Terry Gilliam Sounds Off

Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe it's a different one. The old one got fired.
Terry Gilliam

And Now For Something Completely Different was supposed to be our entree into America. It failed in America but was a big success in England.
Terry Gilliam

At the first screening, there were a lot of areas that we went around and around about. Then we had our second screening. It played better. It's almost a reasonable length film now!
Terry Gilliam

Hyperbole is something I'd better avoid.
Terry Gilliam

I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn't understand.
Terry Gilliam

I keep referring to them in the plural but all I'm dealing with is Bob. I don't know where Harvey fits in the equation. He was very present at the beginning, winding his brother up. I don't know where he is now.
Terry Gilliam

I was always keen to shock people and shake them up; Eric was a little bit more traditionally motivated in really being just funny all the time.
Terry Gilliam

I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country... dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.
Terry Gilliam

I was doing political cartoons and getting angry to the point where I felt I was going to have to start making and throwing bombs. I thought I was probably a better cartoonist than a bomb maker.
Terry Gilliam

I was getting frustrated with America. It's interesting how as simple a thing as, like, letting your hair grow longer changed in the world in those days.
Terry Gilliam

In advertising, I was frustrated by having to deal with the client. It was the only time I really worked in a proper office, and I didn't like it-simple as that.
Terry Gilliam

In New York, we used to go outside film studios and get reels of blank film, and we used to draw on them, do flipper books, that sort of thing.
Terry Gilliam

It was lights, camera, inaction.
Terry Gilliam

It was like a nightmare working with these guys. Here's how I get through this film: the Weinsteins don't exist. I didn't speak to them.
Terry Gilliam

It's 85 million dollars and they got to be really careful because they are going to need me.
Terry Gilliam

It's been interesting how kids have had hardly any problems watching it, but adults have more trouble. This happened way back even with Jabberwocky and Time Bandits.
Terry Gilliam

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort.
Terry Gilliam

Literally overnight, I became an animator... and one that was well-known.
Terry Gilliam

People used to think we just faked all that stuff... it was all written, rehearsed. The fact that it looks as cobbled together as it does is just that we weren't very good.
Terry Gilliam

The character Heath plays is the dreamer, the scholar, the one who's dragged along reluctantly and who then finds this truly enchanted world.
Terry Gilliam

The musical, Hair, was at the time very smart because it got to that basic element of this dividing line in society... which was hair.
Terry Gilliam

The only time you get to see something interesting occasionally is music videos but even they've become boring, they seem more and more the same.
Terry Gilliam

There are moments when television systems are young and haven't formed properly, and there's room for lots of original stuff. Then things become more and more top-heavy with executives who are trying to guarantee the success of things.
Terry Gilliam

There I was back in American television with all of the restrictions. I managed to finish my contracted animation, but it was radio animation.
Terry Gilliam

There was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn't want to go down that route.
Terry Gilliam

They make Spy Kids, they make Scream, they make A Scary Movie. This doesn't do that, so it could be a very bad marriage. I'm trying to keep this potential nightmare quiet because we're just finishing editing.
Terry Gilliam

We did Holy Grail, and I got my name up there as one of the directors. After that, I started moving more and more down the line I wanted to, which was making movies.
Terry Gilliam

We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.
Terry Gilliam

You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.
Terry Gilliam