Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
(Credit: Alamy)
Sun 6 October 2024 3:00, UK
It wasn’t a massive departure in the grand scheme of things, but after spending the first two decades of his career working almost exclusively in high fantasy and outlandish comedy, Terry Gilliam realised that it was time to freshen up his filmography.
After making his feature-length debut behind the camera co-directing Monty Python and the Holy Grail alongside fellow first-timer Terry Jones, Gilliam quickly gained attention as a striking visualist who blended the surreal with the absurd in heightened realities, which proved specific enough to run the risk of pigeonholing.
Jabberwocky, Time Bandits, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen all walked down that path, resulting in mixed fortunes. Each one of those movies has a legion of ardent supporters, but another recurring theme was box office disappointment. Of the four films, only Time Bandits recouped its budget in cinemas, with the latter losing a fortune after a dismal showing on the big screen.
This being Gilliam, there were also plenty of behind-the-scenes battles along the way, so a change of pace was needed, and The Fisher King provided it. Admittedly, there were both fantastical and comedic elements to the story, but it was a world removed from the majority of his previous credits.
The results can’t be argued with, either, after the New York City fable became the highest-grossing movie of Gilliam’s directorial career, with Mercedes Ruehl’s Academy Award win for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ making it the first – and still only – entry in the auteur’s canon to have taken home an Oscar.
Robin Williams also made the ‘Best Actor’ shortlist for his performance as the mysterious Parry, a homeless man who changes the life of Jeff Bridges’ Jack Lucas when he enlists the help of the suicidal former shock jock in his quest to track down the Holy Grail.
It was a resounding victory for Gilliam on all fronts, but he has his suspicions over why he landed the gig in the first place. In an interview with The Playlist, it sounds as though the studio was adamant Williams was the only person they wanted to play the lead, and it was mutually beneficial for everyone that Gilliam had a pre-existing personal and professional relationship with the star.
“I think the real reason they hired me was that I was the bait to lure Robin in,” he conspiratorially suggested. “We just worked together on Munchausen. I was the honeytrap. That was easy. Robin was right there for the get-go. To me, then, the biggest thing was to make sure Robin and I didn’t float off into the ether there.”
The duo got along like a house on fire, but due to their similarly anarchic comic sensibilities, there was a danger they could end up losing sight of the story being told. Fortunately, that was where Bridges came in. “We just could wind each other up brilliantly and just get extremely silly,” Gilliam confessed. “Jeff was the anchor; that’s why Jeff was so important. He became the anchor to keep the whole film, Robin, myself grounded.”
Gilliam didn’t mind being used as bait to entice Williams to The Fisher King, and it was a strategy that made everybody a winner.
Related Topics
Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.