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Terry Gilliam - A Biography by Michael Palin

Michael Palin wrote this biography of Terry Gilliam for the Brazil presskit. It has never been reprinted anywhere until now

TERRY GILLIAM - A BIOGRAPHY

BY MICHAEL PALIN

TERRY GILLIAM, the shy diminutive genius of the British film industry, is, in fact, an Englishman inside an American body. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and New York, he came over to England in the mid ’60s on a very cheap flight, but, thanks to films like “Jabberwocky” and “Time Bandits” and his new epic “Brazil” he has now well over half the money for the fare back.

Despite this new affluence Gilliam has decided to make his home in England — “It’s so much cheaper than getting builders to make it,” he jokes. On arrival in England Gilliam was found to be insane and sent to join the Monty Python team — a unit set up by the BBC to deal with those who were too silly to find normal work. Gilliam was the animator of the group, and was occasionally given major acting roles, such as the now legendary Man in Suit of Armour with Dead Chicken. “It was either Marlon Brando or Terry Gilliam for the part,” remembers one of the Pythons, “but everyone was using Brando.” But it was Gilliam’s cartoons with their Wittgensteinian overtones that captivated the British public and led to Terry being allowed to park his car in the BBC car park, if there was space.

But for restless, ambitious Gilliam mere glory was not enough. “I want to be able to afford the best shampoo in the world,” he was once heard to say and it was almost inevitable that in 1976 he would become the first of the Monty Python team to make his own film. It was called “Jabberwocky.” The film became a cult success in Gilliam’s house and after “The Life of Brian,” in which Terry extended his acting range, he collaborated with nice, talented Michael Palin on the screenplay for “Time Bandits.”

The film was so good and exciting that if Gilliam had been British he would probably have been offered a knighthood. As it was, he was ignored. “I directed ‘Time Bandits’!” he would shout, but bus after bus would go past. So he was forced to undergo further treatment with the Python team. The result was “The Meaning of Life” — a marvelous film (in color).

But success in itself was no longer an attraction to the constantly, vibrantly inventive brain part of Gilliam’s head. He wanted power. A chance meeting with Arnon Milchan at a Meet Arnon Milchan evening in London led to a friendship which led to Gilliam being given the chance to make what he’s always wanted… really big explosions.

“Brazil,” as the result was eventually known, is the first film to have a country named after it. It’s bound to arouse strong feelings. But Gilliam is no stranger to controversy — he once took a melon back to a shop — and in his characteristic way he’s ready for anything.

On the front door of his castle in London hangs a simple motto “You don’t have to be mad to work here — but it herps.” Even spelt wrong, there’s no getting away from the wit, wonder and wizardry of the man Cahiers du Cinema once described as Terry Gilliam.

My excellent cockney accent

Letter to the Daily Mail, 15th July 1982:

The real thing!

In her TV review of Twentieth Century Box, Mary Kenny reaches the conclusion ‘as in My Fair Lady’ that my excellent cockney accent ‘just can’t be real’.

Mary thinks I either learned it from a ‘Teach Yourself Cockney’ cassette or else I am Hungarian.

Quite obviously Mary grew up in a quaint little Oirish village where she gathered her stereotypes from stiff British black and white films wherein the maid would whine about ‘toffs’, exclaim ‘cor bloomin’ and never dare get involved in this ‘ere new fangled television lark’.

Sorry to spoil the joke gal, but colourful Baker was born in Deptford and has lived for the past 24 years in the well known Hungarian hamlet of Bermondsey, SE16. He never attended university, nor RADA nor even the fiendish Loveaduck School of Ethnic Linguistics, Budapest.

He does, however, enjoy eels and mash (for which he is learning to use cutlery).

Consider yourself one of us, Mary!

DANNY BAKER,

London, W.

Oh No, It’s The Neighbours!

From page 29 of the Evening Standard, 22nd November 1990:

Dramatis Personified

The thespian’s lot is not a happy one-or so Nicholas Craig would have you believe. His creator Nigel Planer talks to FRANCIS WHEEN about the agonies and the agonising of the actor

NICHOLAS Craig is an actor, with the emphasis strongly on the second syllable. Whatever part he is rendering – Lord Foppishness in School for Fops, or (on all fours) Towzha in Hovel’s brilliant satire Dogs of Tblonsk at the Cottesloe Theatre, or even the punk rock son Gob in the TV sitcom Oh No, It’s The Neighbours! – this disciple of Thepis takes his craft seriously.

“The actor,” he once wrote, “must know what it’s like to be everything from a Mongol Emperor to an Elderly Passer-by, he must know how the Frenchman feels when the alarm clock goes off, he must know how the alarm clock feels, he must experience the pain of the carrot on the chopping board, or how is he to tell the Truth?” In a new television series starting tonight, Nicholas Craig – The Naked Actor (BBC2, 10.10), Craig aims to share that truth, and indeed that pain, with us.

Nigel Planer, the man who begat Nicholas Craig, is also an actor. Though many people still think of him merely as Neil, the Hippy from The Young Ones, he has been quietly extending his repertoire in the past two couple of years – a leading role in Dennis Potter’s Blackeyes, for instance, and a part as a pregnant man in Emma Tennant’s recent television drama Frankenstein’s Baby. Now he is treading the boards at the Globe Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, in Alan Ayckbourn’s Man of the Moment which has just been named Comedy of the Year in the Evening Standard Drama Awards.

In the awards game, however, poor Planer still hasn’t caught up with his alter ego Craig, who won “Best Actor in a Hitherto Unperformed Late-Jacobean Tragedy” for his performance as Truepate in The Cuckolde of Leicester a few years ago – though he modestly dismissed the trophy as an invidious gewgaw.

“Art is not competitive,” Craig nobly pointed out at the time. “There should be no prizes. So, to see it engraved on a bronze statuette that one is a better actor than Jeremy Irons (it doesn’t actually say that, but that, effectively, is what it means), is simply embarrassing for both of us.

“It’s absurd. I’ve seen Jeremy be bloody good in some shows. I’m sure we all have.” For the benefit of other thesps who find themselves in this position, he has devoted a whole episode of his new series to Awards Technique – with particular reference to the acceptance speech, including obligatory mentions of one’s agent, the rainforests, the Rose Theatre and VAT on theatre seats.

The character of Nicholas Craig was conceived four years ago by Planer and the playwright Christopher Douglas. His first public appearance was the book, I, An Actor (1988), a brilliant satire on dramatic affectations, which – much to Planer’s delight – was taken seriously by at least one reader. “It could almost be a send-up of a theatrical autobiography,” a baffled reviewer wrote in the Yorkshire Post. The verdict in the trade journal, The Stage, was blunter: “Ha, bloody ha.”

Craig’s television debut was an “Interview Masterclass” on the Late Show last year in which – using clips from Wogan – he coached his fellow actors in Chat-Show Skills. (Which uproarious anecdotes about Johnny Gielgud should one tell? Are blue blazer and Garrick Club ties de rigueur, even for actresses?)

The new series follows this model. Tonight’s episode, on “Actorship”, has a glorious montage of chat-show veterans – Anthony Sher, Maureen Lipman, Anthony Andrews, Jane Asher, Peter Barkworth – all furrowing their brows and telling us what sheer bloody agonies they endure for their art. Like a stuck record, a grim-faced Anna Massey turns up every so often to repeat that acting is “torture”.

Meeting Nigel Planer in a Soho café last week, I was disconcerted to discover that he sometimes slips into the sort of portentous talk that is mocked in the Nicholas Craig programmes. “We are talking about levity and giving gravity,” he said with a frown when I asked about the new series – though he did then add “it’s bloody funny as well”, which it certainly is. The same thing happened when I asked Planer whether, as an actor, he might find himself turning into Nicholas Craig. No, he said, because he already is Nicholas Craig in many ways. “His attitudes, the way his mind works, are very much an exorcism of one’s own way of thinking.” Heavy, as Neil the Hippy might say. But then came the deflating coda again. “It’s a funny old business,” he mused. It sure is. Whereas Nicholas Craig’s TV series may look like a pretty sharp put-down of grease-painted luvvies and darlings, Nigel Planer seems desperate to assure is that it is all done with tremendous respect. “It’s not the backbiting jealousy that passes for satire these days. There’s a lot of crap that’s just bitching at each other, slagging each other off. I’m too soppy for that.”

Oh yeah? What about the review of Kenneth Branagh’s autobiography which Planer – in his Nicholas Craig persona – wrote for The Sunday Correspondent? It seems that Planer was guilt-stricken immediately afterwards. I had to leave a message on Branagh’s answering machine, saying I’m sorry. He rang back and said don’t worry.” Besides, Planer added, although he had been willing to criticise the Branagh book, “I wouldn’t attack his film of Henry V.” Soppy is the word.

The Naked Actor, then is wholesome entertainment, with no slagging or bitching, but with plenty of useful and indeed nourishing hints on theatrical moustaches, vintage cars (essential in TV drama) and the use of waistcoats as props. Back to Nicholas Craig for a final, and typically modest, comment: “I hope viewers have as much fun watching The Naked Actor as I had making it. It really is much too early for all this premature prattle about nominations and awards and so on. The Naked Actor is just a simple statement about actors, for actors, by an actor.” The Golden Rose of Montreux may soon join The Cuckolde of Leicester trophy on his mantelpiece.