PLUME: In order to dispense with discussing Python - a subject you’ve gone over ad infinitum and ad nauseum over the years - if you were to sum up in a sentence or two what the Python years were like, what would it be?

GILLIAM: It was the best years… It was my college years. Complete freedom with a group of brilliant collaborators. You can’t ask for any more than that in life.

PLUME: I think that sums it up nicely. After the series ended, were things up in the air at that point?

GILLIAM: No, because the series ended as we started transitioning into movies. Once we did And Now For Something Completely Different - which was supposed to be our entree into America. It failed in America but was a big success in England… which was very irritating, because it was merely a rerun of all of our best stuff from the first couple of series. It was irritating that the public just wanted more of the same.

PLUME: Which has carried on through the years, unfortunately…

GILLIAM: It certainly has. The public seldom lets you down when you go that route. And then we did Holy Grail, and I got my name up there as one of the directors. Immediately after that, I started moving more and more down the line I wanted to, which was making movies.

GILLIAM: Up till then, Terry and I thought we were all completely on the same wavelength, but when we started working it proved to be not quite as in-sync as we both had originally thought - so we kind of divided the job. I stayed closer to the camera and he dealt with the others in the group - who, by then, I didn’t want to speak to, because actors are supposed to take direction - something I discovered on Jabberwocky, where I was working with some of the great English comics of all time and they were listening to me and doing what I asked them. I thought, “This is fantastic! This is great! I want to do more of this!”

PLUME: So what, the group dynamic of Python just didn’t allow that at the time?

GILLIAM: No, because I had been several years up in my little room with my pieces of paper - who did what I told them - so my social skills were not as highly developed as they are now. So when I was doing a scene that involved special effects where we’ve got animals coming over a battlement and I’ve got to make sure that the guy’s heads are below the battlement - and I wasn’t particularly good at expressing my reasons and they were rather impatient about having to kneel down in uncomfortable armor… things like that. I said, “Wait a minute… I didn’t write this sketch - it’s yours, John. If you want it done properly, you’ve got to do this.” It wasn’t death-dealing friction, it was just irritating. I thought, “Okay, I’ll make sure we’re shooting it properly and I’ll let Terry be the more diplomatic one.” We survived that, and in making Jabberwocky I really enjoyed working on my own - which, in a sense, I’d been doing as an animator.

PLUME: By design, isn’t directing a solitary profession?

GILLIAM: Not really… For me, it’s a totally collaborative thing. I like working in that way.

PLUME: But there does have to be a singular deciding voice where the buck stops…

GILLIAM: Yeah…Ultimately, that’s right. At a certain point, group decisions become very impractical. It’s just easier to have one voice - right or wrong.

PLUME: Compared to how you direct films now, what are the major differences to how you ran things when you first started out?

GILLIAM: At that stage, I storyboarded everything in much more detail. Coming from animation, I was obsessed with the frame, and so I relied on the boards more than I do now. I’m much freer and more confident. One of the problems was trying to force actors into frames that I had drawn, and - being a cartoonist - I tend to draw people with different proportions than they really have. That’s what worked well in Time Bandits, because I draw people in my cartoons that have the same proportions as dwarves. These guys turned out to be lifesavers for me, because they fit into the frame as I drew it.

PLUME: Your dream composition…

GILLIAM: Yeah. I think I’m more relaxed and more confident and I trust more people now to do their jobs, rather than trying to do everything.

PLUME: So were you more high-strung then?

GILLIAM: Yeah… I had a lot more energy. The spring is winding down now.

PLUME: Well, how would your lack of confidence manifest itself when you first started out?

GILLIAM: Well, it’s about knowing what the jobs are and entrusting people to do them well. When you’re a young director and a half the crew is older than you, they treat your requests with a sucking in of breath and say, “We’ve had 400 years in this industry and we’ve never done that that way.”

PLUME: Frank Oz mentioned that when he first started out, his insecurity manifested itself as basically acting like an asshole…

GILLIAM: Yeah, it tends to be that… “Just do it my way. No conversation, just do it.” Maybe I was… I don’t remember. I luckily have the ability to forget those times. It’s just trusting other people more. When you’re just starting out, you don’t trust anybody - because you think you’re the only one that really knows what you’re doing. The truth is, you’re probably the one who’s least qualified.

PLUME: Because you’re far too close to it?

GILLIAM: Yeah. What I’ve learned to do is trust a lot of people to get other voices, so that when the prop man comes up and says, “What are you doing that for?” - rather than saying “F*** off!” - I say, “Well, uh, why am I doing that?” What I like is to have people breaking down the hierarchy of filmmaking so that they’re covering your ass, in a sense, because they’re questioning you. I’ve found that the British have always been better at questioning than the Americans. The Americans are more fascistic in their approach to filmmaking, and they’re kind of frightened of asking the director impertinent questions.

PLUME: Isn’t American filmmaking more subjective than it is objective?

GILLIAM: I don’t know… I think it’s actually more of a machine there. What I mean by fascistic is that the hierarchy seems to be more important there. If you ask the crews there what American directors are about, they seem to be more about power and authority…

PLUME: And do they get their executive producer credit…

GILLIAM: Exactly. I found that on The Fisher King - which is the first American one I did - it took two or three weeks to get the crew to realize that I wanted their opinions… I wanted them to get involved in the thing and not just taking orders. I wanted them to ask, “Why do I have this gun in my hand and why am I being asked to shoot that guy?”

PLUME: Don’t you think that’s just a byproduct of the studio system, where everybody tries to protect their little fiefdom?

GILLIAM: Yeah. They don’t want people meddling in their turf, so they don’t meddle in other people’s. I say I want an open door policy, where everybody’s involved in everything and looking at everything, so there are a lot of eyes on this production - not just mine - and I want people to come forward with suggestions and thoughts. Eventually, I got that going on Fisher King, but I’d found before that English crews are much more adept at asking “Why?”…

PLUME: Just by their very nature?

GILLIAM: Yeah. And that’s important to me.

PLUME: I think that expresses itself in great many aspects of British culture - that sense of questioning experimentation and exploration…

GILLIAM: Yeah…

PLUME: It’s ironic that Americans consider themselves to be so freethinking and adventurous…

GILLIAM: I think America is one of the great conformist nations of the world - maybe the world leader when it comes to conformity. I still feel that.

PLUME: So the American spirit is more than willing to go up the hill as long as there’s somebody to lead it…

GILLIAM: Yeah.

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