Happy 80th Birthday, Terry Gilliam! Born today in 1940 as Terrence Vance Gilliam, this American-born British animator, comedian, actor, screenwriter, producer and film director was also a former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Gilliams' father was a travelling salesman for Folgers® before becoming a carpenter. Soon after, they moved to nearby Medicine Lake, Minnesota.
In 1952, the family later moved to the Los Angeles, California neighborhood of Panorama City.
While there, Gilliam attended Birmingham High School, where he was the president of his class and senior prom king. He was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" and achieved straight As.
During high school, he began to avidly read Mad® magazine, then edited by American cartoonist and editor Harvey Kurtzman, which would later influence Gilliam's work.
Gilliam began his career as an animator and strip cartoonist. One of his early photographic strips were for the then-American satire magazine Help!, which featured future Python cast member John Cleese.
When Help! folded, Gilliam went to Europe, jokingly announcing in the very last issue that he was "being transferred to the European branch" of the magazine, which, of course, did not exist.
Moving to England, Gilliam animated sequences for the British children's sketch comedy television series Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967–1969). Abbreviated as DNAYS, the program also featured Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin.
During this time in 1968, Gilliam obtained British citizenship. He then held dual American and British citizenship for the next thirty-eight years.
Later, Gilliam was a part of the British surreal sketch comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974) from its outset, credited at first as an animator (his name was listed separately after the other five in the closing credits) and later as a full member.
His cartoons linked the show's sketches together and defined the group's visual language in other media, such as LP and book covers and the title sequences of their films.
Gilliam's animations mix his own art, characterized by soft gradients and odd, bulbous shapes, with backgrounds and moving cutouts from antique photographs, mostly from the Victorian era.
Besides creating the animations, Gilliam also appeared in several sketches, though he rarely had main roles and did considerably less acting in the sketches. He did, however, have some notable sketch roles.
These included Cardinal Fang of the Spanish Inquisition and the bespectacled commenter who said, "I can't add anything to that!" in the sketch "Election Night Special".
Others included Kevin Garibaldi, the brat on the couch shouting "I want more beans!" in the S04E06 sketch "Most Awful Family in Britain 1974" (the final episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus").
Still others were as The Screaming Queen in a cape and mask in “The Visitors”; and one of the major English Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelly in “Ant Poetry Reading”.
More frequently, he played parts that no one else wanted to play, generally because they required a lot of makeup or uncomfortable costume.
This involved a recurring knight in armor who ended sketches by walking on and hitting one of the other characters over the head with a plucked chicken.
Gilliam later took on a number of roles in the Python's films, including both Patsy and The Old Man From Scene 24 (Bridgekeeper). This was in the 1975 British comedy/fantasy film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' (which he co-directed with Terry Jones).
Gilliam also played the Green Knight, Sir Bors, the Animator (who had a sudden heart attack and died) and the Gorilla Hand. Gilliam was also responsible for photography, while Jones guided the actors' performances.
In the 1979 British comedy/satire film 'Monty Python's Life of Brian' (also known as 'Life of Brian' and directed by Jones), Gilliam played the Man Even Further Forward, the Revolutionary, a Jailer, the Blood and Thunder Prophet, Frank, an Audience Member and a Crucifee.
Gilliam also designed the covers of most of the Monty Python albums, including "Another Monty Python Record", "The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief", "Monty Python Live at Drury Lane", and all of their film soundtrack albums.
A British freelance designer and graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, Katy Hepburn, also worked with Gilliam.
As for his philosophical background in screenwriting and directing, Gilliam said on the American Nickelodeon variety television show Roundhouse (1992–1996), "There's so many film schools, so many media courses which I actually am opposed to.
Because I think it's more important to be educated, to read, to learn things, because if you're gonna be in the media and if you'll have to say things, you have to know things.
If you only know about cameras and 'the media', what're you gonna be talking about except cameras and the media?
So it's better learning about philosophy and art and architecture [and] literature, these are the things to be concentrating on it seems to me. Then, you can fly...!"
Gilliam's films are usually imaginative fantasies. His long-time co-writer, British actor and writer Charles McKeown, commented, "the theme of imagination, and the importance of imagination, to how you live and how you think and so on ... that's very much a Terry theme."
Most of Gilliam's features include plotlines that seem to occur partly or completely in the characters' imaginations, raising questions about the definition of identity and sanity. He often shows his opposition to bureaucracy and authoritarian regimes.
He also distinguishes "higher" and "lower" layers of society, with a disturbing and ironic style.
His films usually feature a fight or struggle against a great power which may be an emotional situation, a human-made idol, or even the person himself, and the situations do not always end happily.
There is often a dark, paranoid atmosphere and unusual characters who used to be normal members of society. His scripts feature black comedy and often end with a dark tragicomic twist.
Gilliam is fascinated with the Baroque period because of the pronounced struggle between spirituality and rationality in that era. There is often a rich baroqueness and dichotomous eclecticism about his films.
For instance, high-tech computer monitors equipped with low-tech magnifying lenses in 'Brazil' and a red knight covered with flapping bits of cloth in his 1991 American comedy drama/fantasy film 'The Fisher King'.
Gilliam is also is given to incongruous juxtapositions of beauty and ugliness or antique and modern.
Regarding Gilliam's theme of modernity's struggle between spirituality and rationality whereas the individual may become dominated by a tyrannical, soulless machinery of disenchanted society, American film critic Keith James Hamel observed a specific affinity of Gilliam's features.
Hamel compared these to the writings of British economic historian Arnold Toynbee and the German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, and political economist Max Weber, specifically the latter's concept of the "iron cage" of rationality.
Gilliam's films have a distinctive look, not only in mise-en-scène but even more so in photography, often recognizable from just a short clip.
To create a surreal atmosphere of psychological unrest and a world out of balance, he frequently uses unusual camera angles, particularly low-angle shots, high-angle shots, and Dutch angles. Roger Ebert had said that "his world is always hallucinatory in its richness of detail".
Most of Gilliam's films are shot almost entirely with rectilinear ultra-wide-angle lenses with focal lengths of 28mm or less to achieve a distinctive style defined by extreme perspective distortion and extremely deep focus.
His long-time director of photography, Italian-born cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, has said, "with Terry and me, a long lens means something between a 40mm and a 65mm."
This attitude markedly differs from the common definition in photography, by which 40 to 65 mm is the focal length of a normal lens, resembling the natural human field of view, unlike Gilliam's signature style, defined by extreme perspective distortion due to his usual choice of focal length.
The 14 mm lens has become informally known as "The Gilliam" among filmmakers because of his frequent use of it at least since the film of which he is best known for co-writing and directing.
This is the 1985 British/American black comedy satirical dystopian fantasy/sci-fi film 'Brazil'.
The film follows low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), of whom escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel.
Sam then investigates a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro).
Sam later meets Jill Layton (Kim Greist), the woman from his daydream. In trying to help her, Sam gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.
In January 1986, Roger Ebert wrote: "Just as George Orwell's 1984 is an alternate vision of the past, present and future, so "Brazil" is a variation of Orwell's novel."
Two months later, 'Brazil' won two BAFTA Awards for Best Special Visual Effects and Best Production Design. This occurred at the 39th British Academy Film Awards in mid-March 1986.
Though a success in Europe, the film was unsuccessful in its initial North American release. Despite this, it has since become a cult film.
In 2017, a poll of one hundred and fifty actors, directors, writers, producers, and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the 24th best British film ever.
In another interview, Gilliam mentioned, in relation to the 9.8 mm Kinoptic lens he had first used on 'Brazil', that wide-angle lenses make small film sets "look big". The widest lens he has used so far is an 8 mm Zeiss lens.
This was employed in filming the 2009 British/French/Canadian fantasy/adventure film 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'.
According to Gilliam's personal life, he has been married to British former makeup and costume designer Margaret Diane "Maggie" Weston since 1973. She had worked on Monty Python's Flying Circus, many of the Python films, and her husband's films up to the late 1980s.
Gilliam has also been involved with a number of charitable and humanitarian causes.
In January 2006, Gilliam renounced his American citizenship. In an interview with the German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, he described the action as a protest against then-43rd U.S. President George W. Bush.
In an earlier interview with The A.V. Club, he also indicated that it was related to concerns about future tax liability for his wife and children.
As a result of renouncing his citizenship, Gilliam was permitted to spend thirty days each year in the United States over the next ten years, "less than any European".
On September 8, 2015, Variety mistakenly published a false obituary claiming that Gilliam had passed.
In May 2018, Gilliam suffered a perforated medullary artery that was erroneously reported in the media as a stroke.
For most of Gilliam's early career, fans of Monty Python's Flying Circus assumed that he was British, since Python's other five members were natives of Britain.
However, the innovative animator and future director, who spent more time behind the scenes than in front of the camera, was actually the troupe's only American member.
Gilliam has been active from 1968–present.
