Latest news with #TerryGilliam
The Independent
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Monty Python star blames Trump for ruining satire
Director Terry Gilliam claims the re-election of President Trump has "destroyed" satire and inadvertently "killed" his new film, "The Carnival at the End of Days". Gilliam states that Trump has 'destroyed' satire because his actions are so extreme that they make traditional satire impossible, thus 'killing' his movie. He stated that irony and satire were "basically dead" due to "woke activists" making people afraid to tell jokes, but Trump has "turned it upside down". Gilliam's upcoming film, "The Carnival at the End of Days", is a star-studded comedy about the apocalypse, set to feature Jeff Bridges as the voice of God and Johnny Depp as Satan, among others. Gilliam indicated he might need to rewrite much of the film, including a preamble that it takes place during "the Trump lost years from 2020 to 2024".
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Terry Gilliam Says Trump ‘Killed' His ‘Carnival at the End of Days' Film: He ‘Destroyed Satire'
Terry Gilliam is pointing the finger at Donald Trump for ruining comedy. The outspoken director detailed how his next film, 'The Carnival at the End of Days,' has essentially been thwarted amid Trump's second term as President. 'The Carnival at the End of Days' was set to start filming in April 2025; the cast includes Johnny Depp, Jeff Bridges, and Adam Driver. Yet now Gilliam is back to the drawing board. The filmmaker told THR ahead of the Umbria Film Festival (where he serves as honorary president) that he will have to 'rewrite' the film, as Trump's presidency has 'destroyed satire' as a concept. More from IndieWire Johnny Depp Says Studio Wanted Him to 'Retire' from 'Fantastic Beasts' Franchise: 'F**k You' Does Iranian Cinema Construct Its Own Cinematic Veil for Women? Pulling Back Hijab in Recent Films 'He's fucked up the latest film I was working on,' Gilliam said of the president. 'Because it was a satire about the last several years when things were going as they were. He's turned it upside down. So he's killed my movie.' He added, 'I had a sub-title that said: 'Great fun for all of those who enjoy taking offense.' That was how I approached it. I think Trump has destroyed satire. I mean, how can you be satirical about what's going on in the way he's doing the world? […] I think Trump has changed things considerably. He's turned the world upside down. I don't know if people are going to be laughing more, but they're probably less frightened to laugh. There have been woke activists with a very narrow, self-righteous point of view. That's frightened so many people, and so many people have been very timid about telling jokes, making fun of things, because if you tell a joke, these people say you're punching down at somebody. No, you're finding humor in humanity!' However, the project could still be salvaged with a few tweaks. 'With 'Carnival,' the other day I was thinking I was going to put a little preamble on it saying that what you're about to see takes place during the period historians refer to as the Trump lost years from 2020 to 2024. […] I think I've got to rewrite a lot of it. I'm still trying to decide how to approach that.' Bridges was set to play the voice of God, with Depp cast as Satan. Jason Momoa, Asa Butterfield, Emma Laird, and Tom Waits also star. 'You'd think everybody would be rushing forward to give me all the money I need,' Gilliam said of the cast, saying the stars are 'quite good.' 'It's not as easy as that.' He concluded, 'Irony [and] satire [are] basically dead. And humor, to me, is probably one of the most essential things in life. You've got six senses, and the seventh sense is humor, and if you don't have that, life is going to be miserable.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Terry Gilliam on the Timeliness of ‘Brazil' at 40, How Donald Trump 'F***ed Up' His Next Film
The 29th edition of the Umbria Film Festival in Italy is kicking off today, and its honorary president, Terry Gilliam, has plenty to say about his long and varied career as filmmaker, funny man and provocateur. The fest, which runs through Sunday, will feature a Saturday event dubbed 'Becoming X into the Gilliamverse,' an artistic/musical intervention by the Becoming X cartoonists' collective, which is dedicated to the 40th anniversary of Gilliam's legendary dystopian sci-fi comedy Brazil. 'To cap off this day, a live drawing will take place in Piazza San Francesco, immediately following the film's screening,' reads the festival website. More from The Hollywood Reporter Niels Swinkels Named President, International Distribution at Focus Features Will Apple Ever Air 'Tehran' Season 3? 1-2 Special Takes Radu Jude's 'Dracula' for North America Gilliam talked to The Hollywood Reporter about the film's anniversary, the state of his planned next film The Carnival at the End of Days and how President Donald Trump may have contributed to its delay. Happy birthday, ! Can you believe your film is 40 years old? I recently rewatched it, and it feels so timely. How do you explain that?Clearly, I'm a prophet. Very simple! (Laughs.) I don't know. The world has always been like this. I just looked at [the future] back then, and I thought about what it was going to be like. I guess most people don't think about long-term events. You have had Hollywood hits and some films that weren't hits. How do you feel about your relationship with Hollywood? It's actually been quite fine. I mean, my introduction to it was Time Bandits, which every studio turned down. And then we did it, and it was no. 1 for five weeks. So, I was a golden boy. I was hot. And so, rather than doing a big studio film that I was offered, I said now's my chance to do a film I want to do, Brazil. And that film then started my relationship with Hollywood, with [then-Universal boss] Sid Sheinberg. So I was off to a rather interesting start. And then I got my comeuppance and my kind of Orson Welles moment with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It went completely chaotic. It was partly because of David Puttnam, who had originally started the film, two weeks after we started shooting got fired [at Columbia Pictures], and then it was left in the hands of the studio. Of course, the new people at the studio wanted to make sure that the previous group of people running the studio looked bad. Dawn Steel got me to cut five minutes out of the movie to get it to two hours long. And she said if I cut it, she'd be behind me, powerfully. And then I did the cut, and they released only 117 prints of the film. That was at a time when every other film got 2,000-3,000. They completely buried Munchausen, I think. What's funny is I watched the new 4K version, sitting there thinking: This is a fucking great film. I really genuinely felt that. I felt I was watching a wonderful film that's funny, but many people never saw. Since you mentioned funny, you have always had a reputation for humor, sarcasm, caricature and all those things, but you have expressed concern in the past that irony was disappearing. How do you feel about the state of humor, or lack thereof, these days?I think Trump has changed things considerably. He's turned the world upside down. I don't know if people are going to be laughing more, but they're probably less frightened to laugh. There have been woke activists with a very narrow, self-righteous point of view. That's frightened so many people, and so many people have been very timid about telling jokes, making fun of things, because if you tell a joke, these people say you're punching down at somebody. No, you're finding humor in humanity! So, irony, satire were basically dead. And humor, to me, is probably one of the most essential things in life. You've got six senses, and the seventh sense is humor, and if you don't have that, life is going to be miserable. Has the return of Donald Trump also affected your work? Well, he's fucked up the latest film I was working on. Because it was a satire about the last several years when things were going as they were. He's turned it upside down. So he's killed my movie. That's , right?Yes. I had a sub-title that said: 'Great fun for all of those who enjoy taking offense.' That was how I approached it. I think Trump has destroyed satire. I mean, how can you be satirical about what's going on in the way he's doing the world? With Carnival, the other day I was thinking I was going to put a little preamble on it saying that what you're about to see takes place during the period historians refer to as the Trump lost years from 2020 to you think that there might still be a way to do the movie, maybe in a few years? I think I've got to rewrite a lot of it. I'm still trying to decide how to approach that. You have a star-studded cast that was going to make this movie with you, right? Yes, if we ever make it. Jeff Bridges is the voice of God. Johnny Depp is playing Satan. So the cast is rather good. Adam Driver, Jason Momoa, Asa Butterfield, Emma Laird and Tom Waits. You'd think everybody would be rushing forward to give me all the money I need. It's not as easy as that. I read once that Quentin Tarantino told people that you gave him some great directing advice. When was that? That's why on Reservoir Dogs I've got a thank you from Quentin in the film. I was at the Sundance festival, the part where old-timers are supposed to be helping younger directors. And I was there with Volker Schlöndorff and Stanley Donen. All three of us read the script for Reservoir Dogs, and I was blown away by it. I thought, 'Fuck, this is wonderful and extraordinary.' Stanley and Volker, It made no sense to them. And the previous group before us had been very negative on Quentin as well. I said I think your work is wonderful. It's a great script. And I said, here's how you direct: Be very clear about what you're trying to do. Then you surround yourself with really good people, and then you listen to them. There are all sorts of creatives who cite Terry Gilliam as a role model or inspiration. Are there any creatives that Terry Gilliam looks up to? Most of them are dead. Fellini is like a god to me. Kubrick was a god. Kurosawa, Buñuel and Bergman. I think those are the big ones. They're all different sizes and shapes, different kinds of movies, but they were all filmmakers that constantly surprised me and made me think of things in a fresh and different way. And that's all I'm trying to do as well. I'm not trying to teach anybody anything. Actually, one of the other great inspirations for me was Mary Poppins — not the film, but the person, the lady. Because she always had a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. So, if I'm doing a dark and disturbing film like Brazil, I make it funny as well. Let's talk about the Umbria Film Festival. How did you first get involved in it? The festival existed before I got involved. And then I bought a house in Umbria in 1990, and the first film of mine that was shown at the festival before I was honorary president was Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I loved the place. I loved the town of Montone, where the festival takes place and which is beautiful. And I liked the people. And eventually I got more and more involved with it, and I'm still involved. It's in this small beautiful town, and it's very, very familial. What's funny is that when the festival occurs, a lot of the foreigners who live around there in the hills and valleys turn up just for the festival. So you see a lot of people meeting each other for one week every year. As the honorary president, do you have to draw up a vision statement or anything like that? I just turn up and welcome people on the first day of the festival. Then, I hang around, and sign autographs. It's great! Everybody else does the real work. There is this special event at the festival this year that allows people to dive into the 'Gilliamverse.' How would you describe what the 'Gilliamverse' is like? I don't describe anything I do. I allow other people to describe it. I don't have a fucking clue what it is. I just do what I do. Before I let you get ready for Umbria, anything else you would like to mention or highlight? I want to talk about the film that seems to always get lost when they talk about my films. The one that gets lost is Tideland. And Tideland is one of my favorite films of all the films I've done. It just seems to disturb a lot of people. They can't get over the fact that there's a little girl alone. She's not quite alone. Her father has just died, but she's got the body. That's the important thing. I love Tideland, and I think a lot of people are just shocked by the film. But I think it's the sweetest thing I've ever done. It's what a child's imagination is like. And people are frightened when they discover what children are really like. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts
Fox News
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Monty Python' comedian says Trump emboldened people to laugh again after woke activists ruined comedy
Veteran filmmaker and "Monty Python" alum Terry Gilliam believes that President Donald Trump's re-election has allowed people to laugh again. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday, the 84-year-old director spoke about his career, the state of comedy and the future of his latest film project amid the changing cultural landscape. When asked if he still felt that humorless activists were stifling comedy, Gilliam declared that Trump had shaken up the environment. "I think Trump has changed things considerably. He's turned the world upside down," Gilliam said. "I don't know if people are going to be laughing more, but they're probably less frightened to laugh." Gilliam blamed woke activists with a "narrow, self-righteous point of view" for instilling fear in comedians over the past several years. "That's frightened so many people, and so many people have been very timid about telling jokes, making fun of things, because if you tell a joke, these people say you're punching down at somebody. No, you're finding humor in humanity!" he said. Gilliam described how Trump's return to power had the unintended consequence of derailing his upcoming comedy, "The Carnival at the End of Days," a satire about Satan trying to stop God from wiping out humanity, which lampoons woke culture. The film originally carried the subtitle: "Great fun for all of those who enjoy taking offense." "Well, he's f— up the latest film I was working on. Because it was a satire about the last several years when things were going as they were. He's turned it upside down. So he's killed my movie," Gilliam said. "That was how I approached it. I think Trump has destroyed satire. I mean, how can you be satirical about what's going on in the way he's doing the world?" he said. He joked about including a disclaimer in the film that places it in the so-called "Trump lost years" between 2020 and 2024. The film's script mocking self-righteous woke activists feels outdated now, he elaborated to Deadline. "And the other problem is that the script, in some ways, is out of date because it was a satire of the world two years ago, and Donald Trump has come along, and he is the carnival. He's turned the world upside down — everything. We may have to rework some of the story because parts of it was very specific about the wonderful world of woke before The Donald took over again. That very narrow way of thinking of life. We'll see where it goes. At the moment, I may be out of a job for another 10 years," he told the outlet Tuesday. Gilliam lamented the difficulties of getting the film off the ground in an increasingly cautious entertainment industry. We've been living in "a very nervous world," he said. "You were not allowed to offend anyone, and all the executives were living in fear, so I started looking elsewhere." Despite his recent comments about Trump, Gilliam is no fan of the president, calling him a "conman" and an "idiot" in a 2018 interview with Agence France-Presse. Gilliam has long been outspoken against political correctness and cancel culture hurting comedy. In a 2020 interview with The Independent, Gilliam said he was all for diversity but was tired of "White men being blamed for everything wrong in the world." "It's been so simplified, is what I don't like. When I announce that I'm a Black lesbian in transition, people take offense at that. Why?" he joked. In 2023, he echoed these sentiments to Euronews, saying people were losing their sense of humor. "(Activists) are very self-righteous, and if you don't agree with them, you're then a transphobe, a homophobe... No! I'm a phobe-phobe! I hate hate! That's what I hate!" he said at the time.
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kenneth Colley, Admiral Piett in a Pair of ‘Star Wars' Films, Dies at 87
Kenneth Colley, the British actor who appeared in seven features for director Ken Russell and portrayed the Darth Vader underling Admiral Piett in the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, has died. He was 87. Colley died Monday at his Ashford home in Kent, England, of complications from COVID and pneumonia, his agent Julian Owen announced. More from The Hollywood Reporter How Jamaal Fields-Green Took Charge of the Tony-Favorite 'MJ the Musical' and Made It His Own Why the John Garfield Retrospective at Karlovy Vary May Seem More Political Than Intended Paolo Sorrentino's 'La Grazia' Set to Open Venice Film Festival For Ken Russell, Colley played dramatist Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky, younger brother of the famed composer, in The Music Lovers (1971), and he did six other features with the director: The Devils (1971), The Boy Friend (1971), Mahler (1974), Lisztomania (1975) — as Frédéric Chopin — The Rainbow (1989) and Prisoner of Honor (1991). In a career that spanned more than 60 years, Colley also enjoyed a fruitful association with Monty Python and its members; he worked with director Terry Gilliam in Jabberwocky (1977) and with Michael Palin and Terry Jones on a 1977 episode of the BBC's Ripping Yarns and played Jesus in Life of Brian (1979). He had a stutter that he said disappeared whenever he was onstage or in front of a camera. Colley's Firmus Piett served as first officer of the flagship Star Dreadnought Executor under Admiral Kendal Ozzel (Michael Sheard) in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), then assumed command of the ship after Ozzel's death at the hands of Vader. He wasn't expected back for Return of the Jedi (1983). 'But I got a call from my agent saying there's been a lot of fan mail about this character and George [Lucas] has decided to put him in the next one, do you want to do it?' he recalled in a 2008 interview. 'I said sure, yeah. Who wouldn't?' He returned to play Piett once more in the 2012 animated telefilm Lego Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out. Born in Manchester on Dec. 7, 1937, Colley began his professional acting career in 1961 and went to perform for London's Old Vic, The Royal Court Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Also in the 1960s, he showed up on episodes of The Avengers, Coronation Street and Emergency-Ward 10 and in such films as How I Won the War (1967) and Oh! What a Lovely War (1968). Other notable roles included the Duke of Vienna in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure for the BBC in 1979; a Soviet colonel in Clint Eastwood's Firefox (1982); Adolf Eichmann in the 1985 NBC telefilm Wallenberg: A Hero's Story; a Nazi in the 1988-89 ABC miniseries War and Remembrance; the pirate Ben Gunn on the 1986 Disney Channel miniseries Return to Treasure Island; and a crime boss on the BBC's Peaky Blinders in 2016. Colley's work as Piett made him a popular figure at Star Wars conventions and events all over the world. 'If you let it, it becomes a way of life,' he said in that 2008 interview. 'I think we're now into the third generation of people, who were not born, and it keeps it alive. For me, the personal experience is a very long time ago, but this kind of secondary experience is going on all of the time. I've just signed a picture for someone just a minute ago. I think it may outlive me.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts
