I was getting frustrated with America. It's interesting how as simple a thing as, like, letting your hair grow longer changed in the world in those days.
Terry GilliamInvariably, what I'm trying to do is more ambitious than the budget, but we manage to do it somehow.
Terry GilliamI never define depression, clinical or otherwise. It's the basis of most life, it seems to me, in the modern world. We're all depressed.
Terry GilliamThere was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn't want to go down that route.
Terry GilliamI just like the fact I can make a film which might give comfort to some people who think they are the only crazy person in the world and suddenly they see there are two crazy people in the world.
Terry GilliamThere are moments when television systems are young and haven't formed properly, and there's room for lots of original stuff. Then things become more and more top-heavy with executives who are trying to guarantee the success of things.
Terry GilliamI've given up asking questions. l merely float on a tsunami of acceptance of anything life throws at me ... and marvel stupidly.
Terry GilliamA lot of people seem to get carried away that something that's made out of paper mâché is going to be better than not. And I always thought the original King Kong, that terrible little puppet with its hair going in all directions, was far more magical than Peter Jackson's incredibly beautifully rendered King Kong. So there's something to be said for a more primitive version of things. I think it's because it makes the audience work a little bit more, because you've got to invest it with life and reality, so I like doing that.
Terry GilliamIt's hard for me to worry about the studios losing money. I'm not very sympathetic to their money problems, because they certainly haven't been sympathetic to mine.
Terry GilliamI find Hollywood gives these pat stories, and they're reassuring stories, and I don't really want to give people that. Hollywood does all that work. I'm offering, sometimes, an alternative to that. The answers aren't black-and-white. There may not even be answers in certain instances. The ground is not necessarily solid, either. So you've got to keep awake the whole time, even after the movie is over.
Terry GilliamI don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know.
Terry GilliamThe more money you have to work with, the more people you have to deal with that you probably don't want to be spending time dealing with.
Terry GilliamI do think so much of what I do is reactive to the way the world sees itself, or the way the world is being portrayed. I wanted to offer an alternative to that. Whether it is accepted or not is beside the point, but it's an alternative.
Terry GilliamI was an incredible Anglophile. I found people who shared the same sense of humor and attitude toward the world.
Terry GilliamWell, I really want to encourage a kind of fantasy, a kind of magic. I love the term magic realism, whoever invented it – I do actually like it because it says certain things. It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying 'That's the world.' And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things.
Terry Gilliam