Great short interview video with Terry Gilliam and Empire Magazine about his “floating time”, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and Mr. Vertigo.
Posts Tagged: ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’
EXCLUSIVE! Terry Gilliam Confirms That BBC Will Be Airing His Opera “Faust” In The Fall
Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam's "The Damnation Of Faust"
We have all been hearing that BBC would be airing “The Damnation Of Faust”. Now it has been confirmed. This morning Terry Gilliam has confirmed to me that his opera, “The Damnation Of Faust”, will air on BBC this autumn. The opera played to critical acclaim in London and will also be playing in Italy. We are in hopes here at the Don Quixote Support Site that it will play in the USA as well, though no plans for this have been announced.
The date of the airing of the program has yet to be announced. We will let all of you know as soon as it is announced and confirmed.
Terry Gilliam Opera, Gets Dates In Italy and Belgium!
The Terry Gilliam directed, highly acclaimed, opera “Damnation of Faust” which opened with the ENO in London in May has now gotten dates to open in Italy and Belgium. We are in the midst of trying to get more information on these dates/events for you now.
Terry Gilliam's "Damnation Of Faust"
Terry Gilliam Is Guest Of Honor At “Persol Magnificent Obsessions: 30 Stories of Craftmanship in Film” In NYC 6/16/11
Click on thumbnail to enlarge photo:
Source: Wall Street Journal
Terry Gilliam: ‘Most People Don’t Experience What True Obsession Is’
Eyewear brand Persol, recognizable to style watchers and cinemaphiles alike as the company behind Steve McQueen’s specs and Marcello Mastroianni’s La Dolce Vita chic, debuted an exhibition in honor of cinematic artifacts in Chelsea.
“Persol Magnificent Obsessions: 30 Stories of Craftmanship in Film,” will be open to the public at Chelsea’s Center 548 through Sunday, June 19 before traveling to Paris and Milan. The exhibit features mixed-media looks at past “obsessions,” from sound design (Alan Splet and Ann Kroeber’s soundscape for “Blue Velvet”) to costume design (Milena Canonero’s sumptuous clothes for ‘Marie Antoinette,’ whose color palette was taken from a box of macarons) to set design (Mark Friedberg’s use of Rajasthani craftsmen to decorate ‘The Darjeeling Limited’). The exhibition’s theme is linked to Persol’s message about its products’ artisanal values and the 30 manual steps required to make one pair of glasses.
The opening night’s guest of honor, director Terry Gilliam, was quick to talk about his reputation for cinematic obsessions. “I liked the idea of something about cinema and obsession,” the director said on the rooftop terrace, during a quiet moment before the party kicked into high gear. “It’s a term that gets used a lot but most people don’t experience what true obsession is.”
“Ideas take me over. They possess me,” he said. And once ideas take over, it’s a battle to “clear it out.” When it works, there’s a film to show for it. “Other things, you work on for years and it doesn’t happen. Those are the ones that take a lot of energy out of you. There’s been several of those.”
“I’m not a director for hire,” Gilliam said. “I only do films when I’m obsessed or possessed. I’m always impressed with directors for hire. They take any old thing and show up for every day. I have to be driven, because I don’t like getting up to work every day.” He laughs softly.
That seemed as good a segue as any to ask Gilliam about his most recent work, a short film funded by an Italian pasta company. Trailers for “The Wholly Family” are online, showing a typically whimsical off-kilter Gilliam spectacle, with dancing clowns, a wide-eyed child and puppets. Gilliam said the company, Garofalo, only had two requests: That the film take place in Naples and no one dies. It was not different, the director says, than seeing Warner Bros. before the credits. Last summer, Gilliam directed a web cast of an Arcade Fire concert, which was presented by American Express.
This could signal the start of more corporations moving into funding films that blur the line between ads and films. “There’s no product placement. It’s just a movie,” Gilliam said. “There’s so many commercials coming out. So why not be a patron of the arts?”
“It’s as if we’re moving back into the era of the Medicis, and big corporations are thinking, well, if we can support the arts or something interesting, it will reflect on them,” the director said. And as for the directors: “Wherever the money comes from, we go.”
The director, who jokes that’s he’s currently jobless and looking, was hopeful that “The Damnation of Faust,” his debut as an opera director, now currently playing to London crowds, and with upcoming dates in Italy and Belgium, may eventually have its day stateside.
Persol Press Release For “Magnificent Obsessions: 30 Stories of Craftmanship in Film”
June 17, 2011
PERSOL MAGNIFICENT OBSESSIONS.
30 stories of craftsmanship in film
The first in a series of three exhibitions, PERSOL MAGNIFICENT OBSESSIONS. 30 stories of craftsmanship in film uncovers 10 stories of obsessive craftsmanship within filmmaking.
The exhibits offer the opportunity to view rarely seen artifacts from some of cinema’s most iconic films, as well as behind the scenes research notes, sketches, video interviews and materials used in the development process by some of the world’s greatest filmmakers.
Curated by Michael Connor, Persol Magnificent Obsessions. 30 stories of craftsmanship in film aims to show whether making a film or a pair of sunglasses, it is only through the uncompromising drive for perfection that one can truly create a work of art. The exhibition will explore the many steps – from an actor’s immersion in character research to the meticulous detailing of a costume designer – to create an icon. Iconic characters, iconic sounds and visuals, iconic scenes, costumes, and props, the exhibition will showcase how each step can take hours, weeks or months of painstaking research and craftsmanship to develop.
This is a theme close to the heart of Persol, a brand that for nearly a century has been linked to the film, art and creative worlds, with a long tradition of Italian design, craftsmanship and engineering. Just as each film emerges from a team of individuals combining their talent, dedication and creativity, at the Persol factory in Lauriano, Northern Italy, every pair of sunglasses passes through the hands of at least 15 highly trained craftsmen, each making their own personal contribution. It takes a minimum of 30 steps to create a pair of Persols, each step carried out by hand.
Among the celebrated stories are those of Oscar-winning costume designer Milena Canonero, who designed hundreds of elaborate costumes for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, taking the entire color palette from a box of macaroons. And director Terry Gilliam, not just for his creation of a timeless dystopian vision in Brazil, but for his dogged battle with the film’s US studio to see its release, and preserve its less than audience-friendly ending. The exhaustive preparation and dedication to the art of award-winning acting, performances by Robert De Niro (unhinged Vietnam War vet Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver) and Sir Ben Kingsley (Gandhi), are also examined through a series of artifacts, video exhibits and a large-scale installation.
The brand was born in Turin in 1917, just as cinema was entering its first Golden Age, and Persol sunglasses went on to play a lead role in some of Italy’s best known films, including La Dolce Vita and Divorce Italian Style. In 1968, Steve McQueen appeared on the set of The Thomas Crown Affair wearing his favourite Persol folding 714 sunglasses, making legends of both the actor and his eyewear. Other notable screen credits for Persol include The Getaway, Casino Royale, Die Another Day, North by North West, The American, Broken Flowers and Ocean’s Thirteen among many others.
Today Persol continues to champion contemporary cinematic excellence as a sponsor of the Venice, Turin and Tribeca Film Festivals, and is working in special partnership with the Museum of the Moving Image.
PERSOL MAGNIFICENT OBSESSIONS. 30 stories of craftsmanship in film exhibition in New York will be open to the public from June 17th until June 19th included.
After New York, the exhibition will travel in Paris late June and Milan late September.
Terry Gilliam’s “Damnation of Faust” To Air On BBC!
Our wishes are answered! Terry Gilliam’s “Damnation of Faust” is coming to television! Thanks to BBC!
Source: Intermezzo
Terry Gilliam’s Nazi-tasting ENO production of The Damnation of Faust is to air on BBC4 this autumn.
The director himself will introduce the work for TV.
In recent years, opera on BBC TV has been the near-exclusive preserve of the Royal Opera House. While ENO have teamed up with Sky Arts for a series of gimmicks like ‘”3-D Lucrezia” and “Multiview Bohème”, I can’t remember when one of their productions last aired on a terrestrial channel. Could this signal a longer-term switch in BBC affiliations?
VIDEO: Audience Reacts To Terry Gilliam’s “Faust” – “Brilliant! Absolutely Brilliant!”
Check out this video of the audience’s reactions to director Terry Gilliam’s new ENO opera, “The Damnation Of Faust”. It’s wonderful!
Congratulations Terry Gilliam and the ENO!
Excellent Review For Terry Gilliam’s “Faust”!
Source: The Guardian
By Andrew Clements
At first sight it seems really perverse to invite Terry Gilliam to cut his teeth as an opera director on a work that isn’t really an opera at all.
Berlioz labelled it a “dramatic legend” and intended it for the concert hall; the pacing of the score, with its extended orchestral interludes and ballads, and character pieces for many of the solo vocal numbers, hardly suggests a living, breathing piece of theatre.
But the hazy dramatic boundaries, and the latitude for interpretation that Berlioz’s recasting of the Faust legend allows, gives a maverick creativity like Gilliam’s the freedom to flourish.
Working together with a creative team of huge experience, he has refracted the story through 100 years of German history and culture, from the 19th century to the Third Reich, from the romantic imagery of Caspar David Friedrich, through the grotesqueries of Otto Dix and George Grosz to Leni Reifenstahl’s film of the 1936 Olympics.
Sometimes too much is packed into each scene – if one imaginative stroke doesn’t quite hit the mark, another is likely to comes very soon after. But the best of what Gilliam comes up with is by turns breathtakingly imaginative and horrifyingly vivid, whether it’s the Hungarian March serving as a backdrop to the outbreak of world war one, Faust’s seduction of Marguerite while Kristallnacht is taking place outside her window, Marguerite’s final scene awaiting the train that will take her to a concentration camp, or Faust and Mephistopheles’s ride to the abyss in motorbike and sidecar.
No punches are pulled, the use of video is perfectly judged, and everything on stage has a musical as well as visual purpose.
Gilliam’s direction of the singers, whether en masse or individually, is detailed and precise too. Christopher Purves, right, as Mephistopheles is the master of ceremonies, by turns suave, demonic or caricature, and commandingly incisve in everything he sings. Peter Hoare as Faust, far right, is a bizarre hybrid between Shockheaded Peter, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a mad scientist; he sings his numbers with great style and sense of line; Christine Rice as Marguerite has two solos, the Ballad of the King of Thule and the Romance, and the still points of beauty. Only the chorus lack of presence disappoints, along with Edward Gardner’s undemonic treatment of some orchestral passages.
Terry Gilliam Receives Bradford Int’l Film Fest Fellowship – Talks Quixote – 3/19/11
My sincere thanks to Phil Stubbs, editor/administrator, of Dreams Terry Gilliam Fanzine for sharing his experience at BIFF for Terry’s receipt of the Bradford International Film Festival Fellowship yesterday, March 19, 2011. Below, Phil shares his experience and photos with all of us.
On March 19, Gilliam was in Bradford to receive its International Film Festival’s Fellowship award. In the Pictureville cinema at the city’s National Media Museum, the director introduced a screening of Time Bandits. It was remarked that the film had been released thirty years ago.
This was the first time that I (your Dreams editor) had seen Time Bandits on the big screen. Unfortunately the print had a crackly soundtrack and looked worn. Also, it appeared out of focus. Despite this, there was detail on the screen that I hadn’t seen before. The appearance of the Supreme Being was extremely bright, and the film was played very loud indeed (though I was at the front). What I enjoyed more than I ever had done before was the soundtrack. And all the way through I was thinking just how wonderful the script is – even though I was expecting all the gags.
Following the feature, there was a screening of The Miracle of Flight, Gilliam’s short film from 1974. Then the filmmaker was interviewed by festival director Tony Earnshaw. It was a wide-ranging interview, covering his first animations all the way through to The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.
In the interview, Gilliam spoke about the many problems he has encountered in his career. He said he had been incredibly lucky – overall – to do what he has wanted to do. He has never taken on projects he didn’t want to do, so all the mistakes are his own mistakes. Further, he had many stories and anecdotes about the stars he has worked with, including Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Robert de Niro, Oliver Reed, Jonathan Pryce and Jeff Bridges. I recorded the interview so it’s likely that some transcript may appear here in the future.
He touched upon the opera he’s been working on. And with respect to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Gilliam said he is still working on gaining funding, and that Robert Duvall is still attached.
Sadly, there was no screening of The Wholly Family, even though a few days before the interview, Gilliam told Dreams that he was hoping to bring it with him to share with the audience.
At the end of the interview, Gilliam was presented with his Fellowship award by Earnshaw. There was then a screening of his 1968 short Storytime and also The Christmas Card from Do Not Adjust Your Set – the latter being a real audience pleaser. The whole session had lasted over four hours!
A short video of Gilliam talking about Julie Christie in Billy Liar and Darling was uploaded to the festival website. This can be seen below.
While he was in Bradford, Gilliam also popped in to see the cast of Spamalot, which was on tour at the Bradford Alhambra theatre, next door to the Media Museum. In the pic below, he is with cast member Phill Jupitus.
Phil, thank you for sharing and for your continued support and friendship to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote Support Site.
Video: Terry Gilliam Discusses His New Opera “Damnation of Faust”
In this teaser video, Terry Gilliam discusses his new opera, “Damnation of Faust” which he is directing for the English National Opera.
Photos/BTS Video of Terry Gilliam’s “Wholly Family”
We have more news of Terry Gilliam’s new short film, “Wholly Family” for you. Clak Magazine has published the first photos from the film and Brendon Connelly of Bleeding Cool News has posted some behind the scenes footage for everyone.
