Two new Terry Q&As...that I missed!

[TlatoSMD]

So I went on Facebook today at 3pm my time and found a post by Terry telling us to go to the Twitter account of SonyPicturesUK because he'd be giving a Q&A at 4:15pm UK time. Seeing that was still two hours away for me, I went to SonyPicturesUK and found a tweet telling people to go to this Reddit for the Q&A: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/20...ou_ask_me/

I saw that Terry was even replying to long questions there. So I posted my 5 questions to Terry that already went to nothing during the Guardian Q&A for The Wholly Family (interviewer hardly used any of the questions sent in) and the recent Irish Q&A (where they messed up on their available time). After posting my 5 questions, I saw that the Q&A on Reddit had started 2 hours before I'd arrived, and ended 1 hour before that. So in case the Q&A Terry had announced on Facebook was actually different from the Reddit, I went back to Twitter, made my own account, and using the required hashtag of #AskTerryGilliam twittered a link to my 5 questions in one place: http://www.reddit.com/user/TlatoSMD/

30 minutes before the Twitter Q&A started, SonyPicturesUK made an actual announcement about it, saying pretty much that outside of the previously announced hashtag of #AskTerryGilliam, questions would also have to be directed exactly @SonyPicturesUK, so I did that and *FINALLY* got on the right twitter questions list with my link to my 5 questions on Reddit! (The finished Q&A is here: https://twitter.com/SonyPicturesUK )

And then...Sony didn't forward my questions to Terry, most likely because they were too long! After he'd answered even long questions on Reddit!

4 times now (Guardian Q&A, Irish Q&A, Reddit, Twitter) that sending in the same questions went to nothing! GRAAAAAAAH!

[phildreams]

Post the questions here... what do you want to ask Terry?
Phil

[TlatoSMD]

Thank you for your kind help, Phil. Here are my 5 questions the way I sent them to the interviewers for the recent Q&A in Ireland:

(I apologize for my first question being kinda long, as it's what I'm most obsessed about. I leave it to you guys if and how you think you can condense it in any way when for you'll be putting it towards Terry. Don't worry, the other questions will be shorter!)

Question no. 1 of 5: Terry's amazing wide-angle lenses

What's been thrilling me to no end ever since I first got aware of you is your surreal, larger-than-life ultra-wide angle imagery, and it's spoiled me to most other directors ever since. The only parallels in art history I could identify would be

a.) certain Mannerist paintings from the Early Baroque period particularly associated with the short-lived spread of a rather self-ironic, philosophical kind of reason (favoring, in opposition to ecclesiastical Counter-Enlightenment, witty critique, puzzling mind games, and individualism),

b.) and some psychedelic art styles and caricatures of the 1960s counterculture, whereas the values of the latter I understand to have a certain influence upon you if mostly through Harvey Kurtzman.

The overarching theme for these two art movements would be trying to liberate people's minds in a way, a theme which also fits the wide-angle imagery in your movies pretty well, by showing everything in a highly unusual, disorienting field of view, in order to make people reconsider their traditional perceptions and prejudices.

Yet, when looking to the film world, potential influences regarding your particular use of rectalinear wide-angle imagery would be sparse. In fact, the only film that I could name as looking particularly "gilliamesque" before Python would be Orson Welles's version of Kafka's The trial.

So my question is: Could your identify any visual influences upon yourself with your use of extremely wide lenses? It's been already there with your very first feature Holy Grail, yet the only film theory source I remember you talking about particulary studying before Holy Grail was Eisenstein, and he certainly doesn't look like that. You once said that you pretty much "learned the tools of the trade" when working at an ad company back in the 60s, does that have anything to do with it?

Question no. 2 of 5: Lenses and early 16mm hobby

I understand you've been toying with 16mm film as a hobby even way before Holy Grail. Were you already prone to using very wide lenses for that back then as well? If so, I'd love to be able to pay for a DVD edition or their being on a DVD as bonus, just as I would for an official edition of The Beatles's homemovies from the 60s.

Question no. 3 of 5: Terry, Francois Schuiten, and The Obscure Cities

Besides being a fan of yours, I'm also a fan of the Belgian steampunk graphic novel series The Obscure Cities (aka Les Cites obscure) drawn by Francois Schuiten, which shares with your films aspects of dystopian kafkaesque satire, a taste for historical settings and (as taken from one of your interviews) old-fashioned mechanical things, and, of course, breathtaking, immensely imaginative and whimsical imagery. So I've been pleasently surprised when in Schuiten's biography, The Book of Schuiten, I came upon a photo of you and Francois talking to each other at some conference, taken circa around the time of Brothers Grimm and Tideland.

So I'm wondering, how do you feel about Schuiten's comics if you know them, and would you ever want to collaborate with Schuiten on a future certain masterpiece of a film, maybe even an adaptation of an existing Obscure Cities volume or an independent chapter taking place in the Obscure World? Schuiten did work as production designer on a number of international films before, after all.

Question no. 4 of 5: Magical Mystery Tour

When your iconic animations first came on the air in the UK with Do not adjust your set, it was just a few days away from another countercultural premiere on the same airwaves, which was that of The Beatles's telefilm Magical Mystery Tour, a work which I think many people will agree on would've benefited in many places from better direction and a tighter script by a director who would've been more in tune with their countercultural and psychedelic brainwaves at the time.

With The Beatles, according to your words, having meant a lot in your life and career, would you have liked to have been there, or now go back to 1967 in a time machine, to give the Fabs a hand or two with better photography, direction, and maybe a few script touch-ups, to help shape the Magical Mystery Tour film more into what it could've been?

Question no. 5 of 5: Homelessness

In a few interviews related to The Fisher King, you have mentioned in passing that your cinematography and visual language for that film came from having for some time actually gone homeless and living in the street in an American city. Exactly when and where was that, and for how long?