YouSaid · the spoken record

Terry Gilliam

lines on the record: 57
first: 2011-04-10
most recent: 2011-04-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That's actually hard. Strangely enough, probably Einhelden Laban because it's such a rich textured piece you can sit there and imagine the journey of your own life, and I would be able to be present at my own death which I would hate to miss.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, if it's big enough I can probably hollow out a bit of it and smuggle along with me a pistol in there that when I get bored with my company I can shoot myself.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's still a good read. It's got good action sequences in it. The book. I think it's going to have to be the biggest dictionary I can find.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It were inspired by or we stole, I can't remember which, for the figure of death in Baron Munchhausen. It's extraordinary. The waves of the world just sweep on endlessly.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess we're going to the island. We are. This one is, I love this piece because it's based on a painting by a man named Arnold Berklin, who painted all sorts of strange classic creatures and is a painting of this strange islandness golden rock with a door in it and there's a boat with a white shrouded figure heading towards it. It's called the Isle of the Dead. And Rockmanoff wrote a piece which we”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know this is so cruel I'll be alone. I'll be with me and I don't like desert islands. Maybe it's a good thing, maybe that's the way one should end their lives just sitting on the mountain and letting the clouds and the bugs do whatever they do.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a bit of that. I just, when I was younger, I thought I could actually make a difference. I'm not sure anymore. That's what happens with age. And it's an American thing. You're raised to be a hero, that you can actually change the world. You can make a difference. Your life is important. Every American gets this. I remember when I went to India some years ago with Mike Palin, we did a trip to India. And I suddenly thought for the first time, the hero is very Western concept, this one guy who's going to change the world. You go to India and he says, no, I can't make much of a difference at all. This place runs itself. It is its own thing. And so I think I've become much more eastern in my thinking. The world just turns again. Sometimes you get crushed by the wheel as it turns, sometimes you rise to the top. It goes on. The world is extraordinary place. It's a great ride. I've only got a few more turns before it's over.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would like there's somebody I really admire, and his name is Van Dyke Parks, and he's one of the great American musicians, and he made an album called Jump, which when I was making Brazil, which was a long nine months, I played it every morning on the way to work, and it made me happy. It made me American again. It made me optimistic. And so this is a song from Jump.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't know. I think I'm quite good at covering what I'm feeling, but I'm a miserable sod around the house, I mean, just grumbling, dark cloud. But I hopefully I stay out of their way, and Maggie keeps the family out of my way. Well, let's brighten things up a little bit here. It's getting miserable in his studio.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fetal is a nice position to sleep in The point with depression to me is you've got to go all the way down to the bottom before you can come back up. And the bottom is very deep. There's not much fun. You just have to deal with it. I mean, to me, life is just about dealing with what's thrown at you.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we've never had a career. We don't use that word in the house. No, we don't think about things like that. It was good fun because, in fact, I was very depressed because I assumed we would never get the film out. It became a game of me, the joker, against the very serious head of a studio.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The LA critics discovered that the film didn't actually have to be released to qualify ha and they was in their bylaws somewhere. So we won the big ones.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a cult film. You know, it's one of those movies that people Aunt No, what happened was we started clandestine screenings with the LA critics, and the LA critics announced Best Picture Brazil, best screenplay Brazil, best director Brazil. And this is a film that hadn't been released, and they had to release it”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he was just a little personal note to the head of the studio because we'd made this little film called Brazil, and the student decided it was would be a much better, more successful film if one changed the ending, made it a happy ending, you would reach a larger audience, isn't that what you wanted, Terry? And I said, no, we all agreed at the beginning to tell this particular story, and that's what we tell, and it doesn't have a happy ending. So I took a big full page hat out in variety, and it was like an Italian death poster, big empty page outlined in black at the edge, and in the middle of this white space in the middle it says, Dear Sid Scheinberg, when are you going to release my film Brazil signed Terry Gilliam? Suddenly, explosions everywhere. I mean, they went crazy.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did you say that? I did say Tom Cruise. I don't know. I've heard rumours to that effect, but I might be the person to confirm that rumor. Oh, not over the air. But it had to be within the family. And that's what it was.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shooting so I No, with me, it's very simple. I gave up. I'm going home. That's it. It's over. Finish. We were halfway through shooting. Heath was a star, and he wasn't there. And I called Johnny Depp, and I called him not to get him to play a part. I called him immediately the day. I think Heath died. And he said, well, whatever happens, I'm there for you, whatever you want. And my daughter, being shrewder than me, told the money people who were fast retreat at that point because they were closing the shop down. She said, Johnny Depp says he'll do anything. And then later when I decided what to do to go ahead, I basically just called people who were friends of Heath. There were other people being offered bigger names, bigger stars, but nope, family. I'm not going to give you the names. But I said it was wrong. Tom Cruz.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On my daughter, Amy, said you got to come into my office, and there it was on the BBC website. I said, It's just a joke. This is not possible because we'd just all been together two days earlier. I mean, he was so vital, so full of life, so joyous, and suddenly he's dead. It's just like that. Life is over. And I think that's what happened with Hath. I mean, I still don't have any other explanation other than just, you know, you take your pills, your sleeping pills and things, you die.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think the next is a bit of Richard Strauss Einheldenleben, which translates as a hero's life, I believe. The thing I love about Strauss again. Fine fine violin, which is the last bit of his spirit, he dies.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not really because I think I do feel I owe everything to Python that's going to be on my grave probably X Python no matter what. All the films I've done came out of that once that momentum starts boom bum boom and so no Python gets the credit for everything”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the Faustian tale has always been the thing I hold up as the thing to watch yourself, watch yourself constantly, because the temptation to sell out to do it the other way, to do it the easy way. The temptation is there always. And I just fight against it. The great advantage of being a Python is that we've got this little pension fund. We own the shows. We own two of the movies. And so money trickles in. It doesn't make a man rich, but it makes a man comfortable enough that he will wait.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Possibly because people were trying to get me to do it. I'm just perverse. People were for years, it's probably 20 years people have been trying to get me to do opera and I just didn't do it because I was determined to keep making films. I was attracted to the ENO because it's not an opera house. It's an old music hall. And they offered me Berliosis damnation of Faust. And the reason I took it is it's never been successful, so I can't be judged to be less good than others”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think for a long time I'd wanted to be a movie director because it was the greater form. Basically, I always wanted to do that”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's one of those things you do it, and then you kind of forget about it. Right. I suppose Python is the most, for me, the most important thing suddenly I was able to do all of the things I really wanted to do, which is direct live-action films and not be an animator or a lumberjack.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he gave us the money to make life a Brian is what he did, and out of that grew handmade films, which was George and Python together, and it was quite an extraordinary relationship because he always felt that the spirit of the Beatles went into Monty Python because we started when they quit. And I think there is an element of truth to that. He seemed to be the biggest Python fan in the world. It was always embarrassing being with him because he would throw out Python lines and I didn't know what he was talking about”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were we? This is the Beatles, of course, have to come in because they've been so much an important part of my life, and particularly George Harrison with handmade films, that we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for George. And I always said he wouldn't be where he was if I hadn't been buying all of his albums. So I thought we ought to do tax man from George Harrison.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to get her on the program to find out the truth. No, we've been married for so long. It's quite extraordinary, but she's, I guess, balances me.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know I think Maggie's stability for me is what she is. I mean, I couldn't function without her. I mean, she... Seems to do everything when she says single parent family, I mean basically we've got three kids and me, so she's got four to deal with basically.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tried and I failed, I think, and not as creative as they ought to be, frankly. Now the kids are great. It's a difficult one. I think in my last year in college I counseled a summer camp and all the kids came from Beverly Hills so they were sons and daughters of film directors, actors. They were the famous kids and they were all a mess. They were all a mess. They'd been raised by nannies. They had been privileged beyond belief. And they were all terrible. And I was worried, oh, I don't want my kids to end up like that. So my wife Maggie has done most of the work of raising them. I think I'm hidden down somewhere.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've wanted to be an outsider, let's put it that way, and I felt I was far too normal and everything was right. I used to blame my parents for not being poor and miserable in putting me in closets and locking me in. I thought this is terrible lack of child abuse. How could I be an artist? How can I be anything if I'm like that?”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was watching the freaks, the pinheaded man, the dwarfs, the strangely shaped human beings, all just sitting around playing cards. You know, it wasn't like the lizard man. It was Bob, and it was, you know, Ken. And they were just normal people, extraordinary, but normal. Those are the people that impressed me because they were dealt a pretty odd hand of cards, and yet they've made a life out of it. And I think that's great.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I must have been about twelve or thirteen the Clyde Bate Circus came all of us kids would go out there to try to get a job helping raise the tents. It was great you still raised tents with elephants and things like that. And I got stuck with the freak show tent. At that point, I used to go to the country fairs and they'd have the great canvas hoardings out front with you, the lizard man, the alligator woman. And it was, again, the extraordinariness, the amazingness about what life can produce. As a cartoonist, you deal with grotesques, you stretch things, faces, bodies, everything. And suddenly I was there with living cartoons. But what was interesting for me was inside the tent.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where we go Disc four all right now when I was making the brothers grim in Prague, I started falling into this other wonderful world which was Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, gypsy music, and one group I really loved was a group called Parnograst. And this is them.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh when at church they'd found my jokes about God were unseemly, I think was the word. They didn't laugh. I said, what kind of God do you believe in that can't take a joke? My little jokes are going to undermine the whole structure that you believe in. This is nonsense. I'm out of here.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just it happened and I didn't understand why it was happening. I was distracted by life. I wasn't interested in money. I was interested in just being able to do what I wanted to do, control what I wanted to do, and hopefully find an audience for it.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have no idea it's as simple as that. I go through life not being aware of who I am. I don't even know what I look like, is the reality. I mean, years ago when we were doing Fisher King there was a birthday party on the set for Robin Williams and somebody videoed it and Robin comes through the door of the set and happy birthday and there's a guy walking around in the room and I don't know who it is and it was me So I have no self-awareness in that sense.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never felt superior. I was always surprised that other people found it more difficult than I did. I don't think I ever felt superior. I mean, I was elected student body president, which completely astonished me because I had no political ambitions. For whatever reason, they decided that I was the guy to run for president.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think we were Lutherans then in those days. And then we moved to California and became Presbyterians. We were always in church. That was a basic thing. In fact, it's how I got to college because it went to college on a Presbyterian scholarship. I was going to be a missionary.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, I just always drew. I just love drawing. I love playing is what I get paid to do. Come on, let's be honest. Play.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His music goes from the darkest to the most heavenly. And I think I'm attracted to, again, it's just extreme thing. Those that can use the entire range there that's available.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He lies, doesn't he? But the great thing with Tom, we all want to talk like Tom. I was going to do a CD called talk like Tom, and it's a way of relaxing rather than doing other yoga things. You just talk like Tom.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, let's have some music. Ah, it is contrast, but it's not contrast. It's again America, and it's Tom Waits, who I just think is the great musical poet in America, and it's a song called Alice.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, just like Jesus and Joseph, Pinocchio and Geppetto, that's how it works. My mother was a virgin too, just so you know. Nice to clear”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was a carpenter, but he went through different stages he was a folger's coffee salesman at one point, he helped build the Alaskan highway driving an earth mover. He was away a lot because of that, but his carpentering is what I remember him most for because he made things. And that's always been important to me, the ability to make something.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is it. Maybe this is how you maintain your innocence by forgetting things like that. We had a treehouse which was made out of the biffy when we got an inside door toilet. It was great.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything We were among Swedes, let's put it that way, because Minnesota is the homeland of Swedes. They left Sweden. They came all the way across the world and ended up in a place that looks exactly like Sweden. And so it's a Swedish Protestant kind of world. We didn't have an indoor toilet for the first several years, and I remember the Biffy as it's referred to, was a two-holer out in the back garden. Now, I have no sense memory of going out there in 40 degree below zero and sitting on that wooden seat.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was basically a country cottage that was just for the summer that my dad insulated against the forty degree below zero winters. We lived about two blocks from a lake across the street was a swamp. Behind the house was a forest. A few blocks that direction was cornfields. I mean, this is Tom Sawyer Country. Indeed. This is true America.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so and it's that innocence that I think probably informed me more than anything else being an American growing up in the country and I just thought this is the world this is fantastic I mean when we played the song the first time I started welling up because I was innocent once it was like I was in the garden of Eden”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is it? Oh yes, we're going back to the beginning now. This is the kid in Minnesota. Going to the movies and seeing Walt Disney and Pinocchio, and it's when you wish upon a star.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was an ideally designed creative environment because everybody respected each other as comedians and as writers, not as individuals and human beings, but we respected each other's talent. And there was always this war going on between, say, the Oxford versus the Cambridge people, the tall versus the normally sized people, the left brain versus the right brain. And I was the lucky one because I could watch that and then step in when I wanted to and then pull back when I wanted to.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he's right, I think'cause I've always been reactive. I don't know what I want, I don't know, but I do know what's wrong. I do know what makes me angry, and so I respond to that immediately.”
2011-04-10 · Desert Island Discs · Terry Gilliam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source