“He’s conned me”: the actor Terry Gilliam was convinced had screwed him over
As a member of Monty Python, Terry Gilliam got to work with some of the finest comedic minds of all time.
He clearly grew accustomed to working with top names, as is evidenced by his movie career… As a director, Gilliam has worked with just about everyone there is to work with – from screen legends like Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall to more modern stars like Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield, with his list of famous friends being long and glittering.
Nowhere is this more clear than in his 1995 weird sci-fi epic, 12 Monkeys. The movie stars Bruce Willis – who was only hired because he had a “penile-shaped head” – as a criminal sent back in time to discover the cause of a virus that has killed most of the human population. He is joined by Madeleine Stowe, Christopher Plummer, and another one of the 1990s biggest stars, Brad Pitt.
Pitt plays Jeffrey Goines, an anti-capitalist radical who meets Willis’ character in a mental hospital. Goines is not an easy character to play. On the surface, he’s your typical ‘movie nutjob’, complete with weird ticks and crazy eyes. He occupies something of a sagely position in the movie, however, guiding the hero through his quest. As Gilliam explained to author Robert J Emery in his book The Directors: Take Two, at first, he was worried that Pitt wasn’t up to the task.
“When we were working with Brad, he was supposed to be sending me tapes of his progress, which he determinedly refused to do,” he said. “I was getting very nervous as we were approaching shooting days. ‘Oh, it’s not going to work; it’s going to be a disaster. He’s conned me. I made a major mistake here.’”
Gilliam had always been sceptical of casting Pitt. He initially wanted Jeff Bridges (who had appeared in his previous film, The Fisher King) for the part, but he was convinced by his casting team to give the youngster a chance. As it turns out, however, the director needn’t have been concerned. “He turns up a couple of days in advance, and we started talking, and he said he was ready,” he revealed. “On the first day of shooting, he just got on the set, and he exploded. Whoa! Jesus! This is fantastic.”
Contrary to what Gilliam believed at the time, Pitt was working incredibly hard to get the character of Goines just right. All this effort paid off, as his performance was touted as the highlight of the movie by critics across the globe.
At the 1996 Oscars, he was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actor’, and he won the corresponding award at the Golden Globes. As an added bonus, Pitt had been a relative unknown when he was cast, but had subsequently become a huge star by the time 12 Monkeys came out. Gilliam had bagged himself an A-lister on a C-lister’s salary.
All this goes to show that you should never judge a book by its cover and, if you’re working with Terry Gilliam on something, you should probably ignore most of what he says.
