Many forget just how important and vital a cinematic voice Terry Gilliam was during his peak years, especially when he was battling Universal for the final cut of his 1985 masterpiece, “Brazil.”
The last film that Gilliam directed was 2018’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” a film he was trying to make for more than two decades. It came and went without much excitement, although I thought it was his default best film since 1998’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
I don’t really think Gilliam has been particularly successful since ‘Fear and Loathing,’ with minor works such as “Tideland,” “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” “The Brothers Grimm” and “Zero Theorum” being major disappointments, but I still believe he has a great film left in him … if only he could get it greenlit.
Gilliam had hinted at retirement last year, mostly due to not longer being able to find funding for the films that he wanted to make. In a new interview, the 82-year-old filmmaker reveals that he is still trying to make two projects.
The first one is the already-mentioned film about God erasing humanity that he's teased for a few months now, co-written by Christopher Brett Bailey.
The second is “The Defective Detective.” Apparently Gilliam is now working with a producer ("who's done very well in LA") to recapture the rights to ‘Defective Detective’ .
“The Defective Detective” is about a washed-up cop having to go to a fairytale land in order to bring back a kidnapped girl. The project was co-written by Gilliam and Richard LaGravenese, right after they worked together on ‘Fisher King.’
This is one of the projects Gilliam has tried to make for a few decades now. Nick Nolte, Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis were once attached to the film, but it never left the ground. Gilliam had last mentioned that he’d love to see Matt Damon play lead role.
Bless Gilliam's rebellious heart. To even think of such an out-there premise like this one requires a filmmaker as oddly eccentric (and visionary) as him.
The director of such classics as "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Brazil," "12 Monkeys," and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" will surely be looking for European funding now, since American producers have basically given up on bank-rolling such risk-taking stories.