Gilliam’s autobiography is quite enjoyable too. Here are my notes:
Gilliamesque: A Pre-posthumous Memoir by Terry Gilliam and Ben Thompson
NY: Harper Design, 2015
ISBN 978-0-06-238074-6
(page 7) It’s crazy how isolated the Western world has become from reality. Apart from anything else, nothing sets your imagination free like a direct connection to the planet you actually live on.
(177) One thing I did learn from my time spent at Hollywood’s sharp end is that there’s only one other town in America like it, and that’s Washington. The two places function in exactly the same way - they’re all about being seen at the right places, and all the real business is done over breakfast. In Washington obviously you’re looking at lobbyists rather than agents, but the primacy of getting the deal done over the likely benefits (or otherwise) to mankind seems to be the same whether what’s being punted is an oil deal or a blockbuster sequel.
(252-253) George [Harrison] was someone who never really did anything but good, and was incredibly generous about supporting people whose work he approved of. He loved hanging out with his mates and playing music, and spent the rest of his time lovingly restoring the thirty-six acres of gardens at Friar Park - the magnificent Gothic revival mansion which he’d put up as collateral to enable us to make “The LIfe of Brian.” And he didn’t just pay other people to do it for him and turn up every now and again to order them around like most rock stars would - he physically did it himself, basically turning himself into a manual labourer.
(274) I realise this probably sounds very superstitious, but I’ve never read Freud for the same reason - because I wouldn’t want to mess with what gives me the good stuff. I know I’ve got all sorts of weird fucking shit floating around up there in my head, but I don’t want to analyse it - I want to put it to work.
(281) I think it was author William Gibson who suggested that global stocks of cognitive dissonance are currently so high they threaten to make the traditional idea of science fiction redundant. And once you reach my age, you tend to find that the individual days become really long, but the years get shorter, which only distorts your temporal perspective still further.
