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Gilliam out to disturb with film about childhood

Posted on: Thursday, 10 August 2006, 19:15 CDT

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON (Reuters) - Terry Gilliam tends not to make life easy for audiences, and his new film about a 10-year-old girl who prepares heroin for her father to inject and seeks to seduce an older simpleton is out to make them squirm some more.

The 65-year-old filmmaker is unapologetic for the provocative scenes in "Tideland," which follows Jeliza-Rose and her addict father on their journey to an isolated farm house where her imagination is let loose.

"I just felt we are constricting the way we look at the world and the way we think, particularly about children," said the Monty Python veteran, who has directed such critically acclaimed films as "Brazil" and "Twelve Monkeys."

"I knew full well when we were making it there would be a lot of adults who would really squirm and be very uncomfortable, but that's because of what goes on in their heads, not because of what children are about," he told Reuters by telephone.

Jeliza-Rose's down-and-out father, played by Jeff Bridges, spends much of his life "on vacation," under the influence of heroin that he injects after it is prepared for him by his daughter.

Her companions are four dolls' heads removed from their bodies, and she wants to have a baby with Dickens, a deranged 20-year-old who mistakes passing trains for giant sharks.

Gilliam also throws stuffed animals, a rotting corpse and warped religious beliefs into the mix.

"Tideland," based on a novel by Mitch Cullin, seeks to explore children's budding sexuality, a topic Gilliam believes has become taboo because of associations with pedophilia.

"What's going on is clearly a sexuality that's bubbling under the surface. That's the way children have always been. But somehow we're not allowed to talk about that any more because the next leap is into what the newspapers are selling."

IN NEED OF A HIT?

Gilliam is increasingly cast as the maverick genius and Hollywood outsider.

His last film, "The Brothers Grimm," cost an estimated $90 million and fared poorly with critics and at the box office. In 2000 "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" was ditched due to illness and floods.

"I have a foot in both camps," Gilliam said, when asked if he considered himself estranged from Hollywood. "I need to, because some of the things I want to do demand Hollywood money."

"Tideland" was not among them. It cost $12 million, but Hollywood was "too nervous" to back it.

"We went out to talk to people initially and they all ran away so those doors were closed to us."

Its performance at the box office may be affected by the controversial content.

As well as drugs and children's desires, the character Dell clings to fervent religious beliefs when her life falls apart, reflecting, Gilliam argues, the trend toward conservative Christianity among some Americans.

"I just find, in particular in America, it's getting so crazed, the fact that church-going is so high and it's not just the old, relaxed church-going. It's much more intense."

But Gilliam's next projects may require him to convince the big studio bosses that he can land them a commercial hit.

He plans to adapt fantasy writer Terry Pratchett's "Good Omens," which would cost around $80 million, and is also hopeful of resurrecting the ill-fated Don Quixote project if he can persuade Johnny Depp to commit.

Reuters/VNU

Source: REUTERS

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