Terry Gilliam famous quotes

I've given up asking questions. l merely float on a tsunami of acceptance of anything life throws at me ... and marvel stupidly.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Acceptance #Asking Questions #Given

I don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Thinking #Unlearn

Hyperbole is something Id better avoid.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Hyperbole

I like being a patron of things, I like patronizing things. And if it's not going to be people, I'll patronize a festival.
-- Terry Gilliam

#People #Festivals #Patronizing

I just like the fact I can make a film which might give comfort to some people who think they are the only crazy person in the world and suddenly they see there are two crazy people in the world.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Crazy #Thinking #Two

All films are learning processes. I am still trying to work out how you make a movie. I didn't study at film school or any of those things. I didn't bother with film theory.
-- Terry Gilliam

#School #Work Out #Trying

You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Interesting #Stories #Reputation

I have always got medicine I want to give to people.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Medicine #People #Giving

I was doing political cartoons and getting angry to the point where I felt I was going to have to start making and throwing bombs. I thought I was probably a better cartoonist than a bomb maker.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Political #Cartoon #Bombs

Talent is less important in filmmaking than patience.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Important #Talent #Filmmaking

If you really want your films to say something that you hope is unique, then patience and stamina, thick skin and a kind of stupidity, a mule-like stupidity, is what you really need.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Unique #Stupidity #Skins

Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe its a different one. The old one got fired.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Thinking #Different

Every few years when it's been another five years that have passed and I haven't made a film and the depression starts taking over totally, I allow myself to do a commercial. And then I feel really dirty and get to work promptly.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Dirty #Years #Film

Port Talbot is a steel town, where everything is covered with gray iron ore dust.  Even the beach is completely littered with dust, it's just black.  The sun was setting, and it was quite beautiful.  The contrast was extraordinary, I had this image of a guy sitting there on this dingy beach with a portable radio, tuning in these strange Latin escapist songs like 'Brazil.'  The music transported him somehow and made his world less gray.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Beautiful #Song #Beach

Gorillaz virtually changed my wife...sorry, I mean, life...no, actually, it was my wife.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Sorry #Mean #Wife

The success of the Hollywood marketing machine is to limit what we see. Not just to limit what we can see, but also to limit our expectations - to limit what we want to see.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Expectations #Marketing #Want

Fantasy isn't just a jolly escape: It's an escape, but into something far more extreme than reality, or normality. It's where things are more beautiful and more wondrous and more terrifying. You move into a world of conflicting extremes.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Beautiful #Moving #Reality

The whole point of animation to me is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn't really matter. Whatever works is the thing to use.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Ideas #Stories #Use

Because I dislike being quoted I lie almost constantly when talking about my work.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Lying #Talking #Dislike

They pay money to watch the same film. Now, you could argue, that's because it makes them feel comfortable. When they go to a movie now, it's almost like hearing a pop song. You know the rhythms, you know when the downbeat is going to come, you know when the explosion is going to come… And so as life becomes more complex, as the economy is in trouble, people cling to what makes them comfortable, so they go again and again to see the same movie.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Song #People #Watches

Nobody went to see Tideland! I was hoping people would get angry about it but those that saw it didn't want to talk about it. This is the world we're living in, people don't want to discuss things that are actually worth discussing.
-- Terry Gilliam

#People #World #Want

I think there's a side of me that's trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg - I don't usually admit this publicly - because I tend to think that they only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic. What I want to do is take whatever cinema is considered normal or successful at a particular time and play around with it - to use it as a way of luring audiences in.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Successful #Thinking #Play

People in Hollywood are not showmen, they're maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Men #Thinking #People

[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers. ... The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it. ... The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Clever #Nice #Stupid

The Brothers Grimm came along and I was so desperate for work ... Actually I've got to say that I like the movie, I won't apologize for it.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Brother #Apologizing #Desperate

Well, I really want to encourage a kind of fantasy, a kind of magic. I love the term magic realism, whoever invented it – I do actually like it because it says certain things. It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying 'That's the world.' And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Thinking #Magic #Age

There are moments when television systems are young and haven't formed properly, and there's room for lots of original stuff. Then things become more and more top-heavy with executives who are trying to guarantee the success of things.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Trying #Television #Stuff

There was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn't want to go down that route.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Sides #Want #Vans

Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Stars #War #Hate

I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn't understand.
-- Terry Gilliam

#War #Police #Vietnam

I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country... dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Country #Lakes #Swamps

I was getting frustrated with America. It's interesting how as simple a thing as, like, letting your hair grow longer changed in the world in those days.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Simple #America #Hair

In advertising, I was frustrated by having to deal with the client. It was the only time I really worked in a proper office, and I didn't like it-simple as that.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Simple #Office #Frustrated

When it came to slaughtering sacred cows with such crude yet perfect musical precision, there was no one better than Frank. I wonder what songs he's teaching the angels right now? Good luck God! You've got your hands full this time.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Song #Teaching #Good Luck

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort.
-- Terry Gilliam

#New York #Team #Years

My problem is I'm like a junkie. I want a good movie fix, and I never get that fix.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Good Movie #Want #Problem

Literally overnight, I became an animator... and one that was well-known.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Well Known #Wells #Animator

They all sort of get mixed up in my head, to be quite honest. They're all dealing with similar things. It's about how you deal with reality, by ignoring it sometimes, reinventing it other times, and that's how you get through it.
-- Terry Gilliam

#Reality #Honest #Sometimes