Terry takes on #MeToo, Weinstein, Trump and John Cleese!!

[cclark]

Here's an interview with Ellen Barkin on her favorite directors (from 2015):
https://film.avclub.com/ellen-barkin-on-...1798277840

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)—“Waitress at North Star Café”
Ellen Barkin: [Laughs.] I don’t know why everyone talks to me about that movie. I’m in it for five seconds. I went down there to do the one real scene as the waitress at the North Star Café. And then Terry [Gilliam] decided it would be fun, since I’m in disguise with a wig and a fake ass and hips—my whole body was padded—to keep disguising me and insert me in, I think, two or three other scenes.

The A.V. Club: What were you disguised as?

EB: One time, I was in a club that they were all in, and I had some fringed, revealing outfit on, very scantily clad. Then I was part of their check-in scene, where I was dressed up as some Middle America lady. But it was fascinating to watch Terry, who I have loved and adored. So I was happy that he just kept saying, “Don’t go home.” I think he liked having me there, and he knew that I liked being there. So he’d just say, “Can you stay, and be in the nightclub scene, and we’ll disguise you again?” And I would say, “Sure.”

He’s fascinating to watch. It’s an interesting combination, because he has storyboards, if I remember correctly, so he’s got it pretty much planned out, but it’s so loose that he just goes with whatever’s happening on the set. So it’s a kind of perfect combination of a director who knows exactly what he wants out of the scene and how he wants to shoot it, and then will be willing to turn that around 180 degrees if one actor does one interesting thing that catches his eye. And he was very open to the kind of quirky improvisation of Benicio [Del Toro] and Johnny Depp.