Customer Reviews

Terry Gilliam: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers)

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I haven't taken a look yet at the Faber & Faber "Gilliam on Gilliam" which I suppose could be seen as a competitor to this book. If the format to that is similar to their "Scorsese on Scorsese", it might be a better choice for an overview collection, at least if you want to cut to the quick. The problem with this generally solid book is that it often gives multiple interviews done at approximately the same time - sometimes on the same promotional tour for the same film - so it can often seem like going over similar or identical ground twice or even three times.

That said, it's still a valuable book for the Gilliam fan or completist. The interviews date back to his work on MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975), his first film as director (co-directed with Terry Jones, the only time he has collaborated on helming duties) and continuing up through FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1998) and his attempted and aborted (though conceivably soon-to-be-reactivated as I write this) film of THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE in 2002-3. Gilliam is an expansive, highly cine-literate, entertaining and witty subject - especially when paired with a fellow Python as he is a couple of times. Some of the interviews are transcriptions of live sessions in front of audiences or for TV, others are the more typical sitting-in-a-hotel-lobby press type. The director's interest in comics, the middle ages, and the nature of fantasy and dreams come up again and again, as well as politics and his rage against much of what he sees wrong with America (a country he left more or less for good in the late 1960s for England) over his lifetime. He has certainly softened somewhat as he has reached middle age and is entering his autumnal years, and is often much more generous in later interviews towards onetime foes such as Sid Sheinberg (producer and near-destroyer of BRAZIL) than in earlier, more wrathful and youthful periods.

The interviews range from quite short - 3 or 4 pages - to pretty lengthy, 40 or more pages - and given, as I said, the repetetive nature of the multiple interviews/same time period structure, you might find as I did that skipping around the book is more interesting. Recommended certainly for the fan, but you might have a look at the Faber & Faber volume as well.