Terry Does Vegas

"There are two types of directors," I say. "The bad father, who yells at and humiliates his actors to get what he wants, and the good daddy, who nurtures, encourages and gives his actors a lot of support. I picture you as the good daddy."

"I'm not either. I'm the buddy. The ones who yell, that's about power. I'm not about power. I'm trying to get the best film I can. To me, the film is God, and we're all trying to serve our God."

"How did you get Bruce Willis to buy that theory?" I ask. "I've interviewed him and I'm pretty sure that when he's in the room there's no question in his mind who's God."

"When I heard Bruce was interested in Twelve Monkeys," Gilliam says, "I wasn't so sure about it. But we met, and we had a really funny afternoon. The one thing that impressed me about Bruce was a scene he did in Die Hard. In it he's picking glass out of his feet while he's on the phone talking about his wife, and then he starts crying. I thought, I've never seen that in a macho-man movie. He told me that was his idea, it wasn't scripted. So I thought, There's something going on here that intrigues me. I said to Bruce, 'Here's the problem. I heard stories about your entourage and we can't have that on this film. You have to come to this naked. You're a monk, you're a man without friends and you can't bring the support team.' He asked if he would bring the wrong kind of baggage to the film and I said, 'Potentially you do. But there's a side of me that wants to keep confounding the public' And I told him, 'If we're gonna do it, we do it this way--no smirk, no steely-eyed thing, and no little moue thing you do with your mouth.' That was the total sum of my direction."

That's it? That's all it took to tame Bruce Willis?

"Not really," says Gilliam. He takes such a deep breath you'd think he was going underwater. "Bruce is aggressive, he likes fighting. No, he loves fighting. That's where he feels the most comfortable, when he can suddenly push against you, and you push back, so he pushes harder. The other bit of direction I did, which almost killed me, was to let him push me. I just kept going backwards. But I think Bruce is a very good actor."

"Good actor or not," I say, "he's still a piece of work."

"Bruce Willis really wants to be loved and liked by people," Gilliam insists, "yet he puts all these barriers around him. I think he's actually quite vulnerable, but the barriers are so thick and deep now that most people never get into that inner core."

"After listening to you talk about Bruce," I say, "I feel a lot less hostile toward the guy."

"Oh God," Gilliam shrieks, "don't let me change your mind about anything. That would be sad."

After Gilliam shows me a few more scenes from Fear and Loathing, I think how difficult it must be to be responsible for a big movie. "Did your experience with Baron make you insecure about releasing a big picture?"

"Batman & Robin, The Postman," Gilliam says, "now those were colossal flops that cost a fortune. Baron Munchausen was nothing compared with all those. I have certainly fought with the studios over the years. Nobody got Time Bandits. They told me that blowing up kids' parents at the end was going to kill the film. Of course, they were wrong. Kids and their parents loved that film and it made wheelbarrows full of money. Twelve Monkeys made gobs of dough. The Fisher King did really well. So when people still bring up Munchausen as an example of my being out of control, I just have to laugh."

It's already been hours since I first walked into Gilliam's editing room. As I start to gather up my things, Gilliam grabs my arm. "Don't tell anyone what Johnny Depp looks like in the film," he pleads. "I want them to pay their six dollars to go to the theater and see Johnny Depp bald."

Six dollars? For the first time all day I realize that it's been a long time since Gilliam has lived in America.

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Martha Frankel interviewed Angelina Jolie for the March '98 issue of Movieline.

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