Terry Gilliam is a patient filmmaker. Unlike some modern directors, who will drop a project at the first sign of trouble, Gilliam is clearly the type of man that will stick to a film until he sees it through to completion. This is most obviously seen in his relentless persistence for bringing “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” to the big screen, after 25 years. Now, for his next project, it appears the director is dusting off another script of his and hoping it takes just under a decade to bring it to production.
Recently, Gilliam was speaking at a Masterclass as part of the Brussels International Film Festival. According to a report by Madame Faits on Cinema, he ended his discussion by saying the next film he’d like to work on is the long-in-development “Mr. Vertigo.” The film, which he says will star Ralph Fiennes, is something the filmmaker has been talking about for years, dating back to 2011.
“Mr. Vertigo” is based on the novel by author Paul Auster, which follows a young orphan that is taught how to levitate and tours the country during the 1920s as part of a sideshow carnival. If that doesn’t sound like a perfect Terry Gilliam film, then we don’t know what is.
The director also talked at BRIFF about how he recently took the opportunity to pitch the film at Cannes but wasn’t able to land a solid deal. So, it appears that if Gilliam is locked in on wanting to bring “Mr. Vertigo” to the big screen, he’s in for a bit of a fight. That being said, this is the same guy that finally brought ‘Don Quixote’ to Cannes, so you can’t count him out.
Obviously, there’s no expected release date or production start date, and with Gilliam, we’re thinking it could happen this year or 10 years from now. Either way, it appears like we have another project by the filmmaker to look forward to.
Here’s the synopsis for the novel:
Paul Auster, the New York Times-bestselling author of The New York Trilogy, presents a dazzling, picaresque novel set in the late 1920s – the era of Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Al Capone. Walter Claireborne Rawley, renowned nationwide as “Walt the Wonder Boy,” is a Saint Louis orphan rescued from the streets by a mysterious Hungarian Jew, Master Yehudi, who teaches Walt to walk on air. Master Yehudi brings Walt into a Kansas circus troupe consisting of Mother Sioux and Aesop, a young black genius. The vaudeville act takes them across a vast and vibrant country, through mythic Americana where they meet and fall prey to sinners, thieves, and villains, from the Kansas Ku Klux Klan to the Chicago mob. Walt’s rise to fame and fortune mirrors America’s own coming of age, and his resilience, like that of the nation, is challenged over and over and over again.