Mad

Time Bandits, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, The Fisher King, and Fear

Loathing in Las Vegas

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Vice: I’d like to start with something that’s near and dear to me. I love Mad magazine and I love Harvey Kurtzman, so I’d like to ask you about growing up reading Mad and your eventual work with Harvey.

Terry Gilliam:

Mad

It was fantastic—the bomb in the mailbox on the letters page.

That’s how you know it’s great art. I remember seeing the first six issues. My dad had them. I forget when the first issue came out. ’52? ’51? But it’s still edgy today. The sex and anger are all on the surface.

You got to work for Harvey at Help! magazine along with Robert Crumb and some other greats.

Mad

Humbug

Trump

Help!

Help!

Fang

You went to Occidental College in Los Angeles, right?

West Side Story

Nice.

Act One

Little Annie Fanny

Oh my God.

What’s it like to meet and then work with someone you idolize?

Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

Help!

laughs

Help! is also where you met John Cleese, which kind of started you moving through the creative industries like a shark. I envy that a lot, for an artist in one lifetime to work and move through so many different fields and become masterful in them.

But you did start building connections to that world through Help!

We should just say, for those who don’t know, that fumettis are comics that use photographs.

Making fummetis must have taught you things that came in handy later, doing TV and then film.

Mad

What did you do after Help! folded?

laughs

Wow. And when you got back, was that when John Cleese asked you to do animations for Monty Python?

Good Morning America

The Cocktail People

Do Not Adjust Your Set

Was it an animated cartoon?

We Have Ways of Making You Laugh

Jabberwocky (1977)

So your famous stop-action collage style was a financial necessity at first.

laughs

Do Not Adjust Your Set

Talking about Monty Python is almost hard for me because it was such an omnipresent thing in my life at certain points.

Every year there’s a kid in every middle school doing the dead-parrot sketch. It just never goes away. Kids who don’t fit in always discover Monty Python.

That’s when I got into it. I didn’t like what was popular culture at the time and Python made sense to me.

So yeah, I don’t know what to ask because I know so much about Monty Python. [laughs] Maybe it’s been talked about too much.

I don’t think that really happens anymore.

The Simpsons

South Park

Family Guy

Since Monty Python has been covered as covered can be, let’s move on. I rented your first feature film, Jabberwocky, from my public library expecting it to be Pythonesque, but I got something a lot different.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Movie-marketing people are fucking assholes. I live in New York and when you’re walking down the subway platform, every movie poster just gives you less and less of an idea of what the movie is about. They’re ugly and vague and bland.

So Jabberwocky had a big effect on me. It confused and upset me as a 13-year-old. It was funny and scary. The ending was not one that a teenager would have expected. And that made me think about you as a teenager. You were popular in high school. Weren’t you the homecoming king?

I wonder if being so popular back then helped you to be quick to make friends and connections in your career. I mean, being well adjusted couldn’t hurt.

laughs

Still, you’re so lucky to have not had to do a “real” job all your life.

Brazil

Would you say that you get bored easily?

You just channel your positive energy?

Do you get depressed, though?

Storytime, an early animated short (1968)

Sometimes a person who can confront depression and the grim aspects of life doesn’t like other people. They don’t want to talk to anyone, much less worry about selling an idea to a producer or an agent.

I can relate to that. And when you’re by yourself and deprived of stimulus it’s just you and your thoughts.

You also read a book at your own pace, while TV and video games keep going even if you stop.

laughs

sinister voice

After Jabberwocky, you made Time Bandits, a movie that I loved a lot as a child. It sits in my mind along with Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. I wanted to watch it over and over again. It’s also one of your most positive films even though it has a lot of scary elements. I mean, the main character’s parents die in the end!

It’s a common theme in comics, too, like in Batman and Superman. Kids secretly want to kill their parents and be free of the restrictions they put on them. Anyway, just thinking about Time Bandits now makes me happy. And George Harrison was involved in the film. He was my favorite Beatle. I don’t want to get off topic here, but can I ask you what George was like?

Amazing.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

Time Bandits, to me, has a happy ending. The main character ends up free of his parents and I can imagine his adventures continuing. I also liked that Sean Connery, who played King Agamemnon earlier in the film, turns out to be a fireman at the end.

Even though it gutted me when I was a child.

Happy accidents. So Time Bandits ends with a hopeful note and Brazil ends with no hope—

laughs

I guess I never saw that before. [laughs]

Brazil does feel like a pretty scary and dark film, though.

Brazil

laughs

So we’re more good than bad?

It’s nice to hear you say that.

Time Bandits (1981)

You recently renounced your citizenship and now you can’t come back for more than 30 days a year.

laughs

I’ve heard that there were serious production difficulties on Brazil and Baron Munchausen.

Brazil

Variety

Brazil

laughs

You get away with a lot of things that would get other people blacklisted.

laughs

Brazil is full of huge buildings that look like tombstones, much like the building at the beginning of Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life, which are just imposing and horrible monsters.

Let’s talk about The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I loved it but other people didn’t.

Munchausen

The Last Emperor

Magnificent Ambersons

Brazil

It’s another movie like Time Bandits that’s so full of neat ideas. It’s beautiful.

A few years later The Fisher King came out. I saw it when I was 14 and I don’t remember much about it.

Fisher King

Who was in it?

And then there was 12 Monkeys.

Legends of the Fall

Everything looks so great in that movie. All the set design and the machines, that big tube you shove down Bruce Willis’s throat. The animals moving around the abandoned city. It’s just beautiful.

laughs

12 Monkeys

And now you’ve got a movie coming out soon called The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

No. I didn’t see it. I’m sorry.

I also didn’t bring up Fear and Loathing or The Brother’s Grimm.

But hold on—how do you feel about Tideland?

Tideland

Do you want to tell me about your new movie at all?

“Go drop $10 if you want to live.”

And about being able to see past failure and keep going and improvising.

I’d just like to thank you for inspiring me as a teenager, and thanks for inspiring me right now. It was good talking about hope and art.

We’re all in it together.

laughs

will be in theaters October 16. Also, head to VBS.TV later this month for more with Terry Gilliam