LFF - Terry Gilliam and Dave McKean reveal all

We catch up with the two directors to discuss their forthcoming films.

Nov  3 2005

Time Out caught up with two illustrators-turned-directors this week – Terry Gilliam, who is in town to promote his tenth full-length feature, 'The Brothers Grimm', and Dave McKean, who with 'MirrorMask' is publicising his first.

Gilliam gave a hugely entertaining Q&A as part of the Times Screen Talks, in which he talked about everything from a desire to be a magician to dodging the draft to frequent battles with the studios over his work.

Interspersed with clips from the likes of 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', '12 Monkeys' and 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' (a snippet of which made Gilliam somewhat hysterical), the director gave an insight into what it's like to work with the Weinstein's (not too good by all accounts) and shocked the audience by revealing that Tom Cruise came close to being cast as the lead in 'Brazil'.

Gilliam also talked about several projects that have been languishing in development hell, including his eagerly anticipated adaptation of Terry Pratchett's 'Good Omens'. He revealed that the film nearly went into production with Johnny Depp and Robin Williams in the leads some years ago, but fell through because of a $15million budget shortfall, and now looks as though it probably won't happen.

Regarding the seemingly cursed 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote' there was better news however. Gilliam said he was determined to make the film, 'If you are going to get involved in Don Quixote, you’ve got to finish it' he declared. Further he explained that producer Jeremy Thomas was currently trying to sort out the legal wrangle surrounding the script and that there should be some movement soon. At which point the audience burst into spontaneous applause.

As for McKean, whose 'MirrorMask' is a visually stunning assault on the senses (click here to read our Locarno and Edinburgh reviews of the film), the first-timer admitted it was harder to make a film with his co-collaborator Neil Gaiman than it was to write a book.

'We've never argued, and if we ever even slightly disagreed about something, we had a rule that if it was about the words then Neil would have final cut, and if it was the pictures, I would. But with the film I couldn't let Neil go off and write what he wanted because I had to make sure we could do it.'

In spite of the film's relatively small $4 million budget however, McKean realised much of what Gaiman wrote, and the result is the beautiful, disturbing and visually breathtaking account of a young girl's jounrey through a dark yet strangely familiar fantasy world.

It looks like the odd argument hasn't put the director off filmmaking either, with McKean spilling the beans about what he would like to do next.

'It's an expansion of a book that Neil and I did a while ago called 'Signal to Noise', he explained. 'I always liked the book but I didn't think we really tackled the subject. I've written the script and it's much, much broader and bigger than the original. It will have some strange, extravagant and bizarre sequences in it, but it will be a more adult drama.'

Our full interview with Dave McKean will appear online nearer the release of 'MirrorMask' in 2006, while Gilliam's 'The Brothers Grimm' is out on Friday and is reviewed here.

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