Terry Gilliam

Gilliam is an influential and idiosyncratic film-maker (if perhaps less original than popularly imagined). He met his future fellow-Python Cleese while working in New York for Kurtzman, of MAD magazine fame. His hero Fellini was encountered in Rome, while filming ‘Munchausen’. Rushdie interviewed him sympathetically, the aspirant director Tarantino found him the only supportive mentor at Sundance, while Stoppard, who co-wrote ‘Brazil’ with him, kept telling him it was too close to ‘1984’ (which Gilliam in fact had not read).