Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam (/ˈɡɪliəm/; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor, comedian and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
My strength, if it's anything, is that I can lure some big-name actors in. That's probably the strength of almost any director now. On your own, as a director, you've only got so much weight. James Cameron, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay. . . that's about it. Everybody else depends on the star power that they can draw.
Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things.
There's something about living in the country that I think makes you inventive, because nature is full of miracles and wonder and surprises, and if you don't have much money, you have to make things if you want things.
Gorillaz virtually changed my wife. . . sorry, I mean, life. . . no, actually, it was my wife.
I don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know.
The Brothers Grimm came along and I was so desperate for work. . . Actually I've got to say that I like the movie, I won't apologize for it.
I got tired of my taxes paying for exciting little wars around the world. Then I discovered that when I died, my wife would probably have to sell our house to pay for the taxes in America.
I hate losing laughs; they're rare things.
I think it's worse for actors, though, because people have to choose you. As a director, I get to choose the actors, but most of the time, actors have to be chosen in order to work.
[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers. The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it. The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it.
I do want to say things in these films. 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.
If you really want your films to say something that you hope is unique, then patience and stamina, thick skin and a kind of stupidity, a mule-like stupidity, is what you really need.
I thought, how do you confuse violent Russian mobsters? Well, by being silly!
Everybody gets excited about technology, but it doesn't interest me in the least. I'm only interested in it if it makes my job easier or cheaper. They're tools.
People in Hollywood are not showmen, they're maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want.
Hyperbole is something Id better avoid.
I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country. . . dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.
I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn't understand.
Literally overnight, I became an animator. . . and one that was well-known.
I'm a cartoonist, it's what I am at heart, so cartoons take reality and deform it and make it grotesque, you make it funny, but you alter it. If it works, it's based on reality. That's what I try to do.