Terry Gilliam has been making headlines lately with his thoughts on #MeToo, Time’s Up, and diversity in Hollywood. While these comments have been polarizing, to say the least, today we’d like to focus on an interview where the filmmaker talks about the subject he knows best – movies. Recently, Gilliam sat down for an extensive (and boy, do we mean extensive) interview over at RogerEbert.com to discuss “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” as well as why superhero films don’t do it for him and why Adam Driver was chosen as his leading man.
But first, the interview brought Gilliam back to his days as a potential director in the “Alien” franchise, and what he thinks of the series, particularly Ridley Scott’s classic first film.
“‘Alien’ is just a ghost train where something jumps out and you don’t know who’s going to die next,” said Gilliam. “When I watched the first ‘Alien,’ all I kept saying was, ‘Just kill them all and be done with it,’ because you just know that they’re all going to die along the way. In the end, Sigourney Weaver, who we’ve established is a really tough military officer, is running around in her underwear trying to find a cat. Give me a fucking break.”
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Gilliam does admit that there are some great shots in the film. However, there is one shot that the filmmaker feels is so egregious that it takes him out of the experience altogether. Specifically, he doesn’t like the end shot of the Xenomorph floating in space.
The director also talked about how the sequel was offered to him, but he had zero interest in joining the fledgling franchise. “I got offered an ‘Alien’ sequel because I was hot at that time, as a result of ‘Time Bandits” and ‘Fisher King,’ and I just don’t want to do films like that. They are factory jobs, working for a studio. My last factory job was on the Chevrolet assembly plant in Los Angeles, during my junior year of college, night shift on the line. Never again.”
Gilliam then switches gears, but staying on the subject of franchise filmmaking, by discussing Marvel’s dominance. However, as we’ve discussed before, the filmmaker has zero interest in doing a superhero film, and the main reason is that he doesn’t feel the tension in modern superhero films.
“There’s always got to be reality in my films,” said Gilliam. “Maybe it’s the only way I can stop myself from going completely mad. It’s the tension between reality and fantasy that is interesting, and that’s why I don’t like all the big Marvel movies. There are too many of them, they are dominating the industry, and everybody just wants to see the next one and go, ‘Well, there’s the Hulk again.’
He continues, “On a technical level, these films are brilliant, and I find myself watching them from a distance because there is no real tension. There is no real threat. You just know they’ll win somehow, or they’ll win if the whole civilization doesn’t collapse around them first. It’s kind of like us in real life. The heroes in my films don’t win, they survive.”
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The conversation then turns to films that Gilliam actually likes, even though the filmmaker admits that he rarely watches films while working on one of his own. And unsurprisingly, the director seems to enjoy many of the films that are universally acclaimed.
“When I’m making a film, and I’ve been on this one for a while, I don’t go to movies,” said Gilliam. “I really don’t because they are all better than what I’m doing, and I get very depressed. As far as movies of late that I’ve enjoyed, ‘Get Out’ impressed me, and a couple years before that, ‘Whiplash’ did too. I like the simpler movies that are about real people and good ideas. What I liked so much about ‘Get Out’ is that you had to have been a black guy to have written and directed it. A white guy could’ve never done it, and I thought that was important. It was so specific to the black experience.”
And lastly, Gilliam discusses his admiration for Adam Driver and why he was chosen to star in ‘Don Quixote.’ And while “Star Wars” is the reason Driver sat down with the director, the mega-franchise was actually a handicap in the eyes of Gilliam. “This film was made because of Adam Driver,” admitted Gilliam. “I had never seen him do anything, aside from ‘Star Wars,’ where he’s doing this [opens mouth in screaming pose] a lot, and I was like, ‘Okay, fine. I don’t care.’ But my daughter, who is one of the producers, said, ‘You gotta meet him,’ and I did initially because he was hot. You meet the people who are hot because that’s how you’ll get the money you need.”
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The director also goes into detail about how Driver’s history in the armed forces post-9/11 impressed him and why that was also a factor as to why Gilliam met with him. Gilliam also says that Driver has quite the transformation in his latest film, saying, “He’s such a strange actor because if you just stand him there, he’s kind of goofy looking—he’s tall and gangly, with a big nose and ears that stick out. He doesn’t look like a movie star, but by the end of this film, he looks like one of the most romantic leading men I’ve seen in a while. He just transforms himself, and it’s not coming from anything external, it’s all coming from inside. It’s fantastic to watch.”
While it seems like there’s no possible way that Gilliam said anything else in the interview, you should go over to RogerEbert.com and read the whole thing, with more thoughts on Harvey Weinstein, his filmmaking process, and yes, why he thinks terrorism is a good thing.