Terry Gilliam Talks Doctor Parnassus

1 month ago 14th Oct 10:21

In the dark days following the death of Heath Ledger, Terry Gilliam was grieving the loss of a close friend and couldn’t bring himself even to contemplate what would happen to the film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, that they had both been working on when the young Australian actor sadly passed on.

But with the help of his daughter, who serves as producer on the film the filmmaker, with the help of Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, completed the movie in remembrance of their friend.

- There must have been times when you thought that Doctor Parnassus would never be finished. Are you pleased with the final film?

It’s good. I’m delighted with it. Delighted that it actually works and delighted that we ended up making a good film and so we won’t leave Heath tied to a piece of shit at the end of his life.

- During those dreadful days after Heath’s death did you worry about the film?

It wasn’t like worrying; I just thought ‘it’s over.’ I was fatalistic about it, like ‘**** it, I don’t know what to do.’ And I didn’t seem to have the energy to want to do anything but I was surrounded by others who were determined that l carry on and make it happen.

And I’ve always said that making a film is like climbing a mountain like Everest - you have a good team around you so that when one falls the others stay together and lift the whole thing up and you get there and it was like that.

My daughter Amy just wouldn’t let go. Amy was a bully (laughs), that’s what she was. And Nicola Pecorini was the same and they said ‘this is ridiculous, we’re going to finish this film..’ And I said Amy ‘you don’t know what the **** you are talking about.  You are a novice at this game, I don’t see how to finish It.’

But then ideas started floating around and eventually we decided to do what we did. And also the money was running out. If we hadn’t pulled something out of the hat quickly it would have gone. And I suppose the rabbit was Johnny (Depp).

- Was that a call that you made?

I didn’t know what to do, I hadn’t a ****** clue but I spoke to Johnny and said ‘if we need you, will you be around?’ And he said ‘I’m there whatever you want.’ And I only found this out afterwards, but if Johnny hadn’t said ‘yes’, the money would have gone. I actually didn’t realise that at the time. I found out a lot in retrospect about was what going on, but at the time I was in my own little world.

- It’s amazing how well using the three actors works.

Seamless is the word that comes to mind.

- It’s almost like you could have come up with that idea in the beginning.

In the ‘post’ stage we got a rough cut of the film and the guy who was doing the ‘post’ sound saw it and he just assumed that it was meant to be like that, that it had been written that way. And that was the first time I was aware, ‘****, the thing works...!’ and then it was just a matter of tidying things up.

The fact that the guys, Colin, Jude and Johnny, pulled it off is what is extraordinary. There was no rehearsal, they just dove in. And that’s why I was calling friends of Heath to get involved, because that connection was there and they all did a brilliant job.

- Tell me about casting Tom Waits as the devil.

What a guy - he’s absolutely magnificent.

- He doesn’t do a lot of films. Did you have to use your powers of persuasion to get him on board?

No, it’s sillier than that. A Dutch animator friend of mine wanted to Tom to do the voice-over in this animation thing. I sent it to Tom and Tom wrote back and said ‘sorry, I don’t want to do this’.