The invaluable advice Terry Gilliam gave Quentin Tarantino: “Him saying it made it achievable”
It’s not often that a young filmmaker destined to become an iconic director gets to grill an award-winning writer, director, and comedy legend. However, when Quentin Tarantino first met Terry Gilliam, he came away with a pivotal piece of advice that completely changed his cinematic worldview.
Tarantino first made waves on the independent scene when Reservoir Dogs premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. However, before his debut feature even premiered, he attended one of the institute’s filmmaking labs, where he encountered Monty Python alumni.
Even though he was a lifelong student of the medium who’d always possessed the self-confidence to believe they were guaranteed to make it to the top, Tarantino was happy to absorb as much information from those who’d been around the block and back more than a few times and encountered almost every single one of the ups and downs of the filmmaking process along the way.
Gilliam has battled his way through a career that’s seen him run into financial, creative, artistic, and studio roadblocks, but he’s always maintained his creative vision. Even when his productions have been taken out of his hands to be re-cut, re-edited, and sent to cinemas as something he barely even recognises, they’re still distinctively and recognisably Gilliam’s images.
With that in mind, his answer to Tarantino’s complicated question was a fairly simple one, but it nonetheless helped shape the aspiring auteur’s approach to the craft. “Mr Gilliam, you have a vision that carries over in every single movie that you do,” he recounted to Filmmaker Magazine of his inquiry. “How do you achieve that special vision in each one of your different movies?”
Nobody knows what Tarantino expected to hear when he asked the question, but the answer gave him a new perspective on directing. “I have the vision in my head, and all I have to do is hire a good cinematographer, good production designer, good costume designer,” Gilliam replied. “And my job is to articulate that vision to them. After I’ve articulated it, they take it and go to the moon with it.”
As Tarantino explained, “He said something which should be obvious, but him saying it made it achievable.” It was a necessary lightbulb moment from one legendary filmmaker to another about-to-be-legendary auteur. Not long after this unique interaction, Reservoir Dogs started shooting, setting a standard that would continue throughout his career.
Gilliam might be a famously short-tempered fellow when it comes to dealing with executives, but he’s always been happy to pass on words of wisdom to the next generation. He wouldn’t have had any idea at the time, but he was a monumental influence on Tarantino, who took independent cinema by the scruff of the neck and reshaped it in his own image during the 1990s.
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