THE HISTORY BOYS

I DON’T LIKE FANTASY!” CHUCKLES a typically mischievous Terry Gilliam. “I always want the audience to feel like they’re witnessing amazing things going on in the real world.” It’s an eyebrowraising admission from a master of the outlandish. Throughout Gilliam’s much-lionised body of work, a central conflict between imagination and reality constantly echoes. “My wife keeps telling me that I’m always making the same film – I just change the costumes,” quips the now 80-year-old director.

Forty years ago, Gilliam was best known as the reclusive, quiet member of Monty Python, injecting his surrealist sensibilities into its iconic animations. After co-directing Python’s big-screen romp Monty Python And The Holy Grail, and helming 1977’s Michael Palin-starring Jabberwocky solo, he was keen to fly the Python coop.

“George Harrison and his manager Denis O’Brien created HandMade Films to fund . That was – in theory – then going to give, but then Denis told me he had absolutely no interest in making it.”