\n<\/p>\n
D<\/span>own an alley in Covent Garden, on a building that was once a banana warehouse, there is a blue plaque. \u201cMonty Python, Film Maker, Lived Here, 1976-1987,\u201d reads the inscription. It\u2019s easy to miss: the plaque is not at eye level as they normally are, but up on the first floor, almost as if the blue plaque committee lost confidence in their uncharacteristic joke. Or perhaps John Cleese put it up.<\/p>\n Terry Gilliam arrives. I like his jacket. It looks like it\u2019s been stitched together from bits of blankets. \u201cMe too,\u201d he says. \u201cI got it 30 years ago in a secondhand store in New York.\u201d We\u2019re going to wander around London, revisiting places that have played significant parts in his career, as he approaches his 85th birthday.<\/p>\n The mother and son who worked the hotdog stall were filthy, totally Dickensian. I was in love with this place<\/p>\n The dates on the plaque are right, he thinks. After the success of 1975\u2019s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which Gilliam co-directed (with Terry Jones), they had money. So he, Michael Palin and special effects whiz Julian Doyle rented this building. On the ground floor, they recorded the Monty Python albums. Upstairs was a studio where they did some of the effects for Life of Brian, like the spaceship crash. \u201cWe went down to the local magic shop, bought exploding cigars, emptied the gunpowder, then broke a lightbulb and put it on the filament.\u201d Boom. Gilliam giggles at the memory. He giggles a lot, a childish, naughty giggle. I was half-expecting a grumpy old man. \u201cAt home I am,\u201d he admits. \u201cThis is a performance.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Where it began \u2026 the blue plaque on the old banana warehouse. <\/span> Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The area is much gentrified. He tells me about a mother and son who used to prepare their hotdog stall here, before wheeling it to Leicester Square. \u201cThey were filthy, totally Dickensian. I was in love with this place.\u201d And over there was an armourer, \u201cmaking armour the old way, pounding away on steel\u201d.<\/p>\n Really? It sounds like he\u2019s recalling scenes from his films, but I check later and a New York Times piece from 1978 also mentions the Covent Garden armourer. Now it\u2019s all high-end coffee shops and hair salons. What was once the Python\u2019s warehouse is now Neal\u2019s Yard Remedies, currently being refurbished. A workman notices Gilliam looking up at the plaque and asks who he is. \u201cTerry Gilliam.\u201d The man nods, but not knowingly. Wrong generation.<\/p>\n After arriving on a boat from the US in 1968, Gilliam\u2019s career really took off with the TV comedy sketch show Monty Python\u2019s Flying Circus. I wonder if he felt an outsider? They\u2019d all been to Oxford or Cambridge while he was, in his own words, \u201ca monosyllabic Minnesota farm boy\u201d, albeit one with a talent for animation.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in awe. They were so clever with words, great performers. I was just this guy cutting up pieces of paper and mucking around. But my sense of humour was like theirs, even though mine was more visual. That\u2019s the thing about Python: the chemistry of the six of us. We were different, we fought, but the combination produced an inexplicable chemical magic.\u201d Who could have known the only thing lacking would be a giant stampy foot?<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I was in awe\u2019 \u2026 Gilliam, far right, with the Pythons.<\/span> Photograph: Python\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n Originally credited as animator, Gilliam was soon an integral Python, going on to co-direct Holy Grail, which led to a whole new chapter of making his own films. This building we\u2019re standing outside is part of that chapter: he cut his 1985 satirical Orwellian fantasy Brazil here and cast Time Bandits, the film that preceded Brazil in his Trilogy of Imagination. We talk and walk. \u201cLuckily I\u2019m not recognisable like Cleese or Palin,\u201d he says. He likes to talk to people though, stopping for a chat with a woman in a key-cutting booth. \u201cKeep cutting those keys,\u201d he tells her.<\/p>\n Gilliam has nominal aphasia, meaning he struggles to remember the names of things. Once he couldn\u2019t remember the name of his wife (it\u2019s Maggie Weston \u2013 they met when she was a makeup artist on Monty Python). So much of ageing, he says, is regressive. \u201cI\u2019m actually regressing back to the clay that God uses to make Adam. What does Adam do when he gets going? He has to name everything? I\u2019m doing the opposite. I\u2019m un-naming everything!\u201d The nominal aphasia might have something to do with a recent stroke. Gilliam didn\u2019t know it was a stroke at the time, thought he was going blind, he tells an amusing anecdote about walking into an invisible man.<\/p>\n We are at our next stop: the London Coliseum on St Martin\u2019s Lane. Our route is planned around geography rather than along a timeline, so we\u2019ve jumped to 2011, when Gilliam directed Berlioz\u2019s The Damnation of Faust here. \u201cI know nothing about opera. I\u2019d probably seen one or maybe two maximum in my whole life.\u201d But he was persuaded to do it. He set Faust in Nazi Germany, though had to tone it down when the production moved to Berlin. \u201cThey were very nervous about Faust in hell, with Hitler so prominent.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I know nothing about opera\u2019 \u2026 where Gilliam directed The Damnation of Faust.<\/span> Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The security guard isn\u2019t keen to let us in. Maybe he doesn\u2019t believe that this guy with a rat-tail haircut in an old patchwork jacket once directed an opera here. While phone calls are made, Gilliam says, \u201cI can show you where a good place to piss is,\u201d and disappears down another alley.<\/p>\n Ew. Yes, it stinks. I\u2019m happy to report we don\u2019t add to the stench: Gilliam just wants to show me a bit of proper London. It\u2019s quite a contrast to the ornate Edwardian splendour of the Coliseum interior when we\u2019re eventually allowed in. His Faust was a big success. \u201cI was so proud \u2013 and 41% of the audience had never been to an opera before. They were coming in jeans. My happiest moment was on the last day. In the queue for tickets, a fight broke out! I thought, \u2018Yes, we\u2019ve made it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n On our way to the final stop, Gilliam says he sees his life as a fairytale. \u201cThere\u2019s the king and knights doing their thing. There\u2019s the lovely maid who\u2019s virtuous and being abducted all the time, and witches waiting. It\u2019s all there.\u201d<\/p>\n His last film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, took 25 years to make because he kept running out of money. \u201cThen my daughter met a lady who, late in life, had come into a lot of money. She had been following my career \u2013 or lack of it \u2013 and she gave us three and a half million euros, just like that. A Fairy Godmother came into our life. You\u2019re going to the ball, Terry!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018He was going to be the finest actor of his generation\u2019 \u2026 Heath Ledger in The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.<\/span> Photograph: AP<\/p>\n We arrive not at a ball but at a pub, the Horseshoe in Clerkenwell where, in 2008, Gilliam shot a scene for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The film follows a travelling theatre troupe whose leader, played by Christopher Plummer, is both wise and childlike and has more than a hint of Gilliam about him. Gilliam says he identifies more with Don Quixote. \u201cIt\u2019s about a man who sees reality in a more noble beautiful way, constantly failing and smashed down, but you keep getting up. That\u2019s the task.\u201d<\/p>\n Richard the landlord greets Gilliam warmly, and has fond memories of when Doctor Parnassus\u2019s strange travelling theatre came to town. But a sadness hangs over the project. Heath Ledger also starred in the film \u2013 the last he ever made. Gilliam wants to show me where they had their last conversation and leads me to the men\u2019s toilet. \u201cSo I\u2019m here, having a piss, and Heath comes in and stands over there.\u201d He indicates the other end of the urinal. \u201cI\u2019m happy pissing away and he says, \u2018Terry.\u2019 I turned and he had this ridiculous mask and clown makeup on. He says, \u2018We\u2019ve got to stop meeting like this.\u2019 What a place to say goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n Two days later Ledger was dead, having taken an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in his New York apartment. He was 28, although Gilliam says he always seemed much older. \u201cEverybody who knew him said there\u2019s somebody very old inside this young body. There was no question he was going to be the finest actor of his generation. He had it all, and everybody loved him because there was such a warmth about him. And it was his magnetism that worked on so many different levels, he was so smart and just capable of everything you\u2019d ever want of an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I think about my death every day. I\u2019m not worried at all\u2019 \u2026 Gilliam in the Horseshoe.<\/span> Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Later, Gilliam was in Vancouver to shoot the sequences featuring the Imaginarium \u2013 a mirror through which people could step to explore their own imaginations \u2013 when he got the call about Ledger. \u201cI just wanted to die,\u201d Gilliam says. His immediate thought was to abandon the whole project, but he was persuaded to carry on. They ended up using footage they\u2019d already shot of Ledger, but then got three actors who had known him \u2013 Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law \u2013 to play transformed versions of his character. The film is dedicated to Ledger.<\/p>\n Not that he\u2019s anywhere near it, but does Gilliam ever consider his own demise? \u201cMy death is something I\u2019m not worried about at all. I think about it every day of course, but in fun ways. I just don\u2019t want anybody in my family to jump the queue, that\u2019s all. I\u2019m out first, number uno.\u201d He has a plan, it\u2019s in his will. They have a house in Italy, he says, that sits like a nipple on a breast-shaped hill in Puglia. \u201cI want to be buried there with the best view. Put me in the ground in a cardboard coffin, then get an oak sapling and stick it in my chest so I can grow up to be an oak tree. It\u2019s beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n It is indeed beautiful. And perhaps a little inappropriate, appropriately. Maybe a giant foot then stamps down on it \u2026<\/p>\n Film-maker and Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam will be in interview at a special Guardian event on 29 October to celebrate his extraordinary life and 50 years in film, live at Cadogan Hall in London and online. Book tickets here.<\/p>\n This article was amended on 21 October 2025. An earlier version used a picture from the set of The Brothers Grimm in a section discussing The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. 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