With Monty Python Live (Mostly) – the live recording of the legendary Monty Pythons’ final reunion show – now in cinemas, we were beyond delighted to be offered the opportunity to Terry Gilliam. Giles Hardie got on the telephone for an extensive chat with the Python, animator, and director of awesome feature films such as Brazil and the forthcoming The Zero Theorem.
[Terry Gilliam picks up the phone]
TERRY GILLIAM: Hello?
FLICKS: Terry it’s an honour to speak with you.
Hi, thanks, nice echo chamber there. You’re using the speaker phone! [He chuckles.]
Yes indeed. Thank you for your time talking to us. Of course the first thing you do when you announce a live comedy show on stage in London is talk to the Australasian press.
Yes, because I know that’s where our biggest fan base is of course. Yuh. [Chuckles]
We’ve got to do this thing, we’ve got to get it out of our systems before we all die. So, yeah. Here we go. [Laughs]
In terms of live European events screened down under, it’s second only to Eurovision.
How nice. We’ll be competing with ourselves. Who will win is the question. [Chuckles politely at interviewer’s lame attempt at humour]
It seems you have been having fun in the press in the lead up to the show. You grabbed headlines for telling The Evening Standard you wish the reunion would be cancelled. Are you perhaps playing with the media?
No! I only speak the truth of what I’m feeling at any moment. The press plays with what I say though.
Context is something that is a very loosely defined term it seems. Normally most things I say are removed. If I say I wish it was cancelled and then I laugh afterwards, that’s a very different statement than just saying I wish it was cancelled [laughs].
Then the other papers reported that you threw a tantrum.
It always happens. I wish they could translate my giggles and laughter but they just print the words, and the words are not necessarily what I mean.
We will. [See our brackets]. Perhaps you could provide animations as a guide for every interview?
[Chuckles] No, when I said I wish it was cancelled, I was in the middle of rehearsals for this opera that just opened [Benvenuto Cellini]. I was completely in a place where ‘I have no time in my life’. All the plans I’d originally had for this year have been thrown into the air because of this show, so at a certain point I didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about it, so “Oh, just get rid of it, get it out of my life”. But that’s not how I really feel. I tend to say what I think at the moment and the long term thinking is something I tend to throw out the window. [Chuckles again … it’s a great chuckle].
So, how are you feeling about it at the moment?
We start rehearsal on Monday. I’m in Paris promoting The Zero Theorem. The opera opened last Thursday and was deemed an utter triumph, so I’m relaxed. Now I’ve just got to learn my lines before Monday.
The rehearsals haven’t begun yet. We all get together on Monday for two weeks of rehearsal. Eric has been rehearsing some singers and dancers to fill in the gaps when we keel over on stage and need medical attention. [Somewhat concerningly, he doesn’t giggle after this]
Down under we will see the final show ‘as live’ after it was actually live in England, which is OK as it would be hard to spoil gags that are 40 years old. What can we expect to see from a globe away?
Pretty much what people see there but probably closer and more in focus. I would hate to be the people sitting in the very far end of the O2 Arena when we’re performing. [Giggles] I think the people watching it in the cinema are going to get a better show.
So what is in the show?
Well we’re doing our big hits: Satisfaction. Brown Sugar. All of those. [Laughs]. We’re hoping they’ll still play.
The show is basically structured on the original show we used to do with a lot of rearranging because Graham is still not available for the show no matter how hard we’ve tried to reassemble his ashes – they just don’t stick together properly!
There’s all of that. Eric’s written new songs. What’s going to be interesting is some of the sketches will have to be performed by different people because of Graham’s absence.
An Australian comedian, Wil Anderson, had a famous routine about the difference between rock stars and comedians, noting that comedians are never asked to play the classics. Does it feel surreal to be asked to do a show full of the same jokes from decades past?
It does. To me when we stopped doing Python it was because we’d run out of fresh ideas. So the idea of coming back and resuscitating the old moments is slightly odd.
All I know is that my ego will benefit from it. To have all those people cheering when we say and do the exact same things we did thousands of years ago. It will be good. We’ll go to bed at night feeling we’re important again and we’re still loved. It’s important when you get old.
The critics have certainly loved ‘The Zero Theorem’, complete with a naked, hairless, Christoph Waltz.
I thought that’s what the world was looking forward to, to see Christoph, naked, with no hair, no eyebrows. Maybe I just got it wrong there.
I’m sitting here in Paris and that’s all I’ve been doing for the last two days is promoting The Zero Theorem so it’s almost pleasant to talk about the ancient Pythons and their reunion.
Speaking of your films, will the resurrection of Python prompt another effort to revive ‘Don Quixote’?
He’s the eternal phoenix. Every time I finish one project I try to get Quixote up and running again. Yes, I’m working on it. We shall see if it actually comes to fruition this time but I’m feeling a bit more confident than I have in the past.
A reunion of Python, a complete ‘Quixote’… what about the third ‘never going to happen’ project, ‘Good Omens’?
[Resigned sigh] It’s very weird. The script is tied up with some bankruptcy case. Some receiver in North London actually controls it. I’ve been thinking Good Omens would be the perfect vehicle to do on HBO or Showtime. So it’s an extended story that runs for weeks. I actually like our script. I think Tony and I have compressed it nicely. But it could possibly be better on television with a run of 10 episodes.
Well, legal cases have helped us get what we want from you before. It seems uncharitable that the world’s ecstatic you lost a case last year and have to do these shows to pay the bill!
Yes that’s why we’re putting our selves on stage again. It’s amazing how financial disaster can breed creative brilliance I’m told. I feel like I read that somewhere. [Definitely a long giggle here.]
I know, this is the weird thing. What was that Paul Simon quote? One man’s poison is another man’s whatever? That’s what’s interesting about life you can’t really plan it properly. It was so unlikely that Python would get together again because none of us really thought it would happen until a disaster occurred and brought us together.
It’s going to be interesting doing this show again. At times I think we’re going to be entertaining ourselves more than the fans because we haven’t really spent that much time together over the years. But when we did the read through a month and a half ago, it was so funny and nice to be able to laugh that uncontrollably again. It should be lively, to say the least.
Thankfully you have all found some work to keep you busy since the original show. Is there anything you’ve learned that you’ll bring back to the troupe?
No, I just think we don’t have any nerves anymore. There’s nothing to be lost. And so I think that kind of relaxed nature, it will be interesting to see how it plays.
The main thing will just be to make sure there are wheelchairs and oxygen waiting in the wings at all moments.
Will you prepare any animations to drop through the ceiling in case of emergency?
Not really. There’s a little opening sequence that we’re doing at the moment. And in fact the day before yesterday I was rerecording sounds for some of the animations because the quality wasn’t good enough for the big shows so we’re livening things up a bit.
Animation technology has changed incredibly, have you had to unlearn any skills to recreate the magic?
Adobe After Effects is the thing. It’s so easy to do cut out animation now, it’s much easier than it was. Anyway, I don’t even have to do it now I just tell people what to do. That’s the power of our amazing success over the years. [Small laugh, then …]
[Terry actually uses his laugh here to interrupt the follow up question]
It’s very funny because I didn’t want to do any, because I’ve been so busy doing this other stuff. Then some material was presented as the possible opening animation and I didn’t like it. So the people who are dealing with the projection work are doing this new animation using my artwork and under my instructions, but I don’t literally have to do the physical labour anymore.
The best way to prompt you to action was to show you something you didn’t like.
It certainly worked this time. [Laughs] This shit is going to go on and people are going to think I’ve done it? We’re going to have to start again folks. [Laughs more, but you know he’s serious.]
Given all the hype, analysis and reverence in the media over the reunion (and the last four decades), is it possible we have over-thought a three-and-a-half-year television show?
I don’t really think much about the fact that people like it, people analyse it, people talk about it. It is wonderful. I mean when we were doing it we just had to fill up a half hour every week. You just got on with the job and hopefully did it as good as you could.
What was interesting was by having to fill up the half hour there was a lot of material that went in at the time, if we didn’t need to have that extra material, we wouldn’t have done it. Yet in retrospect you look at some of the stuff and it would have been rejected then but it was really good in the end that we did it.
So that working under pressure was really important. And I suppose I’ve never changed. My films are always under pressure, under budgeted, under schedule and somehow it gets me angry enough and produces enough adrenaline that we manage to do what we do.
I’m almost frightened of being able to do exactly what we want to do, when we want to do it, with no pressure. That’s the most terrifying thing. Then you’ve got no excuse for it not working. Under pressure you’ve got lots of excuses.
In reality what I loved about the Python shows is they’re very uneven. Some stuff just doesn’t work. But it doesn’t matter. The totality is sufficient. It seems we overcome the weaknesses enough. That’s what I loved about the shows. The heights we sometimes reach were breathtaking only because we were too stupid to know better.
One of those heights was the Bruces. Of course, the audience here will be happy to see the Australian sketch in the show. Given the casting reshuffle, will you become a Bruce?
I was! During the read-through I was a Bruce. But then I notice I’ve been written out of that part. I don’t know if I was that terrible or maybe I was just too close to reality. Something happened but Eric wrote me out, I’ve taken this very personally, I feel almost broken hearted because I wanted to be a Bruce. Now we’re going to have to give it to people who give to charity instead.
[He’s definitely not laughing here, in fact he sounds deeply depressed … someone call the Evening Standard]
That is very much our loss. Thanks you for talking to us anyway.
Thanks a lot. Cheers.
[Laughs, then before disconnecting …]
Doug, gimme two seconds I have to take a pee.
[You can’t say we didn’t include the context].
‘Monty Python Live (Mostly)’ is playing for a limited time – click for session times
