A successful animator who worked for several magazines and British television shows before becoming famous, Terry Gilliam became the quiet sixth member of the famed comedy troupe, Monty Python, before graduating to the status of acclaimed but often embattled feature director. Though he spent little time working in front of the camera, save for small roles the other five Pythons refused to play, Gilliam was responsible for the infamous cut-out animation that was used in the opening credits and as a segue between skits on Monty Pythons Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-1974). After co-directing the troupes first official feature, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975), he ventured off on his own to make visually striking and surrealist films like "Jabberwocky" (1976), Time Bandits (1981) and the acclaimed comedic dystopia, Brazil (1985). Though his creative genius often translated well on the screen, Gilliam sometimes engaged in fevered battles with studio executives behind the scenes. On a few occasions, Gilliam went head-to-head with fate itself. In 2000, his first stab at The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2009) was plagued by disaster and injury from the start, leading to a nine-year hiatus before returning to production, while The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2010) suffered the unexpected death of star Heath Ledger in early 2008. Regardless of insurmountable odds, Gilliam trudged forward, continuing to make some of the most imaginative films on both sides of the pond.
Born on Nov. 22, 1940 in Medicine Lake, MN, Gilliam spent the first part of his childhood surviving the bitter cold of the American Midwest before the family moved to Los Angeles when he was 11. He graduated Birmingham High School in Lake Balboa, CA, where he was an exceptional student, class president, valedictorian, prom king and voted Most Likely to Succeed. But despite his accomplishments, Gilliam harbored the desire to draw cartoons a skill he developed as a young boy. Moving on to higher education, he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles on scholarship, where his sterling academic record went to pot amidst slacking off and pulling practical jokes, like stealing cadavers from the medical department and leaving them around campus. Over four years, he switched majors from physics to fine arts to political science. All the while he worked as the editor and cartoonist of Fang, the colleges conservative magazine that Gilliam turned into a humor publication. Begging a professor for a passing grade so he could graduate, Gilliam earned his bachelors in 1962 and promptly moved to New York.
In New York, he began working as an associate editor for Help! magazine, a humor rag ran by Gilliams idol, Harvey Kurtzman, who founded Mad magazine. It was there that Gilliam met John Cleese, who was performing off-Broadway as a member of the Cambridge Footlights and appearing in a photo story about a man having a relationship with a Barbie doll. After three years working at Help!, Gilliam moved back to Los Angeles and landed a job as a writer and art director for the Carson-Roberts Advertising Agency, where he designed posters and wrote ad copy for Universal Pictures. He hated it. Gilliam left the United States amidst burgeoning political turmoil in 1967 and traveled to London, where his encounter with Cleese back in New York led to contributing animated sequences for such British television shows as We Have Ways of Making You Laugh (ITV, 1968) and Do Not Adjust Your Set (ITV, 1967-69). On the latter show, he met soon-to-be Python members Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, while developing the distinctively satirical, surreal and downright bizarre animation that later helped define Monty Python.
After working with Palin, Idle and Jones, as well as reacquainting himself with Cleese, the group got together to create Monty Pythons Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-1974), an absurdist sketch comedy program that broke the mold for all others that followed. Gilliam was brought into the comedy troupe formed by the other five to use his cut-out animations to segue from one sketch to another in stream-of-consciousness style. While he created many outlandish images, Gilliams greatest contribution was the famed Monty Python foot that stamped down the titles during the shows opening, which was actually Cupids foot from Agnolo Brozinos erotic painting, An Allegory of Venus and Cupid. While his animation was prominent onscreen, Gilliam himself remained, for the most part, behind-the-scenes. He did, however, appear on camera in roles the other five did not want to play mainly small parts that required heavy makeup or uncomfortable costumes. Gilliams most noted recurrent role was an armored knight who would walk into a sketch at random and hit characters with a rubber chicken. By the time the series ended in 1974 after four seasons, Gilliam was contributing to episodes as a writer.
But while Monty Pythons Flying Circus ended, the comedy troupe remained together. They went to work straight away on a feature film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), which Gilliam co-directed with Terry Jones. Shot on a shoestring budget, The Holy Grail consisted of all new material unlike the previous rehash of their shows skits, And Now for Something Completely Different (1971) centered around King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his futile search for the legendary cup of Christ with his Knights of the Round Table. Absurd, self-referential and unabashed in its stinging humor, the film was an instant cult classic, thanks to memorable scenes like the Black Knight, who refuses to back down from a fight even after all his limbs are hacked off; an obnoxious French guard (John Cleese) who chides Arthur and his knights with adolescent taunts like I fart in your general direction; and the infamous Knights Who Say Ni. Though he was in large part off-screen, Gilliam was memorable for playing Patsy, Arthurs grimy servant who follows the king around banging two empty halves of coconuts together. In one of the numerous moments where the film broke the fourth wall, Gilliam appears as a weak-hearted animator who dies of a sudden heart attack, thus ending the cartoon threat to the knights known as the Legendary Black Beast of Arrrgghhh!
Branching out on his own, Gilliam directed the Python-esque Jabberwocky (1977), an absurdist fantasy starring Michael Palin as a coopers apprentice or barrel maker who looks to make it big during the Dark Ages. Not as coherent or funny as The Holy Grail, the film established the directors dark comic tone and absurdist imagery for which he later became known. Back with his mates, Gilliam wrote and co-starred in the troupes next film, the far superior Monty Python and the Life of Brian (1979), an irreverent farce that follows a Jewish man named Brian (Chapman) who gets mistaken for being the messiah during the time of Jesus (Kenneth Colley). More cohesive than their first effort, Life of Brian was the strongest effort by the Pythons to make a narrative film while still retaining the outlandish gags and overall silliness that marked their careers. While many moments in the film were memorable, none were as striking as the final scene where a crucified Brian sings Always Look on the Bright Side of Life with his fellow martyrs. Also notable was the lack of juxtaposing animation typical of a Python effort. The only animation used was during the opening title sequence. In this film, Gilliam did appear onscreen more in various roles and uttered a favorite line: I think he said, Blessed are the cheesemakers.
Once again breaking away from his Python roots, Gilliam directed his second feature film, Time Bandits (1981), a dark comedy masquerading as a childrens fantasy about a curious English school boy (Craig Warnock) who is whisked away across time and space by six dwarves on a robbing spree across several epochs of history. Along the way, the young boy meets several historical personages, including Napoleon (Ian Holm), Robin Hood (John Cleese), and King Agamemnon (Sean Connery). After participating as a writer and performer in the last two Monty Python projects, Monty Python: Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982) and Monty Pythons The Meaning of Life (1983), Gilliam ran afoul of the studio system with "Brazil" (1985), the directors ambitious satire about a drone-like civil servant (Jonathan Pryce) battling against the oppressive bureaucracy of the governing state. Gilliam publicly clashed with Universal over the release of the film. The studio balked at the length of this darkly comic look at a futuristic society, resulting in two versions; a European cut that ran 142 minutes and an American one that clocked in at 131 minutes. It was the beginning of a series of headaches Gilliam would endure throughout his career.
After months of squabbling with Universal, including a full-page ad in Variety from Gilliam that demanded the studio release the film as is, the matter came to a head when the still-unreleased Brazil earned Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay prizes from the Los Angeles Film Critics. At the time of its initial release and in part because it had become a cause c
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