THE TEDDY ROOSEVELT OF MT. NERDMORE

I, of course, mean the title as a compliment. Being a nerd, it pleases me that my people have joined the mainstream culturally, as our unabashed, unironic enthusiasm for the often uncool is by no means a negative character trait. Like what you like, I say. Except juggalos and furries: you can all go fuck yourselves.

Terry Gilliam, though, has never and will never go mainstream. Otherness has followed him his whole life. Chased out of the US by police harassment for being a longhair before long hair was cool, Terry Gilliam settled in the UK, where he became a citizen (after holding dual citizenship for decades, he renounced his US citizenship as a protest against George W. Bush). He then, legendarily, became the only non-UK native in Monty Python (Welsh-born Terry Jones being the only other non-Englishman), about which wink wink say no more.

As the non-performing Python (he'd do bit parts, mainly stuff the others didn't want to), Terry Gilliam was responsible for the absolutely fucking daft animation that became one of the show's defining traits, as well as directing; he co-directed the first Python movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with Terry Jones. He first went solo with 1977s Jabberwocky (which featured Michael Palin though was not a Python movie), which launched a succession of visually dazzling, utterly insane pictures, full to the brim with subversive content and wearing their disregard for commercial convention—and even, occasionally, the audience—as a badge of honor.

Inevitably, such a singular artist, especially one who once said, “I'm a better cartoonist than I am a bomb maker. That's why so much of the US is still standing,” ran into trouble with movie studios, most famously on Brazil, of which approximately 90 different versions exist. High profile commercial disasters (Baron Munchausen cost $46 million and grossed 8) and a complete absence of ass-kissing or any desire to conform have made it a constant struggle for Gilliam to get movies made.

This has led to more than a few of the greatest “what ifs” in recent cinema history: Gilliam tried twice to get an adaptation of Watchmen off the ground, unsuccessfully; Zack Snyder's glitzy but shallow version so many years later invites speculation as to how Gilliam's take would have looked, though arguably Snyder's Watchmen, for all its foibles, was more faithful to the source material than Gilliam's would have been. Later, though, in an even more wistful “what if,” Warner Bros rejected Gilliam's active and passionate campaign to direct the first Harry Potter movie. While it's possible to split hairs about whether Gilliam's aggressively unique visual style and two middle finger “I'm an auteur, back away now or taste my wrath” method of dealing with studio exec evil white guy in suit types would have been an asset or a debit to Watchmen, there can be no argument whatsoever that Terry Gilliam would have made a better Harry Potter movie than Chris Columbus. The facts:

Terry Gilliam—Nonpareil visual stylist, director of Time Bandits and Baron Munchausen (fuck the grosses, Baron Munchausen is fucking tight), as effective a bipartite demonstration of an understanding of children's fantasy as any filmmaker can make; able to both make a picture that would enthrall kids and imbue the first picture with the darkness that the series had begun to explore at the time they were putting the first movie together.

Chris Columbus—Cunt.

Reversals like the ones Gilliam suffered on Watchmen, Harry Potter, and the Job-like struggles he had on his Don Quixote picture make it hard, at times, for me to watch a lot of his pictures. As much as I'd like to watch the movies and not worry about the tsuris involved in their production, I'm too emotionally invested in Terry Gilliam to be able to separate them. When I was a little kid and still in my “the actors make it all up as they go along, don't they?” phase in my education as a cineaste, I could name three movie directors: Steven Spielberg (the most famous and successful at the time), Martin Scorsese (one of the most critically acclaimed), and Terry Gilliam. Why Terry Gilliam? Time Bandits.

I could, if I so chose, go picture by picture through Terry Gilliam's whole career and explain why each one—even the ones I don't like—are awesome. But rather than go overboard and make the same points a dozen or so times, I'm going to stick with the one I know best, have seen the most times, and have lived with the longest.

Time Bandits opens in a way that really makes the Harry Potter thing sting, since its protagonist is an 11-year-old English boy, Kevin, whose suburban parents are materialist dipshits who ignore him and yell at him to not make any noise. Left to himself, Kevin reads constantly, with a focus on history. One night, after a weird dream involving a knight charging through his bedroom wall the previous night, a cantankerous sextet of midgets (dwarves? Let's stick with “midgets,” since it's inaccurate, politically incorrect, and I like the sound of the word more) materializes in Kevin's closet. Possessing a map of all of space and time, which they've stolen from their boss, the Supreme Being, the midgets are searching for “The Most Fabulous Object In The World.” Kevin is still processing the arrival of his bizarre houseguests when the Supreme Being shows up and the midgets, terrified, find an exit through Kevin's bedroom wall.

Their ensuing journey introduces Kevin and chattering, larcenous entourage to such luminaries as Napoleon (played as a shitfaced neurotic obsessed with people shorter than him by Ian Holm; needless to say, after our heroes sing “Me and My Shadow,” Monsieur Bonaparte wants to hang the fuck out) and Robin Hood (John Cleese in full-on “I'm John Cleese, old chap, pity you aren't as well, it's rather a lark” mode, with the best line in not only the movie but the universe: “The poor are going to be absolutely thrilled. Have you met them at all? . . . Oh, you must meet them. I'm sure you'd like them. Of course they haven't got two pennies to rub together, but that's because they're poor!”)

Our diminutive protagonists rob Napoleon blind only to have Robin Hood nationalize their shit (“Oh yes, and believe you me, the poor are going to be, well, not just absolutely thrilled, but also considerably less poor, aren't they, Redgrave?”) Kevin, thoroughly fucked off at being the most sensible (and tallest), strikes out on his own and ends up inadvertently saving the life of King Agamemnon (Sean Connery):

Sean Connery: “Where didzhyou come from?”
Kevin: “I'm not really sure.”
Sean Connery: “Who shent you? The godsh? Wazh it Zeush? Apollo? Athena?”
Kevin is silent
Sean Connery: “Well, you're shertainly a chatty fellow, aren'tshoo?”

Sean Connery takes Kevin to live with him as his son, and Kevin, keen on the Greeks as he is, is happier than he's ever been in his life. He even survives a minor palace intrigue before his midget comrades return and steal him away into the recesses of space-time once more.

Kevin, pissed, finds himself on the Titanic with his reluctant cohort, and once the boat, of course, sinks, the villain (named, simply, Evil) springs a trap and lures our protagonists to his Fortress of Ultimate Darkness, where they navigate a series of deadly obstacles to confront Evil, and discover that there's no such thing as The Most Fabulous Object in the World.

*dispassionately watches the concept of materialism writhe around on the ground after that steel-toed kick to the nuts*

Eventually, the Supreme Being intervenes to save the day, kill Evil, and raise the dead. The way Ralph Richardson plays the Supreme Being is absolutely perfect—what is God if not old, white, male, English, drunk, and kind of a dick? And wearing a suit, no less . . . I'm just saying. I'm just saying.

So after the Almighty Ralph Richardson has the midgets clean up all the “concentrated evil” and whisks them back off to work on shrubberies, Kevin finds one last chunk, which emanates thick black smoke . . . and suddenly, Kevin is being rescued by firemen, back in good ol' modern-day England. Turns out it was all a dream . . . or so it seems, until Kevin finds photos of his adventures in his satchel, sees a fireman who looks like Sean Connery, and mum and dad find a chunk of concentrated evil in the toaster oven. Kevin warns them not to touch it, but they don't listen, and they explode. The only thing saving that from being one fucktastic bummer of an ending is George Harrison's awesome song over the closing credits:

Sláinte, George.

Of course, a Terry Gilliam picture is far more than its story. The visuals defy description, so rather than describe them and fuck up, let's watch the (kind of Python-y) trailer:

One of the reasons why, all sentimental attachment aside, Time Bandits is still my favorite Terry Gilliam picture—yes, even over Brazil; no, it doesn't mean I love Brazil any less—is that he didn't have any money. This means that his visuals, which always look kinda low budget even when he has $40-50 million to play with, take on a charming, handmade quality (even though Handmade Films, which produced Time Bandits, was George Harrison's company, it was the perfect name for a Terry Gilliam picture).

That visual sense of the personal, that one guy actually made all this stuff out of shit he found in his garage, is my favorite thing about the look of Terry Gilliam pictures. Formal perfection can often come across as cold and uninviting. The warmth conveyed by the low-budget, handmade look goes a long way to conquering the crankiness and the go fuck yourself that pervades Gilliam's work.

It's a shame that, after a career now entering its fifth decade, Terry Gilliam still has such a bitch of a time making a picture. Completely aside from his uncompromising vision and the troubles he has getting evil white guys in suits to give him money, this man has the worst fucking luck of any director ever. While most directors with more than a handful of pictures under their belt have the odd story about that one picture where something went wrong, Terry Gilliam seemingly cannot get through one shoot without the picture either flopping on a near unprecedented scale (Baron Munchausen), actors destroying their back (Jean Rochefort, Don Quixote) or dying (Heath Ledger, Dr. Parnassus), or a studio sprouting horns and chasing him through the editing room with a pitchfork (Brazil). From what I've heard, the smoothest process Gilliam has ever had was on Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, when a protracted dispute over screenwriting credit led to Gilliam resigning from the WGA in disgust.

Just once it'd be nice, for his sake, if Terry Gilliam could get through a nice, smooth picture, have everyone get along, no evil white guy nut flexing from the studio, and have the fuckin thing actually be good and turn a profit. It's like David Rapaport says about the nonexistent Most Fabulous Object In The World: “You just have to believe in it!” Too bad the proverbial harmonious Terry Gilliam process seems just as imaginary.