Terry's Flying Circus

Seven lean years after his last completed film, director TERRY GILLIAM is in fighting form with two visionary new works

By Richard Corliss and James Inverne Monday, Aug. 01, 2005

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    The zeal to capture souls remains. "I do want to say things in these films," he explains. "I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don't care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response." Gilliam is proud when he hears stories like the one the rock singer David Crosby told him: that The Fisher King had freed him from feeling guilty about his girlfriend's death in a car crash. "But there's a dangerous side to affecting people," says the director. The Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was inspired by Robert De Niro's sinister portrayal of a dissident in Brazil and took the character's surname, Tuttle, for his alias.

    Some of Gilliam's films have been hits: Time Bandits, The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys (his biggest earner, grossing nearly $169 million on a $30 million budget). Yet the zealot's rep sticks to him and makes potential backers wonder, What catastrophe will befall him this time?

    Simply put, he gets to make movies because big stars--Robin Williams in The Fisher King, Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys, Depp in almost anything--love to participate in a Terry Gilliam adventure. "It's like coming to work every day to see a skeleton," Depp says, "and you all start throwing meat on it to see what monster you'll bring to life." Damon pursued Gilliam for years before landing a part in Grimm. "I grew up loving Time Bandits, the way that movie created this weird but totally convincing world," the actor says. "When I first saw his intricate sets for Grimm's haunted forest, I felt like that kid in Time Bandits stepping into his incredible fantasy land."

    The same energy can exhaust actors. Palin remembers almost breaking his back on Jabberwocky when Gilliam repeatedly got him to walk up some stairs leaning at an unnatural and painful angle. "He thinks he can make people in real life do what he draws on paper," says Palin. "He doesn't mean to upset anyone, but I have heard stories of people cracking up on his films."

    On Grimm, it was Gilliam who nearly cracked up, but the strain doesn't show onscreen. The film is a colorful ragbag of fairy-tale tropes, with crones peddling apples, a girl in a red riding hood running into a wolf and a vain queen at her magic mirror. Gilliam, who loathes the "juvenile fantasy" of movie heroism, makes the brothers pleasant but oafish; Headey, in a gorgeous, starmaking turn, is the real hero as the fearless witch Angelika. The movie's sense of humor is high-low in the Python style. It alternates the drollery of Jonathan Pryce's French villain (when Will charges, "You killed my friends," Pryce purrs, "I only wish you had more") with the labored buffoonery of Peter Stormare's Italian henchman. But in the enchanted forest, Grimm's sense of wonder is spellbinding--a reminder that Gilliam is as much shaman as showman. His reckless, robust imagination leaves Hollywood's prime confectors of fantasy light-years behind.

    He thinks of Grimm as just an entertainment. Tideland may have been the more personal and satisfying. "It had to be done quickly, simply, or we'd run out of money," says Gilliam. "We were like sharks--if we stopped moving, we'd die. All the thinking was immediate, instinctive and liberating."

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