On the week I’m scheduled to speak with legendary artist Terry Gilliam, a quote from Martin Scorsese starts going viral. “I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late,” Akira Kurosawa had expressed at 83. “At the time, I said, ‘What does he mean?’” Scorsese reflected, “Now I know what he means.” I thought it was prudent to ask Gilliam, also an octogenarian if he knows what Kurosawa meant.
The answer? “No.”
The “Monty Python” troupe member, who is also responsible for directing films ranging from “Brazil” to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” remains as plainspoken as ever, Zooming in from his London office. He offers opinions about what’s behind our current culture’s ailments (“Political correctness, probably”) to the Oscars (“I can’t imagine [winning] would change anybody’s life”) to streaming (“Why is Netflix allowing people to make three-hour films?”).
But the main topic of discussion is “Time Bandits,” his family-friendly adventure following young Henry and the group of dwarves with whom he gallivants across history plundering treasure. The 1981 critical and commercial smash hit has just received a 4K restoration for a Blu-Ray re-release by The Criterion Collection. Gilliam says he loves that process because it allows him the chance to “correct things without recutting them.” That appreciation might come from how little else has come so easy in his career.
“Time Bandits” was by no means a flawless production: he lost several key sequences and the ability to have star Sean Connery in a crucial sequence due to budget and scheduling difficulties. But in comparison with the distribution battle over “Brazil,” the troubled shoot of “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” and the decades-long journey to finally make “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” the film looks like a breeze in comparison. Through the struggles, Gilliam maintains his resolve and faith in filmmaking: “It keeps the process alive.” And so long as he himself remains alive, Gilliam says he plans to keep making movies.
Across our wide-ranging conversation, Gilliam reflects on the production, release, and legacy of “Time Bandits” – including his frustrations about his lack of involvement with its adaptation into an Apple TV+ miniseries. He also covers his recent theatrical staging of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” the fate of unrealized projects like “Defective Detective,” and the latest script he’s written with an eye toward directing.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
There was a missionary spirit to your religious upbringing. Though you’ve stepped away from the church itself, I wonder if you see yourself as being something of a missionary as a filmmaker in the way that you value and elevate the importance of a child’s perspective and imagination.
Yes, I suppose! I think I wanted to be a missionary because it’s hard to make the world a better place in some ways. My films are designed to do a similar job. Not necessarily making it a better place, but a place that is confronting a few ideas, unpleasant or pleasant. And the child’s viewpoint is basically the same as the insane man’s viewpoint.
You said that kids understood the narrative logic of “Time Bandits” better than adults did at the time. Was part of the project’s appeal making something that everyone could enjoy together – but the children especially would connect to?Yes, I’ve just tried to reach a very broad audience. And it was also because of the way the studios were categorizing films. This one’s for a child; this one’s for an adult; this one’s for a teenager. I hated categorization like that! I just wanted to make something that might work on many levels, and I would have thought that people of different ages would perceive the film in different ways.
In the ‘80s, “Time Bandits” was among the first non-Disney products to make a film for the whole family, and it seems like no one is even trying that now. What do you think is lost without more entertainment for families and children that treats them like people, not just future consumers of intellectual property?[Laughs] But Hollywood has always about been about promoting consumerism! I just want people to start thinking. That’s what it’s really about for me: to try to say and do things that joggle people’s minds, and possibly their view of the world, to see it in a different way than what is being sold to them day in and day out. I like entertaining people, but I also want to be saying things. I’m basically a follower of Mary Poppins — I want to provide a little sugar to help the medicine go down.
You were in various stages of consideration for projects ranging from “The Addams Family” to “Harry Potter” — could you see the writing on the wall decades ago?I think they thought I was a fantasist who made fantasies. I don’t make films about fantasy. I make films about imagination. Those are very different things. If I had been offered “Harry Potter” or “The Addams Family” when I was younger, I probably would have leaped at the possibility. But at a certain point, it was becoming clear that what I did was not exactly what Hollywood wanted. [laughs] I preferred that way of working, even though I did end up making many Hollywood films that proved to be quite successful.
In your memoir, you wrote, “As the computer-game element in films comes more to the fore, less and less is allowed to be left to the imagination.” Are films just too literal these days?This was always, I suppose, one of my concerns about Spielberg. He wanted to always leave the audience comfortable with a happy ending. He’s a brilliant director, but I don’t want to reassure people. I think life is much more interesting when you’re not certain about how it works. You’re constantly trying to understand life, which is constantly shifting and slipping away from you, and that intrigues me. I don’t want to constantly be painting pictures of what a wonderful place it is. It’s an interesting and exciting place, but it’s also a dangerous place.
Do you think kids need to be told that honest message more often, and our current entertainment just doesn’t get through to them in that way?I honestly don’t know how other people raise their children. I raised mine based on the idea that they bounce—you can drop them and they don’t break! You can have a lot of fun with kids, and you can behave like an adult. If you treat them like an adult, it seems to me they rise to the occasion more than not.
Maybe the better way of asking that is: how have children reacted to “Time Bandits” over the years?They loved it; it seems to me! When we finished the film, the producers felt certain elements weren’t particularly good for the children. Especially the ending with the parents blowing up. I said, “Come on! The kids will be fine with that.” The boys certainly were, and the girls were more motherly. They were concerned about what was going to happen to Kevin now that his parents are no longer there.