fantasy about a kid
who is kidnapped by a band of dwarfs and taken through time, meeting characters
ranging from King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) to Robin Hood (Cleese), it enjoyed
enthusiastic reviews for its imagination, charm-- and Pythonesque humor.
That promise was amply fulfilled by "Brazil" (1985), a visually
dazzling fantasia on the themes of Orwell's "1984." To get it
released without drastic cuts and a happy ending, however, Gilliam had to
take out ads in the trade papers demanding that Universal let it be released.
Partly as a result of the controversy, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association
voted it their best film of the year-- after Gilliam reportedly arranged
a screening for them over the Mexican border. More trouble followed with
"The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen" (1989), which went way over
budget on production in Italy and was more or less dumped when the regime
at Columbia changed hands.
Despite their production difficulties, however, "Brazil" and "Munchhausen"
are both extraordinarily rewarding and delightful films, treats for the
eye and, with a shared theme of the value of fantasy as an escape from reality,
not so bad for the mind, either.
At last Gilliam had a conventional hit with 1991's "The Fisher King,"
in which the fantasy belongs to Robin Williams, a homeless man whose own
idea of a quest helps rescue both himself and a depressed ex-DJ (Jeff Bridges)
from their respective despondencies. "The Fisher King" enjoyed
great critical success, winning a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival,
a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Robin Williams and a Supporting Actress
Oscar for Mercedes Ruehl.
Terry Gilliam's new film is "Twelve Monkeys," starring Bruce Willis
and Brad Pitt.
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