Terry Gilliam movies are hard to explain anyway. Try to encapsulate 12 Monkeys in a logline about time travel, or pose The Fisher King as as simple drama about grief. The lengths Gilliam had to go through to finish what tragically became Heath Ledger's final film take things to the next level.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is about a traveling street show. Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) lets audiences inside his magic mirror into a weird fantasy world that keeps their souls. Dr. Parnassus's theater troupe rescues Tony (Ledger) from a dire situation and he joins their show.
Here's where things get complicated. Ledger only filmed scenes in London before his passing. To make the film work, Gilliam hired Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to play Tony on the other side of the mirror. So when Tony steps into the Imaginarium for the first time, he looks like Johnny Depp. The next time, Jude Law, and so on.
You'd think he's try something easier next but instead he's making another attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. If you want to see how badly that went last time, check out the documentary Lost in La Mancha. Gilliam's spirit got Dr. Parnassus finished, and not just as the Heath Ledger memorial. Gilliam exuded a mellow vibe just lounging around talking about film and art, not about death or disaster. Everything just seems like pure potential with Terry Gilliam.
SuicideGirls: Was there ever a case for not finishing Dr. Parnassus?
Terry Gilliam: Yeah, that lasted for a day. A bit. Almost two days. Very much so. But again, Amy, my daughter said, 'we're going to finish it.' And I said, 'No, this is not possible. You cant finish this.' That was the hardest thing for everybody to beat me up to the point that I was willing to start thinking about what we could do to actually salvage the film.
SG: You were on the side of letting it go?
TG: I was being like a reasonable, experienced human being because I didn't know how you could finish it. Your star dies in the middle of the shoot. There's still half the movie to be made. How do you fix that one? Nobody was coming up with any answers. Oh, we can get another actor to replace Heath. I said, Oh, grow up. Stop talking like that. We have a situation here where the money is running away right now because they're sensible people. They know we can't finish the film. You're supposed to go and find another actor of his caliber and that person is going to be available and were going to do it? Just not practical.
SG: Was it by design that Johnny Depp was the briefest Tony?
TG: We almost didn't get Johnny even though he'd said he was there. Literally, this is where the luck happens. Literally, at the last moment, Public Enemies was delayed by one week. Thats how we got Johnny. The point was it wasn't that he was the briefest. He had to be the first one because if he worked, then Jude and Colin, the whole idea would work. So Johnny's job was basically to take the audience into this other world with a different face on Tony. I thought it had to be him and that's how it worked.
SG: Even though the Imaginarium is CGI, it looks like Terry Gilliam animation. Were you thinking of doing CGI as the aesthetic for that world?
TG: Yeah, there was a bit of that. It was more of a painterly approach is what we were doing but it fell into something that was closer to my animation, except in the 3-D space, its much more elaborate because I had no desire to try to be naturalistic. I wanted it to be painterly but at the same time a totally believable world that you're actually in it. Its much closer to my cartoons than anything.
SG: Are you able to adapt your style to new technology?
TG: Yeah. Its easy. The main thing is to be able to present images to the effects guys so they can do it. Then I'm sitting there with them saying, No, that's wrong. I'm there every day practically in the effects house. So its just trying to get people to do it the way I think it should be. It's strangely odd. It should be much simpler but in fact, most of the computer guys are used to doing naturalistic things and I'm trying to do something thats not naturalistic.
SG: Still, cops dancing on a tongue seems like something you'd draw.
TG: Well, I mean, I storyboarded all of that stuff so my drawings start it. Then we do pre-vises and we do more elaborate drawings. We build this whole thing up. Thats just what I do. The advantage of being a drawer as I am, its easier to communicate ideas to everybody because film is so much about imagery.
SG: Outside of movies, do you use computers?
TG: Yeah, I've got my Mac. I'm completely victimized by it. I've become too dependent on it. It's very bad.
SG: Does it never fuel any creativity?
TG: No. It just fills my day with stuff that I don't need to be doing but I do.
SG: When you look at your set designs, would it be fair to say your films seem cluttered?
TG: Yup.
SG: How does that aesthetic come about?
TG: I'm I guess a magpie or a packrat when it comes to design. I like filling it up with stuff. It's partly because I know people are going to be watching the films again and again and again because its so easy to do this on DVD now. I just want to have a lot of stuff in there for them to keep discovering so each time they watch it, they'll find something new.
SG: What goes on in your brain?
TG: Most of it's just trying to stay awake. I'm good at staring at things. I look out and I just say, That's beautiful out there. I could stare at those trees for quite a while. I think thats what I do. I become a starer. I don't draw that much anymore. That's what was interesting doing storyboards on this. It just got me drawing again. And most of the time, I'm trying to control my imagination because the likelihood of it actually getting on film gets harder and harder so I stopped trying to imagine things.
SG: Wouldn't technology make it easier to make movies?
TG: It does. In many ways it's easier. The problem is getting the money to make it. That's where the problems lie.
SG: But kids are shooting DV movies now and that's where all the new indies come from.
TG: That's great if you want to shoot that. I could shoot all day but I don't want to do that. I want to make these other worlds and they take more money and time and I want to do them to a level of quality that is not about making a home made movie. I don't do home movies. I've never done them. They don't interest me. It's like okay, I'm going to do stuff thats going to be up on a big screen and it's going to be very elaborate. I'm kind of stuck doing that. Probably the most simple film I've done was Tideland. Very simple and it was kind of interesting that we could still make it look stunning, without having to create too much expensive stuff.
SG: What will the new Man Who Killed Don Quixote be and what won't it be?
TG: None of the things you saw in Lost in La Mancha will be in the film. So they're all gone. Its a much, much better script. That's the main thing because the distance of seven years from it just gave me a chance to look at it with very fresh eyes. I said, I don't like this character. It's got to be changed. We've got to give reasons for things. I don't know, I think I'm that much older and I've been through these things and I think I know how to make the character more sympathetic, make him more pathetic, all sorts of things. So I've written about 2/3 of it. Only about 1/3 of the script is different. It's not even that much different. It's not even 1/3. Very strange but it actually has altered it considerably. So you have the same scene now but it means something very different because of what we've done before.
SG: So the fish scene we saw with Johnny Depp we saw in Lost in La Mancha?
TG: The fish won't be there. The fish is gone, unfortunately.
SG: Is it still a time travel story?
TG: Nope, no time travel. It all takes place now in the 21st century. Still many of the same things happen. Most of the same things happen.
SG: Will you end up doing more CGI in this version?
TG: Less. In fact I'm trying to simplify a lot. I cut a lot out. Again, what happens with me when I'm trying to get films off the ground, I get very focused and I start packing too much stuff in. It's the kind of visual clutter, I start cluttering with too many things, ideas at the time. In the end when I make a film, usually the limits of time and budget make me cut a lot of that stuff out. Well, I've cut a lot more out this time just to try to trim it before we started shooting. I used to be very greedy. I want all these things in. It was only when we started shooting that I started cutting them out. Now this time, I want to be even more pragmatic, cut them out before we even begin. I've really simplified it. There's much less going on now. There's one major sequence that hasn't changed. I've got to rethink, not rethink it but think it very careful so we can do it for reasonable budget. Other stuff, its pretty simple.
SG: Have you learned anything about dealing with weather concerns?
TG: That you can't deal with. That was a freak moment so hopefully it won't happen again. Well try for a different time of year anyway just to be safe.
SG: Will you continue to just shoot anyway no matter what happens?
TG: That's always going to continue. That's just the nature of working with very tight budgets. You have to shoot. You can't wait another day or two. I've never been able to do that in my life. It's always you shoot, you shoot, you shoot. Hopefully you adjust to what you didn't get the way you wanted it.
SG: If it goes badly again, would you give it up?
TG: Maybe. Maybe. Here's what I discovered. I was going through my old location photos before. I was in Spain a couple months ago. I suddenly realized, this will be the fourth attempt to make that movie. Boom.
SG: Which two didn't we know about?
TG: There have been two earlier versions. I'd forgotten it. When I was looking at these different location scout photographs, I realized there was one way back earlier.
SG: Are you proceeding Without Johnny Depp this time?
TG: We are. He's not available. Johnny's out.
SG: Who might you be looking for?
TG: Im not going to tell you. Until I get them. Once I've got them, I'll announce it but until then, I've become very superstitious about saying things.
SG: What is a windmill to the 21st century?
TG: Oh, it'll be like the old windmills. They still exist in Spain, the old ones. But there are also modern ones in there as well. Wind turbine farms. Theyre windmills, arent they? The old ones are good. Thats the good thing about Spain. There's plenty of history still alive and well there.
SG: With many of your films now available in high definition on Blu Ray, how do you like letting people see everything you did put in there?
TG: I know. Blu Rays amazing. It suddenly reveals all the work we were doing. It's dangerous sometimes. You know The Thief of Baghdad, the Michael Powell film. It's one of the fantasy films that I loved as a kid. Theres a flying carpet sequences with Sabu on it. Suddenly now I'm seeing, not on Blu Ray but a high def version, theres 27 wires on it. The studio didn't do the decent thing of just spending a little money and painting them out. Theyre all there. So the whole illusion is completely ruined.
SG: Sometimes it's cool to see the seams.
TG: Well, do that on an extra, as the extras. Extras are fine but I don't want to see when I'm watching a movie. I want to go into the movie. I don't want to see technicalities. I want to be lost in the movie. I love DVDs, like on this one, were already starting work. You'll see certain scenes where well start with the storyboard, you'll see the previs, then you'll see the blue screen shoot and then well see it done. So everybody can see how it's done, but I don't want anybody watching the movie to have to sit down and go through that until they've seen it.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus opens December 25.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is about a traveling street show. Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) lets audiences inside his magic mirror into a weird fantasy world that keeps their souls. Dr. Parnassus's theater troupe rescues Tony (Ledger) from a dire situation and he joins their show.
Here's where things get complicated. Ledger only filmed scenes in London before his passing. To make the film work, Gilliam hired Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to play Tony on the other side of the mirror. So when Tony steps into the Imaginarium for the first time, he looks like Johnny Depp. The next time, Jude Law, and so on.
You'd think he's try something easier next but instead he's making another attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. If you want to see how badly that went last time, check out the documentary Lost in La Mancha. Gilliam's spirit got Dr. Parnassus finished, and not just as the Heath Ledger memorial. Gilliam exuded a mellow vibe just lounging around talking about film and art, not about death or disaster. Everything just seems like pure potential with Terry Gilliam.
SuicideGirls: Was there ever a case for not finishing Dr. Parnassus?
Terry Gilliam: Yeah, that lasted for a day. A bit. Almost two days. Very much so. But again, Amy, my daughter said, 'we're going to finish it.' And I said, 'No, this is not possible. You cant finish this.' That was the hardest thing for everybody to beat me up to the point that I was willing to start thinking about what we could do to actually salvage the film.
SG: You were on the side of letting it go?
TG: I was being like a reasonable, experienced human being because I didn't know how you could finish it. Your star dies in the middle of the shoot. There's still half the movie to be made. How do you fix that one? Nobody was coming up with any answers. Oh, we can get another actor to replace Heath. I said, Oh, grow up. Stop talking like that. We have a situation here where the money is running away right now because they're sensible people. They know we can't finish the film. You're supposed to go and find another actor of his caliber and that person is going to be available and were going to do it? Just not practical.
SG: Was it by design that Johnny Depp was the briefest Tony?
TG: We almost didn't get Johnny even though he'd said he was there. Literally, this is where the luck happens. Literally, at the last moment, Public Enemies was delayed by one week. Thats how we got Johnny. The point was it wasn't that he was the briefest. He had to be the first one because if he worked, then Jude and Colin, the whole idea would work. So Johnny's job was basically to take the audience into this other world with a different face on Tony. I thought it had to be him and that's how it worked.
SG: Even though the Imaginarium is CGI, it looks like Terry Gilliam animation. Were you thinking of doing CGI as the aesthetic for that world?
TG: Yeah, there was a bit of that. It was more of a painterly approach is what we were doing but it fell into something that was closer to my animation, except in the 3-D space, its much more elaborate because I had no desire to try to be naturalistic. I wanted it to be painterly but at the same time a totally believable world that you're actually in it. Its much closer to my cartoons than anything.
SG: Are you able to adapt your style to new technology?
TG: Yeah. Its easy. The main thing is to be able to present images to the effects guys so they can do it. Then I'm sitting there with them saying, No, that's wrong. I'm there every day practically in the effects house. So its just trying to get people to do it the way I think it should be. It's strangely odd. It should be much simpler but in fact, most of the computer guys are used to doing naturalistic things and I'm trying to do something thats not naturalistic.
SG: Still, cops dancing on a tongue seems like something you'd draw.
TG: Well, I mean, I storyboarded all of that stuff so my drawings start it. Then we do pre-vises and we do more elaborate drawings. We build this whole thing up. Thats just what I do. The advantage of being a drawer as I am, its easier to communicate ideas to everybody because film is so much about imagery.
SG: Outside of movies, do you use computers?
TG: Yeah, I've got my Mac. I'm completely victimized by it. I've become too dependent on it. It's very bad.
SG: Does it never fuel any creativity?
TG: No. It just fills my day with stuff that I don't need to be doing but I do.
SG: When you look at your set designs, would it be fair to say your films seem cluttered?
TG: Yup.
SG: How does that aesthetic come about?
TG: I'm I guess a magpie or a packrat when it comes to design. I like filling it up with stuff. It's partly because I know people are going to be watching the films again and again and again because its so easy to do this on DVD now. I just want to have a lot of stuff in there for them to keep discovering so each time they watch it, they'll find something new.
SG: What goes on in your brain?
TG: Most of it's just trying to stay awake. I'm good at staring at things. I look out and I just say, That's beautiful out there. I could stare at those trees for quite a while. I think thats what I do. I become a starer. I don't draw that much anymore. That's what was interesting doing storyboards on this. It just got me drawing again. And most of the time, I'm trying to control my imagination because the likelihood of it actually getting on film gets harder and harder so I stopped trying to imagine things.
SG: Wouldn't technology make it easier to make movies?
TG: It does. In many ways it's easier. The problem is getting the money to make it. That's where the problems lie.
SG: But kids are shooting DV movies now and that's where all the new indies come from.
TG: That's great if you want to shoot that. I could shoot all day but I don't want to do that. I want to make these other worlds and they take more money and time and I want to do them to a level of quality that is not about making a home made movie. I don't do home movies. I've never done them. They don't interest me. It's like okay, I'm going to do stuff thats going to be up on a big screen and it's going to be very elaborate. I'm kind of stuck doing that. Probably the most simple film I've done was Tideland. Very simple and it was kind of interesting that we could still make it look stunning, without having to create too much expensive stuff.
SG: What will the new Man Who Killed Don Quixote be and what won't it be?
TG: None of the things you saw in Lost in La Mancha will be in the film. So they're all gone. Its a much, much better script. That's the main thing because the distance of seven years from it just gave me a chance to look at it with very fresh eyes. I said, I don't like this character. It's got to be changed. We've got to give reasons for things. I don't know, I think I'm that much older and I've been through these things and I think I know how to make the character more sympathetic, make him more pathetic, all sorts of things. So I've written about 2/3 of it. Only about 1/3 of the script is different. It's not even that much different. It's not even 1/3. Very strange but it actually has altered it considerably. So you have the same scene now but it means something very different because of what we've done before.
SG: So the fish scene we saw with Johnny Depp we saw in Lost in La Mancha?
TG: The fish won't be there. The fish is gone, unfortunately.
SG: Is it still a time travel story?
TG: Nope, no time travel. It all takes place now in the 21st century. Still many of the same things happen. Most of the same things happen.
SG: Will you end up doing more CGI in this version?
TG: Less. In fact I'm trying to simplify a lot. I cut a lot out. Again, what happens with me when I'm trying to get films off the ground, I get very focused and I start packing too much stuff in. It's the kind of visual clutter, I start cluttering with too many things, ideas at the time. In the end when I make a film, usually the limits of time and budget make me cut a lot of that stuff out. Well, I've cut a lot more out this time just to try to trim it before we started shooting. I used to be very greedy. I want all these things in. It was only when we started shooting that I started cutting them out. Now this time, I want to be even more pragmatic, cut them out before we even begin. I've really simplified it. There's much less going on now. There's one major sequence that hasn't changed. I've got to rethink, not rethink it but think it very careful so we can do it for reasonable budget. Other stuff, its pretty simple.
SG: Have you learned anything about dealing with weather concerns?
TG: That you can't deal with. That was a freak moment so hopefully it won't happen again. Well try for a different time of year anyway just to be safe.
SG: Will you continue to just shoot anyway no matter what happens?
TG: That's always going to continue. That's just the nature of working with very tight budgets. You have to shoot. You can't wait another day or two. I've never been able to do that in my life. It's always you shoot, you shoot, you shoot. Hopefully you adjust to what you didn't get the way you wanted it.
SG: If it goes badly again, would you give it up?
TG: Maybe. Maybe. Here's what I discovered. I was going through my old location photos before. I was in Spain a couple months ago. I suddenly realized, this will be the fourth attempt to make that movie. Boom.
SG: Which two didn't we know about?
TG: There have been two earlier versions. I'd forgotten it. When I was looking at these different location scout photographs, I realized there was one way back earlier.
SG: Are you proceeding Without Johnny Depp this time?
TG: We are. He's not available. Johnny's out.
SG: Who might you be looking for?
TG: Im not going to tell you. Until I get them. Once I've got them, I'll announce it but until then, I've become very superstitious about saying things.
SG: What is a windmill to the 21st century?
TG: Oh, it'll be like the old windmills. They still exist in Spain, the old ones. But there are also modern ones in there as well. Wind turbine farms. Theyre windmills, arent they? The old ones are good. Thats the good thing about Spain. There's plenty of history still alive and well there.
SG: With many of your films now available in high definition on Blu Ray, how do you like letting people see everything you did put in there?
TG: I know. Blu Rays amazing. It suddenly reveals all the work we were doing. It's dangerous sometimes. You know The Thief of Baghdad, the Michael Powell film. It's one of the fantasy films that I loved as a kid. Theres a flying carpet sequences with Sabu on it. Suddenly now I'm seeing, not on Blu Ray but a high def version, theres 27 wires on it. The studio didn't do the decent thing of just spending a little money and painting them out. Theyre all there. So the whole illusion is completely ruined.
SG: Sometimes it's cool to see the seams.
TG: Well, do that on an extra, as the extras. Extras are fine but I don't want to see when I'm watching a movie. I want to go into the movie. I don't want to see technicalities. I want to be lost in the movie. I love DVDs, like on this one, were already starting work. You'll see certain scenes where well start with the storyboard, you'll see the previs, then you'll see the blue screen shoot and then well see it done. So everybody can see how it's done, but I don't want anybody watching the movie to have to sit down and go through that until they've seen it.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus opens December 25.
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
I'm glad he's embracing the CG. While I'm not a major fan of CGI driven pieces, I'm glad it gives Gilliam a venue to really let his imagination shine. He's the perfect filmmaker for this day-and-age. Watching the moments that took place inside of a character's imagination was like watching his old artwork for Monty Python come to life.
It's a shame the flick won't get the love it deserves. But then, that's Gilliam's luck.