Terry Gilliam Still Chasing After Windmills

During a recent visit to Los Angeles, director Terry Gilliam took the time to chat with LA Times “Hero Complex” main man Geoff Boucher. The beleaguered filmmaker (who turned 71 last week)  was in town for an American Cinematheque sponsored screening of Brazil and his latest project, the Italian-made short The Wholly Family.

Much like Orson Welles, Gilliam has spent a large portion of his career battling Hollywood execs and chasing after film financing. That remains the case today, with his decade-old project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote still languishing and likely never to be finished. But it is all by choice, thanks to a decision made decades ago in the San Fernando Valley:

“Look, the last proper job I had was [in the 1960s] at the Chevrolet assembly plant in Van Nuys. It was the night shift, and when I quit I said I would never work for money again. I believe in the things I make. The fact that God doesn’t want me to make them is beside the point.”

Boucher notes that Quixote almost got relaunched last year with Robert Duvall and Ewan McGregor. In the meantime, Gilliam–J.K. Rowling‘s original choice to direct the first Harry Potter film–keeps busy stacking stone walls on his property in Italy, directing opera in London and hoping for a late-stage breath of miracle wind.

[Photo: Lev Radin/Shutterstock.com]

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