Terry Gilliam quotes

People in Hollywood are not showmen, they're maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want. (Terry Gilliam)
Because I dislike being quoted I lie almost constantly when talking about my work. View quote
Terry Gilliam
[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers. ... The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it. ... The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it. View quote
Terry Gilliam
Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things. View quote
Terry Gilliam
Hyperbole is something I'd better avoid. View quote
Terry Gilliam
Everyone gossips on television; it's all so trivial and it's impossible to hear anything. View quote
Terry Gilliam
And we were lucky because we have a magic mirror in this movie. Not every movie has a magic mirror. View quote
Terry Gilliam
Nobody went to see Tideland! I was hoping people would get angry about it but those that saw it didn't want to talk about it. This is the world we're living in, people don't want to discuss things that are actually worth discussing. View quote
Terry Gilliam
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. View quote
Terry Gilliam
The Brothers Grimm came along and I was so desperate for work ... Actually I've got to say that I like the movie, I won't apologize for it. View quote
Terry Gilliam
I think there's a side of me that's trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg - I don't usually admit this publicly - because I tend to think that they only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic. What I want to do is take whatever cinema is considered normal or successful at a particular time and play around with it - to use it as a way of luring audiences in. (Terry Gilliam)
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. View quote
Terry Gilliam
People don't think. My goal in work is to make them think. The media do the opposite. View quote
Terry Gilliam
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. View quote
Terry Gilliam
There comes a part where the money and the creative elements all come crashing together. Everybody's under a lot of pressure, and everybody is panicking about what works and what doesn't. And the studios and the money always have one perspective and the creative people have another one, and usually what happens is a lot of compromises get made. I decided not to. I walked off and did Tideland and came back six months later. View quote
Terry Gilliam
The medieval imagery and iconography is so good for the imagination. View quote
Terry Gilliam
In the end, people have to learn to live together. View quote
Terry Gilliam
I like places where there are people who are different culturally, physically, in every way. And I like to see how they succeed in living together. View quote
Terry Gilliam
I've always liked gossip, gossip is fun, but whether you believe it or not is something else, and yet the web seems to want to believe. The web doesn't distinguish between what's playful and serious. And the speed! What is happening in the web, and all the tweeters tweeting, they become neurons. They are the neurons of the global village. Village is the right word because the village is where the gossip is taking place, it doesn't take place in the cities. A piece of information comes into that little neuron – whoop – and they've immediately got to pass it across the synaptic gap... View quote
Terry Gilliam
It's an abominable place. If there was an Old Testamental God, he would do his job and wipe the place out. The only bad thing is that some really good restaurants would go up as well. View quote
Terry Gilliam
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. (Terry Gilliam)
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. View quote
Terry Gilliam
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. View quote
Terry Gilliam
Literally overnight, I became an animator... and one that was well-known. View quote
Terry Gilliam
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. View quote
Terry Gilliam