Terry Gilliam
From Monty Python to motion picture writer and director - "and now, for something completely different" could definitely serve as the motto for Terry Gilliam's career. Born in 1940 in Medicine Lake, Minnesota, Terry Gilliam was influenced as a student by Harvey Kurtzman's Mad Magazine. At Occidental College, Gilliam switched majors from physics to fine arts to political science - a perfectly logical educational background for what turned out to be his first serious job fresh out of college, as a strip author at Kurtzman's Help! magazine. He met John Cleese while working at Help!. After moving to England, where he created animations for Do Not Adjust Your Set, he met fellow Pythonistas Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Joined by Graham Chapman, the sextet created the groundbreaking Monty Python's Flying Circus, with Gilliam contributing the surreal cutout animations to the show. From ominous hedgehogs and killer cars, Gilliam turned his hand to film directing. After co-directing Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry Jones, his next feature, Jabberwocky, failed to make much of an impact upon critics or audiences. However, his second solo film, Time Bandits, established him in 1981 as a bankable presence at the box office. The spectacular 1985 movie Brazil, featuring a dark and dystopic take on authoritarian and bureaucratic societies, was very nearly ruined by Universal Pictures' insistence that the movie be recut to give it a "happy ending"; fortunately, a vigorous media campaign by Gilliam prevented this disaster from happening. His subsequent films have richly explored the worlds of dream-like storytelling and myth, including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Fisher King (1991), and Tideland (2005). At the same time, he has also revisited the world of on-the-edge science fiction in Twelve Monkeys (1995), and Hunter S. Thompson's drug-fueled gonzo journalism in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). His next project is tantalizingly entitled The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.
