I’m chuffed that former Monty Pythoner and all round creative wizard Terry Gilliam is heading to Venice film festival this year with The Zero Theorum.
His latest film stars Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton and Ben Whishaw (so even if it’s off-the-scale bonkers, it will be utterly believably so) and is billed as a sci-fi tale about a computer genius searching for the meaning of existence. There is literally nothing to not be excited about in that sentence.
Gilliam is one of those people that just oooozes ideas. He doesn’t sit still. He imagines worlds that simply couldn’t come from anyone else’s brain.
I came across this great interview with him in 99U. His initial answer to the question of where his ideas come from is SO Gilliam:
“I used to say I knew where the ideas came from. Because I’d go to bed, and I’d leave my shoes by the bed. And I’d wake up and there’d be these little elves that would come in and put ideas in my shoes, and I’d just use them.
But in truth, the answer lies is something much less peculiar (in all definitions of the word) than the recesses of Gilliam’s brain: don’t pontificate, don’t know where you want to end up, just start with something – anything – and see where it takes you:
“I refuse to intellectualize, or try to understand how it [coming up with ideas] happens. It happens, and I just try to ride with it. And the frightening thing is when it doesn’t happen, it’s actually terrifying because you realize, “I’ve dried up. It’s finally happened: the well is empty.” But, then if you get through those periods, then something starts happening again. A lot of what happens, it’s like doing a painting without actually doing a sketch in advance. You just start and you got this, you add another thing, boom, boom, boom.”
And for someone who’s known for the silly, the fantastical, the surreal, his advice to aspiring artists is searingly practical:
“Perseverance, patience, pigheadedness, the three Ps.”
Those of us who dream of Gilliam’s level of inventiveness can at least get our heads around that.
The Hobbyist 