Making a film is about belief and momentum, says Terry Gilliam. Photograph: Linda Nylind
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that a law exists, etched in stone in some dusty Hollywood courthouse, decreeing that if tragedy or disaster is to strike somewhere - anywhere - in the world of film-making, its repercussions must extend to Terry Gilliam.
Heath Ledger was in the middle of shooting the latest Gilliam film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (summarised here), when he passed away last week.
Ledger wasn’t the film’s lead but the role was important and his involvement, according to Variety, was a “key factor in raising the finance”, which when you consider Gilliam’s track record was the not-inconsiderable sum of $30m. Production got under way in London last month and bluescreen work was due to commence in Vancouver next week and go on till March. That has now been postponed indefinitely, reports say.
It had to be Gilliam, didn’t it? He’s the film-making equivalent of Unlucky Alf from The Fast Show, soldiering on as project after project collapses on his head. Not all of them have been jinxed of course. The Fisher King was nominated for five Oscars. Twelve Monkeys and The Brothers Grimm, which also starred Ledger, fared well at the box office. But The Onion didn’t run the headline Terry Gilliam Barbeque Plagued by Production Delays for nothing.
The marvellous Brazil was caught in the crossfire between Gilliam and Universal, who in their wisdom felt it would work better with a happy ending. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen went magnificently over budget, doubling its spend from $23m to $46m and recouping only $8m at the box office. Time Bandits 2 stalled because a number of the actors from the original Time Bandits had died. Planned adaptations of A Tale of Two Cities and Watchmen never saw daylight either, owing to a rich variety of problems.
The biggest catastrophe, by some margin, was The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, certainly one of the most intriguing movies never made. All that remains is the documentary Lost in La Mancha, which records how Spanish military aircraft kept flying overhead at critical moments, and how poor Jean Rochefort, who’d spent seven months learning English in order to play the Don, developed a double hernia after a few days on horseback and had to return to Paris. They even experienced flash floods - presumably the frogs and locusts were on their way but the film folded soon after Rochefort’s departure.
Now it looks like Doctor Parnassus is heading in the same direction - and it’s a crying shame. Gilliam’s a fine director when he negotiates a balance between studio interference (victim: The Brothers Grimm) and the extremes of his own imagination (victim: Tideland). The current project does - did? - sound a little on the zany side, as the title hints, but the script is by Charles McKeown, who wrote Brazil, and the cast looked great, with Christopher Plummer in the titular role. And Tom Waits as the devil! What more do you need?
Gilliam must have broken a job lot of mirrors at some point early in his career, but let’s pray that the effects will wear off soon. In the meantime, can you think of a less fortunate film-maker?
Source: Why is Terry Gilliam cursed with bad luck?
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