Gilliamesque

December 14, 2015
Gilliam, the former Monty Python animator and director of Time Bandits, Baron Munchausen, and other fantasias, describes a life spent confounding authority in this acerbic memoir. Gilliam's picaresque tale breezes from his Vietnam-era period as an underground cartoonist dodging service in the National Guard to the surreal silliness of the Monty Python comedy troupe. tHe cheerfully allows that his films were marked by his "amazing ability never to learn to do anything properly." Along the way, he defies hierarchs of all kinds: network censors, studio chiefs bent on re-cuts, and church officials enraged by the blasphemous gospel spoof Life of Brian. Baffled by thespians ("Where an actor has got upset... I just try to get in there and look understandingâas if I'm doing something to make it better when really I don't have a clue"), Gilliam is an art-director's directorâhis masterpiece Brazil may be cinema's greatest visual critique of the totalitarian stateâand his accounts of integrating images, sets, décor, costumes, and monster-models, illustrated with his own sketches and hand-drawn storyboards, are fascinating. Amid the gleeful potshots at dictators and divas ("How long it was since he had actually done anything great," he writes of a tantrum-throwing Hunter S. Thompson), Gilliam shows us how prosaic attention to craft can gel into art. Photos.

October 1, 2015
The Monty Python member and controversial filmmaker pens his "Gilliamesque" autobiography. The only American-born member of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Gilliam tells his tale]a "high-speed car chase]with lots of skids and crashes, many of the best moments whizzing by in a blur"]in a breezy, comical style full of digressions that are mostly interesting but occasionally uneven and distracting. The book is lavishly packed with entertaining stories and visual asides, photos, drawings, and illustrations, most accompanied by the author's pithy commentary and reflections. Fans may be surprised to learn the Minnesotan was a Boy Scout and an exceptionally normal student. At Occidental College, he was a pole-vaulter, cheerleader, and class valedictorian. He did a stint in the National Guard and honed his exemplary drawing skills in New York City working at Help! Similar to Mad]Willy Elder's cartoons were "maybe the biggest single influence on how I'd make movies"]it provided Gilliam important illustrating experience and friendships with George Crumb and John Cleese. The author then moved to London and secured a position at the TV show We Have Ways of Making You Laugh, where he worked with Eric Idle and perfected his collage technique of combining found pictures with his own illustrations. Soon, the "foreigner" with fresh cartoons was asked to join the nascent Circus, which premiered on BBC in 1969. It wasn't long before fellow member Terry Jones and Gilliam were directing Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Then came Gilliam's Jabberwocky, and he was off on his own. Thanks to George Harrison's money, The Life of Brian was made, as was Gilliam's reputation as a director. Brazil]"my Citizen Kane"]followed, as did Baron Munchausen]"my Magnificent Ambersons." Unfortunately, the author only discusses the rest of his films, right up to his last, The Zero Theorem, in the final 50 pages. Fans will certainly want more, but for now, this will do.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.