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DATE January 30, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A⨠TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A⨠NETWORK NPR⨠PROGRAM Fresh Airâ¨â¨Interview: Terry Gilliam talks about his dream of making a filmâ¨of "Don Quixote" and how the film eventually collapsedâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev in for Terry Gross.â¨â¨When Terry Gilliam first decided to adapt Cervantes' "Don Quixote" to theâ¨screen, he knew the project had a cursed history. Orson Welles had alsoâ¨attempted a film version of the novel, only to have his starring actor dieâ¨before the film could be completed. But the odds didn't daunt him. As aâ¨director, Gilliam has always pushed the limits of the possible. He startedâ¨out as an animator for "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and co-directed "Montyâ¨Python and the Holy Grail." In The New Yorker, Giles Smith writes that,â¨`Gilliam's work is characterized by a taste for outrageous fantasy, a contemptâ¨for conventional behavior, an interest in the curious affinities betweenâ¨people and reptiles and a distinct liking for dwarves, giants and men withâ¨shaved heads.'â¨â¨That's a fairly accurate description of Gilliam's movies, including "Brazil,"â¨"Time Bandits," "12 Monkeys," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "The Fisherâ¨King" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen," which is often cited as aâ¨classic example of a Hollywood fiasco. Its budget doubled during production,â¨and then the film flopped at the box office.â¨â¨"Brazil" and "Baron Munchhausen" earned Gilliam the reputation in Hollywood ofâ¨a visionary and a battler of windmills, so it seemed a perfect match thatâ¨Gilliam would take on "Don Quixote," until it all went wrong. How wrong?â¨That's the subject of the new documentary film, "Lost in La Mancha," producedâ¨by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, which charts the series of mishaps, acts ofâ¨God and outright disasters which plagued the production. Here's a clip. Thisâ¨is Gilliam musing about his passion for Don Quixote.â¨â¨(Soundbite from "Lost in La Mancha")â¨â¨Mr. TERRY GILLIAM (Filmmaker): Quixote struck me more powerfully when Iâ¨reached middle age, because that's what I thought Quixote was very much about.â¨He's an older man, he's been through life. It's kind of like a last hurrah.â¨He has one last chance to make the world as interesting as he dreams it to be,â¨you know. And I'll be 61 in another couple of months, just an old man who hasâ¨only done X number of films, and I should have done more with the amount ofâ¨ideas that are floating in my head.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Terry Gilliam, welcome to FRESH AIR.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Hi, there.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Could you take us back to the beginning of the story? When did theâ¨"Don Quixote" project begin, and was it a film you were always planning toâ¨make?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I think it was around 1990 when I decided it was time to try toâ¨deal with Quixote. Like most people, you know, I knew the story and had seenâ¨Peter O'Toole singing his heart out in the film of--What was it?--"The Man ofâ¨La Mancha," and Quixote had always been, I suppose, part of my personality, orâ¨madness, all my life, this pursuit of impossible things, and unhappiness withâ¨the banality of life and the need to try to make it more exotic and moreâ¨interesting.â¨â¨And so it was around 1990 I said, `It's time to do Quixote,' and I calledâ¨Jake Eberts, who had been the executive producer on "Baron Munchhausen," andâ¨said, `Jake, I got two names for you. I need $20 million.' And I said, `Oneâ¨name is Gilliam and the other is Quixote,' and he says, `Done.' And then I hadâ¨to sit down and read the book, because lazily, I had never bothered to readâ¨it. And the copy I had was an old, late 19th-century copy, so it weighedâ¨several tons, and it took me several weeks to get through it, and then Iâ¨realized how foolish I'd been thinking that I could make a film of this book,â¨because it's such an extraordinary, vast canvas. And nevertheless, I set out.â¨That was a long time ago.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Can you give us a sense, before we start talking about some of theâ¨things that went wrong, about how you envisioned the film visually. Tell usâ¨some of the visual elements, and how you were going to bring Don Quixote'sâ¨hallucinations, his dreams, to life.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: When I deal with fantasies, I tend to do them veryâ¨straightforward. I mean, I'm looking at the world through the eyes of theâ¨madman, so when you're doing that, you're not seeing things with sort ofâ¨strange colors around the edges and weird, out-of-focus stuff, you see it asâ¨real. So that's the way I tend to approach it, so when he sees windmills asâ¨giants, they're giants, and it's only when we step back and look at it fromâ¨somebody else's point of view that we realize what they are. So I try to dragâ¨the audience in, I suppose, to be Quixote, even though the audience isâ¨supposed to be following this other character. And, in fact, what happens inâ¨the story is that the other character begins to see the world like Quixoteâ¨does. So I've never dealt with fantasy other than what I thought was aâ¨totally naturalistic or realistic way.â¨â¨BOGAEV: So you worked on this film, "Quixote," for 10 years, and you wentâ¨through two producers; you tried to start the film twice, and this is allâ¨before the attempt portrayed in the "Lost in La Mancha" documentary. Butâ¨finally, you pulled together a production team, and these are people from allâ¨over Europe. At this point, you have no Hollywood backing--that's fallenâ¨through--and this whole...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No, to be accurate, it hadn't fallen through. We never askedâ¨for a penny from Hollywood. That was part of the job I was doing. I wasâ¨determined to show that we could make big, spectacular international filmsâ¨without any help from Hollywood in any possible way. In fact, that's one ofâ¨the most disappointing things about the film collapsing is that we failed inâ¨that attempt, because the current financial situation is such that that's notâ¨going to be possible in the future.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, let me correct myself. You pulled together a production teamâ¨from all over Europe. You had no Hollywood backing. And you all assembled inâ¨Madrid for pre-production. How did things go at that point? Forâ¨instance--and I'm thinking that many of the production staff didn't speak muchâ¨English. How much of a problem was that, just simple communication? Becauseâ¨you're struggling to communicate your ideas, your very personal, specificâ¨ideas with costumers and puppeteers and set designers. It can get veryâ¨complicated.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Not really, because there's an advantage. I mean, I draw, soâ¨that is the way one can communicate. Yeah, it isn't quite as efficient,â¨possibly, as if everybody spoke perfect English. In fact, the disturbingâ¨moments are when you--because people are speaking English, you're thinkingâ¨they're understanding everything you're saying. In fact, they're onlyâ¨understanding 90 percent of what you're saying, and that 10 percent canâ¨provide some interesting problems.â¨â¨But, no, that wasn't really the problem. You know, we can get around thoseâ¨things, you know? I may need to shout a bit louder, but I can always drawâ¨something or I do it physically. I grab something and say, `I should be thisâ¨way,' and bum-bum-bum.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, one problem you had--your star is Johnny Depp, who playedâ¨Sancho Panza, and the French actor Jean Rochefort, who plays Don Quixote--theyâ¨don't show up for pre-production costume fittings or rehearsal. In fact, Iâ¨think at one point in the film, it seems as if you can't get Johnny Depp onâ¨the phone at all.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Correct.â¨â¨BOGAEV: That must have been disconcerting. I mean, how worried were you?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No, I mean, there's no question--no, I'm not worried aboutâ¨Johnny and I wasn't worried about Jean, either, to be honest, I mean, becauseâ¨the one thing--having worked with Johnny, I know this is a guy who can turn upâ¨five minutes before you start shooting and it'll be amazing. He doesn't--thatâ¨doesn't worry me. It gets frustrating, because there's always things you wantâ¨to talk about, and you start tearing your hair out because you kind--andâ¨Johnny was busy doing the film "From Hell," and he was in Prague, so he wasâ¨under the gun because they were running late. And I was worried that heâ¨wasn't going to get there in time. And, in fact, he was so exhausted, he didâ¨take a week off before he finally got down there. But the fact is, he wasâ¨ready.â¨â¨But with Jean, because he'd--I don't know; he'd achieved a hernia about, Iâ¨think, a month before I started shooting, and the result of that was that itâ¨was starting to press on his prostate, and the prostate became infected. Andâ¨what was shocking is when he did turn up--'cause he did not get on a plane andâ¨then he got down there--was that I suddenly was dealing with a man that wasâ¨about 20 years older than I'd last seen him a month earlier. It was quite anâ¨experience, because he's 70 years old. He raises show jumping horses. Theâ¨man has never lost a day of shooting in his life. He's far more fit than Iâ¨would ever hope to be. And this nasty little organ became infected, and heâ¨literally went from what seemed like a 50-year-old man to a 90-year-old manâ¨almost overnight.â¨â¨BOGAEV: He did show up for filming. You began filming the movie, and theâ¨first day of shooting, the troubles seemed to begin. What went wrong rightâ¨from the start?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Well, there was a little problem about the extras not beingâ¨rehearsed in a particular fight sequence. That was the moment I went berserkâ¨because, again--what happ--here's--it's a problem in films, because especiallyâ¨on something like this, I was working with some people I hadn't worked withâ¨before, so you're relying on other people's knowledge of them. And there areâ¨always some people on the film that spend most of their time trying to impressâ¨the director by being incredibly charming, rather than going out and doing theâ¨hard graft work. And I stumbled on one of those people, unfortunately, andâ¨something hadn't been done. Rehearsal hadn't taken place. And we're out inâ¨the middle of this hot desert area with always a limited amount of time, andâ¨nobody's prepared themselves properly for that moment. And that was a hugeâ¨shock. I mean, I did go crazy 'cause it was something I didn't expect.â¨And I...â¨â¨BOGAEV: I think the words you used are, `You need to tell me if I'm going toâ¨be'--expletive deleted--`beforehand.'â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Beforehand. Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: `I need to know if I'm'...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: `If I am, I want to know in advance. That's all I ask.'â¨â¨BOGAEV: That's right.â¨â¨(Soundbite of laughter)â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: And that's--I mean, it's very funny, because I think theâ¨four-letter F-word I use more than, you know, a thousand times in theâ¨documentary. I think I was quite amazed at how limited my dialogue hadâ¨become.â¨â¨(Soundbite of laughter)â¨â¨BOGAEV: The second day of filming was the real disaster, though.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: And in the documentary, it looks as if a hurricane blew in while youâ¨were shooting on location in the Spanish desert. It really looks like a stormâ¨of biblical proportions.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No, it was. And...â¨â¨BOGAEV: What was it like on the set?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: It was like--well, I was exhilarated, frankly, because suddenly,â¨a lot of my concerns about our production problems and potential futureâ¨problems had all been taken away from me by this hand of this rather violentâ¨God. It was quite extraordinary the way it built, because it was a slowâ¨build, and we thought, `Oh, there are some clouds coming. Oh, there's aâ¨little problem.' And when it hit, it was literally like the beginning ofâ¨"Wizard of Oz." And, in fact, I'm running around trying to decide whether I'mâ¨in "The Wizard of Oz" or if I'm playing King Lear--in "The Tempest" in theâ¨storm.â¨â¨And it was quite extraordinary, because what, in fact, I did--we were underâ¨this marquee and all the equipment was there, all the people were there, and Iâ¨just walked out into the storm. I was so crazed at that point, howling, and Iâ¨found a large overhanging rock, which I crouched under as this storm startedâ¨building, and it got bigger and more spectacular. It was absolutely beautifulâ¨in its anger, I think. And little by little, I started watching water pouringâ¨down these mountainsides, which were dry, and suddenly there becameâ¨waterfalls. And then there was a rush of water, and then hailstones startedâ¨crashing down.â¨â¨And eventually, after about 45 minutes, it ended. And I had been under thisâ¨rock, looking away from the set. And I crawled out from under my rock andâ¨looked back, and there's nothing there. A sea of mud is all that's left.â¨â¨BOGAEV: It looked like flowing rivers, and they're carrying off yourâ¨equipment...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...in the flash flooding.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I mean, it literally was a flash flood. It was just takingâ¨everything away, and people--what was the funniest thing about it was Louâ¨and Keith, the documentary filmmakers, they had only one camera, and whatâ¨they did was run into their car, you know, protecting their camera. Theyâ¨weren't actually filming the stuff. It was--in fact, the stunt coordinatorâ¨with his digital camera, his own home camera, was filming this. Things--theyâ¨were in the car--you'll see it in the film--shot through a windscreen as theâ¨hailstones are descending, you know. It's them protecting their one piece ofâ¨equipment.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Terry Gilliam. The new documentary "Lost in La Mancha" chroniclesâ¨his attempt to adapt "Don Quixote" to the screen. We'll talk more after thisâ¨break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" theme music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: Back now with director and former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam.â¨His failed attempt to adapt "Don Quixote" to the screen is documented in theâ¨new film "Lost in La Mancha."â¨â¨You did regroup and began filming again, and I suppose this is when the mostâ¨ironic misfortune happened, something that truly elevates this "La Mancha"â¨story to a fiasco, and that's that your star, Jean Rochefort, fell ill and heâ¨couldn't ride a horse. Now we have a clip from the movie. It's from the dayâ¨of shooting that you realize Rochefort is too ill to ride. Let's listen. Andâ¨here, you've just filmed a take and noticed something is wrong, and you're onâ¨the set talking to your first director, Phil.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Lost in La Mancha")â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Cut! We're (censored). Did you see him sit...â¨â¨Mr. PHIL PATTERSON: Crazy...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Did you see him sit on the horse? The pain when he sat down?â¨â¨Mr. PATTERSON: (Censored) crazy? He can't (censored) connect. He can't doâ¨it.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah.â¨â¨Mr. PATTERSON: It ain't gonna happen.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I was watching his face very carefully when he got on theâ¨horse, and it was just--oh, (censored).â¨â¨Mr. PATTERSON: He can't ride like that, he certainly can't act like that andâ¨he certainly can't jiggle hand props with that, you know. Honestly, I want toâ¨go to the French and say I'm going to refuse to shoot with Jean Rochefort on aâ¨horse until he's medically fit.â¨â¨BOGAEV: That's a scene from the new documentary, "Lost in La Mancha" about myâ¨guest Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to adapt "Don Quixote" to the screen.â¨â¨So here you have a Don Quixote who can't ride a horse. Did you know at thatâ¨point just how physically impaired Rochefort was?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I think we did, because the irony was that when I had beenâ¨hunting for a Don Quixote who had to look a certain way, be a certain heightâ¨and a certain age, always the problem was that you could find an actor whoâ¨looked right but couldn't ride a horse. It was the one thing that Jean wasâ¨absolutely expert at. He's a brilliant horseman.â¨â¨So on that day, when he was on that horse and you realized--looked in his faceâ¨and you saw the pain he was in, we knew we were in trouble. I mean, I didn'tâ¨know how bad the trouble was because we broke for lunch and Phil Patterson,â¨the first assistant director, said, `I'm not going to let you put him back onâ¨the horse. I mean, the man's in real trouble.' And I said, `Well, no, no,â¨no, no. We better talk to Jean.' And then Jean said, `Listen, I've been hereâ¨all week. I've been able to do nothing. I don't think I'll be able to getâ¨through the weekend unless I'm able to do a scene. I've spent seven, eightâ¨months learning English to do this, and I'm going to do it.' And then theâ¨producers had said, you know, `He must go back on his horse,' and then talkedâ¨to Johnny Depp and said, `What do you think, Johnny?' And Johnny said, `Well,â¨if he really wants to do it, I mean, you can't say no.' And I--he's an adult.â¨â¨So we put him back on the horse, and all we did--he was on the horse for aboutâ¨45 minutes, just walking. And at the end of it, it took two people to liftâ¨him off the horse, and he was in bad news on the plane the next day to Paris.â¨It's that thing with actors, and that's why I love them, but they can, youâ¨know, almost kill themselves in trying to do their work, and Jean almost didâ¨that.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, Rochefort left after that day's shooting, and he promised toâ¨return in two days. He was seeing doctors in Paris. But two days became fourâ¨and then 10 and then, I guess, maybe never. What was going on while youâ¨waited in limbo to find out your star's prognosis? Were producers coming toâ¨you, saying, `Why can't we recast? Find a different Quixote. Bruce Willis.'â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: There was all of that going on. The insurance company inâ¨particular said, `Recast,' and I said, `Well, we spent almost a year trying toâ¨get to this point. How do you just suddenly recast, 'cause there aren't manyâ¨people out there that fill the bill.' And I said, `We've also got veryâ¨complicated scheduled problems. To reschedule is going to be very difficultâ¨and costly.' And because we were, you know, an independent production, thereâ¨was no fat in the budget. And I said, `I don't know how we can do all ofâ¨that.'â¨â¨Johnny felt very strongly as, indeed, did a lot of the cast and the crew,â¨that, `Let's wait for Jean. Maybe he'll only be a month. Maybe it'll be twoâ¨months. We'll all go away. We won't charge any money for waiting. And whenâ¨he's well, we'll come back and continue the film.' And I was on that side.â¨That's what I wanted to do. But we were given a deadline to come up with anâ¨answer, either recast or reschedule or whatever, or they'd pull the plug. Andâ¨I just felt we couldn't, in the time, put it together in a new form, and soâ¨they pulled the plug.â¨â¨BOGAEV: At some point in the documentary, you're on the phone and you'reâ¨explaining to someone that you've just lost all sense of what the film was,â¨that you had the whole film in your head, you carried these images around inâ¨your head, this vision of it all, for a decade, and it's just dribbled out ofâ¨you.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Well, I think it's, you know, become such a--I don't know,â¨maybe it's a way of surviving. Maybe my system just shut down and sort ofâ¨closed the door on it. Maybe that's what it was, because having spent--you'reâ¨torn because, on one hand, you've spent so long at it, you're tired of it, youâ¨hate it and you're worn out with it. On the other hand, you know, you justâ¨want to get it up on the screen. And so your system is doing bizarre things.â¨And I think physically, I was so exhausted, and then you had the emotionalâ¨exhaustion on top. It was kind of like on one level, there was a relief, `Ah,â¨the nightmare's over. I can go back to some other kind of life.' But--andâ¨you think you've got over it, and then it would hit you like a month laterâ¨what a complete and utter waste of, you know, years of your life this hasâ¨been. And it comes and goes. But it's why I am still going to make the filmâ¨because this is the only way I can deal with these problems is to convinceâ¨myself that, yes, we will do it, and we'll do it in a year or two.â¨â¨BOGAEV: So do other people say, `You're insane. You should just drop it'?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Oh, that's...â¨â¨BOGAEV: Like your wife, or people who care about you?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: There are those. And anybody in film would say, `Of course youâ¨have to move on. You know, that was unfortunate; you probably learned a thingâ¨or two. Move on.' And I said no, I mean, mainly because it's the best scriptâ¨I've ever been involved with, I think. I think it's a great script. I mean,â¨it took us a long time. I think we finally got it. And it's just--I justâ¨know how good a film it'll be. So that's the problem. It may be stupid toâ¨try to do it because there's another side of me that says, `Well, look atâ¨"Lost in La Mancha"; the documentary shows you a few moments from what theâ¨film would have been, and maybe it's better to leave everybody's imaginationâ¨working. They'll probably imagine a better film than we ultimately make.' Soâ¨there's a side of me that thinks like that as well. But I've got to do itâ¨just because I said I was going to do it and because it's very stupid andâ¨impractical and obsessive and something a grown man should walk away from;â¨that's why I must do it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well, it's interesting, because you've had in your career a lot ofâ¨battles with Hollywood studios. I mean, "Brazil," there was a famous battleâ¨between you and MCA/Universal in which, at the end, they wanted you to editâ¨the film, make it shorter and make a happier ending, and they wouldn't releaseâ¨the film when you wouldn't agree to do that. And you took out this full-pageâ¨ad in Variety addressed to the president of MCA/Universal, Sid Scheinberg.â¨And in the end, you won that battle. But it was a real--you went up against aâ¨huge bureaucracy. But in this case, you were working in the way that you wantâ¨to work. There's no real...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...bureaucratic evil...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No, no. I'm just the victim of, you know, a little infection.â¨A virus got me this time. That's what's so bizarre about it. Yeah, you know,â¨there's--I can't really blame anybody except for Jean getting this infectionâ¨which disabled him, and then everything fell apart. It is that problem ofâ¨working where you have no fat, where you've got no safety net, and that's whatâ¨we were doing. So when it went bad, it went totally bad. Usually, I mean, ifâ¨you're working with a studio, there's a lot of fat around the place, so, youâ¨know, these films get made.â¨â¨And I think the result of the whole thing--and that's what was happening whenâ¨it was all falling apart--I kept telling Keith and Lou as they were shootingâ¨to keep shooting, 'cause at least if they will get a film out of this wholeâ¨mess, even though I don't, then there'll be some record of it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Director Terry Gilliam. His failed attempt to adapt "Don Quixote" toâ¨the screen is the subject of the new documentary "Lost in La Mancha." We'llâ¨continue our conversation in the second half of the show.â¨â¨I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Announcements)â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: Coming up, we continue our conversation with film director,â¨screenwriter and former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. And we meet Simonâ¨Russell Beale. The British actor is performing in two concurrent plays at theâ¨Brooklyn Academy of Music. Also, classical music critic Lloyd Schwartzâ¨reviews some light opera.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨BOGAEV: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev.â¨â¨Let's get back to our interview with the director and former Monty Pythonâ¨member Terry Gilliam. His films include "Brazil," "The Fisher King," "12â¨Monkeys" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." In 2000, Gilliam startedâ¨filming "The Man who Killed Don Quixote," a screen adaptation of the classicâ¨Cervantes novel. The production did not go well, disastrously, in fact.â¨Gilliam's failed attempt is the subject of the new documentary film "Lost Inâ¨La Mancha," produced by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe.â¨â¨Now let's talk about the filming of this fiasco, because it's an interestingâ¨thing. I was trying to figure out why you would have anyone document theâ¨making of your film, given that, for instance, "Baron von Munchausen" was aâ¨very painful experience for you. Your budget seemed to spiral out of controlâ¨or to double in the making of it, and some in the industry point to it as anâ¨example of a director out of control, a movie that didn't do well in the boxâ¨office. I know there are a lot of ways to interpret that...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: That's the one that Hollywood loves.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Right, right.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: That version.â¨â¨BOGAEV: But it occurred to me that maybe you wanted people to--a documentaryâ¨team on the set of your film in order to provide a record, to prove that youâ¨aren't a director out of control, that there is a method to your madness, butâ¨then this series of unforeseeable disasters happens.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I mean, I wasn't approaching it that way. I just know thatâ¨every time I make a film, something interesting happens is all I know, and Iâ¨always regret the fact that, you know, it's not been documented, that somebodyâ¨wasn't there to record it, and there's another side that--I mean, a kind ofâ¨selfish, vain side. It's just trying to have my own, you know, diary of whatâ¨went on there at least or somebody else's diary that shows what was going on.â¨And it was as simple as that.â¨â¨And Keith and Lou had made a documentary about "12 Monkeys" called "Theâ¨Hamster Factor," and it was a wonderful bit of work. And they had beenâ¨graduate film students at Temple University in Philadelphia, and basically weâ¨just gave them a Hi-8 camera and said, `Shoot. Here's lots of tape. You'veâ¨got access to everything.' I wore a microphone the whole time, and I said,â¨`It's your film. I'm not going to interfere with it. I'm not going to censorâ¨it.' So they made a wonderful film then, so I trusted them. And when I said,â¨`Come on, come out to Quixote country and see what happens,' they were game.â¨â¨And once they're there, as far as I'm concerned, they have complete freedom,â¨complete access. I'm so desperate for the truth. That's what I want to see,â¨and I don't--especially in films and show business, everything's about image.â¨Everything's about illusion. Nobody ever sees the truth of things. And, forâ¨me, I just want that to happen. So as everything was coming apart, they wereâ¨sometimes incredibly apologetic and actually turning their camera off inâ¨certain situations because they felt there was too much, you know, pain andâ¨anguish around the place, and they felt embarrassed recording it. And I said,â¨`No, no, you've got to keep shooting. This is the truth. This is honest.â¨This is the reality of the thing, and I think you'll get an amazing film outâ¨of it.'â¨â¨And I think that's what's happened. I think when people see "Lost in Laâ¨Mancha," people say, `Oh, how terrible, how painful, how awful that was.' Andâ¨I say, `Well, no, the reality is most filmmaking is more like this than whatâ¨you see in all the press kits.' It's a rough business, and people never getâ¨to see that side of it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: What occurs to you when you watch the documentary?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Well, it occurs to me that I should never watch it again is whatâ¨occurs to me.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Did you watch it?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yes, I've watched it several times, and I can't stand it. Itâ¨leaves me depressed for a couple weeks, and I'm trying to get my life back.â¨â¨BOGAEV: After the "La Mancha" debacle, you auditioned to direct J.K.â¨Rowling's "Harry Potter" film. That's one of the things you did in the wakeâ¨of the Don Quixote mess...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yes.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...for Warner Bros. How does a director's audition work? What's theâ¨protocol?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: It wasn't actually that I auditioned. What happened was that itâ¨turned out J.K. Rowling and the producer wanted me to direct it. Theâ¨likelihood of me directing it was very slim; I think non-existent. And I haveâ¨a feeling that Warner Bros. brought me out to Hollywood just to show them thatâ¨they were doing their due diligence and giving everybody a fair chance. Andâ¨it was a very interesting experience, because I know when I went into theâ¨meeting that a majority of people were against me, and by the end of theâ¨meeting, I'd actually won over quite a few people that were against me. And Iâ¨was so angry with myself for getting excited about the project, knowing Iâ¨would never get it.â¨â¨BOGAEV: For caring.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I ended up driving around for hours later just kicking myself.â¨For a moment, I allowed myself to really fall into that world and begin toâ¨imagine it and think that, `Yeah, I could do this,' and that kind of feelingâ¨when you're not going to ever get the job, when you know that, is veryâ¨irritating to say the least. And on it went. So the film was made as it was,â¨and it was a huge success, and they obviously made the right choice inâ¨director.â¨â¨BOGAEV: What did you think of the film?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Crap.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Really?â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: I think the film is very badly directed. I think it'sâ¨uninspired, unfortunately, I mean, to be quite honest about--I think the firstâ¨"Harry Potter" just was very, very disappointing, it was very pedestrian.â¨There was no real magic in it. It was by the numbers, and "Lord of the Rings"â¨is a wonderful film in comparison. That's what I think.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Well...â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: That the box office doesn't agree with me, I don't know.â¨â¨BOGAEV: What do you think the distinction is, though, in the way that theyâ¨create these visions? Because I'm thinking that they're two very differentâ¨styles, and "Lord of the Rings" seems to have more of a dark and yet childlikeâ¨imagination to it.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Yeah. No, I'm totally impressed with Peter Jackson. I think heâ¨actually believes that world. I think he's a very good director; let's beginâ¨with that. He's an excellent director. He threw himself so passionately intoâ¨that world. He understands it. He understands magic, heroism, epic--theâ¨whole thing; just feel it's in its bones, and so it spews out onto the screen,â¨and it's totally believable. You know, the film was--whatever--three hoursâ¨long, that first one, and I sat there and I was just transported into thisâ¨other world. I never felt that for one moment with "Harry Potter." I thoughtâ¨it's sort of by the numbers. There's some, I mean, technically brilliantâ¨stuff in it, but there's no magic. There's no real, you know, immersion intoâ¨that world.â¨â¨BOGAEV: My guest is Terry Gilliam. His catastrophic attempt three years agoâ¨to film an adaptation of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" is the subject of a newâ¨documentary, "Lost in La Mancha."â¨â¨This film does function as a kind of diary of your worst moments as aâ¨filmmaker, so it must be very painful to have that part of your career exposedâ¨to millions of people, millions of your potential people in your audience.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: No. I don't know. I'm beginning to think that failure's aâ¨really important part of life and should be given more time on the air. Iâ¨think everything's so positive now, everything is so uplifting. Everything'sâ¨blah, blah, blah. The reality of life is it's very up and down, so it doesn'tâ¨bother me. I think what's been most interesting is that people come awayâ¨saying that I'm not a madman, that I'm not out of control, that I do know whatâ¨I'm doing, which people or my agents in Hollywood say, `Oh, this is going toâ¨be so good, so useful, you know, for the executives to see what a responsibleâ¨and decent human being I really am as opposed to the monster they fear.'â¨â¨BOGAEV: Terry Gilliam, it was such a pleasure talking to you today. Thankâ¨you very much.â¨â¨Mr. GILLIAM: Thanks.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Terry Gilliam. The new IFC Film "Lost in La Mancha" documentsâ¨Gilliam's failed attempt at adapting "Don Quixote" for the screen. When weâ¨spoke, Gilliam was in negotiations with the insurance company to get back theâ¨rights to his script, "The Man who Killed Don Quixote."â¨â¨Coming up, we meet British actor Simon Russell Beale. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Interview: Simon Russell Beale discusses his roles in theâ¨productions "Twelfth Night" and "Uncle Vanya" and his career inâ¨theaterâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨The New York Times recently described Simon Russell Beale as the greatestâ¨actor Americans have hardly seen. On the London stage, Beale has played kingsâ¨and commoners, fops and Shakespearean clowns, characters from Chekhov andâ¨Ibsen. Two years ago, Beale performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music asâ¨Hamlet. Now he's returned to BAM with the Donmar Warehouse Theater in anâ¨interesting double bill. He plays the manservant Malvolio in "Twelfth Night"â¨and the title role in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." Sam Mendes directs theâ¨productions. In both plays, Beale explores the comic and tragic dimensions ofâ¨his characters.â¨â¨When I spoke with Simon Russell Beale, we began by talking about "Twelfthâ¨Night." His character, Malvolio, is the butler for Lady Olivia. He'sâ¨secretly in love with her. The other household servants decide to make someâ¨trouble by misleading Malvolio into believing Olivia has feelings for him.â¨â¨Mr. SIMON RUSSELL BEALE (Actor): And then a trick is played on him where aâ¨letter is written apparently from Olivia, which says `I love you,' and heâ¨believes it and dresses up in what he regards as very sexy gear and seductiveâ¨gear, and Olivia, of course, is horrified. He's then accused of being mad,â¨which I think distresses him enormously, and he's shut away. And when he'sâ¨released, he is a very bitter man whose life has been destroyed, and he endsâ¨with this extraordinary curse on the whole company, which is literally secondsâ¨before the play ends, so there's this big black cloud over the end of theâ¨play. And the big debate is, you know, whether you regard his punishment forâ¨being pompous and overbearing and a bully, which he undoubtedly is, whetherâ¨his punishment fits the crime, and I think most people will think theâ¨punishment was probably excessive. I mean, his life is destroyed, the poorâ¨thing.â¨â¨BOGAEV: I'd like to talk about your physical presence on the stage, becauseâ¨you're a very physical actor, and it's fascinating to watch, especially toâ¨watch your hands. Both as Malvolio and as Vanya, you cultivate certainâ¨mannerisms, and Malvolio has some extremely precise dismissive gestures, aâ¨sweep of the hand, for instance. He also fusses. He's a butler...â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Yes.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...so I guess he's a little anal. He fusses with hanging his coat onâ¨the back of a chair, is very fastidious in the beginning, and then as hisâ¨psyche deteriorates and these awful things happen to him, he becomes less so.â¨And you also develop those kind of gestures in the Vanya character. Vanyaâ¨fingers the...â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Fidgets, doesn't he, yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: He fidgets. He picks at his hands. He fingers the long table, whichâ¨is the center of the stage, the central prop. He emphasizes what he's sayingâ¨by placing his outstretched fingers, his fingertips on the tabletop, and heâ¨talks with his hands. All of this makes for a very, very realized, believableâ¨human being on the stage. Where do these mannerisms originate for you as anâ¨actor and how do you hone them?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Well, it's funny you mention the hands, because somebody elseâ¨mentioned them to me a couple of weeks ago, and I was certainly unaware of itâ¨in "Vanya," and then now, only half-aware about a lot of the physicality ofâ¨Vanya. To explain something about the Vanya physicalities, when we startedâ¨rehearsing, Sam put out a sort of carpet with loads of big cushions and bigâ¨easy chairs for the "Vanya" rehearsals, and a lot of the original exercises weâ¨did as we were exploring the play was with us--we naturally sort of gravitatedâ¨to lying on the cushions and lying on the carpet or slumped into this very,â¨very comfortable chair. And that continued into performance, certainly withâ¨me, and I spend, as you remember, a lot of the time actually lying on theâ¨floor of the stage. And I found that very useful because, you know, Vanya's aâ¨child really, in lots of ways. He's a man who is just at the end of hisâ¨tether, and consequently, his physical behavior becomes more and more extreme.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Watching you on the stage, I had the sense that, as an actor, youâ¨have an idea of the physical shape of a character and that the words come outâ¨of that. It's as if you have an idea of what you look like from the audience,â¨and that somehow the interpretation and the words flow through that.â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: I've always pretended that that's not the case, but you're right.â¨I mean, I've never thought I've had a very strong visual imagination, really.â¨But I do remember that when I did "Richard III," which was one of the veryâ¨first things I did with--the second thing I did with Sam, I had an immediateâ¨clear idea of the way I wanted to look, which sort of took me by surprise. Iâ¨mean, I wanted to look like a huge retired American footballer, you know.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Johnny Unitas.â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: I don't know the reference, but with a huge shaved head and big,â¨big man. When Sam offered me Ariel in "The Tempest," you know, the mostâ¨unlikely choice in the whole company is to play Ariel, as...â¨â¨BOGAEV: And Ariel is a sprite. It's usually a little elfin...â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: He's a creature of air, yes.â¨â¨BOGAEV: ...creature.â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: And as we've said before, I'm not a creature of air. But I hadâ¨that funny thing in my stomach when he phoned me up and offered it to me, andâ¨I just had that funny, excited reaction, butterflies in your stomach,â¨thinking, `Ooh, ooh, my Lord,' and I knew he'd come to me partly because Iâ¨could sing, and Ariel has to sing, but I thought, `Wow, what can we do withâ¨that? How can we make this particular person into a creature of air?' Now Iâ¨don't have sort of the same reaction to "Richard II."â¨â¨BOGAEV: How did you make Ariel work? How did you reinterpret Ariel to jiveâ¨with your physical appearance?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Well, actually, to be perfectly honest, it was a series of luckyâ¨accidents. I was given a very beautiful blue silk suit, Chairman Mao typeâ¨suit, and during the rehearsal, the whole show required Ariel--the way Sam hadâ¨directed it was that Ariel did all the work, as it were. I mean, he's aâ¨sprite who's the servant of the great magician Prospero, and Ariel did all theâ¨work, and I had so much to do. I had to bring cactus on the stage and set theâ¨props for them and, blah, blah, blah, all that, and I thought the only way Iâ¨can do it is very, very slowly, and so during one of the final runs in theâ¨rehearsal room, I was just doing it very, very slowly, and at the end of it,â¨Sam said, `Well, that can either be really boring or we could push it and makeâ¨him incredibly slow.' And in the end, he moved in this extraordinarilyâ¨beautiful suit and bare feet very slowly and haughtily and ratherâ¨balletically. And because it was a blue set, they could light me so I almostâ¨disappeared. It was very clever actually of them. I mean, it was a cleverâ¨design.â¨â¨BOGAEV: I'm talking with Simon Russell Beale. He's currently starring in twoâ¨productions at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. He performs asâ¨Malvolio in "Twelfth Night" and Vanya in "Uncle Vanya."â¨â¨When you played Hamlet, your mother had just passed away. Did that informâ¨your performance?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Yeah.â¨â¨BOGAEV: In what way?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: It was my tribute to her, really. She knew I was going to do it,â¨and the dates, you know, cruelly were not--I mean, she couldn't have come toâ¨see me because she was ill for five months. But it was my tribute to her.â¨And, you know, as a gift for somebody who's grieving, you can't get muchâ¨better than that; I mean, the greatest, the greatest discussion of grief andâ¨mortality that's ever been written, and, I mean, I was enormously privilegedâ¨to be able to do that and to be able to give it to her, really. And I thinkâ¨Hamlet turned out very different from what I expected him to turn out. Iâ¨wanted it to be a play about love, for him to be a sweet prince, for it to beâ¨about a good man, I mean, struggling with the fact of death. So, yes, it hadâ¨an enormous effect.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Did you have to struggle to channel your grief in an effective way,â¨an appropriate way, in your performance or did you find that as opposed toâ¨that, your performing "Hamlet" and experiencing grief through Shakespeare'sâ¨words, that he got it right actually, that you could compare?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: I didn't use the grief literally because that would have beenâ¨horrible, but, yeah, you know, you've put it better than I could, which isâ¨that Shakespeare got it right. And...â¨â¨BOGAEV: About grief, you mean?â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Yes, and about, you know, the whole last beat of the play, about,â¨you know, the great human need to say, `It'll be fine, it'll be fine. Allâ¨things shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.' That's notâ¨Shakespeare's, but it's that sort of thing, you know. As I said earlier, youâ¨know, to stand on stage and say to an audience, almost, `Shush, shush, it'sâ¨all right. You know, death will come and the readiness is all and it'll beâ¨all right,' I think is a fantastic privilege to be able to do that. And, youâ¨know, it wasn't a direct--I wasn't grieving there in front of the audience,â¨but it was about saying, `Shakespeare allows us some sort of debate or does itâ¨better than we could do.'â¨â¨BOGAEV: Thank you so much. Simon Russell Beale, thank you for talking withâ¨me today.â¨â¨Mr. BEALE: Well, a pleasure, thank you.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Simon Russell Beale is currently performing in "Twelfth Night" andâ¨"Uncle Vanya" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Donmar Warehouse Theaterâ¨production continues through March 9th.â¨â¨Coming up, light opera. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Profile: Reissues of well-known operettasâ¨BARBARA BOGAEV, host:â¨â¨Some recent reissues of well-known operettas and a performance of aâ¨little-known one got our music critic, Lloyd Schwartz, thinking about theâ¨soothing nature of light opera.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨LLOYD SCHWARTZ reporting:â¨â¨Last summer on a short visit to Vienna, the home of Demelâs Chocolates andâ¨the Sacher Torte, I saw a charming operetta from the 1930s, "Bewitchedâ¨Maiden,"(ph) by a composer famous in Vienna but new to me, Ralph Benatzky, whoâ¨emigrated to Hollywood during the Nazi regime but didn't find success inâ¨America. If `opera,' opera (pronounced OH-pei-rah), is the Italian word forâ¨work, then `operetta' means something lighter, sweeter, a little work, lessâ¨work for the composer but also less work for the listener, who doesn't have toâ¨grapple with the vast scale, the historical or moral complexities of grandâ¨opera or the musical subtleties of the great comic operas. I found Benatzky'sâ¨music irresistible enough to buy a copy of the record in the lobby.â¨â¨Here's the star comedian of the German stage, Uwe Kroger, singing the chansonâ¨of "Hocus-Pocus,"(ph) in which his interference is about to change the hero'sâ¨luck from bad to worse before the happy ending.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Hocus-Pocus")â¨â¨Mr. UWE KROGER: (Singing in German)â¨â¨SCHWARTZ: In Europe, operetta is still a national tradition: Offenbach inâ¨France, Gilbert & Sullivan in England, Johann Strauss in Germany and Austria.â¨In this country, it was a major source of American musical comedy and had aâ¨brief revival in the film musicals of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Butâ¨now it's virtually extinct. By the 1920s, Broadway musicals were rebellingâ¨against the excessive sweetness of operetta, not only the corny, Ruritanianâ¨plots, but all the waltzes and marches. After the heyday of Victor Herbert,â¨Americans wanted something literally jazzier, more syncopated. Enter Irvingâ¨Berlin, Rodgers & Hart and Cole Porter, who changed the landscape.â¨â¨But maybe it's time to look back. The record label indispensable to lovers ofâ¨musical comedy, DRG, has been re-releasing some wonderful 50-year-old Deccaâ¨and Columbia operetta recordings, titles that in themselves recall a bygoneâ¨era of almost silent movie naivety: "The Desert Song," "The Student Prince,"â¨"The Merry Widow," "Babes in Toyland." There's an art to singing this kind ofâ¨music. It can be impossibly arch and cloying if it's condescended to. Here'sâ¨the great Wagnerian tenor Lauritz Melchior taking seriously the famousâ¨drinking song from Sigmund Romberg's "The Student Prince."â¨â¨(Soundbite of "The Student Prince")â¨â¨Mr. LAURITZ MELCHIOR: (Singing) Drink, drink, drink, oh, ...(unintelligible)â¨the stars are just shining on me. Drink, drink, drink, oh, lips that are redâ¨and sweeter than fruit on the tree. Here's a hope that those bright eyes willâ¨shine lovingly, longingly soon into mine. May those lips that are red andâ¨sweet tonight with joy my own lips meet.â¨â¨Group: (Singing) Drink, drink ...(unintelligible) stars.â¨â¨SCHWARTZ: You may remember Kitty Carlisle from the TV game show "To Tell theâ¨Truth" or as the love interest in the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera."â¨She was a lovely singer. Here she is in one of the most enchanting songs inâ¨any operetta, "Vilja" from Franz Lehar's "The Merry Widow."â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Vilja")â¨â¨Ms. KITTY CARLISLE: (Singing) Vilja, oh, Vilja, my love and my brideâ¨(unintelligible).â¨â¨SCHWARTZ: I don't know if operetta will ever really catch on again, but it'sâ¨an appealing oasis from serious thinking and a happy reminder of a time whenâ¨it was still possible to have an illusion of innocence.â¨â¨BOGAEV: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix.â¨â¨(Credits)â¨â¨BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)