The Brothers Grimm (2005)

Die Gebrüder Grimm

Interview with Terry Gilliam

Whenever OutNow.CH went to a film festival this summer, Ex-Monty Python and Enfant Terrible among the society of directors Terry Gilliam was present as well. In Neuchatel at the NIFFF he refused to talk to any press, in Locarno the press office refused us to talk to him. So our final chance was the Biennale in Venice. The big old man invited us to his cosy suite in the Hotel Des Bains, offered us a lot of Tuna-Sandwiches and talked and talked and talked...

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OutNow.CH (ON): A thing we often hear about your work is troubles, troubles, troubles.

Terry Gilliam (TG): Troubles? Where? In New Orleans? That is where the troubles are! No seriously, talking about it is a total waste of time. The troubles are my problem, not your problem. Your problem is the movie. And the movie is the finished thing, people should be talking about. All films have troubles. Some more than others. And I think that there is too much written about that one. When you start thinking that there have been problems, you start to look at the movie in a very specific reference frame. And I think it is missing the point. The movie is the finished thing, I am happy, proud, pleased. It is my movie. My cut. And yes there were a lot of problems along the way (laughs)

ON: Your producer Charles Roven told us, that you need turmoil to be creative. Is that right?

TG: It kind of focuses me. Because when somebody says no, it helps me to prioritise. Especially when you are making an expensive film, there is always a bit of bargaining going on. That is just the nature of it, because there is too much money at stake and too many nervous people. And that's when it turns into a fight. You win some and you lose others. But the only important thing is the end result. And I am happy with that. What is interesting about this one, is the big delay. Last June, we reached a point where I said, there is the film and the other side was saying, that it was not the film they thought it was going to be. When you reach that point, two things could happen. First we get into a fight. I fight well, the Weinsteins fight well and it could have been a bloody battle, that nobody would win. But the film would have suffered. So I said that I'd got this other film that I was going to make now. I went away only to come back to se see what happend when the air was clear. So at the beginning of this year, they called me and said, finish the film your way. In a sense it is the first time - maybe because I get old - that rather than fighting, which I normally do, I walked away from a film and won. It's pathetic.

ON: Can you get used to all the stress while shooting a movie?

TG: Yeah I think you get used to it after a while. I kind of learned to calm down a bit, but the difficult thing is maintaining your focus. And some days I find, okay, I am just relaxed and things are happening and I say: "Jesus, this is not going right, get in there, go to work again" I do not really enjoy long shoots. Because it is hard to keep your focus. But nobody said it was going to be an easy job, making movies (laughs).

ON: Your work is always full of fantasy elements. Do you think that this is in yourself too?

TG: Yeah, that is the problem. I can only make what I am. (laughs). It really is like that. The original script of The Brothers Grimm was not mine, but we rewrote the script, so it became something that I understood. It is always difficult, when people send me scripts. I say, well, that is a really good script but I do not know how to make it. Because it is not me. It is not the way I see things. So I end up incorporating me into the movies. When we did The Fisher King, the script was very straightforward. I then started transforming it, so that Jeff Bridges lives in the tower of glass and steel. A cold place, where the dead man lives. It is very photographic. And Robin Williams lives underground in a cave. So it becomes mystic. That was not in the original script, but it was implied in the script. It was a story about the search for the grail and a parcel.

ON: Fairy tales are always full of cruelty. How did you express that side of fairy tales?

TG: I hired Monica Bellucci (laughs). No. I love about the fairy tales that they are dark and dangerous. Especially now that everything people write for children is happy and sweet. To me those stories were always like preparing the children for the real world. There are witches, giants, dragons and dangerous things. So I wanted it to be dark. I also wanted to test the relationship of the brothers, by creating two different brothers, whereas one is the dreamer and the other is the pragmatist. And I just wanted to bring in an enchanted forest too. Because I love forests. They are dangerous places.

ON: Was there a fairy tale, that you wanted to put in the movie, but that did just not fit in?

TG: No, it was not really like that. We had the story and I kept adding every reference I could. Even when he jumps out of the tower with the hair, he cries out "Rapunzel". Or the queen's bed is the princess on the pea. You know, there are about twenty mattresses under her. They were not in the original script. I kept adding these moments. And the old lady going to the door with the apple. What I really enjoyed was, when I saw the film with kids in the audience. They are very vocal. They go "ah" and "oh" and enjoy finding the references. This is part of the fun.

ON: The princess on the pea? Is that not Christian Anderson?

TG: Probably, I do not care (laughs). No, you see, my favourite story is Hans Christian Andersons "The Emperor's new cloth" . Is it really an Anderson, the princess on the pea?

ON: Yes, I am sure it is. But I am told, that they were good friends, the Grimms and Anderson.

TG: But the difference was, he wrote his stories and they just collected them, they did not write any of that. And that is what is interesting about them, which I did not realise until I started working on the film. Historically we got everything correct in this picture. The French had invaded and the Enlightening was sweeping across Germany and I think the Grimms were terrified, that the oral tradition and the great heritage of stories and tales were going to disappear. So they started to talk to every old lady and old man out there, collecting their stories. What they did to them was interesting. I used to always criticise Disney for simplifying, but the Grimms did it before him. In the first edition of Rapunzel, she is complaining that her clothes are fitting too tight and cause her stomach ache. So she is clearly pregnant by the prince. They trimmed that out in the second edition. It is because they were aiming for middle class audience. That was the market. The world has always been like this. People are whores basically.

ON: There is a deep disagreement about Peter Stormares character. Some like him some don't.

TG: Oh, I love him. He is the new Timothy Carey. It is a big over the top performance. He was so funny during the shooting, he was always (shouting) Cavaldi and he was just outrageous. He made me laugh more than anybody. And, I actually think he is a great actor. He can play anything, from Hamlet to buffoons like Cavaldi. And he brings so much intelligence to it. He decided that this character was really their guardian angel. Even Cavaldi does not know this, but somehow he has got to save them. And in the end when he brings the book back, that was never in the script. Peter said: "No, no, I must find the book. I am the one who is going to protect the future of the Grimms and their stories." It's wonderful, when you work with really smart actors. They invent so much. I mean, I could not do that. If there was a chance, he had to be in the shot somewhere. And it became a game with him. I do not know, if you ever saw tom thumb with Peter Sellers and Terry-Thomas. The two of them are the villains, they are like Cavaldi, like Peter. You do not get a chance to see those kinds of characters anymore and to me, they are part of fairy tales, they are part of that world. When we had the first screenings of this film Peter was the most popular character and he was also the most disliked character. And I thought: "Grrreat"! (laughs)

ON: Your son is in the movie, right?

TG: Yeah, he is the one at the beginning that says: "The Brothers Grimm?"

ON: Was it his wish to be in the film? Or was it yours?

TG: No, he wanted to do it. And I said, okay. Here is a part. He now wants to become an actor. Ahh, I probably destroyed his life. He has never been in a movie before.

ON: How old is he now?

TG: He is seventeen. It was very funny last night, when we arrived by car on the red carpet. He was in the car with me. I got out on the side towards the theatre and he got out on the other side, close to the people. And they started saying "Sexysexy!!!" He rushed over and started signing autographs. It was fantastic!

ON: As a kid I would love to see Brothers Grimm, but I would probably be scared shitless.

TG: Yeah, but that's great. Kids love it!

ON: How old should people be to see this movie in your opinion?

TG: I think you should probably be nine or ten years old. I think below that it probably gets a little bit rough. It depends on the kid, though. We did a lot of screenings and the brothers Weinstein kept thinking it was an older audience and I said, it is an older audience but it also works for kids. I talked to a lot of kids afterwards and I let the kids decide about the right age. They said below nine is a bit too young. I trust kids usually. And I have seen it enough times with children and they were the most excited. Even more excited than their parents. The parents are more frightened than the children. The children go into that journey. That is my memory of the Brothers Grimm, when I was a kid. They terrified me, but you come out at the other end and you know, there is a happy ending.

ON: Your fans are releaved after what you tried to do with the Don Quixote Film and especially after the documentary. What do you think of the documentary Lost in La Mancha?

TG: The documentary is great. And all is true. But I cannot watch it (laughs). It really depresses me, when I watch it. But I do think they captured the moment. Because at the time, it was funny. They were so depressed when the film started collapsing because they came to make a film about the making of the movie. I told them you got a better movie here. Keep shooting! This is good stuff. Other people have the same experiences with films going down, but nobody has ever been there to record it. So here is one and every filmmaker I know watches it and knows exactly what it is all about.

ON: Have you ever started doubting yourself?

TG: I immediately got back into work on other projects, which I think, delayed the depression (bursts out into laughter). The depression hit just before I agreed to do Grimms. So I finally reached a point when I thought, Fuck, I am never going to work again. But I've got to go back to work. And even though it was not my script, I said, let us do it. Let's go. And it got me working again. So it was good.

ON: Was there a feeling that you have to succeed with this one, because you would get buried otherwise?

TG: No. I never think or feel that. But, yeah, I do not like peoples expectations to be too big. I would rather go in with low expectations. There is this feeling like "Oh-oh" and everybody is waiting for that scene that is so important. This actually makes me angry because it should not be like that, but it is like that.

ON: Do you have a kind of look in your head before you shoot a film?

TG: It kind of grows all the time. Because, when you start, you get references from paintings and illustrators and things. And then you start making it. And of course you cannot do that probably, so it is always shifting.

ON: Are these specific paintings?

TG: Yes. We started looking at German paintings from the middle of the nineteenth century. We had a lot of Caspar David Friederich we liked for certain things and then Arthur Rackham illustrated a lot of fairy tales, an English Illustrator. Harry Clark, again nineteen century, for a lot of the costumes and the details. The kind of intense busyness of things came from Harry Clark. Gustave Doré. I always got a Doré when I am running out of ideas (laughs). I basically steal from whatever. It kind of becomes like making a collage. It starts becoming its own thing at a certain point but its using all of these references. Then you start shooting, and it is fairly instinctive. I do not storyboard much anymore. I tried to let the actors dictate what we do. It is more interesting. I've still got very specific ideas. I kind of fool myself into thinking I do not know what I am doing. It is useful because I can pretend that I am a first time filmmaker every time I go to work.

ON: These days, a lot of things can be easily done by CGI, but you do not use them normally.

TG: But I did in this movie, unfortunately. There are eight hundred CG-Shots in this film. Everything. How do you think the mirror is done? There is no mirror in the scene with the queen.

ON: Why do you say "unfortunately"?

TG: I wanted to do it with models originally, with animatronic things. Because there is always a surprising element, when real things interact with other real things. You cannot control it completely and usually you come up with really nice surprising things. We build these trees and none of it looked good. So we ended up doing it all with CGI. But I worked really hard. I have got my own company which does the effects and I spend a lot of time with the animators, trying to make them look at the real world. Because they all just look at the computer screen. They tried to make things too beautiful, too smooth, and I said, no. If a tree moved, it would not be like a ballet, it would do strange things. Or when the wolf jumps, when he lands, he would not land perfectly, he might slip. So I kept trying to do that. Basically what I did, was destroying all there beautiful work.

ON: How much of the casting were you involved in?

TG: Totally.

ON: Down to the smaller parts?

TG: Yeah, everything. This is the only reason why I make films. Because I am obsessed I have to deal with every detail. Every glass, every thing. This is dangerous because you grow up to be Stanley Kubrick if you are not careful. And this would mean the end. Obsessiveness is a thing you always fight against, because it is crazy. After a while you become so trapped in details and everything that is not perfect you can not even shoot. And so I have to fight that a lot.

ON: I think you should have done A.I..

TG: You know, actually there was some strange things going on there. Apparently, Kubrick wanted me, before he died, to do a sequel to Dr. Strangelove.

ON: Have you met him?

TG: No. I have spoken to him on the phone. That's all. (laughs)

ON: Were you interested?

TG: No. It is a wonderful film. Why make a sequel? What he was thinking propably was trying to do some kind of modern statement about where we are now. About the madness of now.

ON: Did he mention A.I. to you as well?

TG: No, I only spoke to Kubrick way back, when he was doing The Shining. All of this comes through second people. Kubrick became more and more reclusive.

ON: But you never met him, never hung out together?

TG: No. The biggest disappointment was after, I think it was the second series of Monty Python, my wife and I got in the car and we went to Greece. We were camping around Europe. When I got back to London, there was this letter waiting for me, from Stanley Kubrick and he wanted me to the opening credits for A Clockwork Orange. I thought, this is is great! My hero! But he wanted it at the end of the week (laughs). Then he had started The Shining. He called me up and was looking for an art director that would work with him, because he wanted to design it himself. So he had these catalogues of architecture, windows, and doors and... He wanted it too all very quickly. I went around to everybody and nobody wanted to work with him, because, once you work with Kubrick, you do not work again. I mean, it made people crazy, he was so obsessive. And I could not find anybody who would work with him. And then, you know, I wrote him a note, saying: "Sorry, but I would love to have lunch with you one day." And I never heard from him again.

ON: Have you still been in contact with Hunter S. Thompson after Fear and loathing in Las Vegas?

TG: Yeah, I mean Hunter is extraordinary. His death was very sad, but it was the right thing to do. I mean he went out the right way. I was very impressed with that. He was a hard worker, slept all day and was awake at night. When we were making the film, Johnny Depp would have to finish the day's work, go home and get ready to get on the phone with Hunter, until two, or three in the morning, talking. And I just had to stay away from that. Hunter was extraordinary, there is nobody like that out there. It is like a great hole was made in the cosmos, when he disappeared. Because he was so smart and so outrageous and so unstoppable.

ON: Why do you think, it was the right decision?

TG: The last thing he wanted was to be old and crippled. He was vain. (laughs). He was in pain. I think suicides should be encouraged. I want a bit of dignity with death. People should go out when they want to go out in the way the want to go out (laughs).

ON: You live in London now. Do you still see the people from Monty Python?

TG: Oh, you know, it is still the dysfunctional family. It has always been like that. Mike Palin, Terry Jones and I, we all live within five minutes of each other. We are all in North London, so we see each other a lot. John Cleese and Eric Idle live out in California, so we do not see them that often. We had dinner two months ago, which was nice. John was in London, so we got together. We always talk about things, but they never quite happen. The only thing that happened of course is SpamAlot, which Eric Idle really did. He just ran with it and worked with it very hard. We said there is "Holy Grail" and you can do with it whatever you want. And he worked on it for five years so it is really his success. I mean it is based obviously on Python, but if he had not been so dedicated, it would not have happened. If anything is ever going to happen with the group, one person has got to start really dedicate himself to get it done. Because the group is too amorphous. We flowed around, everybody is doing their own job.

ON: You would have never considered casting one of them for Brothers Grimm?

TG: No. They are impossible to work with.

ON: Could you imagine to act again?

TG: Me, no! I never acted before. I just made a fool of myself (laughs).

ON: Could you imagine to make a fully animated film?

TG: No, it does not interest me. I enjoy working with actors.

ON: What about something like The Polar Express? It was an awful film, but the technique was quite new.

TG: I did not see it, but it worries me. George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis are getting crazier and crazier. I cannot watch Star Wars now, because there is no humanity anymore. These are just puppets. I know Zemeckis is doing another one where all the characters are animated. In fact, Gabriella Pescucci, who did the costumes for the Grimms, was hired to do the costumes for those. And now Gabriella makes a costume for an actor. It is made very specifically to help the actor be whatever shape or size and all the materials are very precise. Everything is very important. And then Zemeckis just uses them as designs and puts it in the computer to finish.

10.09.2005 / mazemaster, andri, rm