PLUME: I was looking back through some of your old quotes, and in ’98 you said that you thought you maybe only had 15 years of good filmmaking left in you…

GILLIAM: Did I? (laughing)

PLUME: And if you made movies beyond that, you’d feel damn lucky…

GILLIAM: Oh Jesus! I’ve always been very prescient. (laughing)

PLUME: Now that we’re almost 10 years into that quote, do you still feel the same about your longevity as a filmmaker?

GILLIAM: Well, I don’t know. I keep looking – 65 this year, I don’t know how many years I’ve got left. How many films I’ve got in me, I don’t know anymore. That’s why I like the idea that I got two out in one year, sort of thinking I can do this every couple of years and get two films out.

PLUME: When you say “films in you,” is it the actual physical production process, or do you feel you’ll have ideas beyond that that maybe you won’t realize?

GILLIAM: I’m sure there’s a desk drawer full of ideas and some of them will never get fleshed out…

PLUME: Until you’re gone and your family has to make some quick cash…

GILLIAM: (laughing) Yeah, exactly! But I don’t know. I can’t tell. At this stage, finishing a couple of films and starting to promote, there’s one side that thinks “I’ve got to get back into doing something,” and there’s another side that says, “It’s time to take a break.” So I really don’t know. I have to be possessed by ideas before I’m going to make them into films. What I do know is that, in the instance of going from Grimm to Tideland and doing the Tideland rush, was kind of invigorating, because it was a bit like being a youngish filmmaker again. And that was just fun, because it was very distinctive, what we were doing. One day we had this set, and we had to shoot something the next day, and it’s after they’d cleaned up the place – and I just thought cleaning it up wasn’t going to be sufficient, so I thought that maybe they didn’t just clean it up, but they painted it as well. So the poor art department, overnight, had to paint the set white – including the furniture, and the floor, and the windows… Everything. It was fun doing that… Just having the ability to say, “Let’s do that!” and enough good people who would work hard enough to achieve it. So that was a great escape from Grimm, where you couldn’t move quickly like that. It was too complicated. You had to have everything planned in advance.

PLUME: Do you think the key, in future projects, is artificially creating that restrictive scenario?

GILLIAM: Well, they’ve always been like that. I haven’t had to do it artificially. I’ve luckily never had the money I’ve wanted to! It just happens that way. That’s the difference, because in Grimm we had to build these huge sets, and it was complicated to make things look easy. On Tideland, we didn’t have that – it was just four people in a real world.

PLUME: So would a Gilliam film with all of the money and time in the world ever be finished?

GILLIAM: Uhhhh, no. And it would probably be really bad, too. I’m saved from myself constantly by budgets.

PLUME: Now that you’ve got a couple more under your belt, which film do you think fully encapsulates what you’re capable of as a filmmaker?

GILLIAM: (laughing) Clearly none, since I’m such a monumental genius! Put them all together, and they still don’t even give a glimpse of what a genius I am! (laughing)

PLUME: And of course, it’s merely a reflection at a distance…

GILLIAM: These are merely Plato’s shadows on the cave wall!

PLUME: If only they could get within your mind, maybe for a moment they would experience the majesty!

GILLIAM: What’s interesting, though, is that my mind is really emptying out. I mean, it’s leaking all the time… Thoughts, memories… They’re all just leaking out.

PLUME: Well, I hope someone grabs a saucer…

GILLIAM: Yeah! Did you ever read One Hundred Years of Solitude?

PLUME: Yes…

GILLIAM: I’m thinking I should put names on things just so I can remember what they are!

PLUME: You know, in the middle ages you could have had a Mind Boy that would have followed you around and collected the leakage…

GILLIAM: Exactly! (laughing). I mean, Samuel Johnson had Boswell – I NEED A BOSWELL!

PLUME: I think you can put an ad on Craiglist to fill that…

GILLIAM: (laughing) It’s a strange one! Life gets stranger as you get older. It doesn’t get any less interesting. It gets a bit repetitive, but luckily there are surprises along the way.

PLUME: What was the last surprise that you had?

GILLIAM: Being shocked that I was looking at the fabrics that the women were wearing as they displayed their starving children on the news the other night, from Niger. Have you seen any of the footage of Niger and the famine there?

PLUME: Yes, I have…

GILLIAM: First of all, poverty – I thought – was supposed to be dusty and dirty and torn clothing…

PLUME: That’s the Geldof brand of poverty…

GILLIAM: Exactly! These women are beautiful, they’re clean, their clothes are absolutely fabulous, darling!

PLUME: This is coming from the guy who recently inhabited the mind of a doll-playing girl…

GILLIAM: I know! I actually had to write down in my little notebook that “I’m looking at the fabrics that these women are holding their starving children in, and saying, ‘That’s a beautiful pattern, there.'” I think that’s very sick, or the news is getting sick… I think that’s what it is. But it’s interesting that, to me, the most interesting image that I’ve seen in a long time is that these people are beautifully dressed, they’re clean, and their kids are dying. And that’s not the way it’s supposed to look.

PLUME: Well, when the network brings a designer with them to dress up the poverty…

GILLIAM: That’s it. I just blame the women. I think they’re spending all their money at the Laundromat, and these kids are starving because of that.

PLUME: That wouldn’t be the first time…

GILLIAM: The world does keep throwing up wonderful things, if only you can get through the news media. Television has become maya – the illusion of the world – and the world is something constantly surprising if you can get out there to see it.

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