“Hollywood has been very timid these days”: Terry Gilliam on his 50-year directing career

When you’re invited for an audience with Terry Gilliam at his Highgate mansion, getting to the man himself is a characteristically funny, strange adventure. At the front door of the finest house on the road, a mysterious woman – later confirmed by Gilliam to be his wife, Maggie – answers the intercom amid a chorus of barking dogs. Visitors are instructed to find a hidden entrance, which today had been propped open by a bright yellow snow shovel, before climbing the stairs to the top floor, three stories up. On the walls on the way to the top are black-framed one-sheet posters of Gilliam’s 13 feature films.

From Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which he co-directed with fellow Python Terry Jones in 1975 to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), the film he finally finished after several false starts over 29 years, Gilliam’s idiosyncratic and uncompromising oeuvre – especially the off-kilter Orwellian nightmare of Brazil (1985) – has sometimes been critically lauded and sporadically commercially successful. It is rarely, if ever, boring. Always sharply against bureaucracy and authority, his works typically contain elements of comedy, fantasy and surrealism, often with a few grisly shocks thrown in.

At the summit of the stairs, a vast study that could easily contain a decent-sized flat is filled with desks, notebooks, photos, awards, piles of books and props salvaged from the end of his film shoots. “They would have been burned otherwise,” notes Gilliam, who was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1940 but has been a British citizen since 1968. He ushers me to a sunken area down a few steps in the centre of the room and sits with his back to the window. “On a clear day you can see the North Downs,” he says as we remark on the spectacular views. On this baking hot July day we can only glimpse the few hundred yards of an immaculate garden that leads directly down to Highgate Cemetery, which Gilliam jokes won’t be far to travel when he shuffles off this mortal coil.

Gilliam is president of Umbria Film Festival, where the invitation to interview him for this piece came from. “I open the festival, then just fuck off,” he explains. At this edition of the festival earlier this month he spoke to audiences about Brazil, adding he’s “just there to be nice to people and sign autographs”. He talks warmly about pupils at Centro Sperimentale, a film school in Rome opposite the city’s famous Cinecittà studio. “A lot of those kids come out [to the festival]. I talk to them and warn them about filmmaking.”

With 2025 marking the 50th anniversary of Holy Grail, 40 years since the release of Brazil and 30 years since time-travel puzzler Twelve Monkeys (1995), it seemed a ripe opportunity to delve into Gilliam’s career as a whole. 

Lou Thomas: It’s five decades since you co-directed Holy Grail with Terry Jones, aside from starring in it. How fondly or otherwise do you remember making it?

Terry Gilliam: Neither Terry or I had ever directed a film before. Making it was a very simple operation because we seemed to agree about everything – the way the television shows were going, we hated bad lighting, bad sets. We said to the others, “We ought to vote: anybody named Terry gets to direct.” They foolishly – or not foolishly, maybe very smartly – agreed, because directing Python is a dogsbody job. You’ve got to deal with people that don’t want to wear uncomfortable costumes. What was important about that film for Terry and me, it had to be lifted out of TV comedy. We had to make a film and it had to look good and feel good, like movies do.

Investors included Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Elton John. How much of their involvement was because they thought it would make a useful tax dodge and how much because of their love for cinema?

At that time, it was 90% tax. If you were a rock star [you could only] take 10% of your work home financially. Bullshit. So [investors thought] let’s lighten that load and throw money into this film. They were also fans. That’s why when we started writing Meaning of Life [1983], it really was a tax dodge. The film was going to feature us in court because the lawyers had found out.

There we were doing a tax dodge for Led Zep, Pink Floyd, and Bob Marley, because Island Records, Chris Blackwell, put money in. Actually, the money we were making [was] going to help Genesis. People were very loose with how money went.

Sounds like a different time.

A much better time, because you had pirates out there. Now we don’t have pirates, we have accountants and bureaucrats.

What did you learn about directing from Holy Grail?

Not to direct Python again. Because they weren’t interested in the visuals, and some of the things we were doing required cameras in difficult positions and people kneeling down [and they] didn’t like it. So that was really why I felt “not again”. You learned a lot having not done it before, except little 16mm films back in New York for a weekend. You’re thrown in the thick of it and you’ve got to survive. That was the good part, learning how to survive when you’re up in Glencoe and the camera breaks down in the first shot. Those are important things to learn. Forget about composition, forget about anything.

You knocked coconut shells together instead of riding horses. How much of that was because of financial necessity and how much because it was a funny idea?

We just had to work within those limitations: X amount of money to the costumes, the knights’ tabards – those beautiful things – cotton sheets and designs are just painted on them. Hazel Pethig did costumes. Everything had to be done cleverly, but the end effect was, “We’re big time.” And of course, coconuts rather than horses.

Was that good grounding for how to be careful with money for the rest of your career?

You’ve got to have your visuals clear and find out how to do it. The opening shot is on the eastside edge of Hampstead Heath. We just parked the cars there, stuck a Catherine wheel about 50 yards off the road. We didn’t get permission. We just did it and pumped a lot of smoke. With that, then going into Time Bandits [1981], I was making films much cheaper than anybody else and the films were looking like proper films, and I was very proud of that.

On your first solo effort, Jabberwocky [1977], Michael Palin is the lead. Later you put him in Brazil. How would you describe your collaboration as it changed over the years?

Fantastic. Mike and I balance each other, because he is so clever with character and dialogue. His imagery isn’t as good as mine. I have big ideas, but Mike takes them and makes them brilliant, that’s the difference. For Time Bandits, I wanted little guys shorter than the kid. I invented these guys who got fed up with working for God – terrible boss – and they had been involved in creation, but they were so bored; they steal the map of the structure of the cosmos and go out as robbers. They could commit a robbery and go back in time before the robbery. What more do you want? That was the big idea. Then Mike gave us evil, that great character, and he gave great character to all the bandits.

How different was it making Jabberwocky to making Holy Grail?

I didn’t have to put up with those Pythons. OK, Mike’s in it, and Terry Jones I killed in the first scene. On Jabberwocky, the fabulous bunch of actors got together – John Le Mesurier, Max Wall – and they all respected the director. Unlike the Pythons, because the Pythons knew the truth.

It doesn’t matter how good you do in the eyes of the world, friends always mock.

That’s it. I was able to say to Max Wall, “Can you lie there on the floor and can we pour all sorts of shit and dust on top of you?” He was happy and delightful. Once you realise you’re dealing with people that are willing to play, that’s what it’s about. I am careful about who I cast. I want people who will play.

How do you feel about Time Bandits now?

I just love it. Time Bandits was such a huge thing. Everywhere I’d go I’d bump into some little people. They’re all saying I became the patron saint of little people. I loved it, because here was a chance to make the guys action heroes: the leading men, not inside Ewok costumes. Kenny Baker was no longer in R2D2. These guys were free to be seen as what they were.

You produced the film with George Harrison’s HandMade Films.

The script is turned down by every studio, so George put up the cash, and every studio turned the film down, the finished film. Great times.

He also wrote songs for the film.

Dennis O’Brien, who was managing Python and HandMade Films thought, “This is a Snow White and Seven Dwarfs thing. George will write some wonderful songs.” So it was going to be a musical. I said no. Ray Cooper was head of production at HandMade, the first person I actually met once George and Dennis were [on board]. He agreed Seven Dwarfs was not what we were doing.

George’s song, after the film had gone out, those lyrics were about me and George’s attitude towards my attitude when I wasn’t as grateful as [I should have been], like Trump. It wasn’t quite as bad as Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, because they were lovely lyrics, but it was that I had been a bit too unwilling to bend when Dennis O’Brien kept telling me to change this and change that. I was the creative one. He was the money guy. It makes me smile every time I listen to it.

Did George have anything else to do with the making of the film?

No, just being there supporting. George was a wonderful character, always positive and a huge Python fan. Once Life of Brian [1979] occurred, he saved that one. Time Bandits goes to number one for five weeks in America and was the most successful independent film for years until that bastard John Cleese did A Fish Called Wanda [1988] and beat me.

Did George have any other interest in cinema and filmmaking beyond HandMade?

He did say, “Do you know about Baron Munchhausen?” And a combination of me spotting something and George [seeing] the images that the BFI had put out on the Karel Zeman version [1962] was the trigger that started Munchhausen.

What did you think of the Time Bandits TV series?

I was a big fan of Taika Waititi after Jojo Rabbit [2019]. My job was non-writing executive producer. I thought it would keep me involved and I could protect what we had done. I read the script, didn’t really like it and made notes. There was no mention in the script of their size when the Time Bandits come out of the wardrobe. It took me months to finally get images, because they were keeping things away from me. There was the kid and there were normal-size human beings, completely wrong. Fucking ridiculous. The dwarves were central to what Time Bandits was about. The streaming series suffered horribly because of a shortage of dwarves.

You considered calling Brazil 1984½ , in tribute to Orwell’s 1984 and Fellini’s 8½. What specifically did you like about 8½?

To me it was the best film about film directing ever made and captured really what it’s like. And if the story is true, a film that Fellini didn’t know how to end, made about a director who doesn’t know how to end a film. I was a huge Fellini fan. I loved the way he used the camera. I loved his characters. So that was my chance. I had at least seen 8½. I hadn’t read 1984.

Were there any other films or art that influenced the look of Brazil?

German expressionism in art and cinema – Metropolis [1927]. All stuff I was knocked out by.

Robert De Niro’s casting came about because producer Arnon Milchan had made The King of Comedy [1982] and Once upon a Time in America [1984] with him. Can you tell me about De Niro’s vulnerability at the start of shooting?

For Bobby, in other films, he had been the guy. In this one, Jonathan Pryce was the guy. We had been preparing for quite a bit. To walk in when you’ve been held in such high esteem, as he probably was… They [actors] want to believe, but deep down they know they’re frauds. He was a big Python fan. I think he was actually very nervous.

The first couple of days were difficult. Not because he was being difficult. Everything was a mistake, “Can I do it again?” Then he settled into it and had a good time. When you were stepping in, the tone wasn’t clear for anybody. We worked our way to the tone by the end.

You spoke to pre-Top Gun Tom Cruise about playing Sam Lowry, but his people didn’t want him to do it?

I was in LA doing screen tests with Kathleen Turner, Madonna, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jamie Lee Curtis, and my casting director said, “I want to show you something.” And it’s the scene in Risky Business [1983] when [Cruise] does his dance in his underwear. I said, “Who the fuck is this? This guy’s a star.” I wanted to put him on tape. And [Cruise] said, “My people don’t want me to.” I have no idea whether that was his agent, managers, who didn’t want an old video floating around that might pop up one day, or whether it was Scientologists.

Have you tried working with him again since?

Yeah. When Heath Ledger died and I was looking to replace him with the actors I did, Tom’s agent called and said, “Tom would love to come.” The problem was, this is family, they were the three guys that were close to Heath. I wanted it to be like that.

Tom and I keep bumping into each other. He’s got to return from outer space though, first [Cruise is making a film shot in space with director Doug Liman]. They got 200 million. They don’t have a script. He’s also probably put Bond out of business as well, because, Mission: Impossible.

Why did The Adventures of Baron Munchausen [1988] fail at the box office?

Because it wasn’t supported at all. David Puttnam had moved out of England, took over what he thought was Hollywood and he didn’t green-light us – it was his number two that greenlit us. Two weeks into the prep, Puttnam was fired. He had said no to Bill Murray and Ghostbusters and he spent money on a Hungarian director’s film. He was not in London any more, where he did control the place. He goes into somebody else’s turf and gets his head chopped off.

I won’t go through the horrors of making the film, but Dawn Steel had taken over as head of production. She was trying to get me to cut five minutes and said she’d be completely behind the film. I cut five minutes and they buried the film. That was the time you released 3,000 prints. And there were 117 prints made. It was very funny, because this guy who had the VHS rights of it, he’d go in and they’re trying to find ways to not sell the film. They were told, “Make sure the new regime’s films look good in comparison to the old regime’s.” It’s been normal through history, not just films. The new regime is, “That’ll make the old regime look like shit.”

What can you recall about working with Robin Williams on The Fisher King [1991]?

It’s one of the great joys of my life to have become a friend of Robin’s, because his brain was outrageous. Every bit of knowledge in the universe, he absorbed. It all goes in, he turns it inside out, it comes out as the funniest nonsense ever. The bond company wouldn’t let me take Munchausen to the moon. The moon was going to be Sean Connery with 2,000 people on it and I cut three zeros off. Sean said, “I don’t think I want to be the ruler of two.” Robin took over, so much is ad-libbed, and it’s so funny. It lifts the film brilliantly.

Then after the Munchausen nightmare in Italy, it was my Orson Welles moment where I was being punished for it. It was brutal and I was really depressed. My agent sent Fisher King with another script. The other script was what they’d been trying to get me to do for a couple of months. It was The Addams Family, and I don’t want to do [it]. It got done very well, but I was not inspired by it. I only worked on things that really hooked me. I started reading this other script and within five pages I said yes, then discovered the real reason they wanted me was I was the worm on the hook to get Robin. But I didn’t care.

What happened next?

I had always swore I would never do a script that I hadn’t been involved in the writing of. I would not do a Hollywood movie. I made these big rules to live by after Brazil and Munchausen. Off we went and made the film, and I cast it. I’m pretty good at casting, because I’m very careful about who I work with, and I’ve got to feel the same energy or intelligence or boldness or just silliness, whichever it is.

I remember flying to Hollywood to meet the studio people before I’d signed anything. I’m thinking about what was on the film on the plane, The Fabulous Baker Boys [1989] with Jeff and his brother. I have to tell everybody, it’s got to be Jeff Bridges. And it was.

 What made you think Twelve Monkeys was right for you?

Because it was the film that nobody else would touch. It was too complex. They’d had it going out to a lot of people before me and they just couldn’t get anybody to jump on board. I said, “I’ve never read anything like this.” Since I had done one studio film, why not? Bent over once, why not again?

Did you have difficulty getting Bruce Willis away from acting too much like John McClane?

No, it wasn’t quite that. He had come to the Fisher King set one day and I liked him. He wasn’t John McClane, he was a different guy. Actually, I referred to one thing about John McClane. I love the scene where he’s in the bathroom, pulling glass out of his feet. He’s on the phone to his wife and he’s weeping. That was wonderful. Bruce said, “That was my idea.”

I said “I don’t want Bruce Willis, superstar. I want Bruce Willis, actor, and you’ve got to come naked, with no entourage, no bullshit.” That’s how it worked. But there was one day somewhere, during the shoot, where Die Hard [with a Vengeance] needed some re-shoots, so we lost Bruce for a weekend. He came back and he was Bruce Willis, superstar. It took us two weeks to get his feet back on the ground being the naked actor, doing what he should. But it was so good to have him there without the army around him.

Brad Pitt then wasn’t the superstar he has since become but has an important supporting role. How did that work?

[Bruce] responded brilliantly. Before Brad got there, we finished the take, he would walk off the set, we’d get ready for the next one, he’d come back on. Once Brad turned up, he never left the set, because he could see all of our reactions to Brad.

Because Brad was a big surprise. Nobody had ever seen him like he is in Twelve Monkeys. Se7en [1995] hadn’t come out yet, but he’d learned a lot on Se7en. Then he got Fight Club [1999]. He came to meet me to talk about the film, and I liked him a lot, another Midwestern boy like me. He wanted to be an architect when he was young; I wanted to [be one]. I said, “Which part do you like?” He liked the one that I’d already given to Bruce.

Up to that point, Brad was never a motormouth in anything. He’s cool, he’s laconic. I put him in touch with a voice coach who had worked with Jeff on Fisher King. They worked for a week or two. [The coach] says, “He’s got a lazy tongue. He’s slow. It’s not there.” I began to think, “Have I made a mistake?” The studios, any time I asked for more information, they said, “He’s the hottest new thing.” And he wasn’t. Legends of the Fall [1994] had not opened yet. That was what propelled Brad into the hottest new thing.

The first time you see Brad in the film, that is his first day of shooting. Boom, he exploded. In the asylum, where he introduces him around. It’s extraordinary. That was the first day, and I was just blown away. Because he’s got contact lenses in, his eye is going in the wrong direction, he’s got the twitches he’s doing. Chopped his hair. He did all that himself. No director involved. Bruce was also saying, “Fuck me. I’m up against that?” It was funny, because the next day of work, Brad came in, he was complaining. He had put so much energy into it.

With Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [1998], you got in a row over the writing credits because of a discarded Alex Cox and Tod Davies script and were so incensed you burned your Writers Guild of America (WGA) card. Why did you feel that was the right response?

Because they were dickheads. They’re just dicks, because they’re basically run by all the writers who don’t have jobs. I’m convinced [that] is what it is. All good writers are busy. When I was offered Fear and Loathing, I had just met Johnny [Depp] in Cannes. I wanted to work with him, and there was Benicio [del Toro] too. I said I’ll do the film, but I want to rewrite the script completely. Tony Grisoni and I sat down and I was thinking of Dante’s Inferno, because you’ve got Dante and Virgil. Johnny’s character is a Christian. Benicio is a Pagan. The Pagan in Benicio is out of control, and he crosses the line completely in the North Star Café with Ellen Barkin.

You seem to take great pride in taking on films deemed unfilmable.

Yeah, because it’s going to be different than anything you’ve seen before. That’s what I’m trying to do. That book is very important to me. I’d read it when I left America and thought, “Wow.” [Book illustrator] Ralph Steadman became a really good friend. Tony and I, we actually went at it very quickly. We spent eight and a half or 10 days writing.

Hunter S. Thompson thought Johnny was the only man that could play him on screen. Was he correct?

That was Hunter wanting to look good. He had passed through his good-looking period. He was an older man now. Johnny is a very seductive human being and was spending a lot of time up at Hunter’s house, by the end of it; Johnny was the successful vampire. He sucked all of it into himself.

I was trying to keep Hunter at many arms’ length, because it was a huge responsibility to take on that book. I felt, “Don’t fuck this one up, mate.” We had a couple of phone calls. I met him at Chateau Marmont. I was even more worried because he was always surrounded by acolytes who were filming his every moment. Come on, Hunter. You don’t need all that shit.

On The Brothers Grimm [2005], and briefly on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus [2009], you worked with the late Heath Ledger. What made Heath different as an actor?

His depth as a human being. This guy was extraordinary. He was 27 years old, but I actually thought I was talking to a 50-year-old guy sometimes, because there was something about him that just was deep. His relationship with people was wonderful. He was a weird magnet. Monica Bellucci turned up in the makeup department, and there’s pictures of Matt [Damon] and pictures of him up. Not very big pictures, but he was like a magnet. She just went to Heath. Even in the picture. It’s really hard to explain but everybody had the same reaction. I’ve never heard any negative thing about Heath. He just was very open to everybody. He was funny, smart and had wisdom. So he actually died when he was 57, not 27. [Ledger was 28 years old when he died.]

When Heath died mid-shoot, you recast Imaginarium with Johnny, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. How did you set that up, and did you have any difficulty convincing those guys to do it?

No. The point is, when Heath died, it was over for me. This film is done. My daughter, Amy, and Nicola Pecorini, my DP, would not let me quit. They said, “We have to make this film.” There’s no actor that can replace Heath. There is nobody who has all of the qualities that we need and he had. They just beat me up for a week, maybe two. Finally, I was thinking of the Buñuel film, there’s two girls playing the same part [That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977]. We’d shot almost all of the film that we needed outside the mirror. So once you go through the mirrors, it could be Johnny or Colin or Jude. And it worked.

When you finally got Don Quixote finished, how did you feel, and did it turn out how you wanted?

“Thank fucking God.” No, I’m really happy with it. What’s interesting is the reaction to it from critics, assuming that I’ve spent that long to try to make that film, it must be such a brilliant film. It’s just another film I finally got made. It got better in all that time because I rewrote it several times. I like the premise, the idea that a guy with cinematic talent makes a little film when he’s younger and is a huge success and, rather than going into the difficult business of cinema, he goes into advertising, he sells his soul. Jonathan [Pryce] is brilliant.

What’s happening with The Carnival at the End of Days? It was due to begin filming in April.

It’s moved into purgatory. The four horsemen are so busy right now in the real world, we can’t get them together at the same time. April came and went. I said, “Where’s the money?” And nothing happened. I did approach the actors first. I thought Johnny, Jeff Bridges, all this cast is incredible. Johnny’s been signed already, so that part is there.

Jeff Bridges, Adam Driver and Jason Momoa will be in it?

Those three, Asa Butterfield, Emma Laird and Tom Waits. These people have all said yes to this movie. The film is free: I have signed no legal documents. If anybody wants to come on board, we’re willing and waiting. Somebody give me the money.

What’s it about?

It was about the last few years, my reaction to being cancelled a couple of times. I was going to call it The Great Unwokening. It’s a satire. My co-writer is a young guy, Christopher Brett Bailey. I want to work with somebody young, close to the audience’s age, as opposed to their grandparents’ age. All these people came on board because they found it so funny. Though if I had gone the other direction, through their agents to them, it might not have got that far. Because Hollywood has been very, very timid these days.

I’ve got to rewrite it a bit because Trump has started the new carnival. He’s turned the world upside down. I’ve got a preamble to it. “What you’re about to see is what historians now refer to as the Lost Trump Years, 2020 to 2024.” But we have great things, like the rapture takes place. [In] how many films do you get to see the rapture?

Is there anything else you’re working on?

No, I was planning my funeral. There’s another film Richard LaGravenese and I wrote after Fisher King, The Defective Detective. It’s been lost those many years in the bowels of one particular studio, very hard to get out. But there’s a change in that studio. We’ll see. Where the studios have something they don’t really want to make, they want to make sure nobody else makes it. There’s so many scripts sitting there.

It’s the film I really want to get done before I kick the bucket, about a middle-aged New York cop who was the golden boy when he was younger. He’s become, not a thug, but cynical, and he’s transported into a child’s world. The rules of the mean streets of New York don’t work in the children’s world. If you grab somebody, they melt in your hands. When he pulls his gun and shoots the approaching one-headed dragon, now there’s two heads. He’s living in a world where the rules are children’s rules.