{"id":621,"date":"2006-10-05T01:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-05T05:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=621"},"modified":"2016-01-31T22:11:38","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T03:11:38","slug":"terry-gilliam-time-bandits-25-years-later-the-deleted-scenes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2006\/10\/05\/terry-gilliam-time-bandits-25-years-later-the-deleted-scenes\/","title":{"rendered":"Terry Gilliam: Time Bandits 25 Years Later- The Deleted Scenes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>While Gilliam spent a majority of his Question and Answer session at Manhattan\u2019s Film Forum discussing Time Bandits<\/strong> (as detailed here<\/a>), he did touch upon a few other topics worth sharing.<\/p>\n

On the future of motion pictures:<\/strong> At the moment, everybody is very confused about where the business is going with DVDs and the Web. I still think there will always be that big pot of money and it is in the hands of a few people who are very nervous. At the moment, the studios now are not even run by entrepreneurs or people who understand or are interested in film. They\u2019re middle management because all the studios are owned by larger corporations and they\u2019re living in a world where quarterly statements are dictating everything. So you have a lot of people being paid a lot of money who are terrified of making movies. There basic function is to say \u2018no\u2019 because they\u2019re safe when they say \u2018no.\u2019 If they say \u2018yes\u2019 and the film flops- heads roll. That\u2019s just the system. Unless something extraordinary happens I think it\u2019s going to be with us for a long time. When I go to Hollywood I\u2019m usually coming up with a project that to me is fresh, new and exciting and that\u2019s what terrifies them. They fill a need to remake things that have worked before. They want comfort. I\u2019m just so perverse, I like making their lives a misery. I probably suffer more than they do for it.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Does he consider himself a maverick film maker?:<\/strong> I\u2019m not trying to make elitist films or difficult films. I\u2019m actually trying to reach a large number of people and I keep failing. On the other hand, Time Bandits<\/strong> was a big success. Fisher King<\/strong> was a big success. Twelve Monkeys<\/strong> was a big success. I\u2019ve done enough that allows me to do what I do. I\u2019m not really thinking about the audience as such. I don\u2019t know what an audience is. I know what individual people look like, but I don\u2019t an audience. So I make things that excite me, that I believe in. I assume that I\u2019m somewhat part of the human race so that there must be a couple of other people like myself who have similar taste and I\u2019m relying on that. I always get into that situation where I feel that after a certain number of less financially successful films, I need to think of something that will make some money. It\u2019s such a gamble and I can\u2019t predict anything. I\u2019m getting old and I\u2019m going to die soon, so I make what I like.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

On George Harrison as a movie producer:<\/strong> I was under a lot of pressure by Denis O’Brien to use a lot of George\u2019s songs in it. He could see it as a real Snow White and the Seven Dwarves<\/strong> with a lot of \u201cHi ho, hi ho,\u201d all that stuff. I said, \u201cNo that\u2019s not the kind of film we\u2019re making.\u201d George did write and sing that end song which I tacked on. I didn\u2019t realize until much later, it\u2019s his notes to me about the film. There are lines in there about \u201cAmaze without taking up time\u2019, i.e. \u201cIt\u2019s too fucking long Terry.\u201d Just listening to it now, being reminded what a clever, sneaky little bastard George was.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

On his reputation of being \u2018difficult\u2019 for studios to deal with:<\/strong> It\u2019s become a bit of a legend, it\u2019s not really true anymore. Journalists tend to be lazy and they just keep repeating themselves. My big fight was over Brazil<\/strong> and it was very public, but after that I didn\u2019t really have any big fights until the Weinsteins came into my life, but that\u2019s something else. In fact the studio films that I\u2019ve done that were in Hollywood – The Fisher King<\/strong>, 12 Monkeys<\/strong> and Fear And Loathing<\/strong> \u2013 no problems at all. It\u2019s a bit inflated. I think it\u2019s partly because I have people making documentaries about the films that I make or somebody writes a book. There are always fights. Every movie, every director has fights. These get written down or in a documentary so that they\u2019re available for public consumption. Most battles happen behind closed doors. I\u2019m so lazy I don\u2019t write diaries, so I have people write these books or make documentaries. They\u2019re really for me to remind me what it was like and hopefully encourage me to never to it again. I do have this reputation but I\u2019m getting tired of it to be quite honest.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

On improvising solutions on the set:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know if you noticed at the end [of Time Bandits<\/strong>] when the boy is approaching the pile of ashes that the smoke is going backwards. Here\u2019s why- we weren\u2019t able to afford a proper crane, all we had was this cherry picker. When it was going up, it jerked. I said, \u2018Well, this is no good.\u2019 So we started the shot up there and it\u2019s all shot in reverse. Craig is walking backwards.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

On his long gestating adaptation of the novel Good Omens<\/em>:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been working on it this year. In fact I just rewrote the script a week ago. It\u2019s an expensive film, that\u2019s the problem. It means I\u2019ve got to get some A list actors to get the kind of money I need and most of the A-list actors aren\u2019t right for the parts, so I\u2019m in a bit of a quandary. This is a project based on a wonderful book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet about the apocalypse. It\u2019s a comedy with heaven and hell, angels and demons and the anti-Christ. It\u2019s a wondrous book and I think we\u2019ve made a pretty good script out of it. Before Brothers Grimm<\/strong> we had a budget of 60 million. We couldn\u2019t have doe it for that, we lied. But we raised 45 million outside of America. I needed 15 million from Hollywood. I had two actors to play the angel and the devil- Johnny Depp and Robin Williams. And I couldn\u2019t get 15 million dollars out of Hollywood. That was time Johnny was doing Chocolat<\/strong> and The Man Who Cried<\/strong> and they said \u2018Well he just does those European art movies, he\u2019s not worth anything and Robin\u2019s career is over.\u2019 That was the end of that one and along came Pirates of the Caribbean<\/strong>. That\u2019s just what\u2019s awful about Hollywood is that they don\u2019t really understand the talent that they\u2019re dealing with, who they\u2019re dealing with. Now with Johnny you can put him in anything and you can get the money and that\u2019s a product of him sticking to his guns and doing the kind of things he likes doing.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

On how aspects of Brazil<\/em> seem to be playing themselves out on the international political scene:<\/strong> I\u2019m honestly thinking of suing George Bush and Dick Chaney for making a remake of Brazil <\/strong>without my approval! Their version isn\u2019t as funny I don\u2019t think. It is absolutely frightening. Homeland Security is just like the Ministry of Information because if your job is counter-terrorism, what do you need to keep in business? You need terrorists. Even if they aren\u2019t there you may have to create new one. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Gilliam spent a majority of his Question and Answer session at Manhattan\u2019s Film Forum discussing Time Bandits (as detailed here), he did touch upon a few other topics worth sharing. On the future of [click for more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1695],"tags":[83],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-features","8":"tag-classic-films"},"aioseo_notices":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":false,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}