Terry Gilliam - latest news.

Latest - July 2008. Strong rumours continue to abound that Terry Gilliam will resurrect his long standing project a film of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and that filming of the project will commence in 2009. The saga of the previous attempt to make it was documented in Lost In La Mancha. With Jean Rochefort out of the frame to play Don Quixote, old Python sparring partner Michael Palin seems to be in the frame to take the part. We wait to official news on the project with our fingers crossed but not holding our breath.

Terry Gilliam biography part 1: 1940 to 1989. (Terry Gilliam bio part 2)

Terry Gilliam was born Terrence Vance Gilliam on 22nd November 1940 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. An avid artist and cartoon drawer from an early age led to working on his college magazine and eventually working for Help magazine. It's during this time that he met and first worked with John Cleese (in the US with Graham Chapman with The Cambridge Circus Review) on a spoof photo story for the magazine. In 1967 after some time traveling and working in both Europe and America, Terry headed to London again working on a magazine.

He contacted John Cleese (who was then working on the satirical TV show The Frost Report) on the off chance that Terry could submit some cartoons or comedy sketches for the show. John put him in touch with team behind the TV comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set that contained Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, and Terry Gilliam was contracted to provide some "Stream of Consciousness" cartoons for the series. When Do Not Adjust Your Set finished its run Cleese, Chapman, Idle, Jones, Palin and Gilliam came together in the late spring of 1969 to work on the TV series Monty Pythons Flying Circus. The series was phenomenally successful and would run for 45 episodes from 1969 to 1974 (and in 1971 would spawn a feature film called And Now For Something Completely Different - effectively a cinematic reworking of the best sketches from the first two television series). A considerable part of the show's success was the animations that Terry Gilliam provided to help link the whole episodes together.

When the Monty Python TV series finally came to an end, the team decided to chance their arm on the big screen. In 1975 Monty Python and The Holy Grail went into production with Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam co-directing. The co-directing experience was never a comfortable one with a small budget, difficult conditions (re-creating medieval England), pressure for the film to be made quickly playing against Terry Gilliam's desire for the film to look visually stunning. The film was well received but Gilliam was already keen to move on and be able to pursue his own vision without the compromise of working with a team.

In 1977 came the first feature film directed solely by Terry Gilliam. Jabberwocky, again set in Medieval England, was loosely adapted by Terry from the poem by Lewis Carroll. Free from the constraints of working under the Python banner (even though the starring role of Dennis is played by Michael Palin and it also features a cameo by Terry Jones) Gilliam's ability to bring the medieval times stunningly to life is beautifully achieved here. Whilst the film was unable to surpass the comedic heights of Python, and with maybe a hint of style of content, it was deemed a successful debut feature.

A stint back with the Python team lead to the delightfully controversial Life of Brian (1979) . Keen to avoid the problems encountered on Holy Grail, Terry Jones was chosen to direct freeing up Terry Gilliam to supply the considerable animations, guide the art direction and also act out multiple grotesque characters on screen. Life of Brian was a huge success despite, and perhaps partly because of, the controversy.

First came Terry Gilliam's next directorial feature film. The acclaimed Time Bandits (1981) was a film written by Gilliam and Michael Palin telling the story of a little boy unhappy with his home life who accidentally joins a band of time traveling dwarves whose sole intent is traveling through various times in history and stealing it's treasure. It is here that Gilliam's fantasy / fairy tale aesthetic, that would go on to be the back bone of his future work, is truly realised for the first time.

Terry would rejoin the Pythons for some live shows in the US that culminated in the movie Live at The Hollywood Bowl (1982). 1983 saw the full Python team together for the last time for their final feature film The Meaning of Life with the main directorial duties again going to Terry Jones with Terry Gilliam taking the reigns for the special sequences and animations. One of these sequences originally intended to come near the end of the film was The Crimson Permanent Assurance. This segment caught the imagination of Gilliam to such an extent that it ran hugely over time (its run time tripling) and over budget (over a million pounds over budget - which hampered the budget for the rest of the movie). In the end the segment was so long it no longer fitted into the movie and was instead made into the supporting feature.

1985 saw the release of the next Terry Gilliam film in the form of futuristic black comedy Brazil. A film about an office worker dreaming of love, whilst living in world drowning in bureaucratic red tape under a totalitarian regime. Whilst not being a huge commercial success, its scope and imagination saw Terry Gilliam's artistic reputation enhanced even further, whilst a row with studio bosses who wanted the film re-cut for a happy ending in order to make the film more saleable, also led Gilliam to be viewed by some of the film industry as awkward and un-realistic. This would all seem like crying over spilt milk when compared to Gilliam's next film.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) seemed ideally suited to Terry Gilliam. The story of the mythical Baron Munchausen, famed teller of great tales (or more accurately fanciful lies). Set in Baroque Europe, the film was hopelessly under budgeted and in efforts to get the film completed the budgets ended up being massively increased. This led to the perception within the industry that Gilliam was out of control and had little regard for the studio's money, whereas previously he had enjoyed a reputation for making expensive looking films for relatively small (particularly in Hollywood terms) amounts of money. Though a financial disaster, the film gained much critical praise for its stunning visuals (which garnered no less than 4 Oscar nominations).

continued in Terry Gilliam bio part 2