Terry Gilliam: "Will Direct for Food"
Source: ComingSoon
"From a very early age, whenever somebody says 'this is what the world is' I say 'wait a minute, what about this!' It's always trying to rediscover or redefine or shake people up in their idea of the world. I was brought up a nice Christian boy, I was gonna be a missionary, went to university on a Presbyterian scholarship, but I was always making jokes about God, Jesus, the community. People were taking offense at this and I was like 'what kind of God do you believe in that can't take a joke?'"- Terry Gilliam
On the corner of 11th Avenue and 51st Street in New York, a line of people stands waiting to see a taping of "The Daily Show with John Stewart" when from around a corner a panhandler appears. The beggar is a man in his 60s with a ponytail and baggy clothes, carrying a cardboard sign reading "STUDIO-LESS FILM MAKER - FAMILY TO SUPPORT - WILL DIRECT FOR FOOD". The man is Terry Gilliam, Monty Python alum and director of such classics as Time Bandits, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, and he is on a mission: to promote his new movie Tideland.
This being the age of the internet, word got out on the web about Gilliam's gonzo stunt the night before and thus a throng of loyal fans were waiting to greet the director and gladly put dollar bills into his plastic cup. "This is more lucrative than making movies!" he declared of the growing wad of cash, followed by his trademark giggle. An out of breath Carmiel Banasky was happy to get a Tideland postcard from the director, who autographed the back listing the film's October 13th release date. "I ran all the way from Central Park just to shake hands with Terry Gilliam," said Banasky, who added "The way I romanticize New York is how it is in 'The Fisher King'."
Another fan named Noah presented Gilliam with a small portrait he drew of the filmmaker and former animator looking like Rambo, a strip of film tied around his head for a bandana, undoubtedly a comment on his maverick reputation. Noah saw the panhandling as a perfectly Gilliam-esque stunt. "It's great, it brings a lot of attention. Everyone's waiting in line so they're kind of a captive audience for him."
When a dozen or so of his followers posed for a picture with their hero, he turned the cardboard sign around to reveal a poster for Tideland, a little girl sitting on and upside-down tree. The striking image perfectly encapsulates the film, and his street-promotion tactics exemplify how difficult it has been making it to American screens. Since premiering at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, the movie has deeply polarized audiences and critics who find it either revelatory or profoundly unpleasant. Unable to secure a major US distributor, boutique company THINKFilm is now releasing the movie in limited engagements over the next month. Of course, given the disastrous fate that befell his Don Quixote film, documented in the famous post-mortem documentary Lost in La Mancha, it's a minor miracle that Tideland exists at all.
Based on a cult novel by author Mitch Cullen, Tideland tells the story of 9-year-old Jeliza Rose (Jodelle Ferland) living with her two junkie parents, who she routinely prepares heroin injections for. After her mother, a grotesque Jennifer Tilly, dies of a methadone overdose, her musician father Noel (Jeff Bridges) takes Jeliza to the now-abandoned farmhouse where he grew up. When Noel also ODs, Jeliza escapes the bleak reality of her abandonment by exploring the vast surrounding prairies with four detached doll heads who talk to her. Along the way she meets a deranged taxidermist named Dell (Janet McTeer) and her retarded brother Dickens (Brendan Fletcher), who thinks he's a submarine commander.
Earlier in the day, Gilliam sat down in the THINKFilm offices to discuss how the film came to be and how the cardboard sign reading "STUDIO-LESS FILMMAKER", while a joke, is not entirely inaccurate. "There was the book sitting on a pile of things, submissions. I read it and thought 'f**k, this is great, this'll wake up a few people.'" One of the people the book woke up was producer Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor), who managed to secure Tideland's modest $12 million dollar budget through several independent companies in Canada, where the film was ultimately shot.
Said Gilliam, "We had a very short prep period, the shortest I've ever had. The joy was I had to make instant decisions. I couldn't double think, which I always do. Things just started falling into place. Dickens, Brendan Fletcher, is the first time I've ever cast somebody without meeting them in the flesh. He sent this tape in that he and his girlfriend had done. 'Jesus this guy's good!' I said 'he's got it', again because of this time thing. I couldn't piss around. I said 'great, move on.' I wish I could force myself to do this more often cause I really like working that way.
"The most terrifying thing was Jodelle because we were in pre-production and I still hadn't found her. I was right at the edge of telling Jeremy Thomas 'I know we've spent a bit of money but we have to pull the plug' 'cause the girls I'd seen up to this point just weren't up to it. Then this tape came in from Vancouver and there was this little creature with these amazing eyes and this incredible energy. I thought 'hello'. Brought her to Toronto and did a little test and said 'you got it'."
Jodelle Ferland's role of Jeliza would be daunting for any actress, since she is in every scene and has to carry the majority of the film by herself, essentially playing within her own headspace and often doing multiple voices. When she's not by herself, Jeliza is forging a playful if unsettling friendship with the twenty-ish Dickens, leading to a scene where the two kiss that has caused many audience members to walk out. "I don't know where they're gonna start leaving, but I know a lot of people will not connect to this film, they refuse to allow themselves to connect to this film, that's the problem. You have to submit!
"Shooting it I knew what we were doing was completely innocent and it had to stay that way. There's even a scene later on where she's in his bedroom. In the book, he's sort of getting on top of her, his hand going up her thigh and I said 'we can't do that'. It's a really fine line we're treading here and if we go over it we're completely f**ked. I know audiences are gonna be squirming because adults come with all their pre-conceptions and fears, but at the end of that scene c'mon folks, nothing happened. But then they'll probably be more terrified. 'If he's done that for openers what's he gonna do next!' (laughter)"
As for what Gilliam's next film will be, things are a bit dubious at the moment. Aside from "the big white elephant in the room", his abandoned film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote which is still set to star Johnny Depp as soon as the rights to the script are out of litigation, he has his sights set on The Defective Detective, a project he's been developing with "Fisher King" scribe Richard LaGravenese for over a decade. The film, at one point to star Nicolas Cage before he left to make Snake Eyes, revolves around a burnt-out NY cop who enters the elaborate fantasy world of a children's book in order to find a missing girl. Featuring many elaborate set-pieces, including a never-ending traffic jam in which people have taken up residence in their cars as well as a battle between good and corporate evil, the film is seen as a risky proposition in need of a major star. However, according to Gilliam a new tactic could get it off the ground yet.
"Shekhar Kapur (director of 'Elizabeth') started a comic book company in India, and Richard Branson of Virgin is putting money into it. Shekhar's trying to get me and John Woo to take any of the scripts that aren't going anywhere and make comic books out of them. Then we'll get Hollywood excited and Hollywood will then want to make a movie out of the comic book. Somebody suggested to me that I do 'Defective Detective' as a comic book or even an animated film, and maybe that's what should happen. It's just sitting there and it's not going anywhere."
Another commercial project that has languished in development hell is Good Omens, based on the popular novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. A satiric fantasy in the vein of Douglas Adams, the story of a bookish angel and a wild demon who band together to save the earth from the Anti-Christ does to the Bible what "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" did to science fiction. Gilliam tried to get the film off the ground in 2001 with Robin Williams and a pre-Pirates Johnny Depp, but studios weren't anxious for an apocalyptic comedy in the wake of 9/11. Now the problem is finding another set of bankable stars who can fit the roles and a studio willing to roll the dice on the director's quirky visions.
"It's costly, that's the problem. What worries me now is the atmosphere out there is so frightened and timid and when you're doing expensive films they seem to be wanting very safe expensive films. This is just a wonderful book, and I think our script is good too. I want to do my own things. 'Good Omens' and 'Defective Detective' are wondrous and I can't seem to get them moving. I'm actually trying to find the producer of my dreams who has great power and likes what I do and will help me! I've never stayed with one producer, I'm kind of all over the place with producers, which is a bad thing because I never built up the kind of Brian Grazer-Ron Howard relationship.
"I wish I could do a few more films before I kick the bucket. We'll see. (laughter)"
In the end, Gilliam's New York panhandling career lasted a bit over an hour, in which time over 100 people came by to greet him. The highly approachable director chatted with all of them, even taking time to talk to one girl's boyfriend on a cell phone for 5 minutes. If the film he's made can generate the kind of interest he aroused today through the sheer force of his personality, then Tideland could one day have a devoted fanbase of its own. As the crowd began to scatter and the sun began to set, a passing soccer player pointed out the figure with the cardboard sign to a friend. "Terry Gilliam, good director… if that's really him."
Tideland opens for an exclusive engagement October 13th at the IFC Center in New York City, then October 20th in Los Angeles and Chicago.
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Gilliam Hopes For Good Omens
Director Terry Gilliam told SCI FI Wire that he doesn't yet have a project lined up to follow his latest film, Tideland, but that he's still hoping to direct a big-screen version of the fantasy novel Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. "I've been working on it for quite a while, but it's a big budget," Gilliam said in an interview. "I was doing this before The Brothers Grimm, before Tideland, but it needs A-list stars to work—to get the money is what I mean—and none of the A-list stars are right for the part. That's what's frustrating."
Good Omens is a satirical book that deals with the appearance of the son of Satan heralding the End Times and the efforts of an angel and a demon to thwart them to preserve their comfortable positions on Earth.
"It's an angel and devil and the Antichrist and the Apocalypse," Gilliam (Brazil) said. "It's a comedy. Neil and Terry wrote it together years ago, and we've adapted it, and it's really good. It's fantastic. Here's my beef with Hollywood. Before The Brothers Grimm, we went out to Hollywood to get [Good Omens] made. We had raised $45 million from the rest of the world, and we needed $15 [million] out of Hollywood. I had two actors, Johnny Depp and Robin Williams. I couldn't get $15 million out of Hollywood with those two people. They said, 'Johnny, nah, he does those European art movies, Chocolat, The Man Who Cried, Robin. His career is finished.' And now there's Pirates of the Caribbean. The world turns just like that. I'm waiting to see the [new] Barry Levinson film [Man of the Year] with Robin. I'm told it's really sharp. I hope it works, because Robin's brilliant; he's just made some bad choices, that's all. ... I can't stand that place [Hollywood] because of that. I need their money, though."