Terry Gilliam

You know the hardest thing to do in hollywood is burn bridges. There is usually some sucker who still likes me. There is usually some sucker who will still work with me.

In advertising, I was frustrated by having to deal with the client. It was the only time I really worked in a proper office, and I didn't like it-simple as that.

It was lights, camera, inaction.

The whole point of animation to me is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn't really matter. Whatever works is the thing to use.

Literally overnight, I became an animator... and one that was well-known.

I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country... dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.

People used to think we just faked all that stuff... it was all written, rehearsed. The fact that it looks as cobbled together as it does is just that we weren't very good.

I was doing political cartoons and getting angry to the point where I felt I was going to have to start making and throwing bombs. I thought I was probably a better cartoonist than a bomb maker.

We did Holy Grail, and I got my name up there as one of the directors. After that, I started moving more and more down the line I wanted to, which was making movies.

They make Spy Kids, they make Scream, they make A Scary Movie. This doesn't do that, so it could be a very bad marriage. I'm trying to keep this potential nightmare quiet because we're just finishing editing.

There was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn't want to go down that route.

Hyperbole is something I'd better avoid.

At the first screening, there were a lot of areas that we went around and around about. Then we had our second screening. It played better. It's almost a reasonable length film now!

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort.

There are moments when television systems are young and haven't formed properly, and there's room for lots of original stuff. Then things become more and more top-heavy with executives who are trying to guarantee the success of things.

I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn't understand.

Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe it's a different one. The old one got fired.

It's been interesting how kids have had hardly any problems watching it, but adults have more trouble. This happened way back even with Jabberwocky and Time Bandits.

I was getting frustrated with America. It's interesting how as simple a thing as, like, letting your hair grow longer changed in the world in those days.

You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.

I keep referring to them in the plural but all I'm dealing with is Bob. I don't know where Harvey fits in the equation. He was very present at the beginning, winding his brother up. I don't know where he is now.

We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.

It's 85 million dollars and they got to be really careful because they are going to need me.