Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
I wanted to ask Gilliam about his major cultural influences, which were a blend of Mad magazine and the Bible. "Of course I've read the Bible!" he exclaimed. "In the 50s, the Bible was the most popular book in America! Everybody read the Bible compared to now, where no one reads it anymore.""When you grow up reading the Bible," he elaborates in Gilliamesque, "there's no question that you see it as your duty to change the world for the better. And I think that's why for all my frequent recourse to irony and/or sardonic sarcasm, my films have always been repositories for idealism both in terms of the process of making them and of the subject matter of the films themselves. Cynicism can often be a way of covering up one's own inability to do great deeds. I think that was what drew me to the British sense of humor, because the Brits had an almost patented response… They'd failed at an empire, but then they learned to accept failure and make fun of it."Grimms' Fairy Tales were also a huge influence on Gilliam, which he said were every bit as bowdlerized as the Old and New Testaments had been. "That what's interesting," he said, "we're sharing a culture that's grown out of those tales, and no one even realizes it."I worked in a post office, a butcher shop, a Chevy plant. The nightmarish production lines that showed up in a lot of Monty Python animations were inspired by that. –Terry Gilliam
Advertisement