PLUME: Now that it has been revived, do you prefer the current incarnation to your original?

GILLIAM: Yeah…It’s much better. When I was working before with Charles McKeown, we never succeeded to my satisfaction – I mean, the book is so vast and extraordinary that you can’t capture it by trying to make an earnest copy of it. So by freeing it up and having this modern man – this modern man is really a result of the time I was working on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – by throwing a modern man back into the 17th century and forcing him to become the servant to this lunatic…it just allows me to do a lot more and say a lot more in a freer way – and, strangely enough, I actually think we’re true to Cervantes without slavishly copying it. I think the spirit is there – and the approach is a modern way of looking at Cervantes, with the same absurdities and the same sense of sacrifice and punishment and dreams… I think that’s what was done… We’ll find out when it’s finished whether it is. I don’t know.

PLUME: It’s a project that I’m excited about…

GILLIAM: It’s a weird one. We’ve got four weeks to go before starting shooting, and I’ve kind of lost the plot.

PLUME: What is your definition of “losing the plot”?

GILLIAM: Not knowing what it’s about anymore – that, or why we’re doing it… Or why I even wanted to do it.

PLUME: Is that standard procedure for you before starting a project?

GILLIAM: Yes. It always happens like this. It’s like, just before going on stage, suddenly realizing you’ve forgotten all the words. Anxiety is at its peak now, because there’s so many things that have to come together in four weeks’ time so we can start shooting – and there’s so many things that still aren’t together.

PLUME: When do you rediscover the plot? When you’re on the set filming?

GILLIAM: No, I think that’s when it’s even further lost. It’s totally instinctual by then. I think my approach is that I’ve imbued myself with it sufficiently that I’m living it and not thinking about it.

PLUME: So you become a feral director?

GILLIAM: Yes, pretty much so. You become this filter for what’s right and wrong. I’m dying for the actors to get there and start doing what they do, because I’m kind of bored with my version of it. They regenerate it… They bring new life to it. I mean, when you see the set – at this point, they’re just bits of plaster and wood and drawings… it’s when it all comes together that it’s like, “Ahhhh… now we’re getting somewhere.” And then you wait for the actors to come and do what they do, because they’re going to do it slightly different than I’m thinking – and that’s great.

PLUME: What’s your current comfort level? What do actors bring to your projects now?

GILLIAM: Oh, a lot. That’s what I love about it. They’re the element that makes it interesting now, for me, because the idea of having it all in your head and trying to just repeat that on film is boring. They come, and they bring different things to it. I enjoy that now, I don’t feel threatened by it. They are what is really making it. If they’re good people and they’re intelligent people, it becomes a totally collaborative thing where we all are making this thing together – and every idea that comes in changes it slightly or improves it or takes it down a slightly different road to. I guess my job is to still keep my hands enough on the steering wheel so that I stay on a main road.

PLUME: Continuing the comparison to animation, when you started out making films, you were almost doing it in a limited animation way – going from A to Z quickly… But now you have the confidence to do full animation – where you can have a little furl of a cape and such… A flourish…

GILLIAM: Yeah… It’s wonderful, because we can go down little roads that aren’t on the map – as long as we can get back on the main one occasionally.

PLUME: So what is your interest now, post-Quixote?

GILLIAM: Tony Grisoni and I are going to be doing Good Omens. I don’t know if you know the book…

PLUME: That is the one that was talked about possibly being in conjunction with you a few months ago, wasn’t it?

GILLIAM: Yeah… Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. There is a British company called Renaissance Films that is handing over some money to us to write it and hopefully make it after Quixote. It’s a good tale. The book, on the Web, seems to be, like, the 11th most talked-about sci-fi book out there… it’s not really sci-fi… it’s about the Antichrist…

PLUME: So you’re making another children’s tale…

GILLIAM: Well that’s it. Exactly. It’s the Angel from the Garden of Eden and the Serpent from the Garden of Eden – who have now, a thousand years later, grown soft on humanity. They’re like a couple of ambassadors to some banana republic, and they’ve been away from their home countries for a very long time and they’ve gone a bit native. Unfortunately, the Antichrist is delivered and the whole place is going to come to an end in a few days – and they don’t really want it to happen. So that’s what it’s all about.

PLUME: So it will make the perfect Terry Gilliam film…

GILLIAM: It’s got a lot of the elements – the same old elements.

PLUME: Is it surprising how all of these “fan favorites” keep finding their way to you?

GILLIAM: Yeah. I guess you become a magnet for certain things. I guess they decide that there’s nobody else out there that is quite on the same wavelength.

PLUME: Do you feel pigeonholed at all when people point out the Terry Gilliam style or call something “Gilliam-esque”?

GILLIAM: No, not at all, because I don’t know what it is or what it means. They may think they know what it means, but I don’t. I just do what I do. The fact that I deal with many of the same themes over and over again – yes, that’s true – but how do you compare Brazil to Fisher King? I don’t know. I don’t know what the style is that is identifiable between the two. I don’t know.

PLUME: Do you think it’s something that’s perceived by each individual just based around the name attached – by the fact of somebody calling something “Gilliam-esque”?

GILLIAM: It’s probably that. Maybe there is a sensitivity or an attitude towards life that they’re reacting to. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s nice to have those sort of adjectives floating around the language.

PLUME: At least people respect and love your work enough so that when some project comes up that they love, they really want to see you attached…

GILLIAM: I like the fact that at least it’s clear that there’s a signature there that means something to people. That it’s not just one more faceless film that comes out – that the machine spewed out.

PLUME: Or, worse yet, those poor individuals that – when they sign their names – it means crap…

GILLIAM: I know. I think that maybe they suspect that there’s an individual voice there – if nothing else.

PLUME: Just this disembodied voice making films…

GILLIAM: Yeah.

PLUME: So what is the future of Defective Detective? Wasn’t there some kind of call that went back and forth with you and Bruce Willis about that a little while back?

GILLIAM: It sort of comes and goes. It never quite gets itself together. Maybe it will never get made… maybe that’s the one that just never gets made, and it serves as a kind of quarry to keep stealing things from.

PLUME: It’ll be that lost script that somebody makes long after you’re gone…

GILLIAM: Yeah…

PLUME: “The way that Gilliam would have wanted it…”

GILLIAM: What I hope it isn’t Eyes Wide Shut – the film that shouldn’t have been finished. If only Stanley had died during the making of it, it would have been the unfinished masterpiece.

PLUME: And people could have gotten back to their lives a little bit sooner…

GILLIAM: And it might have been watchable…

Continued below…

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