That catamaran you see in the background is the same one I ride to get home. That spells Novalja which is my home village...and below it is the city I live in for most of the year. Made me giggle it did...
I'd say that pic came from Michael Palin's New Europe, the latest of his many BBC travelogues.
For those of you who haven't seen them, the early ones are easily some of the best travel documentaries around - Around The World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole and Full Circle would be my choices.
Palin as Quixote would certainly be interesting casting and his first serious gig since the fantastic, essential GBH almost 20 years ago (I'm not counting Fierce Creatures ).
__________________ "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how theTatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan
That catamaran you see in the background is the same one I ride to get home. That spells Novalja which is my home village...and below it is the city I live in for most of the year. Made me giggle it did...
Very cool. Also, all the pics of Croatia you have posted in other threads have been stunning, to say the least.
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“Film can't just be a long line of bliss. There's something we all like about the human struggle.”― David Lynch
Gilliam's next project, due out sometime in 2009, is sure to at least draw some attention. Not much has been leaked about the plot of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but it has to do with a traveling theater on wheels, immortality and a deal with The Devil. But no matter how it turns out it will be highlighted because, if nothing else, it has the distinction of holding Heath Ledger's final screen performance. Christopher Plummer stars in the title role with Tom Waits as Mr. Nick (that's Satan, to you) and the cast also includes Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law and Ledger. The movie was still in production when Heath died in January, but apparently enough of his footage was completed to slot it into the film. There's no completed trailer yet, but just an intriguing preview that has clips of his other films for the first forty-five seconds before Terry leads us on a brief behind-the-scenes tour with some production sketches and a tease of the plot. Hopefully it will be a return to the quality of projects from the previous century. Stay tuned.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
I'm so happy that Terry decided to try and fit some of Ledgers scenes into the film. I know for awhile there he was a little unsure about doing it. I've heard there isn't a lot of footage but at least its something.
This sounds like a pretty damn interesting movie to boot. Tom Waits. I'm in. He's big in Japan you know...
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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus debuted at the Cannes Film Festival to so far mixed reviews. But here's a piece mostly with Gilliam talking about finishing the project without Heath Ledger. He also says Quixote is readying for a second go with Depp again....
------------------------------------------------------------- Heath Ledger's Final Performance Screens At Cannes DAVID GERMAIN, May 22, 2009
CANNES, France — Heath Ledger's zeal roused his co-stars to up their game in his final film, and his death inspired them - and three A-list friends who completed his role - to carry on with a story the late actor had wanted to see, director Terry Gilliam said Friday. As Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the filmmaker said Ledger almost co-directed the film.
"Heath was enjoying himself so much, and he was ad-libbing a lot, which I don't normally allow...but Heath was just brilliant at it, and he got everybody else going," Gilliam said. "Everybody was just energized by Heath. He was extraordinary. He was almost exhausting because he had so much energy. That just passed on to everyone else. Everyone's part grew because they were full of Heath's energy," Gilliam said. "What I thought was interesting was to watch people filling the void that Heath left. Everybody was just growing to make sure that there was no void left in the space that Heath had left us."
The movie closes with the dedication: "A film from Heath Ledger and friends."
Ledger's death by an accidental prescription drug overdose on January 22, 2008, left Gilliam with some of the biggest hurdles he has faced in a career filled with tough breaks. Gilliam fought prolonged battles with studio executives over both Brazil (1985) and his previous Ledger collaboration The Brothers Grimm (2005). In 2000, Gilliam saw his fantasy epic The Man Who Killed Don Quixote shut down after a few days of shooting because of a string of mishaps. On Friday, the director said he would soon restart production on Don Quixote, which will star Johnny Depp.
Gilliam said that, when Ledger died with only about half of his performance for Doctor Parnassus filmed, his first thought was to scrap the film. "Fortunately, I was surrounded by really good people who insisted that I couldn't be such a lazy bastard and that we had to go out and find a way of finishing the film for Heath," Gilliam said. His solution was to cast Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to play incarnations of Ledger during otherworldly portions of the fantasy film.
Ledger's character, Tony, is a slick-tongued fundraiser for children's charities who crosses Russian mobsters and is left for dead, hanging under a London bridge. He's rescued by a small theater troupe run by Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), an immortal monk who made a deal with the devil (Tom Waits) and now must find a way to keep the wily demon from taking the soul of his teenage daughter (Lily Cole). Parnassus is overseer of a magic mirror that sends people to a world of imagination, and the script called for Tony to take three trips to the other side - portions of the film that had not been shot when Ledger died.
Depp, who worked with Gilliam on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and the Quixote picture before it was aborted, along with Law and Farrell stepped in to each play an incarnation of Tony on his through-the-looking-glass sequences. "The real credit has got to go to Johnny, Colin and Jude, which was an extraordinary thing, to come in," Gilliam said. "They're all doing other films, they're involved in other projects, and they came to the rescue of this thing. They did it solely, basically, for nothing. The money they would have been paid went to Matilda, Heath's daughter. To me, they're the real heroes."
Ledger won the supporting-actor Academy Award in February for his last completed role as the maniacal Joker in The Dark Knight.
Doctor Parnassus includes allusions that eerily parallel the mythic aura that has grown around Ledger. The movie has references to unforeseen death, remaining forever young - even James Dean, to whom Ledger has been compared as another rising star who died before his time. Gilliam said those parallels were in the script before Ledger died, and he decided they should stay because "this is the movie Heath wanted to see, and this is the movie that we will do. And I hope he would be pleased with it. I think he would be." -----------------------------------------------------------------
Still no official release date in the U.S. or U.K. for Parnassus, though it will start playing throughout Europe in September and October so I would expect the worldwide dates to hover around that timeframe.
Gilliam is back, for the first time since The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, with The Zero Theorem. It stars Christoph Waltz, David Thewlis, Tilda Swinton, Mélanie Thierry, Matt Damon, and Ben Wishaw. It opened in the UK back in March. Did any of you British MoFos catch it? Still no official release date here in America, but will likely get an art house run sometime this summer/fall. The official website is HERE.
Great thread as usual, I would call myself a fan of Terry Gilliam, although I have only seen two of his full films. Seen the three Monty Python feature films very recently, and I would give them all about . What I wrote about his films:
Brazil
Brazil seems to be a film that people either love or hate though, set in a bizarre dystopian future world, Gilliam's film feels like a nightmare at times, it's a fantastic comedy that mocks the bureaucratic world.
Brazil is a film that at times requires a lot of patience at concentration. Over two hours in running time, constantly cutting between different strange scenes and giving us dream sequences too, if you don't exactly understand what you're seeing then it's understandable that you won't like the film. However I have watched the film twice, and both times have found myself loving and enjoying it incredibly.
Terry Gilliam does a masterful job in creating his dystopian world, the atmosphere is dark, dirty and often plain strange. The dream sequences are just as odd, although equally as beautiful.
Jonathan Pryce gives a fantastic performance as the film's lead character, an innocent man who becomes the victim of the world that he lives in, his character brings plenty of humour to the screen in this satirical film. Robert De Niro only has a minor role despite being second billed, but for the moments he has on screen he is great.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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This film is a hell of a trip that some will find disgusting and intolerable, but others will find themselves enjoying every minute of it. I am part of the latter group. The film is basically a visual portrayal of the effects of psychedelic drugs, perfectly created by Gilliam, with a number of fantastic scenes such as near the film's beginning where we see Johnny Depp panicking as he sees the room's people transform into strange creatures.
I found the film to be absolutely hilarious, with two great performances by Depp and Del Toro. Depp gets a lot of stick (mainly for his 'less serious' films like Alice in Wonderland, Pirates of the Caribbean etc.) from some people but I honestly love him and some of his roles, Del Toro is another favourite actor of mine, although someone I have seen less off. He is superb as the sometimes calm, sometimes crazy Dr. Gonzo, with a superb performance both in terms of phsyical apperance and dialogue.
Criticised for its excessive visceral and sometimes grotesque style and lack of substance, these complaints are not fully correct in my opinion. The film acts as a critique of the American dream and is negative and ironic in its portrayal of this, using Las Vegas to show it. I do not see how this film would encourage drug use either, if anything I think it would have the opposite effect, although in some instances the effects seem fun and interesting, the characters find themselves in very dangerous, life threatening situations because of them in others.
I missed the chance to see The Zero Theorem. It had a screening on April 12th in Belgium at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, but I only realized that on April 15th!
I personally think the trailer looks great. The reviews are rather mixed, but I'm pretty sure that I'll like/love it.
I mean, how could I not love a film directed by Terry Gilliam that's set in a dystopian future and explores existential themes through a main character that is played by Christoph Waltz?
Fantastic write up, Holden. I absolutely love Gilliam's work, but have to catch up on a few of the later ones!
Let's not forget the short 'The Crimson Permanent Assurance'.
Imaginarium was quite good, flawed but the changes due to Ledger's death weren't entirely to blame. They actually helped the film in some interesting ways as much as they obviously hurt the film's flow. I couldn't quite achieve the suspension of disbelief to really get deeply involved but it was certainly a clever, beautiful and fractured film.
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From The A.V. Club. Will The Man Who Killed Don Quixote finally make it to at least a smaller, streamed screen?
---------------------------------------------------------- Amazon to sponsor Terry Gilliam’s new attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote By William Hughes, Jun 10, 2015 5:13 PM The Onion's AV Club
In what increasingly seems like a piece of decades-long, deeply depressing performance art—or maybe a stunning bit of stealth marketing from whoever gets paid to promote the word “quixotic”—director Terry Gilliam has been working since 1998 to bring an adaptation of Don Quixote to the screen. Now it’s been announced that Amazon is teaming up with the Time Bandits and Zero Theorem director in his cosmically suicidal efforts to goad the universe into stopping him from making The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
Gilliam confirmed the plan earlier this week, during an interview about the upcoming Criterion Collection release of The Fisher King. The director laughingly referred to Quixote as “my madness,” in a lighthearted way that suggests he’s already heard all your jokes about how the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result—i.e., for God to not attempt to drown him when he tries to make a movie. And because you can’t get any more doomed than “totally and completely doomed,” he also hinted that his troubled miniseries The Defective Detective might be similarly revived with some of Amazon’s money.
Gilliam’s deal is the latest in a lengthening line of team-ups between streaming services and creative talents who don’t mesh well with the Hollywood system (plus, for some reason, Adam Sandler). Netflix has a movie deal in place with mumblecore kings The Duplass Brothers, while Amazon is working with folks like Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, and Woody Allen on various projects. Gilliam, who’s famously battled against producers, lawsuits, and death itself in his efforts to make movies like Brazil and The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus, would seem to be a perfect fit for the new Amazon paradigm, provided that the ground doesn’t open up and swallow the company’s Seattle headquarters the next time the director sets foot there.
Gilliam’s Quixote is expected to be something of a twist on the classic tale, with the story centering on a twenty-first century advertising worker being transported back in time to squire for Miguel de Cervantes’ famously deluded knight. Jack O’Connell is attached to star as the ad-man, Toby, while John Hurt will play Quixote himself. Filming is expected to start in 2016, with the inevitable documentary about how the film fell apart after O’Connell and Hurt were, like, carried away by locusts who also devoured the movie’s funding to start filming at around the same time.
Wow great thread. Have been a Gilliam fan since the early Python years. Hes clearly a genius although sometimes his approach bogs me down. But other times I am simply stunned at his ability to translate his vision into visual spectacle. Will always love Baron Von Munchhausen and Tideland although both those works tend to go under the radar.
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Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies...
One of his regular actors, Jonathan Pryce (Brazil, Munchausen, Brothers Grimm), is 6'2" and still a thin man...with great costumes and make-up, he could work out perfectly as Terry's Quixote.
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That catamaran you see in the background is the same one I ride to get home. That spells Novalja which is my home village...and below it is the city I live in for most of the year. Made me giggle it did...
).
He's big in Japan you know...
