TIME BANDITS

Monty Python legend Terry Gilliam talks to Simon Hooper about Time Bandits, the plans for a sequel, and his next film….

So let’s go back to the start. The Time Bandits story was yours, but the script was co-written with Michael Palin who traditionally always wrote with Terry Jones. Why Michael rather than John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle or Terry Jones?

Because Mike was the nice one. The one we all liked. Mike was nice. Terry and Mike balance each other and I thought I could balance him in a slightly different way because he’s so clever with character in particular. Dialogue and character I’m not great on. I’m good on the big ideas, the shape of something, the story we’re trying to tell, the characters as far as who they are but not what they say; that’s why I thought it would be a good combination and it was.

The script is full of ideas and visuals but I understand there were scenes that were dropped, including a bank robbery and a spider women scene. What else was dropped?

That’s pretty much it. The spider women scene was a great loss because it was a really very funny scene. Two women sat in their little cave luring blond beautiful knights in and then wrapping them up in their spidery webs and keeping them prisoner while they looked at them; and they would play music, but these women had these big old 19th century skirts and there were six legs on each of them beside their arms, so they were eight-legged creatures, and they were very romantic.

Old Monty Python pals Terry Gilliam and John Cleese

You had a great cast in this. The story behind the casting of Sean Connery is well known, because producer Denis O’Brien used to play golf with him, but what about Shelley Duvall? She supposedly had a really hard time with Kubrick on The Shining, so how was she on this?

It might have been Eric Idle who got her, because Eric knew everyone. That was his great talent, knowing everyone of importance, and I’m pretty sure he was the first one that introduced me to Shelley.

I got the impression that she’d been so traumatized after working with Kubrick that the thought of doing another film would almost seem like anathema to her.

Well I think it probably started that way but then I fell through the roof of the medieval carriage and caught her head gear and almost broke her neck. Kubrick was probably mental damage to her, mine was physical.