AVC: Tideland centers on a bunch of themes that are common in your work, particularly psychosis and imagination, and how they help people deal with life. Do you have any idea where your original interest in those themes comes from?
TG: I don't know. Maybe I'm just trying to explain my reality and life and imagination and myself. I don't know. I never think about things like that. I'm not Woody Allen. I'm not interested in why or where my ideas come from. It's just there, and I use it. [Laughs.]
AVC: At the same time, there's a huge body of scholarship about you and your films. Do the theories interest you when someone else is spinning them?
TG: They need to explain it, so they do. So that's fine. I don't mind. [Laughs.] It's like I become a subject where they can work out some of their own problems. [Laughs.] I'm intrigued when I do read things, I'm actually surprised sometimes. "Oh, hello, I didn't think of things that way." But I really don't want to analyze it. I used to blame my parents for not abusing me as a child, because I thought, "How can I be a creative artist unless I was treated badly as a child?" I wasn't poor, I wasn't black, I wasn't blind, I wasn't anything. I said, "I don't have a chance in the creative world." [Laughs.]
AVC: In interviews, you've said that with The Brothers Grimm, you deliberately set out to make a commercial film.
TG: Well, it wasn't really a choice. It was a studio film. It was costly. So I was trying to work within those parameters. I don't know what makes a commercial film. Nobody knows. But you know if you do Tideland, it's less likely to be commercial. [Laughs.]
AVC: Did you personally do anything different to make it Brothers Grimm a commercial product?
TG: I didn't. It was just within the story that was being told, the situation wasn't pushing as many buttons. It wasn't going into dark, strange, and disturbing territory for people. Even though, I must admit, there are scenes in it that really get people worried. [Laughs.] On nerves. I will always try to do that. But with Grimm, I was dealing with fairy tales. A lot of people were saying, "Oh, some of those scenes are too dark. Little girls being swallowed by horses and disappearing." But that's what happens in fairy tales. It's a fairy-tale world. To even get stranger—because this is the 25th anniversary of Time Bandits, they've put out a special edition. Time Bandits and Tideland are like two bookends. They're both about childhood imagination. They're both about children with less-than-wonderful parents. There are many connections. I keep wondering whether the world has changed or whether I've changed, because one is obviously much jollier and fun, and the other is darker. Time Bandits, I would argue, is maybe for children, while Tideland is for adults. But maybe it's the same film.
AVC: Is it possible that the tonal differences between the films just come from 30 years of you growing up?
TG: Probably. I'm more cynical, darker, more despairing, more prone to depression. All those things are there. That's why I when I watch Tideland, I actually find it a joyous experience. I'm laughing all the time. And that's what's interesting. I actually tell people it's a better film for most people the second time. The first time can be very on the edge of your seat. "Where is this going?" People are very uncomfortable, worrying about where I'm going to take them. And I don't take them where they're worried about, so the second time, they relax and enjoy it much more. My wife said it was shocking because it was innocent. For the American screenings—they didn't add this for the press screenings, which bothers me—I've actually done an introduction that goes out with the film when it's in cinemas. Because I've been doing so many festivals this year, and doing a little introduction, and people said, "Oh, the introduction helped me get into the right frame of mind for the movie." So I've actually done an introduction for the film when it's released.
AVC: What do you say in that introduction?
TG: Well, it starts, "Hello, I'm Terry Gilliam. I have a confession to make: Many of you are not going to like this movie." [Laughs.] Then it goes on from there. But basically, what I'm saying is, "Try for the next couple of hours to forget your prejudice, fears, and preconceptions that you have developed as an adult. Try to become innocent again. See the world through a child's eyes, and don't be afraid to laugh."
AVC: You said earlier that you don't care what people come out of the movie thinking. Yet you feel the need to address people directly beforehand, and tell them how to approach it?
TG: I know. It's weird. It only came out of the fact that I've been doing so many festivals, and so many people said, "Oh, thank you for doing this." It actually also came out—the reason I thought of doing this was, several years ago, when M. Night Shyamalan made Unbreakable, he came to London for a screening, and I was sitting in the audience, and he said the one reason he was inspired to make the film was, he thought, "What would happen if my dad was Superman? As a kid, I was so impressed with my father, and I actually did think he was Superman. What would happen if he really was?" Now, that isn't what he put at the beginning of the film. He wrote a note. There's a crawl at the beginning of the film about comic books. And that sends you down the completely wrong path. But I watched that film thinking "What if my father was Superman?", and I really loved it because of that. And I knew so many other people who had seen the film, and they kept talking about comic books, and they missed the point. So I thought, "I don't like doing this, but let's do it. And we'll see what happens."
There are always some people who will say, "Well, I don't like people telling me how to watch the film." But because I don't think anybody's done this since Rod Serling and Hitchcock, I thought we would reintroduce an old favorite. [Laughs.]
AVC: When we spoke in 2003, you were in the process of trying to get back the rights to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and you thought it was just about to happen. Three years later, not much progress seems to have been made. What's the latest?
TG: It's just about to happen! [Laughs.] It looks like we've actually got it this time. I know I'm the boy who cried wolf, but apparently a deal has been done, and we're waiting for the lawyers to do the fine print. Jeremy Thomas, who produced Tideland, seems to have pulled this thing off. But again, the other side of me isn't going to even think about it until the thing is my hands, and I know we own it.
AVC: Why did you renounce your American citizenship earlier this year?
TG: I thought I'd just simplify my life. I'm getting old. I'm gonna die. I'm not at all happy with what America has been in the last 10 years. [Laughs.] The reality is, when I kick the bucket, American tax authorities assess everything I own in the world—everything I own is outside of America—and then tax me on it, and that would mean my wife would probably have to sell our house to pay the taxes. I didn't think that was fair on my wife and children.
AVC: Isn't it a little early to be thinking about dying?
TG: No, I've thought about dying ever since I was a kid. It's almost a daily occurrence. [Laughs.]
AVC: Maybe that explains why your films are grim.
TG: I suppose that's why I'm not frightened about death, I'm actually bored by it. [Laughs.]
AVC: For about five minutes, the IMDB had you pegged as directing the next Harry Potter film. You've spoken in the past about how angry you were to not have been chosen to direct the first one—
TG: Well, no. That's the wrong word, angry. I wasn't angry at all. Not in the least. It was just a factual thing. There was no way they were ever going to hire me. J.K. Rowling wanted me, the producer did, and they sent me out to L.A., but I actually went out there because it got me a free trip to deal with some lawyers on Don Quixote. There was no way I was ever going to make the film. I knew that. It shouldn't be seen that I was angry about it. It's just an acceptance of the reality of Hollywood.
AVC: You've described yourself as storming out of your home when you found out, and driving around town all night—
TG: Oh, no, that's different. I was angry at myself for allowing myself to get intrigued by the possibility during the meeting at Warner Bros. As I was talking about it, I managed to get myself excited, and I started inventing wonderful things. I was seeing all these executives' faces brighten up, and I managed to get myself excited about the project. I was so angry at myself for fooling me into getting excited about it. That's what I was angry at, not about Hollywood. [Laughs.]
AVC: If they asked you to do one of those films, would you?
TG: No. It's a factory job, is what it is. I don't like that. It's a big operation the way they run it now, and it's so heavily controlled by the studio, considering the kind of work I want to do. But it doesn't stop people on the web fantasizing about me doing the last one.
AVC: Do you consider Good Omens your next project, or is there something else on the table?
TG: That's what I'm trying to get going. We haven't gotten that far. It's been a strange year, because I've been running around doing this Tideland thing, and the one thing I keep discovering about myself, I can't fully commit to anything until I've got the last child out and walking to school on its own. That's why I'm hoping in the next few days, it'll be the last time I have to talk about Tideland, and I can really fully focus my energies on Good Omens. We'll see what happens. It's again, an expensive project, and I don't know what my standing in Hollywood is. I was hoping to get the money before Tideland came out. [Laughs.]
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