Terry Gilliam’s films have been plagued by difficulties. After The Man Who Killed Don Quixote collapsed, his attempt to adapt Alan Moore's Watchmen and people don’t even remember the lashing he took over the budget of Baron Munchausen. Nothing compared to The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus though. Heath Ledger passed away mid filming. Only with the imagination of Gilliam and the participation of actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell could Gilliam complete the film. Now, when Tony (Ledger) steps through Dr. Parnassus’s mirror, he appears as different actors in the Imaginarium.
Q: This film is all about imagination. Where do you draw inspiration from, and is it contrary to our technological world?
Terry Gilliam: Well, the biggest thing I find is we are so overwhelmed by information now and the media pours in, the internet pours in. I don’t know how people maintain their own individual identity anymore and how you imagine your own world because it’s that. I don’t know. I was lucky. I grew up living in the country with only radio so I’d imagine a lot of things and that’s, I think, where it comes from. It’s like with my son. We’ve got a house in Italy and there’s no television, there’s no telephone, and when he was younger, we’d go there and he’d be bored for the first couple days. “No PlayStation? Where’s the stuff?” It’s doing all the work for him. And I said, “Wait for him.” My wife says, “Oh we’ve got to entertain him.” I said, “No, don’t do anything.” About two days into it he starts making things with a stick and then there’s a little bit of this and suddenly he’s come alive and he’s inventing a world and he’s playing. That’s fantastic. He’s having a great time because he’s in his own head now. Then, we go back home and the first thing he does is turn on the television and he’s dead again. I’m really trying to get people to just kind of switch. We used to be able to say “I want people to switch off.” And my biggest thing now is everything is about networking and connections and blah, blah, blah. Mine is about aloneless. I’m trying to get people to learn to be alone. Turn it all off. Just be with yourself and see what’s there, see if there’s anybody home or whether you’re just a neuron or a synaptic gap is what you may be.
Q: So then what is a movie with all of the images you share with us?
Terry Gilliam: Well I throw a lot of sh*t in there in front of you and hopefully it might spark off a few things. My attitude is, I just do that. I throw you around and you may come out and say, “Oh, well I saw that” or “I didn’t see that.” I don’t know. What I’m trying not to do is give answers and hopefully ask some questions, offer possibilities, but get out before I waste too much of your time.
Q: The film celebrates imagination and at the same time, is domesticity is the ultimate goal?
Terry Gilliam: Only for one person, only for Parnassus’s daughter. The irony of that was too great for me not to. I love the idea of here’s this girl, she’s an extraordinary child with an extraordinary little world to be in, traveling. That’s kind of my dream to be in the Imaginarium traveling around the world. And yet, Parnassus’s daughter wants IKEA and a 3-piece suite and bourgeois domesticity. Well, each to his own, that’s all I’m saying. For Parnassus, I think in the end, I love the fact that he comes to terms with it. If that’s her dream, so be it.
Q: Can you recall when you heard the news that Heath Ledger had died and what was going on in your head at that moment?
Terry Gilliam: What you need to do is read the Vanity Fair article. I’m actually bored describing the moment when I found that Heath was dead.
Q: How did you come up with the idea to finish the film?
Terry Gilliam: Once you decide to carry on, which is the hard part, you say “Alright, he goes through the mirror three times. Three actors.” On just a totally pragmatic level, there was no way to get one actor to replace Heath. I didn’t want to do that anyway. And there’s no way to get a great actor to turn up at the last moment. We’re making a movie. People have schedules. They’re all busy working. The fact we were able to squeeze Johnny, Colin and Jude’s schedule into our schedule in some way was kind of a miracle and so you needed a chance. You’ve got three possibilities out there and it was actually just more interesting as well. I thought you needed three A-list actors to replace Heath. He was that good. That was my attitude. But once you make the decision that people’s faces can change on the other side of the mirror, that was basically simple. I didn’t rewrite much. There’s a lot of little things that I’ve done but nothing of any substance. Everything you hear – the dialogue was all written before. That speech that Johnny gives about the young dying, some people think there’s a eulogy to Heath. No. That was written. This film was about mortality. That’s the great irony of the whole thing, mortality being a central part of the story and look what happens. I supposed one’s got to be careful of what one writes at times.
Q: You’ve been considering Good Omens, the story of a game of one-upmanship between the Devil and the forces of God. Did this grow out of this interest you had in that sort of conflict?
Terry Gilliam: Well it’s always been there. I went to Occidental College on a Presbyterian scholarship. I mean, the Devil has always been there in that kind of good and evil, right and wrong, the right choice, the wrong choice, all of those things has always obsessed me all of my life. That’s why I was interested in Good Omens and that’s why we wrote this. The same obsessions have been pursuing me all my life and sometimes I get them out.
Q: Do you think you may yet do Good Omens one day or did you sort of exorcise that yearning with this film?
Terry Gilliam: No, no. It’s still sitting out there. It needs a lot of money though. I mean it’s a very different story. Admittedly, okay, there’s an angel and the Devil but it’s very different and it’s whether I can find somebody who wants to take charge of that project. One of the things is that and another project sort of got mired in costs of things and now it’s very hard to get those films moving because they’ve got a price tag on them before you even begin now. So, one day, if somebody gets interested, it’s waiting.
Q: Can you tell the difference between when you started drawing and the draw that we have nowadays? It looks like the type of art that you’re used to doing kind of lost its place and now it’s all 3-D. How do you relate to that? It seems only in your movie is there space for your kind of art. Do you agree with that?
Terry Gilliam: Yeah, but it’s just because I’m running the show. I make space for my art. I think what’s happening with so much CG work, especially in the live action films, is trying to be naturalistic. The world might be fantastical. It might be extraordinary, but it’s naturalistic and that doesn’t interest me. I thought what we can do here is to do more of a painterly world. I suppose it’s live action with Pixar backgrounds. It’s a bit more like that. I just want that freedom. What we’re doing in Parnassus was being very pragmatic, knowing we don’t have the kind of money to compete with an $80/90/100 million film. So we have got the mirror. You go through for a brief moment and get out before we spend too much money and that’s how we’re able to do it. But also, the other thing about the big films is after 10 or 15 minutes you accept that world as normal and then you’ve got another couple hours to keep spending a lot of money to make this normal world. So, to me, it was more interesting to be able to get in and out and each time you changed the world on the other side of the mirror so it’s a constant surprise. It’s kind of a constant delight. What next?
