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Terry Gilliam
Director / Screenwriter
1940 - 
Born November 22, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Key Production Countries: USA, UK
Key Genres: Fantasy, Fantasy Comedy, Science Fiction
Key Collaborators: Charles McKeown (Screenwriter/Character Player), Roger Pratt (Cinematographer), Katharine Helmond (Leading Character Player), Christopher Plummer (Leading Player), Johnny Depp (Leading Character Player), Ian Holm (Leading Character Player), Jonathan Pryce (Leading Character Player), Michael Palin (Screenwriter/Leading Character Player), Necola Pecorini (Cinematographer), Lesley Walker (Editor)

Recommended: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)* [co-directed by Terry Jones], Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Worth a Look: Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985)*, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), The Fisher King (1991), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
Duds: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
* Listed in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films section.

Links: [ Amazon ] [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Dreams: The Terry Gilliam Fanzine ] [ The Terry Gilliam Files ] [ Salon Entertainment Interview ] [ A Chat with Terry Gilliam ] [ Slant Magazine Interview (2009) ]
Books: [ The Battle of Brazil: Terry Gilliam v. Universal Pictures in the Fight to the Final Cut ] [ Losing the Light: Terry Gilliam and the Munchausen Saga ] [ Terry Gilliam: Interviews ] [ Dark Knights & Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam ] [ Terry Gilliam: The Pocket Essential ] [ Gilliam on Gilliam ]
 
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)Twelve Monkeys (1995)Brazil (1985)The Fisher King (1991)
 
     
  "In breaking free of Monty Python's brand of humour, Gilliam has proven and idiosyncratic visionary to rank alongside Lynch... Brazil provides ample evidence of a talent for creating impossible but nightmarishly familiar worlds. Gilliam's taste for the visually surreal and grotesque compares with Borowczyk, Lynch and Tashlin, also former animators." - Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)  
     
  "Gilliam has worked resolutely in the space between the two elements of magic and reality in all his work, hardly surprising in a man who first became widely known as the provider of brilliant, surreal animation sequences for the Monty Python comedy team in the late 1960s and early 1970s... Gilliam's vision is dazzling an often very funny. One wishes, however, that he would push towards its limits and make films which were meals rather than snacks." - Norman Miller (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)  
     
  "Genial American-born cartoonist, animator and, latterly, film director whose affable exterior conceals a macabre sense of fantasy humour, as perhaps befits a former member of the Monty Python team... When the Pythons moved into films, Gilliam's opportunity to direct soon presented itself. His typically zany flourishes added to the crazy medieval world depicted in Monty Python and the Holy Grail before he made his solo directorial debut on the semi-Python Jabberwocky." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Illustrated Guide to Film Directors, 1999)  
     
 
Please note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we haven't seen include Jabberwocky (1977), The Brothers Grimm (2005), and Tideland (2005).
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"Gilliam likes the romantic vision available to apparently crazy people, as evidenced in both The Fisher King (1991) and his broken-off film about Don Quixote. Gilliam sees animation as creative, vitalistic, and emotional. His fish-eye lenses, fantastic sets, and caricatured acting all contribute to a cartoon-like sensibility in his live-action movies. In Twelve Monkeys, Gilliam takes the plot of La Jetée and changes it from a meditation on photography into a cartoon." - Steven Dillon, The Solaris Effect: Art & Artifice in Contemporary American Film

 
 
Top 250 Directors
501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers
 
See Also
Walerian Borowczyk
Tim Burton
Alfonso Cuarón
Gullermo del Toro
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Terry Jones
Spike Jonze
Fritz Lang
Alex Proyas
Nicolas Roeg
Jan Svankmajer
Vincent Ward
 
Terry Gilliam's Favourites
The Birth of a Nation (1915) D.W. Griffith, Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles, 8½ (1963) Federico Fellini, The Exterminating Angel (1962) Luis Buñuel, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean, Napoléon (1927) Abel Gance, Pinocchio (1940) Ben Sharpsteen & Hamilton Luske, The Seven Samurai (1954) Akira Kurosawa, The Seventh Seal (1957) Ingmar Bergman, Sherlock Jr. (1924) Buster Keaton. Source: Time Out (1995)
 
 
 
         
         

 

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