It's hard to think of another contemporary director who has faced as much adversity in the course of their career as Terry Gilliam. The boisterous Minnesota-born auteur first gained notoriety as part of England's iconic Monty Python comedy troupe before launching a run as a feature filmmaker that has swung from beloved flights of fancy like Time Bandits and Brazil to such controversial headtrips as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Tideland. But the films themselves are only part of the story; almost every entry in Gilliam's canon has been plagued by off-screen travails that range from squabbles with the studio to budget overruns to the physical health of his cast and crew.

And yet, except for one infamous case—namely the abandoned project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which was the subject of the invaluable 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha—Gilliam has always emerged from his various trials and tribulations with a completed feature film. In the face of challenges that might cause a less hardy (or, as some might say, foolhardy) director to put down his camera and find a regular nine-to-five day job, he has soldiered on and produced daring, interesting and above all unique movies that always inspire heated discussions, both pro and con.

Still, even by Gilliam's standards, the behind-the-scenes difficulties that plagued his latest film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, seemed insurmountable. As the entire world knows by now, midway through production on this surreal story of an elderly magician (Christopher Plummer) and his traveling sideshow, the movie's biggest star and Gilliam's personal friend—one Heath Ledger—died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in New York City. In the days following his death, rumors flew that Parnassus would be shut down and locked away in a vault unfinished, but Gilliam refused to let another film go the way of Quixote. Working feverishly, he and his co-writer Charles McKeown invented a conceit that would allow them to cast other actors in Ledger's role for key sequences.

Enter Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, who found time in their crowded schedules to help Gilliam complete Ledger's final performance. In brief, the movie's plot revolves around Parnassus' most valuable possession: a mirror that allows a person to enter a fantastical universe where his or her wildest dreams can literally come true...for a price. The three actors play different aspects of Ledger's character after he passes through the looking glass. Far from being distracting, this device actually makes perfect sense in the world the film creates.

Even Gilliam is struck by how seamlessly Ledger morphs into Depp, Law and Farrell. "For me, it's bizarre looking at the movie, because it works so well the way it is. I can't remember the film I set out to make with Heath doing all the parts," he says, sitting in a sparsely decorated boardroom in midtown Manhattan's Sony offices. "Whether it would be better or worse, I don't know. But it would be different. I've always got to have the film in my head before I start shooting and it was hard to dislodge that. But I look at the finished film and it's clear that it had to be like this all along."

Gilliam may not be able to recall his original vision for Parnassus, but he does have vivid memories of how the idea for the film—which, believe it or not, is the first original screenplay he's penned since Brazil over two decades ago—first popped into his head. "Charles and I started with the notion of an object from another time set down in a modern world," he explains. "It was a wagon, which quickly became a traveling theatre. Now we had to put people inside it. Parnassus was the first occupant and then we decided to create a daughter, Valentina [played by English supermodel Lily Cole]. Next came the fairy-tale-like plotline where Parnassus makes a deal with the devil [Tom Waits]—that's a good start, because we've got a structure and there's a bit of tension in the air, but not too much because we're not making a thriller. Then you need the cuckoo—in this case, Tony [Ledger]—to land in the nest. He's the guy who may save or sink the day and he's got to be the romantic element since you've got a girl on the cusp of womanhood.



“After that, ideas just kept coming, some of which were pragmatic," Gilliam continues. "For example, we knew we couldn't spend the kind of money that the big boys get, so how do you keep the film surprising and visually exciting without spending a lot of money? Well, okay, we've got the theatre and we can afford to build that so a lot of the action can take place there. And when characters go through the mirror, we can do amazing things, but we have to get out before it gets too expensive. So what's our reason for getting out? Charles came up with the idea of a choice or a crossroads and if you have a crossroads, then you've got a good side and a bad side. So that's how we wrote the film. I'm running around the room or standing up and performing things and he's sitting there typing. I have a terrible time writing dialogue if I'm sitting down. Fortunately, Charles writes wonderful dialogue and if it's not going where I want, I can pull it back. But at least I have his wonderful words on the page to push around."

Gilliam's films are renowned for their striking visuals and Parnassus is no exception. The sequences that take place inside the title character's magical mirror are particularly memorable and feature some of the director's most imaginative—and playful—designs since his days pushing cardboard cutouts around for the famous interstitial animated segments that appeared on “Monty Python's Flying Circus.” These days Gilliam has graduated to state-of-the-art CGI effects and if he harbors any nostalgia for the days when he worked with models or paper, he doesn't show it.

"My attitude is, whatever works. In the end, it's all artifice anyway. When people get puritanical about technology, it makes me crazy. Like, 'Movies have to be shot on film!' I just think, 'You're out of your fucking mind!' I don't want to see film projection again in my life! I want digital projection. If you look at this film in digital versus film projection, they're almost two different movies." (When asked whether he shot Parnassus with digital cameras, Gilliam just laughs. "No, we shot on film because it's still the best medium for capturing information. Digital will take over from film in a few years—I know what they're aiming for and they'll get there.")

While he may be forward-thinking when it comes to the tools of cinema, don't expect to see Gilliam following Robert Zemeckis or James Cameron into the realm of motion-capture filmmaking. "I think what they're doing is amazing, but it doesn't interest me," he says matter-of-factly. "That process puts too much control in the hands of the director. There's something that happens when you're dealing with the real world; I want to give the actors enough space to perform in. People need to react to their environments—I don't think you get good performances out of actors just sitting in a room. If I wanted that kind of total control, I’d go full animation. I've seen bits of Avatar, which is very beautiful, and bits of A Christmas Carol and then I saw Up last week. Give me Up any day."

As tragic and trying as the experience of making Parnassus was for Gilliam, at least the story has a mostly happy ending. After premiering to strong reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the independently financed feature was picked up for distribution in all major territories. (Sony Pictures Classics is handling the U.S. release and plans a limited opening on Dec. 25 with an expansion to follow in January.) That's a significant improvement over what happened with Gilliam's last film, the divisive 2005 provocation Tideland, which was barely released by the now-defunct distributor ThinkFilm. In a famous viral video designed to promote Tideland, Gilliam was filmed on the streets of New York carrying a cardboard sign reading "Will Direct for Food" and collecting spare change. "That was fun," Gilliam recalls, smiling mischievously. "People were like 'Oh, it's so humiliating!' and I just said, 'Oh, fuck off.' We're filmmakers—we're out there shilling everyday. We make things and we want people to see them. And Tideland played in New York for five weeks after that!"

With an established distributor like Sony Pictures Classics behind him on Parnassus, Gilliam doesn't have to worry about such DIY methods of promotion. Instead, he can turn his attention to his next project, which, improbably enough, is The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. "With any luck, we'll be shooting next April," Gilliam confides and then immediately knocks his fist on the wood table in front of him. "Of course, there are a million things that can go wrong before then. We just completed a major rewrite on the script—I'd say two-thirds of it is the same, but that last third changes everything." The passage of time has taken its toll on the project in one other crucial respect; Johnny Depp, the star of the original version, will not be part of the resurrected Quixote. "He's a superstar now, so his dance card is full for the next three years. It's a pity, because he's still perfect for the part. But these things happen."

After almost four decades of having "these things" happen to him on a regular basis, one might think Gilliam would be tired of the ups and downs of life in the film industry. But the 69-year-old insists he has no plans to turn in his DGA card anytime soon. "I don't know what retirement means. To me, life is about making things and I just happen to make movies now. Whether I'm able to make movies up until the final curtain, I don't know. Maybe I'll just be doing cartoons again or even birthday cards. I began my career in birthday cards, so that's where it could end up. But I have to make things—it's the only way I can justify my existence. If I'm not making something, what the fuck am I doing here? I'm just taking up space and breathing the air that other people could breathe."