Writer and Director Terry Gilliam
His new film is Lost in La Mancha. It's a documentary about Gilliam's failed attempt to adapt the story of Don Quixote to the screen. The film Gilliam was supposed to make was titled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, starring Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis and Jean Rochefort. Gilliam is a former member of the legendary Monty Python comedy troupe and was responsible for the Monty Python TV show's quirky animation. He went on to write and direct such films as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, an adaptation of the Hunter S. Thompson novel.
Other segments from the episode on January 30, 2003
Transcript
DATE January 30, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A⨠TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A⨠NETWORK NPR⨠PROGRAM Fresh Airâ¨â¨Interview: Terry Gilliam talks about his dream of making a filmâ¨of "Don Quixote" and how the film eventually collapsedâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev in for Terry Gross.â¨â¨When Terry Gilliam first decided to adapt Cervantes' "Don Quixote" to theâ¨screen, he knew the project had a cursed history. Orson Welles had alsoâ¨attempted a film version of the novel, only to have his starring actor dieâ¨before the film could be completed. But the odds didn't daunt him. As aâ¨director, Gilliam has always pushed the limits of the possible. He startedâ¨out as an animator for "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and co-directed "Montyâ¨Python and the Holy Grail." In The New Yorker, Giles Smith writes that,â¨`Gilliam's work is characterized by a taste for outrageous fantasy, a contemptâ¨for conventional behavior, an interest in the curious affinities betweenâ¨people and reptiles and a distinct liking for dwarves, giants and men withâ¨shaved heads.'â¨â¨That's a fairly accurate description of Gilliam's movies, including "Brazil,"â¨"Time Bandits," "12 Monkeys," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "The Fisherâ¨King" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen," which is often cited as aâ¨classic example of a Hollywood fiasco. Its budget doubled during production,â¨and then the film flopped at the box office.â¨â¨"Brazil" and "Baron Munchhausen" earned Gilliam the reputation in Hollywood ofâ¨a visionary and a battler of windmills, so it seemed a perfect match thatâ¨Gilliam would take on "Don Quixote," until it all went wrong. How wrong?â¨That's the subject of the new documentary film, "Lost in La Mancha," producedâ¨by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, which charts the series of mishaps, acts ofâ¨God and outright disasters which plagued the production. Here's a clip. Thisâ¨is Gilliam musing about his passion for Don Quixote.â¨â¨(Soundbite from "Lost in La Mancha")â¨â¨Mr. TERRY GILLIAM (Filmmaker): Quixote struck me more powerfully when Iâ¨reached middle age, because that's what I thought Quixote was very much about.â¨He's an older man, he's been through life. It's kind of like a last hurrah.â¨He has one last chance to make the world as interesting as he dreams it to be,â¨you know. And I'll be 61 in another couple of months, just an old man who hasâ¨only done X number of films, and I should have done more with the amount ofâ¨ideas that are floating in my head.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Terry Gilliam, welcome to FRESH AIR.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Hi, there.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Could you take us back to the beginning of the story? When did theâ¨"Don Quixote" project begin, and was it a film you were always planning toâ¨make?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I think it was around 1990 when I decided it was time to try toâ¨deal with Quixote. Like most people, you know, I knew the story and had seenâ¨Peter O'Toole singing his heart out in the film of--What was it?--"The Man ofâ¨La Mancha," and Quixote had always been, I suppose, part of my personality, orâ¨madness, all my life, this pursuit of impossible things, and unhappiness withâ¨the banality of life and the need to try to make it more exotic and moreâ¨interesting.â¨â¨And so it was around 1990 I said, `It's time to do Quixote,' and I calledâ¨Jake Eberts, who had been the executive producer on "Baron Munchhausen," andâ¨said, `Jake, I got two names for you. I need $20 million.' And I said, `Oneâ¨name is Gilliam and the other is Quixote,' and he says, `Done.' And then I hadâ¨to sit down and read the book, because lazily, I had never bothered to readâ¨it. And the copy I had was an old, late 19th-century copy, so it weighedâ¨several tons, and it took me several weeks to get through it, and then Iâ¨realized how foolish I'd been thinking that I could make a film of this book,â¨because it's such an extraordinary, vast canvas. And nevertheless, I set out.â¨That was a long time ago.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Can you give us a sense, before we start talking about some of theâ¨things that went wrong, about how you envisioned the film visually. Tell usâ¨some of the visual elements, and how you were going to bring Don Quixote'sâ¨hallucinations, his dreams, to life.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: When I deal with fantasies, I tend to do them veryâ¨straightforward. I mean, I'm looking at the world through the eyes of theâ¨madman, so when you're doing that, you're not seeing things with sort ofâ¨strange colors around the edges and weird, out-of-focus stuff, you see it asâ¨real. So that's the way I tend to approach it, so when he sees windmills asâ¨giants, they're giants, and it's only when we step back and look at it fromâ¨somebody else's point of view that we realize what they are. So I try to dragâ¨the audience in, I suppose, to be Quixote, even though the audience isâ¨supposed to be following this other character. And, in fact, what happens inâ¨the story is that the other character begins to see the world like Quixoteâ¨does. So I've never dealt with fantasy other than what I thought was aâ¨totally naturalistic or realistic way.â¨â¨BOGAEV: So you worked on this film, "Quixote," for 10 years, and you wentâ¨through two producers; you tried to start the film twice, and this is allâ¨before the attempt portrayed in the "Lost in La Mancha" documentary. Butâ¨finally, you pulled together a production team, and these are people from allâ¨over Europe. At this point, you have no Hollywood backing--that's fallenâ¨through--and this whole...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No, to be accurate, it hadn't fallen through. We never askedâ¨for a penny from Hollywood. That was part of the job I was doing. I wasâ¨determined to show that we could make big, spectacular international filmsâ¨without any help from Hollywood in any possible way. In fact, that's one ofâ¨the most disappointing things about the film collapsing is that we failed inâ¨that attempt, because the current financial situation is such that that's notâ¨going to be possible in the future.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, let me correct myself. You pulled together a production teamâ¨from all over Europe. You had no Hollywood backing. And you all assembled inâ¨Madrid for pre-production. How did things go at that point? Forâ¨instance--and I'm thinking that many of the production staff didn't speak muchâ¨English. How much of a problem was that, just simple communication? Becauseâ¨you're struggling to communicate your ideas, your very personal, specificâ¨ideas with costumers and puppeteers and set designers. It can get veryâ¨complicated.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Not really, because there's an advantage. I mean, I draw, soâ¨that is the way one can communicate. Yeah, it isn't quite as efficient,â¨possibly, as if everybody spoke perfect English. In fact, the disturbingâ¨moments are when you--because people are speaking English, you're thinkingâ¨they're understanding everything you're saying. In fact, they're onlyâ¨understanding 90 percent of what you're saying, and that 10 percent canâ¨provide some interesting problems.â¨â¨But, no, that wasn't really the problem. You know, we can get around thoseâ¨things, you know? I may need to shout a bit louder, but I can always drawâ¨something or I do it physically. I grab something and say, `I should be thisâ¨way,' and bum-bum-bum.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, one problem you had--your star is Johnny Depp, who playedâ¨Sancho Panza, and the French actor Jean Rochefort, who plays Don Quixote--theyâ¨don't show up for pre-production costume fittings or rehearsal. In fact, Iâ¨think at one point in the film, it seems as if you can't get Johnny Depp onâ¨the phone at all.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Correct.â¨â¨BOGAEV: That must have been disconcerting. I mean, how worried were you?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No, I mean, there's no question--no, I'm not worried aboutâ¨Johnny and I wasn't worried about Jean, either, to be honest, I mean, becauseâ¨the one thing--having worked with Johnny, I know this is a guy who can turn upâ¨five minutes before you start shooting and it'll be amazing. He doesn't--thatâ¨doesn't worry me. It gets frustrating, because there's always things you wantâ¨to talk about, and you start tearing your hair out because you kind--andâ¨Johnny was busy doing the film "From Hell," and he was in Prague, so he wasâ¨under the gun because they were running late. And I was worried that heâ¨wasn't going to get there in time. And, in fact, he was so exhausted, he didâ¨take a week off before he finally got down there. But the fact is, he wasâ¨ready.â¨â¨But with Jean, because he'd--I don't know; he'd achieved a hernia about, Iâ¨think, a month before I started shooting, and the result of that was that itâ¨was starting to press on his prostate, and the prostate became infected. Andâ¨what was shocking is when he did turn up--'cause he did not get on a plane andâ¨then he got down there--was that I suddenly was dealing with a man that wasâ¨about 20 years older than I'd last seen him a month earlier. It was quite anâ¨experience, because he's 70 years old. He raises show jumping horses. Theâ¨man has never lost a day of shooting in his life. He's far more fit than Iâ¨would ever hope to be. And this nasty little organ became infected, and heâ¨literally went from what seemed like a 50-year-old man to a 90-year-old manâ¨almost overnight.â¨â¨BOGAEV: He did show up for filming. You began filming the movie, and theâ¨first day of shooting, the troubles seemed to begin. What went wrong rightâ¨from the start?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Well, there was a little problem about the extras not beingâ¨rehearsed in a particular fight sequence. That was the moment I went berserkâ¨because, again--what happ--here's--it's a problem in films, because especiallyâ¨on something like this, I was working with some people I hadn't worked withâ¨before, so you're relying on other people's knowledge of them. And there areâ¨always some people on the film that spend most of their time trying to impressâ¨the director by being incredibly charming, rather than going out and doing theâ¨hard graft work. And I stumbled on one of those people, unfortunately, andâ¨something hadn't been done. Rehearsal hadn't taken place. And we're out inâ¨the middle of this hot desert area with always a limited amount of time, andâ¨nobody's prepared themselves properly for that moment. And that was a hugeâ¨shock. I mean, I did go crazy 'cause it was something I didn't expect.â¨And I...â¨â¨BOGAEV: I think the words you used are, `You need to tell me if I'm going toâ¨be'--expletive deleted--`beforehand.'â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Beforehand. Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: `I need to know if I'm'...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: `If I am, I want to know in advance. That's all I ask.'â¨â¨BOGAEV: That's right.â¨â¨(Soundbite of laughter)â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: And that's--I mean, it's very funny, because I think theâ¨four-letter F-word I use more than, you know, a thousand times in theâ¨documentary. I think I was quite amazed at how limited my dialogue hadâ¨become.â¨â¨(Soundbite of laughter)â¨â¨BOGAEV: The second day of filming was the real disaster, though.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: And in the documentary, it looks as if a hurricane blew in while youâ¨were shooting on location in the Spanish desert. It really looks like a stormâ¨of biblical proportions.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No, it was. And...â¨â¨BOGAEV: What was it like on the set?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: It was like--well, I was exhilarated, frankly, because suddenly,â¨a lot of my concerns about our production problems and potential futureâ¨problems had all been taken away from me by this hand of this rather violentâ¨God. It was quite extraordinary the way it built, because it was a slowâ¨build, and we thought, `Oh, there are some clouds coming. Oh, there's aâ¨little problem.' And when it hit, it was literally like the beginning ofâ¨"Wizard of Oz." And, in fact, I'm running around trying to decide whether I'mâ¨in "The Wizard of Oz" or if I'm playing King Lear--in "The Tempest" in theâ¨storm.â¨â¨And it was quite extraordinary, because what, in fact, I did--we were underâ¨this marquee and all the equipment was there, all the people were there, and Iâ¨just walked out into the storm. I was so crazed at that point, howling, and Iâ¨found a large overhanging rock, which I crouched under as this storm startedâ¨building, and it got bigger and more spectacular. It was absolutely beautifulâ¨in its anger, I think. And little by little, I started watching water pouringâ¨down these mountainsides, which were dry, and suddenly there becameâ¨waterfalls. And then there was a rush of water, and then hailstones startedâ¨crashing down.â¨â¨And eventually, after about 45 minutes, it ended. And I had been under thisâ¨rock, looking away from the set. And I crawled out from under my rock andâ¨looked back, and there's nothing there. A sea of mud is all that's left.â¨â¨BOGAEV: It looked like flowing rivers, and they're carrying off yourâ¨equipment...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...in the flash flooding.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I mean, it literally was a flash flood. It was just takingâ¨everything away, and people--what was the funniest thing about it was Louâ¨and Keith, the documentary filmmakers, they had only one camera, and whatâ¨they did was run into their car, you know, protecting their camera. Theyâ¨weren't actually filming the stuff. It was--in fact, the stunt coordinatorâ¨with his digital camera, his own home camera, was filming this. Things--theyâ¨were in the car--you'll see it in the film--shot through a windscreen as theâ¨hailstones are descending, you know. It's them protecting their one piece ofâ¨equipment.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Terry Gilliam. The new documentary "Lost in La Mancha" chroniclesâ¨his attempt to adapt "Don Quixote" to the screen. We'll talk more after thisâ¨break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" theme music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: Back now with director and former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam.â¨His failed attempt to adapt "Don Quixote" to the screen is documented in theâ¨new film "Lost in La Mancha."â¨â¨You did regroup and began filming again, and I suppose this is when the mostâ¨ironic misfortune happened, something that truly elevates this "La Mancha"â¨story to a fiasco, and that's that your star, Jean Rochefort, fell ill and heâ¨couldn't ride a horse. Now we have a clip from the movie. It's from the dayâ¨of shooting that you realize Rochefort is too ill to ride. Let's listen. Andâ¨here, you've just filmed a take and noticed something is wrong, and you're onâ¨the set talking to your first director, Phil.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Lost in La Mancha")â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Cut! We're (censored). Did you see him sit...â¨â¨Mr. PHIL PATTERSON: Crazy...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Did you see him sit on the horse? The pain when he sat down?â¨â¨Mr. PATTERSON: (Censored) crazy? He can't (censored) connect. He can't doâ¨it.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah.â¨â¨Mr. PATTERSON: It ain't gonna happen.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I was watching his face very carefully when he got on theâ¨horse, and it was just--oh, (censored).â¨â¨Mr. PATTERSON: He can't ride like that, he certainly can't act like that andâ¨he certainly can't jiggle hand props with that, you know. Honestly, I want toâ¨go to the French and say I'm going to refuse to shoot with Jean Rochefort on aâ¨horse until he's medically fit.â¨â¨BOGAEV: That's a scene from the new documentary, "Lost in La Mancha" about myâ¨guest Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to adapt "Don Quixote" to the screen.â¨â¨So here you have a Don Quixote who can't ride a horse. Did you know at thatâ¨point just how physically impaired Rochefort was?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I think we did, because the irony was that when I had beenâ¨hunting for a Don Quixote who had to look a certain way, be a certain heightâ¨and a certain age, always the problem was that you could find an actor whoâ¨looked right but couldn't ride a horse. It was the one thing that Jean wasâ¨absolutely expert at. He's a brilliant horseman.â¨â¨So on that day, when he was on that horse and you realized--looked in his faceâ¨and you saw the pain he was in, we knew we were in trouble. I mean, I didn'tâ¨know how bad the trouble was because we broke for lunch and Phil Patterson,â¨the first assistant director, said, `I'm not going to let you put him back onâ¨the horse. I mean, the man's in real trouble.' And I said, `Well, no, no,â¨no, no. We better talk to Jean.' And then Jean said, `Listen, I've been hereâ¨all week. I've been able to do nothing. I don't think I'll be able to getâ¨through the weekend unless I'm able to do a scene. I've spent seven, eightâ¨months learning English to do this, and I'm going to do it.' And then theâ¨producers had said, you know, `He must go back on his horse,' and then talkedâ¨to Johnny Depp and said, `What do you think, Johnny?' And Johnny said, `Well,â¨if he really wants to do it, I mean, you can't say no.' And I--he's an adult.â¨â¨So we put him back on the horse, and all we did--he was on the horse for aboutâ¨45 minutes, just walking. And at the end of it, it took two people to liftâ¨him off the horse, and he was in bad news on the plane the next day to Paris.â¨It's that thing with actors, and that's why I love them, but they can, youâ¨know, almost kill themselves in trying to do their work, and Jean almost didâ¨that.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, Rochefort left after that day's shooting, and he promised toâ¨return in two days. He was seeing doctors in Paris. But two days became fourâ¨and then 10 and then, I guess, maybe never. What was going on while youâ¨waited in limbo to find out your star's prognosis? Were producers coming toâ¨you, saying, `Why can't we recast? Find a different Quixote. Bruce Willis.'â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: There was all of that going on. The insurance company inâ¨particular said, `Recast,' and I said, `Well, we spent almost a year trying toâ¨get to this point. How do you just suddenly recast, 'cause there aren't manyâ¨people out there that fill the bill.' And I said, `We've also got veryâ¨complicated scheduled problems. To reschedule is going to be very difficultâ¨and costly.' And because we were, you know, an independent production, thereâ¨was no fat in the budget. And I said, `I don't know how we can do all ofâ¨that.'â¨â¨Johnny felt very strongly as, indeed, did a lot of the cast and the crew,â¨that, `Let's wait for Jean. Maybe he'll only be a month. Maybe it'll be twoâ¨months. We'll all go away. We won't charge any money for waiting. And whenâ¨he's well, we'll come back and continue the film.' And I was on that side.â¨That's what I wanted to do. But we were given a deadline to come up with anâ¨answer, either recast or reschedule or whatever, or they'd pull the plug. Andâ¨I just felt we couldn't, in the time, put it together in a new form, and soâ¨they pulled the plug.â¨â¨BOGAEV: At some point in the documentary, you're on the phone and you'reâ¨explaining to someone that you've just lost all sense of what the film was,â¨that you had the whole film in your head, you carried these images around inâ¨your head, this vision of it all, for a decade, and it's just dribbled out ofâ¨you.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Well, I think it's, you know, become such a--I don't know,â¨maybe it's a way of surviving. Maybe my system just shut down and sort ofâ¨closed the door on it. Maybe that's what it was, because having spent--you'reâ¨torn because, on one hand, you've spent so long at it, you're tired of it, youâ¨hate it and you're worn out with it. On the other hand, you know, you justâ¨want to get it up on the screen. And so your system is doing bizarre things.â¨And I think physically, I was so exhausted, and then you had the emotionalâ¨exhaustion on top. It was kind of like on one level, there was a relief, `Ah,â¨the nightmare's over. I can go back to some other kind of life.' But--andâ¨you think you've got over it, and then it would hit you like a month laterâ¨what a complete and utter waste of, you know, years of your life this hasâ¨been. And it comes and goes. But it's why I am still going to make the filmâ¨because this is the only way I can deal with these problems is to convinceâ¨myself that, yes, we will do it, and we'll do it in a year or two.â¨â¨BOGAEV: So do other people say, `You're insane. You should just drop it'?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Oh, that's...â¨â¨BOGAEV: Like your wife, or people who care about you?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: There are those. And anybody in film would say, `Of course youâ¨have to move on. You know, that was unfortunate; you probably learned a thingâ¨or two. Move on.' And I said no, I mean, mainly because it's the best scriptâ¨I've ever been involved with, I think. I think it's a great script. I mean,â¨it took us a long time. I think we finally got it. And it's just--I justâ¨know how good a film it'll be. So that's the problem. It may be stupid toâ¨try to do it because there's another side of me that says, `Well, look atâ¨"Lost in La Mancha"; the documentary shows you a few moments from what theâ¨film would have been, and maybe it's better to leave everybody's imaginationâ¨working. They'll probably imagine a better film than we ultimately make.' Soâ¨there's a side of me that thinks like that as well. But I've got to do itâ¨just because I said I was going to do it and because it's very stupid andâ¨impractical and obsessive and something a grown man should walk away from;â¨that's why I must do it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, it's interesting, because you've had in your career a lot ofâ¨battles with Hollywood studios. I mean, "Brazil," there was a famous battleâ¨between you and MCA/Universal in which, at the end, they wanted you to editâ¨the film, make it shorter and make a happier ending, and they wouldn't releaseâ¨the film when you wouldn't agree to do that. And you took out this full-pageâ¨ad in Variety addressed to the president of MCA/Universal, Sid Scheinberg.â¨And in the end, you won that battle. But it was a real--you went up against aâ¨huge bureaucracy. But in this case, you were working in the way that you wantâ¨to work. There's no real...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...bureaucratic evil...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No, no. I'm just the victim of, you know, a little infection.â¨A virus got me this time. That's what's so bizarre about it. Yeah, you know,â¨there's--I can't really blame anybody except for Jean getting this infectionâ¨which disabled him, and then everything fell apart. It is that problem ofâ¨working where you have no fat, where you've got no safety net, and that's whatâ¨we were doing. So when it went bad, it went totally bad. Usually, I mean, ifâ¨you're working with a studio, there's a lot of fat around the place, so, youâ¨know, these films get made.â¨â¨And I think the result of the whole thing--and that's what was happening whenâ¨it was all falling apart--I kept telling Keith and Lou as they were shootingâ¨to keep shooting, 'cause at least if they will get a film out of this wholeâ¨mess, even though I don't, then there'll be some record of it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Director Terry Gilliam. His failed attempt to adapt "Don Quixote" toâ¨the screen is the subject of the new documentary "Lost in La Mancha." We'llâ¨continue our conversation in the second half of the show.â¨â¨I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Announcements)â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: Coming up, we continue our conversation with film director,â¨screenwriter and former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. And we meet Simonâ¨Russell Beale. The British actor is performing in two concurrent plays at theâ¨Brooklyn Academy of Music. Also, classical music critic Lloyd Schwartzâ¨reviews some light opera.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev.â¨â¨Let's get back to our interview with the director and former Monty Pythonâ¨member Terry Gilliam. His films include "Brazil," "The Fisher King," "12â¨Monkeys" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." In 2000, Gilliam startedâ¨filming "The Man who Killed Don Quixote," a screen adaptation of the classicâ¨Cervantes novel. The production did not go well, disastrously, in fact.â¨Gilliam's failed attempt is the subject of the new documentary film "Lost Inâ¨La Mancha," produced by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe.â¨â¨Now let's talk about the filming of this fiasco, because it's an interestingâ¨thing. I was trying to figure out why you would have anyone document theâ¨making of your film, given that, for instance, "Baron von Munchausen" was aâ¨very painful experience for you. Your budget seemed to spiral out of controlâ¨or to double in the making of it, and some in the industry point to it as anâ¨example of a director out of control, a movie that didn't do well in the boxâ¨office. I know there are a lot of ways to interpret that...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: That's the one that Hollywood loves.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Right, right.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: That version.â¨â¨BOGAEV: But it occurred to me that maybe you wanted people to--a documentaryâ¨team on the set of your film in order to provide a record, to prove that youâ¨aren't a director out of control, that there is a method to your madness, butâ¨then this series of unforeseeable disasters happens.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I mean, I wasn't approaching it that way. I just know thatâ¨every time I make a film, something interesting happens is all I know, and Iâ¨always regret the fact that, you know, it's not been documented, that somebodyâ¨wasn't there to record it, and there's another side that--I mean, a kind ofâ¨selfish, vain side. It's just trying to have my own, you know, diary of whatâ¨went on there at least or somebody else's diary that shows what was going on.â¨And it was as simple as that.â¨â¨And Keith and Lou had made a documentary about "12 Monkeys" called "Theâ¨Hamster Factor," and it was a wonderful bit of work. And they had beenâ¨graduate film students at Temple University in Philadelphia, and basically weâ¨just gave them a Hi-8 camera and said, `Shoot. Here's lots of tape. You'veâ¨got access to everything.' I wore a microphone the whole time, and I said,â¨`It's your film. I'm not going to interfere with it. I'm not going to censorâ¨it.' So they made a wonderful film then, so I trusted them. And when I said,â¨`Come on, come out to Quixote country and see what happens,' they were game.â¨â¨And once they're there, as far as I'm concerned, they have complete freedom,â¨complete access. I'm so desperate for the truth. That's what I want to see,â¨and I don't--especially in films and show business, everything's about image.â¨Everything's about illusion. Nobody ever sees the truth of things. And, forâ¨me, I just want that to happen. So as everything was coming apart, they wereâ¨sometimes incredibly apologetic and actually turning their camera off inâ¨certain situations because they felt there was too much, you know, pain andâ¨anguish around the place, and they felt embarrassed recording it. And I said,â¨`No, no, you've got to keep shooting. This is the truth. This is honest.â¨This is the reality of the thing, and I think you'll get an amazing film outâ¨of it.'â¨â¨And I think that's what's happened. I think when people see "Lost in Laâ¨Mancha," people say, `Oh, how terrible, how painful, how awful that was.' Andâ¨I say, `Well, no, the reality is most filmmaking is more like this than whatâ¨you see in all the press kits.' It's a rough business, and people never getâ¨to see that side of it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: What occurs to you when you watch the documentary?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Well, it occurs to me that I should never watch it again is whatâ¨occurs to me.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Did you watch it?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yes, I've watched it several times, and I can't stand it. Itâ¨leaves me depressed for a couple weeks, and I'm trying to get my life back.â¨â¨BOGAEV: After the "La Mancha" debacle, you auditioned to direct J.K.â¨Rowling's "Harry Potter" film. That's one of the things you did in the wakeâ¨of the Don Quixote mess...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yes.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...for Warner Bros. How does a director's audition work? What's theâ¨protocol?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: It wasn't actually that I auditioned. What happened was that itâ¨turned out J.K. Rowling and the producer wanted me to direct it. Theâ¨likelihood of me directing it was very slim; I think non-existent. And I haveâ¨a feeling that Warner Bros. brought me out to Hollywood just to show them thatâ¨they were doing their due diligence and giving everybody a fair chance. Andâ¨it was a very interesting experience, because I know when I went into theâ¨meeting that a majority of people were against me, and by the end of theâ¨meeting, I'd actually won over quite a few people that were against me. And Iâ¨was so angry with myself for getting excited about the project, knowing Iâ¨would never get it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: For caring.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I ended up driving around for hours later just kicking myself.â¨For a moment, I allowed myself to really fall into that world and begin toâ¨imagine it and think that, `Yeah, I could do this,' and that kind of feelingâ¨when you're not going to ever get the job, when you know that, is veryâ¨irritating to say the least. And on it went. So the film was made as it was,â¨and it was a huge success, and they obviously made the right choice inâ¨director.â¨â¨BOGAEV: What did you think of the film?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Crap.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Really?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I think the film is very badly directed. I think it'sâ¨uninspired, unfortunately, I mean, to be quite honest about--I think the firstâ¨"Harry Potter" just was very, very disappointing, it was very pedestrian.â¨There was no real magic in it. It was by the numbers, and "Lord of the Rings"â¨is a wonderful film in comparison. That's what I think.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: That the box office doesn't agree with me, I don't know.â¨â¨BOGAEV: What do you think the distinction is, though, in the way that theyâ¨create these visions? Because I'm thinking that they're two very differentâ¨styles, and "Lord of the Rings" seems to have more of a dark and yet childlikeâ¨imagination to it.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah. No, I'm totally impressed with Peter Jackson. I think heâ¨actually believes that world. I think he's a very good director; let's beginâ¨with that. He's an excellent director. He threw himself so passionately intoâ¨that world. He understands it. He understands magic, heroism, epic--theâ¨whole thing; just feel it's in its bones, and so it spews out onto the screen,â¨and it's totally believable. You know, the film was--whatever--three hoursâ¨long, that first one, and I sat there and I was just transported into thisâ¨other world. I never felt that for one moment with "Harry Potter." I thoughtâ¨it's sort of by the numbers. There's some, I mean, technically brilliantâ¨stuff in it, but there's no magic. There's no real, you know, immersion intoâ¨that world.â¨â¨BOGAEV: My guest is Terry Gilliam. His catastrophic attempt three years agoâ¨to film an adaptation of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" is the subject of a newâ¨documentary, "Lost in La Mancha."â¨â¨This film does function as a kind of diary of your worst moments as aâ¨filmmaker, so it must be very painful to have that part of your career exposedâ¨to millions of people, millions of your potential people in your audience.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No. I don't know. I'm beginning to think that failure's aâ¨really important part of life and should be given more time on the air. Iâ¨think everything's so positive now, everything is so uplifting. Everything'sâ¨blah, blah, blah. The reality of life is it's very up and down, so it doesn'tâ¨bother me. I think what's been most interesting is that people come awayâ¨saying that I'm not a madman, that I'm not out of control, that I do know whatâ¨I'm doing, which people or my agents in Hollywood say, `Oh, this is going toâ¨be so good, so useful, you know, for the executives to see what a responsibleâ¨and decent human being I really am as opposed to the monster they fear.'â¨â¨BOGAEV: Terry Gilliam, it was such a pleasure talking to you today. Thankâ¨you very much.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Thanks.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Terry Gilliam. The new IFC Film "Lost in La Mancha" documentsâ¨Gilliam's failed attempt at adapting "Don Quixote" for the screen. When weâ¨spoke, Gilliam was in negotiations with the insurance company to get back theâ¨rights to his script, "The Man who Killed Don Quixote."â¨â¨Coming up, we meet British actor Simon Russell Beale. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Interview: Simon Russell Beale discusses his roles in theâ¨productions "Twelfth Night" and "Uncle Vanya" and his career inâ¨theaterâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨The New York Times recently described Simon Russell Beale as the greatestâ¨actor Americans have hardly seen. On the London stage, Beale has played kingsâ¨and commoners, fops and Shakespearean clowns, characters from Chekhov andâ¨Ibsen. Two years ago, Beale performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music asâ¨Hamlet. Now he's returned to BAM with the Donmar Warehouse Theater in anâ¨interesting double bill. He plays the manservant Malvolio in "Twelfth Night"â¨and the title role in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." Sam Mendes directs theâ¨productions. In both plays, Beale explores the comic and tragic dimensions ofâ¨his characters.â¨â¨When I spoke with Simon Russell Beale, we began by talking about "Twelfthâ¨Night." His character, Malvolio, is the butler for Lady Olivia. He'sâ¨secretly in love with her. The other household servants decide to make someâ¨trouble by misleading Malvolio into believing Olivia has feelings for him.â¨â¨Mr. SIMON RUSSELL BEALE (Actor): And then a trick is played on him where aâ¨letter is written apparently from Olivia, which says `I love you,' and heâ¨believes it and dresses up in what he regards as very sexy gear and seductiveâ¨gear, and Olivia, of course, is horrified. He's then accused of being mad,â¨which I think distresses him enormously, and he's shut away. And when he'sâ¨released, he is a very bitter man whose life has been destroyed, and he endsâ¨with this extraordinary curse on the whole company, which is literally secondsâ¨before the play ends, so there's this big black cloud over the end of theâ¨play. And the big debate is, you know, whether you regard his punishment forâ¨being pompous and overbearing and a bully, which he undoubtedly is, whetherâ¨his punishment fits the crime, and I think most people will think theâ¨punishment was probably excessive. I mean, his life is destroyed, the poorâ¨thing.â¨â¨BOGAEV: I'd like to talk about your physical presence on the stage, becauseâ¨you're a very physical actor, and it's fascinating to watch, especially toâ¨watch your hands. Both as Malvolio and as Vanya, you cultivate certainâ¨mannerisms, and Malvolio has some extremely precise dismissive gestures, aâ¨sweep of the hand, for instance. He also fusses. He's a butler...â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Yes.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...so I guess he's a little anal. He fusses with hanging his coat onâ¨the back of a chair, is very fastidious in the beginning, and then as hisâ¨psyche deteriorates and these awful things happen to him, he becomes less so.â¨And you also develop those kind of gestures in the Vanya character. Vanyaâ¨fingers the...â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Fidgets, doesn't he, yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: He fidgets. He picks at his hands. He fingers the long table, whichâ¨is the center of the stage, the central prop. He emphasizes what he's sayingâ¨by placing his outstretched fingers, his fingertips on the tabletop, and heâ¨talks with his hands. All of this makes for a very, very realized, believableâ¨human being on the stage. Where do these mannerisms originate for you as anâ¨actor and how do you hone them?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Well, it's funny you mention the hands, because somebody elseâ¨mentioned them to me a couple of weeks ago, and I was certainly unaware of itâ¨in "Vanya," and then now, only half-aware about a lot of the physicality ofâ¨Vanya. To explain something about the Vanya physicalities, when we startedâ¨rehearsing, Sam put out a sort of carpet with loads of big cushions and bigâ¨easy chairs for the "Vanya" rehearsals, and a lot of the original exercises weâ¨did as we were exploring the play was with us--we naturally sort of gravitatedâ¨to lying on the cushions and lying on the carpet or slumped into this very,â¨very comfortable chair. And that continued into performance, certainly withâ¨me, and I spend, as you remember, a lot of the time actually lying on theâ¨floor of the stage. And I found that very useful because, you know, Vanya's aâ¨child really, in lots of ways. He's a man who is just at the end of hisâ¨tether, and consequently, his physical behavior becomes more and more extreme.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Watching you on the stage, I had the sense that, as an actor, youâ¨have an idea of the physical shape of a character and that the words come outâ¨of that. It's as if you have an idea of what you look like from the audience,â¨and that somehow the interpretation and the words flow through that.â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: I've always pretended that that's not the case, but you're right.â¨I mean, I've never thought I've had a very strong visual imagination, really.â¨But I do remember that when I did "Richard III," which was one of the veryâ¨first things I did with--the second thing I did with Sam, I had an immediateâ¨clear idea of the way I wanted to look, which sort of took me by surprise. Iâ¨mean, I wanted to look like a huge retired American footballer, you know.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Johnny Unitas.â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: I don't know the reference, but with a huge shaved head and big,â¨big man. When Sam offered me Ariel in "The Tempest," you know, the mostâ¨unlikely choice in the whole company is to play Ariel, as...â¨â¨BOGAEV: And Ariel is a sprite. It's usually a little elfin...â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: He's a creature of air, yes.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...creature.â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: And as we've said before, I'm not a creature of air. But I hadâ¨that funny thing in my stomach when he phoned me up and offered it to me, andâ¨I just had that funny, excited reaction, butterflies in your stomach,â¨thinking, `Ooh, ooh, my Lord,' and I knew he'd come to me partly because Iâ¨could sing, and Ariel has to sing, but I thought, `Wow, what can we do withâ¨that? How can we make this particular person into a creature of air?' Now Iâ¨don't have sort of the same reaction to "Richard II."â¨â¨BOGAEV: How did you make Ariel work? How did you reinterpret Ariel to jiveâ¨with your physical appearance?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Well, actually, to be perfectly honest, it was a series of luckyâ¨accidents. I was given a very beautiful blue silk suit, Chairman Mao typeâ¨suit, and during the rehearsal, the whole show required Ariel--the way Sam hadâ¨directed it was that Ariel did all the work, as it were. I mean, he's aâ¨sprite who's the servant of the great magician Prospero, and Ariel did all theâ¨work, and I had so much to do. I had to bring cactus on the stage and set theâ¨props for them and, blah, blah, blah, all that, and I thought the only way Iâ¨can do it is very, very slowly, and so during one of the final runs in theâ¨rehearsal room, I was just doing it very, very slowly, and at the end of it,â¨Sam said, `Well, that can either be really boring or we could push it and makeâ¨him incredibly slow.' And in the end, he moved in this extraordinarilyâ¨beautiful suit and bare feet very slowly and haughtily and ratherâ¨balletically. And because it was a blue set, they could light me so I almostâ¨disappeared. It was very clever actually of them. I mean, it was a cleverâ¨design.â¨â¨BOGAEV: I'm talking with Simon Russell Beale. He's currently starring in twoâ¨productions at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. He performs asâ¨Malvolio in "Twelfth Night" and Vanya in "Uncle Vanya."â¨â¨When you played Hamlet, your mother had just passed away. Did that informâ¨your performance?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: In what way?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: It was my tribute to her, really. She knew I was going to do it,â¨and the dates, you know, cruelly were not--I mean, she couldn't have come toâ¨see me because she was ill for five months. But it was my tribute to her.â¨And, you know, as a gift for somebody who's grieving, you can't get muchâ¨better than that; I mean, the greatest, the greatest discussion of grief andâ¨mortality that's ever been written, and, I mean, I was enormously privilegedâ¨to be able to do that and to be able to give it to her, really. And I thinkâ¨Hamlet turned out very different from what I expected him to turn out. Iâ¨wanted it to be a play about love, for him to be a sweet prince, for it to beâ¨about a good man, I mean, struggling with the fact of death. So, yes, it hadâ¨an enormous effect.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Did you have to struggle to channel your grief in an effective way,â¨an appropriate way, in your performance or did you find that as opposed toâ¨that, your performing "Hamlet" and experiencing grief through Shakespeare'sâ¨words, that he got it right actually, that you could compare?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: I didn't use the grief literally because that would have beenâ¨horrible, but, yeah, you know, you've put it better than I could, which isâ¨that Shakespeare got it right. And...â¨â¨BOGAEV: About grief, you mean?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Yes, and about, you know, the whole last beat of the play, about,â¨you know, the great human need to say, `It'll be fine, it'll be fine. Allâ¨things shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.' That's notâ¨Shakespeare's, but it's that sort of thing, you know. As I said earlier, youâ¨know, to stand on stage and say to an audience, almost, `Shush, shush, it'sâ¨all right. You know, death will come and the readiness is all and it'll beâ¨all right,' I think is a fantastic privilege to be able to do that. And, youâ¨know, it wasn't a direct--I wasn't grieving there in front of the audience,â¨but it was about saying, `Shakespeare allows us some sort of debate or does itâ¨better than we could do.'â¨â¨BOGAEV: Thank you so much. Simon Russell Beale, thank you for talking withâ¨me today.â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Well, a pleasure, thank you.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Simon Russell Beale is currently performing in "Twelfth Night" andâ¨"Uncle Vanya" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Donmar Warehouse Theaterâ¨production continues through March 9th.â¨â¨Coming up, light opera. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Profile: Reissues of well-known operettasâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨Some recent reissues of well-known operettas and a performance of aâ¨little-known one got our music critic, Lloyd Schwartz, thinking about theâ¨soothing nature of light opera.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨LLOYD SCHWARTZ reporting:â¨â¨Last summer on a short visit to Vienna, the home of Demelâs Chocolates andâ¨the Sacher Torte, I saw a charming operetta from the 1930s, "Bewitchedâ¨Maiden,"(ph) by a composer famous in Vienna but new to me, Ralph Benatzky, whoâ¨emigrated to Hollywood during the Nazi regime but didn't find success inâ¨America. If `opera,' opera (pronounced OH-pei-rah), is the Italian word forâ¨work, then `operetta' means something lighter, sweeter, a little work, lessâ¨work for the composer but also less work for the listener, who doesn't have toâ¨grapple with the vast scale, the historical or moral complexities of grandâ¨opera or the musical subtleties of the great comic operas. I found Benatzky'sâ¨music irresistible enough to buy a copy of the record in the lobby.â¨â¨Here's the star comedian of the German stage, Uwe Kroger, singing the chansonâ¨of "Hocus-Pocus,"(ph) in which his interference is about to change the hero'sâ¨luck from bad to worse before the happy ending.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Hocus-Pocus")â¨â¨Mr. UWE KROGER: (Singing in German)â¨â¨SCHWARTZ: In Europe, operetta is still a national tradition: Offenbach inâ¨France, Gilbert & Sullivan in England, Johann Strauss in Germany and Austria.â¨In this country, it was a major source of American musical comedy and had aâ¨brief revival in the film musicals of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Butâ¨now it's virtually extinct. By the 1920s, Broadway musicals were rebellingâ¨against the excessive sweetness of operetta, not only the corny, Ruritanianâ¨plots, but all the waltzes and marches. After the heyday of Victor Herbert,â¨Americans wanted something literally jazzier, more syncopated. Enter Irvingâ¨Berlin, Rodgers & Hart and Cole Porter, who changed the landscape.â¨â¨But maybe it's time to look back. The record label indispensable to lovers ofâ¨musical comedy, DRG, has been re-releasing some wonderful 50-year-old Deccaâ¨and Columbia operetta recordings, titles that in themselves recall a bygoneâ¨era of almost silent movie naivety: "The Desert Song," "The Student Prince,"â¨"The Merry Widow," "Babes in Toyland." There's an art to singing this kind ofâ¨music. It can be impossibly arch and cloying if it's condescended to. Here'sâ¨the great Wagnerian tenor Lauritz Melchior taking seriously the famousâ¨drinking song from Sigmund Romberg's "The Student Prince."â¨â¨(Soundbite of "The Student Prince")â¨â¨Mr. LAURITZ MELCHIOR: (Singing) Drink, drink, drink, oh, ...(unintelligible)â¨the stars are just shining on me. Drink, drink, drink, oh, lips that are redâ¨and sweeter than fruit on the tree. Here's a hope that those bright eyes willâ¨shine lovingly, longingly soon into mine. May those lips that are red andâ¨sweet tonight with joy my own lips meet.â¨â¨Group: (Singing) Drink, drink ...(unintelligible) stars.â¨â¨SCHWARTZ: You may remember Kitty Carlisle from the TV game show "To Tell theâ¨Truth" or as the love interest in the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera."â¨She was a lovely singer. Here she is in one of the most enchanting songs inâ¨any operetta, "Vilja" from Franz Lehar's "The Merry Widow."â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Vilja")â¨â¨Ms. KITTY CARLISLE: (Singing) Vilja, oh, Vilja, my love and my brideâ¨(unintelligible).â¨â¨SCHWARTZ: I don't know if operetta will ever really catch on again, but it'sâ¨an appealing oasis from serious thinking and a happy reminder of a time whenâ¨it was still possible to have an illusion of innocence.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix.â¨â¨(Credits)â¨â¨BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)