Terrence Vance Gilliam ( ; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, collage animator,Earmarked for Collision: A Highly Biased Tour of Collage Animation - Routledge and actor. In a career spanning more than five decades, he has received various accolades including the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2009, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award.
Gilliam started his career as an animator and strip cartoonist. He joined Monty Python as the animator of their works, but eventually became a full member and was given acting roles, gaining stardom as a member of the comedy troupe alongside John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman. Together they collaborated on the sketch series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974) and the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975, also co-directed), Life of Brian (1979), and The Meaning of Life (1983). They received the BAFTA Award in 1988 for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema.
As Python started to take longer breaks between projects following Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Gilliam became a solo filmmaker; after directing The Crimson Permanent Assurance—to which he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Short Film—Python effectively ceased working together, and Gilliam pursued his career as a filmmaker. He transitioned to directing serious films with themes exploring imagination and oppositions to bureaucracy and authoritarianism. His films are sometimes set in dystopian worlds and involve black comedy and tragicomedic elements. He has directed thirteen feature films, making his directorial debut with Monty Python and the Holy Grail and his solo directorial debut with Jabberwocky (1977).
Gilliam gained breakthrough with Time Bandits (1981) and has since directed ten more films, gaining further acclaim with the next two "Trilogy of Imagination" films—Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)—and The Fisher King (1991), the first and last of which earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Director respectively. He also directed 12 Monkeys (1995) and other directing credits include Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Brothers Grimm (2005), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018). Gilliam is the only Monty Python member not born in Britain; he became a naturalised British citizen in 1968 and formally renounced his American citizenship in 2006.
Early life and education Terrence Vance Gilliam was born on 22 November 1940 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Beatrice (née Vance) and James Hall Gilliam. His father was a travelling salesman for Folgers before becoming a carpenter. Soon after, they moved to nearby Medicine Lake, Minnesota. In 1952, the family moved to the Los Angeles neighborhood of Panorama City. Gilliam attended Birmingham High School. During high school, he began to avidly read Mad magazine, then edited by Harvey Kurtzman, which would later influence Gilliam's work.
Gilliam graduated from Occidental College in 1962, where he was a member of the California Epsilon chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, with a Bachelor of Arts in political science.
Career 1965–1969: Animation and move to England Gilliam began his career as an animator and strip cartoonist. One of his early photographic strips for the US magazine Help! featured future Python cast member John Cleese. When Help! folded, Gilliam went to Europe."Salman Rushdie Talks with Terry Gilliam". The Believer. March 2003. Moving to England, he animated sequences for the children's series Do Not Adjust Your Set which he worked on from 1968 to 1969, and which also featured Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin.
1969–1974: Monty Python's Flying Circus
Gilliam was a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus from its outset, credited at first as an animator (his name was listed separately after the other five in the closing credits) and later as a full member. His cartoons linked the show's sketches together and defined the group's visual language in other media, such as LP and book covers and the title sequences of their films. His animations mix his own art, characterised by soft gradients and odd, bulbous shapes, with backgrounds and moving cutouts from antique photographs, mostly from the Victorian era.
He also appeared in several sketches, though he rarely had main roles and did considerably less acting in the sketches. Gilliam did, however, have some notable sketch roles, such as Cardinal Fang of the Spanish Inquisition; the bespectacled commenter who said, "I can't add anything to that!" in the sketch "Election Night Special"; Kevin Garibaldi, the brat on the couch shouting "I want more beans!" in the sketch "Most Awful Family in Britain 1974" (episode 45); the Screaming Queen in a cape and mask in "The Visitors"; and Percy Bysshe Shelley in "Ant Poetry Reading". More frequently, he played parts that no one else wanted to play, generally because they required a lot of makeup or uncomfortable costumes, such as a recurring knight in armour who ended sketches by walking on and hitting one of the other characters over the head with a plucked chicken. He also designed the covers of most of the Monty Python albums, including Another Monty Python Record, The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief, Monty Python Live at Drury Lane, and all of their later film soundtrack albums.Monty Python: Almost the Truth (Lawyers Cut), episode 3, 2009
Reacting to a 2018 commentary of the controller of BBC comedy commissioning Shane Allen reflecting about the Monty Python troupe by saying "If you're going to assemble a team now it's not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes. It's going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world", Gilliam told during a press conference at the Karlovy Vary festival that the statement "made [him] cry: the idea that no longer six white Oxbridge men can make a comedy show. Now we need one of this, one of that, everybody represented... This is bullshit. I no longer want to be a white male, I don't want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world: I tell the world now I'm a black lesbian... My name is Loretta and I'm a BLT, a black lesbian in transition.", the name "Loretta" referencing a character played by Eric Idle in Monty Python's Life of Brian.
1975–1983: Transitional years
In 1975, Gilliam began his career as a director by co-directing Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry Jones. Gilliam was responsible for photography and also appeared as both Patsy and the Old Man from Scene 24, while Jones guided the actors' performances. It was the only Python film directed by Gilliam, though he continued to act in their subsequent projects.
As Python started to take longer breaks between projects following Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Gilliam became a solo filmmaker, building upon the experience he had acquired. In 1977, he directed his first film outside the group, Jabberwocky, also a comedy set in the Middle Ages. It featured Python member Michael Palin in the lead role, and was based on the poem of the same name. In 1978, he published Animations of Mortality, an illustrated, tongue-in-cheek, semi-autobiographical how-to guide to his animation techniques and the visual language in them.Dreams: Terry Gilliam Books. Dreams: The Terry Gilliam Fanzine.
Gilliam served as art director on Monty Python's Life of Brian, Terry Jones having taken on sole directing duties. Gilliam made Time Bandits in 1981. Following directing the short film The Crimson Permanent Assurance, which opened showings of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Python effectively ceased working together, and Gilliam pursued his career as a filmmaker.
1984–1998: Trilogies and critical success The "Trilogy of Imagination", written by Gilliam, about "the ages of man", consisted of Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985), and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). All are about the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible."Matthews, Jack (1996). Dreaming Brazil. Essay accompanying the Criterion Collection DVD. All three films focus on these struggles and attempts to escape them through imagination: Time Bandits through the eyes of a child, Brazil through the eyes of a man in his thirties, and Munchausen through the eyes of an elderly man. In the summer of 1986, he cut ties with Arnon Milchan and 20th Century Fox and started directing Munchausen through his own new Prominent Films banner independently.
In the 1990s, Gilliam directed a trilogy of Americana: The Fisher King (1991), 12 Monkeys (1995), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), which took place on North American soil and, while still surreal, had fewer fantastical plots than his previous trilogy.Pirie, Chris (2002). "Gilliam the Snake Charmer". Imagine Magazine (backed up on Dreams by Phil Stubbs, used with permission.
1999–2009
In 1999, Gilliam attempted to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which was budgeted at US$32.1 million, making it among the highest-budgeted films to use only European financing; but in the first week of shooting, the actor playing Don Quixote (Jean Rochefort) suffered a herniated disc, and a flood severely damaged the set. The film was cancelled, resulting in an insurance claim of US$15 million. Despite the cancellation, the aborted project did yield the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, produced from film from a second crew that had been hired by Gilliam to document the making of Quixote. After the cancellation, both Gilliam and the film's co-lead, Johnny Depp, wanted to revive the project. The insurance company involved in the failed first attempt withheld the rights to the screenplay for several years with the production on hold until 2008.
Following the failure of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series and a fan of Gilliam's work, advocated for him to direct Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2000, but Warner Bros. ultimately chose Chris Columbus for the job.IMDb: Biography for Terry Gilliam. Retrieved 22 April 2007.
In 2002, Gilliam directed a series of television advertisements called "Secret Tournament". Part of Nike's 2002 FIFA World Cup campaign, the advertisements feature a secret three-on-three tournament between the world's best football players, including Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Thierry Henry, who are inside a huge tanker ship. The advertisements are accompanied with a remixed version of the Elvis Presley song "A Little Less Conversation".
In 2005, Gilliam released The Brothers Grimm, followed later in the year by Tideland. In 2006, Gilliam made his debut as theatre director by directing the stage show Slava's Diabolo, created and staged by the Russian clown artist Slava Polunin. The show combined Polunin's clown style, characterised by deep nonverbal expression and interaction with the audience, with Gilliam's rich visuals and surrealistic imagery. The show premiered at the Noga Hall of the Gesher Theatre in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Israel.