And now you have this whole system where everyone wants to do the cinematic universe thing because of Marvel.
Yeah, I know. Listen I love comic books, but when they dominate cinemas, like they do now, just the Marvel universe taking over, I just find it ridiculous. The difficulty is if you’re outside the system or doing smaller films, they’re really hard to get through because you’re competing with $80 million in advertising. That’s why the really talented people are now drifting towards TV.
“My relationship is a bit strained, probably self-destructive, when it comes to dealing with Hollywood.”
Do you ever regret agreeing to be part of the documentary “Man Of La Mancha” which documented in excruciating detail the failure of “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote”? Maybe in a way it crystallized your narrative—the “mad man,” the “risk taker” or however some might see it? How do you feel about that movie?
Well, I think the narrative… listen those stories are waiting there all the time. Especially Hollywood which loves to put you in a box with these kinds of stories. I’m apparently trouble, I’m Quixote-esque and mad, ridiculous, and a talent that should be doing many more Marvel films. I don’t really worry about it, I don’t think about it. The ‘Quixote’ thing is my madness, there’s no question about that. It’s been twenty-five years and I’m still on course to make it. [ed. Note, you can read more about ‘Quixote’ here]
When you look at the standards of Hollywood acceptance and success, “Fisher King” kind of looks like your most Hollywood effort in comparison to the others. Relatively of course.
It was perverse. It was interesting: the producers were two women, it was a script written by a first time script writer. It was me going into Hollywood just out of sheer perverseness, to break all my own rules. Then we ended up with something that was just beautiful. The heart of it was that script, Richard’s script was there and I always said, casting the right people would be the trick for it. I just hope I didn’t fuck up everybody else. I kind of think I didn’t fuck up too badly.
Is there a film maybe that you think is overlooked in your body of work that you think that could use a second chance in this kind of Criterion setting? Because these releases gives the audience a second chance to reevaluate things and also a critical reevaluation.
Oh yeah. I’ve, well I’d be quite happy if they did “Tideland,” ‘Parnassus’ and ‘Zero Thereom.’ Get on with it guys. I think [“The Imaginarium of Doctor] Parnassus” is the one that I feel got some, got short shrift. It was handled so badly by Sony [Pictures] Classics. In Italy they made twice the money than they did in the U.S., which is impossible. It was interesting to see how the selling of the film really seemed to make all the difference in people’s perception of something.
“You know exactly what you’re going to get when you see ‘The Avengers’ — it’s just a Big Mac.”
It reminded me a little bit of ‘Munchausen’ because again, the studio effectively dumped ‘Munchausen.’ They did a hundred seventeen prints in all. But over the years, I bump into people it’s one of their favorite films of mine. I think most of my films tend to age well. “Fear And Loathing In Los Vegas” was a box office disaster, ten million dollars is all it made. But it’s considered a classic now [laughs].
What about director’s cuts? Are there any in the vaults? Maybe something like your version of “The Brothers Grimm”?
‘Brothers Grimm’ was so an unhappy experience. I really don’t even approve of the idea of going back and doing a director’s cut. Either you do it properly the first time or you don’t. Don’t put your name on it if you don’t believe in it. I think we did about as good as we could with it, however the shooting is where the problems lay. There is a book about [the making of ‘Brothers Grimm’] which is basically relying a lot of the diaries of Nicola Pecorini [an Additional Photographer on the film] and my continuity girls. I skimmed the book recently and I realized I was completely crazed making that movie, I was really miserable. I wasn’t out of control, but I just wasn’t enjoying it. So going to work each morning was an effort as opposed to pleasure.
It wasn’t a good situation, right?
No it was really bad. The main reason I think that I continued is the crew was really good. I just loved working with [Matt Damon and Heath Ledger] they were brilliant and a joy. I just wish I had ended up able to overcome my unhappiness with the situation. That’s one of the things I know, I’ve got to have enough air to breathe when working. If I don’t, I just don’t work well. I think I’d put that film lower down on my lists.
We talked a little bit about Marvel. You know they’re doing new “Star Wars” films now and it’s franchise, franchise, franchise. What would it take for you to be involved in one of those things? Would you even want to?
The idea of dealing with a sequel doesn’t interest me. I just think, what bothers me about them is they just an example of how the audiences have been so trained, dumbed down to just go and see the same thing again and again, rather than being adventurous and discovering new things. The system has been pretty successful in getting people to march in lock step, much more than ever before. That’s, it’s like the McDonald-ization of Hollywood. You know exactly what you’re going to get when you see “The Avengers,” it’s neither wonderful or … it’s just a Big Mac. You know what you’re going to get. That’s I think really sad. That’s why the cable stuff is so popular, so good because people do want to see other things. Here’s their chance to do so. What’s better than bingeing on “Breaking Bad”?
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Next up for Gilliam? He’s still tilting at windmills and attempting his umpteenth making of “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” over at Amazon Studios and will be making some long form mini-series’ there as well, possibly his long-gestating “The Defective Detective.” You can read more about that here.
The Criterion Collection’s “The Fisher King” is available on Blu-Ray and DVD as of right now.