Terry Gilliam Quotes

Everybody has their opinion and some people are wrong. One of the things I enjoy about my films is that children really love them. They are open-minded. As we get older we seem to close in. We limit the size of the world we limit everything about it. We have to break that shell open sometimes and (The Brothers Grimm) is just a desperate attempt to do so.

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!

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.

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.

All I do is hunt. I want to be thrilled. And I`m not being thrilled at the moment. So I`m being old and bitter and curmudgeonly, because I want sensory buzz and I`m not getting it!

My main concern is to protect the film, and sometimes even I can get in the way of the film. If I`m causing a problem for the ultimate film, then I`ve got to be stopped, and I tell this to everybody who works with me. They find it hard to believe, but they finally do say, `Terry, you can`t do it.` I think there`s a side of me that`s trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg - I don`t usually admit this publicly - because I tend to think that they only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic. What I want to do is take whatever cinema is considered normal or successful at a particular time and play around with it - to use it as a way of luring audiences in."

(on future use of CGI in his films) "Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he` s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it`s when you`re now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you`re controlling every moment of that, it`s just death to me. It`s death to cinema, I can`t watch those Star Wars films, they`re dead things."

I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don`t care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response.

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

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.

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

My problem is I`m like a junkie. I want a good movie fix, and I never get that fix. I want to be taken into some place, some world, some idea that I haven`t thought of or imagined. And it doesn`t happen.

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.

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.

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.

The more successful I get, the more the onus of having to get it right wants to settle on my shoulders alone, but I just hate that, I freeze up. I want everyone to share my responsibility, the guilt, and I`ll shoulder the blame, because that`s my job in the end.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It`s hard for me to worry about the studios losing money. I`m not very sympathetic to their money problems, because they certainly haven`t been sympathetic to mine.

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.

There was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn`t want to go down that route.

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.

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.

Hollywood is run by small-minded people who like chopping the legs off creative people. All they want to do is say no.

Hyperbole is something I`d better avoid.

People in Hollywood are not showmen, they`re maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It was lights, camera, inaction.

Whether I like it or not, or whether anybody else does, when I start a film I have a few ideas. And as you`re getting into it, you think, `Ooh, there`s another idea,` and you`re shooting some more and, `Oh, here`s another thing. Let`s do that.` I`m always changing and adding. That`s just the way my mind works.

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

To be deemed to be OK, to be part of the culture, that`s the kiss of death. When I`m pushing against something it helps me define what I believe. I`ve always been led to see what`s beyond, what`s round the corner. The world tries to say that this is what it is, and don`t go any further, because out there are monsters. But I want to see what they are. So when I talk about the others in the group not having done more, that`s because I really admire them, and I get angry when I see those with extraordinary talents not using them.

In the end, people have to learn to live together. That is what I didn`t like about America - it is so homogeneous. I like places where there are people who are different culturally, physically, in every way. And I like to see how they succeed in living together.

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.

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

I think I`ve got a certain talent and I don`t know how to defend it. So I end up defending it more vociferously than it may need, but I always feel under threat. It`s a basic in-built paranoia. When people start interfering, I go a little bit crazy.

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.

`One Of Hollywood`s Greatest Visionaries`?!? I`m Not Even A Hollywood Director!!!

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.

I am getting tired of these fights (with backers.) Each time you get into a fight the world closes in a bit. You start losing an innocence, a belief that everything is possible. Terry Jones thinks I`m belligerent and egotistical, and that I`ve got to get into a fight to keep me going. It does keep me awake. But I limit it to the fights that are worth it nowadays.

There`s a side of me that always fell for manic things, frenzied, cartoony performances. I always liked sideshows, freakshows. Jerry Lewis was a freakshow...Absolutely grotesque, awful, tasteless. I like things to be tasteless.

It happens with every film. There comes a part where the money and the creative elements all come crashing together. Everybody`s under a lot of pressure, and everybody is panicking about what works and what doesn`t. And the studios and the money always have one perspective and the creative people have another one, and usually what happens is a lot of compromises get made.