The Romantic Hen

With enough surrealism and satire to explode Mr Creosote, Gilliam makes a more playful return to his Monty Python days than is seen in any of his previous films; dancing policemen sing about the joys of beating people up and Russian Mafia thugs run for cover underneath the dress of their enormous mother.

The film begins in that least romantic and magical of places, modern day London. Christopher Plumber plays alcoholic yogi, Dr Parnassus, whose Victorian circus act travels the country attempting to lure members of the public through the mirror of the Imaginarium with the help of elfin daughter (Lily Cole), angst ridden street urchin (Andrew Garfield) and Mini Me (Mini Me). No mere pantomime, Dr Parnassus is condemned to these games through legends most twisted hell bent gambler, the Devil. This is a role Tom Waits was born to play. He skits and skips with the kind of demonic revelry that leaves you suspecting he might have made a few wages himself. Heath Ledger’s equally spirited performance sped the film forwards, tight-roping a character encompassing both local saviour and global villain.

If there’s one thing Terry Gilliam is an expert at it’s filling the avid filmgoer full of anticipatory excitement at the prospect of seeing one of his films. As usual, Terry Gilliam fulfils this expectation with The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. Also, as per usual, there’s the same old feeling that this triumph of cinematic storytelling is obscured behind an opaque shell whose intangible elusiveness prevents you from being able to pin down exactly where the genius ends and the madness begins. Interview after the drawing…

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus

You made a big name for yourself doing animations for Monty Python, is that something you’d like to go back to?
I think what I’m doing in Parnassus is very much like an animation, but there’s people in it, it’s bridging the gap. There are so many good animators and so many good animation films coming out that I don’t feel up to it; these guys are really good.

When Wall-E came out, I went to the premiere and bumped into the director Andrew Stanton who said he was a big fan of Monty Python. I asked him to remember that when I’m looking for work in a few years, I’d love to work at Pixar, but he didn’t give me a job.

But I think you were more about getting a point across than technical proficiency.
Yes, but if you look at the animations that are coming out now, they’re some of the most politically astute films coming out of Hollywood; they’re actually saying things. I thought Wall-E was quite wonderful, I haven’t seen a live action film with special effects that’s saying things like that. It’s interesting how you can say more penetrating things about society through animation.

Why do you think that is?
Possibly the abstractness of the animated film allows freedom to say the kind of things you want to say. It’s not real, it’s a couple of steps away. In Eastern Europe under the Soviets, the puppet shows were the things that were really successful because you could make oblique statements about society and no one could sensor you. And I think there’s something like that in animation, because it’s not as direct and the audience is more protected so you can say these things.

What do you make of the recent boom in 3D cinema?
I saw bits of Avatar that James Cameron is doing now. It’s very impressive stuff if you’ve got three hundred million dollars; some of us don’t have that much to work with, so I have no use for 3D. Everyone seems to be moving away from live action if they can – all these directors don’t really like actors, they want total control for everything they do.

Would you like to make a 3D film if you had the budget?
It doesn’t interest me that much one way or the other to be honest, because I’m getting bored of anything that makes the technology of shooting that much more complicated, and I’ve a feeling that does. Another problem is that in 3D you have to wear those glasses so you never get pure white. So it actually flattens it because it limits the contrast ratio between light and dark. So the strange thing is you’re using 3D to make it deeper, and you’re just flattening it at the same time. I saw Beowulf in 3D and there were a couple of moments where the 3D actually worked. Most time I don’t think it’s that important; it’s going to revive a level of cinema where you have these huge budgets which means you’re not going to be dealing with particularly interesting ideas, you’re just going to kill adventure tales.

Is there an element of cynicism in this idea of ‘keeping it real’ and wanting to use actors?
No, I don’t think that. Actors aren’t real, they’re actors, come on! I shoot on film but I can’t wait to get it onto digital so we can finish the film off and project it in digital. I don’t want to see a film projected on film anymore; I think digital projection is just beautiful. Filming on film still captures more information than digital does at the moment, but it will change. It’s not like vinyl, I hate vinyl because I can hear all the pops and cracks. Everybody says ‘oh, it’s a much warmer feeling’. I want a CD where when it goes silent, it goes completely silent. I’m not very nostalgic about technology.

Have you worked much with animals?
In Time Bandits we had a pig and horses. Actually Twelve Monkeys we had a tiger running around in Philadelphia and a great grizzly bear standing behind Bruce Willis on a street corner. Bruce was separated from the grizzly by a single wire that was supposed to be electrified, that was it. I guess the bear bumped into this wire enough times and received enough electricity to know to avoid it, but I just hoped he could see it, that was the problem.

Is there anyone you haven’t worked with that you’d like to?
I keep thinking people like Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, just really good actors that I like. They’re so good, but a lot of these guys don’t have a chance to do really interesting roles anymore. Someone like Morgan Freeman’s brilliant, you just put him in and he gives dignity, regardless of how the script is going; he’s an extraordinary actor. Good actors really excite me because filming is a very boring process and every day they’re lifting whatever is going on. When I’ve got a script I’ve got it in my head a certain way and the actor comes in and does something that surprises me, and that keeps me on my toes. Heath was doing that on Dr Parnassus like I’ve never seen anybody doing, he was on fire. Every shot we would do he would surprise us with something fresh. My mouth was hanging open most of the time we were filming with Heath, I just wondered what’s he going to do next.

Is Oscar success something that drives you?
Oh no, I couldn’t give a shit about that. Except in the way that box office is important because it makes my next film that much easier to get off the ground, it’s purely that. If I got nominated for an Oscar, I’d probably have to accept the nomination purely because it raises my profile to the people with money.

Apparently both you and John Cleese have been nominated only once for an Oscar and Michael Palin was involved in both films.
Michael’s the common denominator, that’s why we like him, not because he’s a nice man, but because he’s brought us to the pinnacle of our professional careers.

Would you ever make a sequel?
They keep coming around, I keep talking about these things but they never quite happen. We wrote a script that was supposed to be the sequel to Time Bandits. Hallmark got onto us and we wrote a two-part series for television, but it never got made. After 9/11 Hallmark decided to get out of the entertainment business at that point, which seemed bizarre. The one thing you do when there’s a disaster is you stay in entertainment because it’s the one thing that works. So after that the head of Hallmark decided to pull out and we were left high and dry.

Is it something you plan to do in the future?
I don’t know. Time Bandits is always the one that people are more interested in doing a sequel for. At the moment there’s somebody talking about it, we’ll see if it come to fruition. It’s been long enough, so it’s not a bad thing to think about.

What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen recently?
Well, it wasn’t Bruno, unfortunately. This is awful. It’s like me with jokes where someone asks you to tell a joke I can’t do it. Right now my brain is refusing to admit there’re funny things in the world. I’m looking round the room trying to think of something funny, there’s a truck driving passed. Oh, there’s somebody being run over, now that is funny.

Do you have a favourite illustrator?
I don’t have a favourite illustrator but I do have a favourite political cartoonist and that’s Steve Bell from the Guardian. That’s my man at the moment. The world’s got to understand that man’s a genius. The really sad person is Martin Rowson who’s the other cartoonist on the Guardian, who’s brilliant, but Steve Bell is just a genius, it’s terrible.