I'll take this, this and that

interview with TERRY GILLIAM

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While watching your movies, we kept noticing more and more connections, common elements and repeating motives.

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Terry Gilliam: Right, but you should know that I don’t do these repetitions consciously. In such situations I always cite my wife, who says, that I keep making the same film only changing costumes. In some way this is true, because all my films have source in the ideas circulating in my head – it’s just that every time I apply those ideas in a somewhat different way.

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One of our ideas about you is that you are rather a worldmaker, than a storyteller. Although in such movies as Munchausen or Parnassus the storyteller is in the middle, in the center, at the same time there is an interesting tension in your films as such, there is tension between storyteller and between worlds, like between Munchausen who wants to stay in the world and the girl who keeps saying: “Come on, keep telling…! They are waiting”.

 

I think this is really smart, because I think you understand the underlying structure in what I think I’m doing.

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And could you tell us something about the structure?

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It starts like this: with serious conflicting ideas. And then it becomes a kind of battle between them. And then, when I get bored with the structure, I just throw it in the air and bury it. I never become pedantic, I hope, about what I’m doing. I create a lot of rules and then sometimes it’s fun to break them all just to see what happens. But the wholeness in films is bigger than what appears on the screen. You got all these reasons, imagination, you got life, love and death - all of it is in there. And I reach a point where I just forget what I’m doing. I’m going to start up with all these ideas and then reality comes: “We are run out of money, we are run out of time etc.” But hopefully those elements never get run away. They all held on during some way and sometimes that is not as successfully as I’d like it to be.

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[…] usually in your films there is this couple of characters: the one who is more rational and the one who is more imaginative.

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With the exception of Las Vegas Parano.

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But in Las Vegas there is this group of policemen and prosecutors, whom you can actually identify with the system.

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But they are not the main characters. I think the difference is not that one is more rational than the other one, it’s just that one probably has morality with a little bit more structure; but only slightly. (laughter)

 

Let’s stick to Munchausen and Brazil again…, the figure of rationality is usually associated with power - an institution, a state. And the other guy, he is not powerless, he has the power of emotions and can tell the story and stuff, but in Faust actually Mefisto is the one who is associated with a power of state and he is again on the side of fantasy, of creation – on the one hand he inspires the fascist machine, but, on the other, to him this machine is a show, the work of his imagination, his creation. In your earliest films you clearly tended to sympathize with those people on the side of fantasy…

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I thought Mefisto is an interesting character. Faust is basically a puppet. Again he is the rational man. It is about rationality to me. The way we work with science, we try to measure and then we can put a thing to the chest, we can label it, we can understand and control it. And the other side, the imagination side, is actually out of control, it’s the other side of us – just appreciating a mystery. An imagination springs out of that, but you are not trying to control it, you let it go. It’s a way our minds work. Psychologist Steven Pinker describes the brain when it’s asleep: it’s like you are walking in the room, where thousand conversations are going on. When we are sleeping, sensory operates us - touch, smell etc. - and then the brain just gets the dance.  And then you wake up, you hear something - so the world starts closing in, you feel something - then the world is closing in more, you open your eyes - and it all closes in. Suddenly all conversations stop, and then we are trying to make sense of it, so the rational brain goes to work. I mean, we need both of these things, that’s why it’s in my films. I suppose I fight against the rational because this thing makes cages. I mean it happens to me: two halves of my brain are fighting each other.

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You tend to treat fantasy in ambiguous way in your films.

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Of course, that’s why I don’t like when you normally talk about fantasy in films of Hollywood. They are all happy endings. No! It’s not that at all. Fantasy is not guaranty of happy ending – it can lead to madness, it can lead to serial killers, it can lead to people having voices in their heads saying “kill them all”.

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I guess Munchausen is the most affirmative in terms of fantasy; all the others are trickier.

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I guess so - setting it in the XVIII century, the Enlightenment and all - I just had more fun. I mean, Munchausen is a liar. And I love the fact. And to me it always has been an interesting thing that the lie may be closer to the truth than the fact. I don’t want things to be nailed down, because the minute everything is nailed down life gets really boring. The more we all become like each other… this is really boring. Where are all the mysteries in the world? The darkest Africa is no longer very dark. We know too much.  Maybe it’s again just kind of infantile attitude, I’ve always want to be the little kid who gets surprised by things.

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When we talk about structure of your films, we try to find something which could be a metaphor of your worlds in creating. And we think it is not a museum, but more a Kunstkammer, a Cabinet of curiosity.

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Yes, you are right.

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Because it is not structureless, it has structure, but it’s an open form. And it’s more organic, more human-like.​

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I agree totally. That is what it’s about. A little bit of this interesting thing, a little bit of that interesting thing… And a viewer can choose, impelled by curiosity and somehow free. I had this idea when I was making the “imaginarium” in Parnassus.

 

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If you talk about the structure of your films, about the conflict, things that base on some ideas, could you tell us how you work when you translate the idea into the image, any visuality you follow making this? For example in Munchausen Jackson is black and white and Munchausen is colorful. Is there a kind of system in this?​

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No, there is no system. It all is just instinctive. The costumes in Munchausen were designed by Gabriella Pescucci. I said I wanted the colors to be almost like Technicolor colors. So if you see the red, it’s really, really red. I was just going for almost primary colors. But there is no necessarily clarity in my logic. It is just instinctive.  I just say: „I like that”. The more I behave instinctively, the better I normally am.
 

But there is always reference, like with Parnassus; I was quite obsessed with Norwegian painter cold Odd Nerdrum. So we started stealing from that some things. Other things then were Maxwell Parish’. So there is definite influence of painters when I’m looking at different types. In Tideland it was Andrew Wyeth.  We start with that and then we just go whichever direction we want to go. But the pro-choice to me - whatever it is - you do a lot of research, you merge yourself and then you look, and look, and look; and you just throw it away and go. And then you are free. But if you really absorbed it, it’s there; it’s in all your decisions.

 

And what about The damnation of Faust? Mefisto was almost black and white and Faust had red firing hear. The contrast was strong, but different than we expect. We expect that Mefisto will be firing red.

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That was the costume designer’s idea. She’d love the idea with red hear and we said: “Great. His head is on fire with ideas”. So we justified it after the fact.

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On the other side – it’s very similar haircut to the one that the boss of the theatre group in Munchausen has.

Here is my new description of what I do – I’m not an auteur (author), I’m a filteur (filter). (laughter) Because we start the process and then people come up with a lot of ideas and I’m the guy that lets those ideas through or not. And I just liked the red, so I justified things afterwards by saying: “Because his mind is so full of ideas his head is burning with ideas”. But if I have to do an interview about it, I’ve got an answer. (laughter)

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You are usually perceived as a creator, as someone who creates from the scratch. But again you tend to underscore the importance of finding things. Like in the surrealistic tradition - the found objects...

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Yes, like the computer in Brazil. It’s a found object. But it’s a found and manipulated object. (laughter) And you then start playing with it – start the process to get straight to the machine. We take the cover of, we see the guts, now we need a television screen (the smallest one we can find) and when we can’t see anything else, we put a magnifying screen. It grows like that. And suddenly you’ve got something. It’s like being a sculptor; it’s like being an artist. Most artists open our eyes to the world. Sometimes you can do it by taking that thing and making people see what it really is by turning it upside down.
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London, 7th of May, 2011
 

An interview was conducted by Kuba Mikurda, Michał Oleszczyk and Jakub Woynarowski.

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Authors of questions: Mariusz Frukacz, Błażej Hrapkowicz, Kaja Klimek, Michał Ligęza, Stanisław Liguziński, Jakub Majmurek,  Kuba Mikurda, Piotr Mirski, Jagoda Murczyńska, Magda Nawisielska, Michał Oleszczyk, Bogna Rosińska, Maciej Stasiowski, Maciej Stroiński, Kamila Wielebska, Jakub Woynarowski