Terrence Vance Gilliam is a British filmmaker, comedian, animator and actor. He gained stardom as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe alongside John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman. Together they collaborated on the sketch series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974) and the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life (1983). In 1988, they received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema.
Brazil is a 1985 sci-fi dystopian dark comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. The film stars Jonathan Pryce and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm.
Time Bandits is a 1981 British fantasy adventure film co-written, produced, and directed by Terry Gilliam. It stars Sean Connery, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Ralph Richardson, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Peter Vaughan and David Warner. The film tells the story of a young boy taken on an adventure through time with a band of thieves who plunder treasure from various points in history.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 adventure fantasy film, co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Robin Williams and Uma Thurman. An international co-production between the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, the film is based on the tall tales about the 18th-century German nobleman Baron Munchausen and his wartime exploits against the Ottoman Empire.
Man of La Mancha is a 1965 musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, and lyrics by Joe Darion. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes and his 17th-century novel Don Quixote. It tells the story of the "mad" knight Don Quixote as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. The work is not and does not pretend to be a faithful rendition of either Cervantes' life or Don Quixote. Wasserman complained repeatedly about people taking the work as a musical version of Don Quixote.
Lost in La Mancha is a 2002 documentary film about Terry Gilliam's first attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a film adaptation of the 1605/1615 novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. The documentary was shot in 2000 during pre-production and filming and it was intended as a "making-of" documentary for the film. However, Gilliam's failure to complete his film resulted in the documentary filmmakers retitling their work as Lost in la Mancha and releasing it independently.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a 1991 American documentary film about the production of Apocalypse Now, the 1979 Vietnam War epic directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Jabberwocky is a 1977 British fantasy comedy film co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam. Jabberwocky stars Michael Palin as Dennis, a cooper's apprentice, who is forced through clumsy, often slapstick misfortunes to hunt a terrible dragon after the death of his father. The film's title is taken from the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871).
In filmmaking, behind-the-scenes (BTS), also known as the making-of, the set, or on the set, is a type of documentary film that features the production of a film or television program. This is often referred to as the EPK video, due to its main usage as a promotional tool, either concurrent with theatrical release or as a bonus feature for the film's DVD or Blu-ray release.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a 2018 adventure-comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Tony Grisoni, loosely based on the 1605/1615 novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Gilliam tried to make the film many times over 29 years, which made it an infamous example of development hell.
Don Quixote, fully El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, is a classic novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615.
Burden of Dreams is a 1982 documentary film directed by Les Blank.
I, Don Quixote is a non-musical play written for television and directed by Karl Genus. It was broadcast in season 3 of the CBS anthology series DuPont Show of the Month on the evening of November 9, 1959. Written by Dale Wasserman, the play was converted by him ca. 1964 into the libretto for the stage musical Man of La Mancha, with songs by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion. After a tryout at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, Man of La Mancha opened in New York on November 22, 1965, at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre.
Man of La Mancha is a 1972 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman, with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion. The musical was suggested by the classic novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, but more directly based on Wasserman's 1959 non-musical television play I, Don Quixote, which combines a semi-fictional episode from the life of Cervantes with scenes from his novel.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a 2009 fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Charles McKeown. The film follows a travelling theatre troupe whose leader, having made a bet with the Devil, takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations and present them with a choice between self-fulfilling enlightenment or gratifying ignorance.
Tony Grisoni is a British screenwriter. He lives in London. His first feature film, Queen of Hearts, directed by Jon Amiel, won the Grand Prix at the 1990 Festival du Film de Paris.
The Zero Theorem is a 2013 science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Christoph Waltz, David Thewlis, Mélanie Thierry and Lucas Hedges. Written by Pat Rushin, the story is about Qohen Leth (Waltz), a reclusive computer genius tasked with solving a formula that will determine whether life holds meaning. The film began production in October 2012.
During his long career, American-born British film director Terry Gilliam has worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these productions fell into development hell or were cancelled. The following is a list of projects in roughly chronological order.
The Ghost of Peter Sellers is a 2018 documentary film directed by Peter Medak and produced by Paul Iacovou. A cautionary tale about filmmaking, it recounts the sequence of how Peter Sellers, one of the biggest comedy actors at the time, in 1973 was attached to a pirate-themed comedy film for Columbia Pictures entitled Ghost in the Noonday Sun. He lost confidence in the film immediately and tried to sabotage it, first firing the producers before turning on his friend, Peter Medak. Despite an illustrious career and the passing of 43 years since the unraveling of the production, Medak is still reeling from the disastrous experience and carrying the wounds inflicted by Sellers and the film's failure. The Ghost of Peter Sellers received its premiere at the 2018 Venice Film Festival as part of the Giornate Degli Autori section, and was premiered in the United States at the 2018 Telluride Film Festival.
