Putting it on film:
"I did storyboards for the first time in a long time on this one," remembers Terry Gilliam, gleefully. "That's why I was enjoying it. It was like going back to my earlier films on which I storyboarded everything myself. That's really an exciting part of the process as you write a script - sitting down and starting to draw pictures. It's transformed. It becomes a different thing. I don't read the script again, we rewrite it based on what I've just drawn and that's really nice. We build models, we use CG and mix everything up and try to get everybody confused, so you can't quite see how we're creating our world. It's like a magic trick…….
Amy Gilliam was taking her first steps as a producer, working in Vancouver alongside Oscar®-winner William Vince, when she heard that her father was writing a new script. "Having worked in the film industry for twelve years and having made my way up the ladder, one of the biggest wishes of my career was one day to produce a film with my father," she remembers. "When I read his script, it was all those things that I'd been brought up with - imagination and adventure - everything about it is just magical. It's not a specific story that I've known from my childhood, but I think many elements of it are close to my heart and my experiences. Terry was running around trying to raise the finance and I thought to myself 'I want to make this. It would be an amazing thing to achieve'. Bill Vince saw the excitement and energy and passion in me for this project and he was the sort of man who, if he believed in something and in someone, he wanted to make it happen for them."
Samuel Hadida joined Bill and Amy as a producer, having distributed Gilliam's "The Brothers Grimm" in France. He was already impressed with the script, but was then delighted to be presented with the art book that Terry produced to illustrate his vision: "It helped us to visualise and to get the sense of what he wanted to achieve. It is a very visual movie, with a lot of special effects involved, and it was great that everybody was on the same page. This world was being created in storyboard and there we saw a preview of where he wanted the animation and the look of the film to go - and that was a big challenge."
"The design of The Imaginarium probably began with Pollock's toy theatres in London," remembers Gilliam. "When I first came here there was a shop that still exists today. They make these Victorian toy theatres, which are cardboard cut-outs, and they have always intrigued me. I went down to the Museum of Childhood, because I knew they had several old original ones there and I photographed several and fiddled with them in Photoshop.
"For the designs on the outside of the Imaginarium, we had books on arcana, hermetic symbols, Robert Fludd. I've always loved that stuff. I don't know what half of them mean, but they trigger ideas and so we started gathering them together and applying them to the theatre. There are snakes, devils, evil eyes, pentagrams. All sorts of things - probably a mixture of every kind of arcane symbolism ever invented. Medieval imagery and iconography is so good and healthy for your imagination.
Alchemists were trying to describe the world, trying to describe the cosmos, trying to make a visual, philosophic sense of it all. It's unlike modern reality and it always seems to stick in my mind more than our current view of reality does."
"Now that we have finished shooting, I know what the film is about, better than when Charles and I were writing it. I often feel I make a film in order to find out what it is I'm making! We knew we had these two warring factions - the guy who might be the Devil and the guy who might be God, but they're neither, they are below that, they are Demiurges.
And we shifted what each is offering the world. Parnassus is offering you the chance to expand your imagination, but that doesn't mean it is going to be easy or a pleasant ride. And we always made the choices Parnassus offers mean - if you should choose the right one - that you might achieve some form of enlightenment, but it will always be a really difficult path. The easier road is invariably with Mr Nick. During the writing we kept changing what Mr Nick was selling. In the final version, he sells the idea of fear, of insecurity. He plays on weakness, whereas Parnassus plays on the fact that certain people are strong and willing to take chances.
"Tony says of Parnassus, 'if he's got this power to control people's minds, why doesn't he rule the world?' Anton answers with a line I've always liked: 'He doesn't want to rule the world - he wants the world to rule itself'. Take responsibility. It's important to plant ideas like that."

Casting:

"Christopher Plummer was the first one we cast, I think," explains Gilliam. "He's a great actor. He's theatrical, he's of a certain age, and he has been a huge star. His daughter Amanda Plummer worked in 'The Fisher King' with me and there's an interesting relationship with him and his real daughter. What's fantastic about Christopher is that his theatrical sense proved to be absolutely perfect for the character - and the fact that he wanted to find the humour in the character all the time."
"I seem to be playing the title character in the movie," muses Plummer. "Not the Imaginarium itself, but Doctor Parnassus. Terry Gilliam called me out of the blue and said 'I'd like you to play my title creature - it's a wonderful old man.' I thought he probably called because there are very few old men left who are actors who can actually speak - and I'm one of them. I get luckier every year, because they get fewer and fewer and, as long as I'm still kicking and alive, I can report for duty. And so I said yes.
"I don't know what I did with Parnassus. He tended every now and then to be very melodramatically written, so, seeing how colourful and busy the sets were and all the other creatures in the film were moving around a great deal, because Terry likes movement, I decided to try to play Parnassus rather still and introspective, rather than outwardly melodramatic. I think it works, because he has an inner sorrow - the fact that he's betrayed his daughter with the devil. I think that that balances him - it isn't just all silly fantasy. There has to be some sort of dark and tragic side to this movie that can be dealt with in a light way, but nevertheless it's there."
Gilliam continues: "A Dutch animator was trying to get in touch with Tom Waits (whom I consider to be America's greatest musical poet) and asked me if I'd send Tom a script of his, which I did. It was the first contact I'd had with Tom in several years. He turned down my friend, but asked 'have you got anything going for me?' And I said 'well, there
is this interesting part in my new film….' and that was it. I said I'd got a part and he said 'I'm in'. Before he'd read the script."
"I play the devil," explains Waits. "I don't play a devil or somebody who's kind of evil. I play the devil. It's kind of a curious conundrum - how do you play the devil? How do you play an archetype that large, that deep in history? I finally realised that I was just going to have to play it myself - it's my devil. It's the way I play the devil. So I hope I've been doing what Terry expected. I hope I've been exceeding his expectations. I'm not always sure that I am, but I hope I am."
"When we were looking for our Valentina, Irene Lamb, who was casting the film, said 'you've got to see Lily Cole'," remembers Gilliam. "So we did a little screen test and bingo, it was done! I just wanted somebody who was extraordinary looking to begin with, and I wanted somebody who was able to look sixteen. The reality is that when we began shooting with Lily, I thought I might have made a mistake, because she was so inexperienced and was surrounded by such great actors. But she rose to the occasion and just got better and better. The end result is an absolutely wonderful performance."
"It feels like a lot of hard work," admitted Cole on location. "But it's really rewarding and Terry's got a really good heart. All the people that are involved have a really good heart, so there's always been a very positive atmosphere to work in and very collaborative. It doesn't feel as though there are any egos fighting. There's no hierarchy, as Terry will joke - even though there is. There's that attitude which encourages everyone to give their input, which really is an amazing, special thing.
"It feels very, very different from modelling, but I expected it to feel different. The practicalities are obviously very different and the industries feel very different. In the scheme of the world, I'm sure they are quite similar, but side by side, there are a lot of differences. I feel much more pressure and much more involved acting, which for me, anyway, is a great thing. I feel it's therefore much more rewarding - I always feel quite stunted when I'm just modelling. There is very little you can actually bring of yourself to it, whereas acting is partly aesthetic, of course, which is why you get the job, but there are twenty million places you can go from there. It's: 'OK, what can you do? Come on and prove it', which makes it much harder, but, by the same standard, much more exciting."
"Verne Troyer was cast very early on," says Gilliam. "He was briefly in 'Fear and Loathing' - for two seconds. I thought if we're going to have a troupe of extraordinary people, an ordinary small guy is not good enough - we've got to get the smallest guy out there. But, it's not just his size…. the thing about Verne is that I know his attitude and he's absolutely spot on for Percy, because Percy's cynical, he's a smart-ass, he just doesn't take it from anybody, and Verne is like that."
Troyer agrees: "There's definitely a lot of me in him. He's kind of a hardass. He's sarcastic, cynical, doesn't really give two s**ts about anything. I love playing this character. If I could play him again I would. I like a challenge. I don't find Terry too demanding, because when you're doing a scene and you want to get the full effect, you don't want to just lollygag around. So I enjoy Terry when he's directing. He knows what he wants and he has a lot of great ideas and it just makes it fun."
According to Gilliam: "Heath Ledger was here in England working on 'The Dark Knight' and he had brought over a mutual friend, who had done the storyboards for 'Brothers Grimm'. They were doing an animated musical video and they needed a place to work. I offered them space at Peerless (our VFX company) in the projection/boardroom. One day, I was in there to show my storyboards to the people who were doing some pre-visualisation work and Heath and Daniele were sitting there. I start the show and begin explaining the sequences and, while this is going on, Heath slips me a little note which says 'can I play Tony?' He had seen the script, but I had never asked him to be involved. 'Are you serious?' I said. He said 'Yes, because I want to see this movie'. It was as simple as that. Once Heath was on board, I thought things would be easy, that the money would come pouring in…….wrong again!
"Finally, people were telling me about Andrew Garfield. I'd never seen him, but he sent an audition tape that he and his girlfriend had made in Los Angeles. He played each scene three different ways and I thought 'the guy's absolutely, stunningly brilliant'. Within a week I got a call from Heath saying, 'have you cast a guy named Andrew?' I said 'yeah'. He said, 'you won't believe it, I'm on my way to his birthday party.' Strange forces were at work already."
Garfield was thrilled to be cast: "Anton's very joyous, very open-hearted,  very warm and childish, but I feel he has more wisdom than most people who are twice his age. He's got a very good way of seeing the world, it's very pure, very innocent. I think Terry sees things very black and white in his life. He likes to compartmentalise things into being good and evil, within his films and within his life and within the world. So I think I fall into the good bracket, although I show signs of darkness taking over me. But I think I'm Terry as a kid, Terry as a young man, who's trying to figure out who he is and where he fits in and trying desperately to be good and trying desperately to help in any way.
"Terry's very, very honest. He doesn't bulls**t you into thinking that he knows any better than you do. He treats you as an equal and he expects you to produce something on the day, so it's not all left up to him and his team around him. There's a real pressure every day, coming into work, to be in the moment, to be inventive, to be brave. Actually, he really encourages crossing over a line that you wouldn't normally cross. You
know when he's happy, and you know when he's not quite happy. But he's never didactic, he's always encouraging."
The next stage of Gilliam's collaborative journey had begun. "Rehearsals were interesting, because the actors were trying to find their characters, but the clearest was always Christopher. We would begin a scene as scripted, as we had written it, and then I'd say 'Parnassus now comes down the stairs' and Christopher would say 'I don't think so, I don't think that Parnassus should enter at this point'. And I'd say 'why?' and Chris would reply: 'well, he will just be standing around with nothing to do….' A great theatre actor always knows how to and when not to make an entrance.
"I have allowed more ad-libbing on this film than on anything I have ever done and it started because of Heath…..he was just so full of ideas and fresh dialogue and so unbelievably fast and inventive. He was still, in some sense, speeding from playing The Joker, which had liberated him in a way that he had never experienced before. He was always telling me 'I am doing things in scenes that I didn't know was inside me. I cannot believe it.' During the first couple of weeks of rehearsal, Andrew, who, before this, had never really ad-libbed, tried to compete with him, but Heath, in character as Tony, was too fast and focussed and intimidating.
It didn't work. Eventually Andrew found he could compete on a different level and protect his character's vulnerability at the same time….by becoming playful and light. It gave Anton a kind of power that Tony couldn't quite deal with.
"I was feeling my way into the film more than I normally do. A lot of it was due to Heath's enthusiasm and energy and the new ideas that were pouring out of him. I was watching and thinking 'let's use them'. I always say I'm not the director, I'm just the filter. I don't care whose idea it is, as long as it's the best one. Fortunately, I'm the guy who gets to choose which one is the best.
"Interestingly, when Heath died, Andrew managed to fill part of the vacuum Heath left - his ad-libbing had become brilliant and very funny.  He said he hadn't realised he could do comedy before, having played very intense, serious characters. It was amazing to watch things shifting and growing, as if the film was making itself."
The producers are delighted with the ensemble cast. "The most important thing is when the actor plays the part, and gives it life," says Samuel Hadida. "It is great to have effects and design and visuals, but emotion is only given to the film by the performances. And this is where the director needs a very special skill; to find the best actors for the world he has created. Terry sees the spark inside their eyes, the way they move, the way they deliver and the way they act. I think that he has an incredible talent. He not only has a world of his own, but he also knows how best this world can live.
"As a producer, you have to provide all the tools and all of the freedom for a director like Terry Gilliam to be able to express himself - to make it possible for his vision to progress from paper to the screen. Our goal is to help him achieve his vision from the moment of its creation, to give him everything he needs to make the best movie possible."

NEXT PAGE

BACK

HOME