Mark Lawson Talks to Terry Gilliam – 23 Jul 2006

Today’s recording opens with a Proms trailer, and a trailer for Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.

Then, Mark Lawson Talks to Terry Gilliam.

Gilliam is a fascinating character. So many of his films have been troubled in various ways, often becoming the subjects of equally interesting books (The books about Baron Munchausen and Brazil are both great) but I’ve enjoyed a lot of what he’s done.

I’m not overly keen on his haircut.

I must watch Time Bandits again. I did love that film so much. The script book was great too. When Sean Connery first appears as Agamemnon, the description said something like “GREEK WARRIOR removes his helmet revealing himself to be none other than Sean Connery (or another, cheaper actor)” I just found a script online, and that was changed in a later draft to “GREEK WARRIOR removes his helmet revealing himself to be none other than Sean Connery – who it turns out we can afford”.

Mark Lawson almost gets through the whole interview without dropping a clanger, but towards the end, when Gilliam is talking about having to walk away from The Man Who Killed Don Quixote Lawson compares him to Orson Welles. “Whereas Orson Welles, The Magnificent Ambersons, the studio interfered, he walked away from it and went and made sherry commercials and virtually never made another film […]” What is he talking about? Ambersons was only Welles’ second film. He might never have reached the heights of Citizen Kane again, but he was continuing to make films for decades, including some classics, like Touch of Evil.

Here’s someone else’s upload of the interview.

Media Centre Description: Interview with the former Monty Python star.

BBC Genome: BBC FOUR Monday 24 July 2006 00:15

After this, there’s a trailer for an Australia season.

Then, the start of Journeys Into the Ring of Fire. I’ve got a couple of episodes of this in full, coming later in 2006.