Terry Gilliam on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Terry Gilliam has big uncle energy: he is quick to laugh, wears garish shirts and is on the precipice of saying something off colour at any moment. A few hours before our interview at Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Czechia, the former Python had a major embarrassing uncle moment. During the press conference for his new film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the 79-year-old lamented how tough he has it in this day and age. “I no longer want to be a white male,” he said. “I don’t want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world. My name is Loretta and I’m a BLT, a black lesbian in transition.” As the kids say: OK, boomer!

When we meet Gilliam later that day, he’s not exactly remorseful for his daft comments, but does seem a tad sheepish. “I'm in trouble,” he chuckles. “I was not supposed to reveal to the world that I'm Loretta. My wife is going to kill me. It's going to be unbearable when I get home.” It’s a shame that Gilliam would go full gammon today of all days. After all, he’s finally – after decades of setbacks – getting to show his passion project to one of its first public audiences.

Gilliam fell for Cervantes’ 17th century masterpiece Don Quixote in the late 80s and his trials to get it made have been well-documented. The first production in 2000, starring Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort, was scuppered by flash floods and Rochefort’s failing health – all elegantly detailed in tragicomic documentary Lost in La Mancha. Further attempts with John Hurt, Robert Duvall and his old Monty Python mucker Michael Palin in the Quixote role also stalled.

The project became a byword for a cursed production. “The press loved that idea,” Gilliam says. “And it's a better story than just saying, ‘they've some trouble, they don't have this money, the weather is bad’. The curse is better.” His obsession to get the film made against the odds is to be admired, although he doesn’t see it in those terms. “I didn't see it as an obsession. I'm just pig-headed, and once I say I'm gonna do something, I'm determined to try to do it.”

He admits to loathing the process – “I hated Quixote,” he blurts out several times during the interview – but the adversities seem to be what kept him going. “Everybody said, 'Oh, it's time to stop, give up, let's do another thing'. And I said, 'That's much too reasonable’. I didn't want to be reasonable. I'd rather be on the edge of madness and see what happens.”

If the making of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was a toil, none of that hardship has made it on screen. It’s a scrappy beast, like all Gilliam films, but it’s also full of the energy, wit and invention that characterises his best work. Rather than a direct adaptation, Gilliam has used Cervantes’ epic story of an ageing Spanish nobleman who believes he’s a gallant knight saving damsels in distress and battling giants as a springboard for his own wild imagination. Gilliam’s skew-whiff fantasy centres on a cynical advert director (Adam Driver) returning to the small Spanish town where he shot his student film (a Don Quixote adaptation) to find that its lead actor, a local cobbler (played by Jonathan Pryce), has stayed in character as the eccentric 17th century knight ever since.

No one should be surprised that Gilliam’s take on Cervantes isn’t straightforward. “I know, my fingerprints are in everything; it's very bad,” says Gilliam when we mention his film’s wild idiosyncrasies. “Whatever I get interested in, and I start doing it, somehow, without even being aware of it, I'm bringing myself into it. Maybe it's a kind of egotism, but I never know I'm doing it until the final result and I say to myself, 'What have I done?'”

So what now for Gilliam? What does Sisyphus do once his rock reaches the top of the hill? “I just want to do something simple where the money's in place so I just go to work,” he says with a smile. We look at him sceptically, and he soon retracts the statement. “I do enjoy difficulties," he admits. “Difficulties focus my mind because I'm very greedy. I want to do everything and then suddenly the restrictions of time and budget keep me contained, and let me work more instinctively.” One thing is for sure, he’s not interested in jumping on the superhero bandwagon. “Why would I do what everybody else is doing?” he scoffs. “If it was 15 years ago, 20 years, I would've jumped at the chance. But it's too late now. It wouldn't be a challenge because those are going to work in a factory.”

Shame. The Marvel and DC conveyor belts could do with a dose of his handcrafted madness.

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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is released 31 Jan by Sparky Pictures; preview at GFT, Glasgow, 23 Jan