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'Monkey Business:

'How director Terry Gilliam

'got Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt and Madeleine Stowe

'to work cheap. '

'The film has a grim view. '

[Woman] That's a nice photo.

- Sitting on the table? - The poster.

'The film: 12 Monkeys -

'R, violence, language, sex, nudity. '

Where's there sex in it?

[Woman] Nowhere.

No. Let's sue them for misrepresentation.

Stars. There we go.

Can I get you anything else?

How long before the show begins?

- The show starts at 5.30. - 5.30.

[Show's theme tune]

'Tonight, Mandy Patinkin

'and director Terry Gilliam! '

[Man] What d'you think of the intro?

What intro?

'Welcome one of Hollywood's true creative visionaries,

'Terry Gilliam. '

I'm not gonna say...!

Hollywood? I've now become a Hollywood director.

There's just no stopping these folk.

'Our next guest was a founding member of Monty Python

'and has gone on to direct such films as Brazil,

'The Fisher King and now 12 Monkeys, which opens today. '

'Welcome one of Hollywood's true creative visionaries,

'Terry Gilliam. '

[Man] Action on the crane!

[Terry sings tune]

[On tape] 'I don't know anything about monkey, or... '

[Chanting] Use is abuse!

Use is abuse! Use is abuse!

[Terry] And action!

[Blows loud raspberry]

Cut.

[Jingling of bells]

[Siren wails]

Those windows over there. If you can hit those ledges...

'In November of 1994, Terry Gilliam began production

'on what he calls his seventh and a half feature film,

'12 Monkeys.

'Although he normally develops his own projects

'and works on the fringes of the Hollywood system,

'Terry comes to 12 Monkeys as a director for hire.

'He's now part of a commercial film package

'that includes someone else's script,

'major studio financing,

'and some of Hollywood's most powerful stars. '

[Terry] 'There's a side of me

'that's permanently sick to my stomach,

'feeling I'm being dragged into the abyss of success...

'Then there's a side of me

'that thinks I'm getting away with murder within the system. '

Maybe I am making a European art movie

within the Hollywood system. I don't know.

Maybe I'll just be caught.

'Terry's movies are too big in scope

'to be anything but films

'that are intended for a broad audience. '

As much as Terry might not wanna be in the Hollywood system,

he knows he's never gonna be able to get

the kind of money he wants

to make those hugely ambitious movies

that his vision is,

without somehow involving the studio system.

So that's the paradox, isn't it?

'Terry's experiences in Hollywood

'have not always been pleasant.

'In 1985, Terry delivered Brazil to Universal.

'Universal didn't like the film,

'and decided to shorten it

'and try out a happier ending. '

[Editor from Universal] Hm-m.

'Though Terry didn't have final cut,

'he thought he'd have the final word,

'and made the Battle of Brazil public.

'He placed a full-page ad in Variety.

'He arranged illegal screenings for the LA Critics Circle.

[Critics] A-ah!

'When the film won the LA Critics Best Picture award,

'Universal released Terry's version of Brazil. '

[Audience] 0-oh

[Cheering and clapping]

Hm-mm.

Hm-mm-mm.

[Grunting and groaning]

'In 1987, Terry began work

'on The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

'The production was plagued with disasters

'and expensive ideas.

'The studio found the film too confusing for mass appeal

'and to avoid spending even more money,

'it put little effort into the marketing campaign.

'As a result, the film floundered at the box office

'and Terry was left with a bad reputation in Hollywood. '

[Door slams]

[Terry] 'After Munchausen,

'I went into a big depression about film-making, period.

'Then Fisher King came along, and it's the first script

'that I hadn't been involved in the writing of. '

It's the easiest film I made and one of the most enjoyable,

and it was successful. Very dangerous stuff, this.

Then I went and got a Hollywood agent.

Now I've got a Hollywood lawyer as well.

'There's an ironic aspect to this whole thing,

'because Brazil was made for Universal Pictures. '

On the other hand, I'm in a situation on this film

where I got final cut.

All I've ever wanted is control of it,

and I seem to have it on this one.

'Terry's asked us to make a documentary

'about the making of 12 Monkeys. '

[Terry] The boys, gentlemen, artists, documentarians.

This is the big moment.

The birth of a great documentary.

'He's jokingly suggested that if anything should go wrong,

'at least this time he'll have witnesses. '

[Terry] 'There's a sadness about this thing.

'There's a decay about it'

There's, uh, a nostalgia.

These are elements of the film.

What is nice about this is just the, you know,

the monotonous forever going in a circle.

Everybody just dutifully following one ass after another.

This is humanity - just a lot of monkeys

except for the one that breaks loose.

The dangerous, destructive one.

[Terry] 'This script is very disconcerting

'because it's dealing with time, it's dealing with madness.

'It's dealing with a perception of what the world is or isn't. '

[Man] 'It's a science fiction thriller

'about a virus that wipes out humanity... '

[2nd Man] 'It's one man travelling back through time

'to put together the jigsaw puzzle. '

[3rd Man] 'But in fact, maybe he really isn't from the future

'and all of this is in his head. '

[4th Man] 'For the first 50 pages of the script,

'you have no idea what's going on. '

Do you think that as the credits roll,

the audience will have figured it out?

Or are they gonna be going home arguing about it?

[Bruce] I wonder...

[Man] They'll be going home arguing about it.

Do we wanna make the answer clear enough

that they can figure it out on the way home,

or that it just remains ambiguous?

The studio's been strange 'cause they put a cap on it.

I think they feel it's an art movie.

They don't know what to make of it.

It doesn't fit any genre or mould that makes sense to them.

'And it was really only when we got Bruce involved -

'Bruce Willis - that it became a more, um, viable project.

'They're obsessed with things like opening weekend.

'And someone like Bruce guarantees an opening weekend.

'And so with him in it, it became definite. '

[Electrical whirring]

Here we go. Stand by.

OK, let's roll.

OK. Let's go.

[Man] And action!

[Charles Roven] 'Terry insisted on final cut,

'and the studio said, "OK, fine,

'"as long as the movie is no worse than an 'R' rating

"and no longer than 2 hours and 15 minutes,

"we'll give him final cut.

'"But financial responsibility will not be ours. "'

This budget... is 137 pages.

It's longer than the script.

I remember every line.

You remember every line?

You don't have to worry, ever, about money.

You only have to worry about the way it gets spent.

The discipline that was put on us -

was not particularly pleasant,

but which was a finite amount of money,

much less than what we needed -

forced us all to work to find solutions

to try and make this movie within that budget.

But we have a long, dense script.

We have a short schedule and a limited amount of money.

So inevitably, you pay the price.

The first bear that Terry chose was a rip-off.

The owner of the bear was asking for something ludicrous.

The plasterers are, uh, 350 a day.

The driver's costing 2,800 a week.

The Marx Brothers are $10,000, the image of them.

We could purchase either one of them

for their rock-bottom price of $7,500.

I'd a bid at 20,000 for this.

So I've been trying...

I really don't get these prices.

I'm on the edge on every set.

That's why we've gotta find ways of...

[Jeffrey Beecroft] I had this feeling the movie should have

this feeling of decay, of the past.

And because we didn't have money,

we couldn't build a lot of big sets.

But I wanted a big look for the film.

So we decided to use old power plants, crumbling buildings,

to show the decay of civilisation within the 1990s

as well as in the year 2035.

[Terry] What we gotta do is...

That thing is gonna have to go below...

[Jeffrey] 'We started talking about,

'"That machine could be this,"

'then they started working the script

'around things we'd found. '

[Terry] 'The time machine sequence in the script

'was originally, I think, about two lines. '

'And as we were wandering around these power stations in Philly

'and looking at gigantic turbines and massive machinery,

'I felt, "We gotta make a time machine. "

'And so I convinced everybody,

'"Let's go for it and let's create a massive time machine. "'

It seemed that by the time I had arrived on the film,

everybody - Terry, Jeff, the producers -

must have talked endlessly about the time machine

and yet never quite homed in on it.

'And it started to happen in daily meetings

'that Terry and Jeff and I had.

'And what developed was... was using found objects,

'things that I'd find in the gutter or in flea markets,

'coming across some piece of scrap metal,

'or some domestic item and adapting that,

'and making it into something unusual. '

[Terry] 'I became more and more obsessed,

'as I was through this whole film,

'about, you know, uh, condoms

'and... and bubbles and sealing.

'The boy in the bubble, sealing things from other things.

'And so we built a cocoon

'that would, uh, transport him into the machine,

'and it was just extraordinary.

'It seemed like an amniotic sac.

'It's something to do with birth and death,

'the two things being closely related in my mind. '

[Jeffrey Beecroft] 'Terry's always looking for an edge. '

He goes, "We're going to make a little movie. "

Then it becomes a big movie.

He said, "I have to start out little

"because it's gonna become big anyway. "

[Terry] 'This is fucking great. '

'I was just reading the script again. '

The gurney is wheeled into a...

[Laughing] Cole is wheeled into a steel tube!

That much on the thing.

[Man] No mistakes this time, Cole.

Stay alert. Keep your eyes open.

Good thinking about the spider.

Do something like that again.

[Terry] 'When we did the time machine,

the set looked like a theatrical set in a strange way.

'I thought, "This is silly.

'"This isn't intimidating, this isn't worrying.

"'This is silly and it's funny.

'"Late in life, trying to learn to be a director. "

'It's what I'm trying to teach myself -

'how do you become a director when it's not your stuff? '

It is harder doing other people's scripts

because... I feel a great responsibility to the writers.

And I fight making it a Terry Gilliam film.

[Boys chanting] We want Bruce! We want Bruce!

'One of the challenges

'in making 12 Monkeys a Terry Gilliam film

'is overcoming the image of some of the actors involved. '

...he's been the target of animal rights activists...

They have guards, gates, alarms. This is madness.

'Terry never worried about Madeleine Stowe.

'He chose her for her versatility as an actor,

'and feels comfortable with her grasp on the role.

'Bruce Willis is a different story. '

'Bruce normally appears in Bruce Willis films. '

'Audiences go to see his films not because of the director

'but because they know what to expect from Bruce. '

So just as I'm in mid-flight,

or Terry's in mid-flight,

Chuck, you're gonna open up.

'Bruce and Terry are trying to do something different -

'trying to tone down the Die Hard image

'and create a more vulnerable character. '

Look a bit closer to camera.

Into the lens even. Try it.

Ugh! Ugh!

'Anxious to be involved in a Terry Gilliam film,

'Bruce and the other principals have also asked

'for only a fraction of their usual fees.

'Still, the buzz surrounding 12 Monkeys

'often has more to do with the film's stars

'than with its director. '

I got 5,000 pictures of different famous people.

- How many? - 5,000.

- Oh, yeah? - Yeah.

[Security] I'd like you across the street

where we've had all the press.

Bruce Willis sees you here

and tells us we're not doing any filming

because you're out here, you'll be holding up the work.

Then a higher authority than me

will ask you to move across the street.

[Man] 'She walks on the set

'carrying a framed picture of Brad Pitt with her,

and gets past that incredible security we have.

I go outside for coffee, I can't get back in!

But we got... wandering the building.

'I think it's fortuitous on the producers' parts'

to have signed Brad Pitt when they did.

When they signed him -

three, four months ago -

Interview with the Vampire,

Legends of the Fall,

still hadn't hit theatres,

and that all happened

three, four weeks before we started filming,

and they've got the hottest guy in Hollywood.

[Terry] 'That'll give time for Roz and Joey to get up. '

And once everybody's over there,

back comes the Pied Piper this way out of the chair.

[Terry] 'One of the interesting things

'was to get Brad Pitt to play a character

'very unlike anything we've ever seen him play before.

'Somebody fast, furious, neurotic and frenzied.

'We decided he had to train for this role

'because his voice didn't have the qualities needed to do it.

'Brad worked really hard at this. '

Like this. I need to know something.

'You gotta wake 'em up. '

You gotta go one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

Number two makes him itch.

Truth... is not how I see it or they see it,

there's just the truth. There is the truth.

You either see it or you don't.

Excellent. OK. Hope it's useful to ya.

What else can you tell me?

Well, um...

I think some of the dis... distraction,

the motor movement... If we're staying with a manic kinda...

Right.

Some of the motor stuff...

I would expect you to get up

and pace around a little bit.

Move around more?

We can go much more irritable.

I think so. There are happy manics.

That videotape, you saw the lady.

Right.

- She's kind of a happy manic. - Right.

And then there are angry manics who are more irritable.

'The window of opportunity is opening now!

'Now's the time for all good men to seize the moment! '

[Laughter]

'And action.

'And the opportunities, they are...

'Oh, they really dosed you, Jim.

'Major load. '

[Terry] 'We've got big-name stars to open the film. '

'Whether it opens it in the right way,

'and lets the audience know what they're in for,

'that's something else.

'I'm more worried about the first couple of previews,

'when the studio sees it, and the audience sees it,

'and everybody panics. '

[Laughter]

It's going to be very different than they expected

and then the shit's gonna hit the fan.

Then the panic starts

and then the pressure's gonna be on.

And the more they feel that,

the more they will push the selling of it

as a Bruce Willis/ Brad Pitt movie.

But it is how the film got made -

by putting some stars in it.

You want it in the camera truck?

Actually, uh, Terry Gilliam's trailer.

OK.

[Terry laughing]

This is breathtaking.

You can't go wrong with this.

[Woman] There's the sandwich really well identified.

[Man] Oh, it's unbearable.

[Terry] It's great!

[Woman] It worked.

Yes, of course it worked.

It's great. It's really funny.

We're glad we gave you a laugh.

[Lloyd Phillips] 'If one was going to write a book

'about the making of the film,

'I'd call it, The Hamster Factor

'and Other Tales About the Making of 12 Monkeys. '

And the hamster factor is the Terry Gilliam element,

which is where everything is in order,

everything is in place.

And then there's detail... that he needs to get right.

'And the hamster factor comes from a scene

'where we built a little laboratory set

'in a gas turbine.

'Bruce Willis was sitting naked, drawing his own blood. '

[Terry] 'In that frame is a hamster in a wheel. '

You say, "It's a simple shot.

"It'll take a couple of minutes. "

Then the hamster didn't do what it was supposed to.

[Man] 'Save the animal. '

[Lloyd Phillips] 'Terry, that night, was more preoccupied

'with getting the hamster to perform right

'than he was Bruce Willis. '

Here we go.

Are you squidged against the wall?

You're incredibly uncomfortable?

Must be right, then.

Sitting on a heater.

'And in the end, he got Bruce's performance

'and he got the hamster's performance. '

[Terry] 'It's in there!

'The hamster's in there,

'and he's in his little wheel and he's exercising. '

That became the hamster factor,

so every time I do a shot

and people think they know what the shot is,

I add one element that's gonna bugger up the whole thing,

and it takes a day to do when normally it'd take five minutes.

And it's a bit of detail that doesn't mean anything

to anybody but myself.

There's not a lot of really good information down there.

Oh, fuck.

I can't work out how they...

I can't work the focus on 'em. That's in focus there.

[Terry] '12 Monkeys has a credit and it says,

'"Based on the movie La Jet�e by Chris Marker. "

'La Jet�e was a film made in the sixties,

'early sixties, in France. '

'It's a film I've never seen,

'but it's about 27 minutes long and nothing moves in it.

'It's black and white photographs, still photographs.

'But what it is about is a world in the future

'where people have survived some apocalyptic end of the world

'and they're living underground

'and people are being sent back to the past.

'And it ends with a man seeing his own death. '

We stuck to that

from the very beginning,

that this is the story of a man who has a dream

and is haunted by a dream.

And he has one dream...

and it's his death.

'He sees his own death. '

[David Peoples] 'We used the situation of La Jet�e

'and the dream and so on.

'By the same token,'

12 Monkeys is not based on it

in the sense that somebody's

trying to copy this masterpiece.

It's not a simple remake.

Yet it has an enormous debt to La Jet�e

that must be acknowledged.

'While 12 Monkeys takes its climactic final moments

'directly from La Jet�e,

'the contrast between the two films is never more striking

'than in these airport scenes.

'This is 12 Monkeys' most logistically complex shoot.

'It involves a very tight schedule for the number of shots

'and the management of over 500 extras. '

I'd like you put put your hands up

if you've been told to move.

[Jazz band plays]

Philadelphia police, airport security, raise your hand.

You're gonna come through, come through...

[Man] Background action.

And action.

Get that guy outta there.

'Nah, tons of them. '

'I was talking about everyone. '

The Japanese are the only thing I like.

Everybody else is nothing.

[Cole] I know this place.

[Railly] Airports all look the same.

This is my dream.

[Terry] 'I don't think this film is La Jet�e.

'We've done this very complicated,

'possibly lumbering, clunky, crash-bang version of that. '

It has such an ephemeral connection to it.

It was the springboard

but the diving board is not the dive.

This is the triple gainer with the double flip

and we're about to hit the water.

If there's no water in the pool, we'll find out.

Boom! It's like this.

We don't see him and you in that...

Background action... Action!

[Actors shouting]

[Piece of set falls]

Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

'I am the man who shoots Bruce Willis.

'I am the man who shoots Bruce Willis. '

And I go, "Stop! Police!"

Actually, Bruce Willis has, I don't think,

ever been killed in a film before.

It's never been done before.

No!

Freeze!

'With all the complexity and confusion of the airport shoot,

'there's one thing that's truly important.

'The audience must realise that Cole's recurring dreams

'are actually childhood memories,

'and that the boy in the airport is the young Bruce Willis,

'who witnesses his own death. '

[Man] '256, take 4. A and B common mark. '

[Man] 'Background action...

'And action! '

[Terry] 'This kid's got these beautiful eyes

'that are really what it's about. '

[Man] 'Six. '

[Bruce] He should do a kid thing,

like he's excited or something.

His first time in an airport...

You walk through, look around a second.

Like, "Cool. This is something. "

Made it! And it didn't kill me.

[Man] '265, take 3.'

[Man] 'And action. '

[Terry] 'And cut. '

- Got that? - No.

'Terry's cast the boy for his beautiful eyes,

'but it wasn't until after the first few takes

'that he realised that beautiful eyes

'were not necessarily enough for the job. '

He photographs beautifully

but he's just...

[Charles Roven] 'Once he realised he'd made a mistake,

'he lost sight of everything else that we had to do there. '

From the beginning, he said,

"I want the movie to open and close on the kid.

"That's how I see the film. "

'And here he was losing the ability to have the very image

'that got him to make the movie.

'He was in danger of losing it. '

'Never comfortable with Terry's choice,

'Chuck Roven insisted on having an alternate young Cole

'standing in the wings,

'waiting for his call. '

[Terry] OK, now you're out of hiding.

Know what this is?

Um, an airport?

Good que... answer.

How's school?

Good. I've been out of it for a while.

I missed two days and I didn't do nothing.

What do I do now?

[Terry] You've never been through one of these before?

Actually, I have. In real life.

We're talking about movies now.

So I look around and...

Just walking and, this is great.

Whoa, that's wonderful. Yeah.

And action.

Brilliant.

We've done it.

Cut that.

It was good. Yeah.

Check the gates on that one.

[Lloyd Phillips] 'Terry's very, very specific

'about the images that he has in his mind. '

Sometimes images become the crutch on which he rests.

So sometimes he misses the theme or the point

of the characters or the script

and relies upon his visual solutions.

'Some of the days that are the most excruciating to complete

'are days where Terry, and the actors,

'are still trying to understand the material. '

[Charles Roven] 'One of the things he told me

'that I believed 'cause I saw it happen,

'was that his life starts to shape itself

'so that he suffers the same things as his lead character.

'So if you've got Bruce Willis in the film

'losing his focus, not knowing what's real and not real,

'Terry, I knew at some point,

'would lose his focus on the movie. '

He wouldn't know what was important and what wasn't,

or begin to be shaky about it.

[Vaudeville-type music]

No-one said anything about elephants.

Where does this fit in?

'And action! '

[Incoherent muttering]

[Mark Egerton] 'Well, who's mad? '

'Is Cole mad? '

Or, as Railly begins to think,

she thinks she's mad.

Who's mad?

Is Terry mad? Probably. Very.

[Terry laughs]

[Crowd shouting] 'Stop the murder! '

'And the horror! '

Use is abuse!

Use is abuse! Use is abuse! Use is abuse!

[Terry] 'I feel more disconcerted on this one

'than anything I've ever done.

'It's a feeling of not sure what we're doing. '

Oh, God, I wish we could get going here.

[Shouting]

Cut it.

[Man] I can't breathe!

[Terry] What happened down there?

Something totally different happened that time.

[Terry] 'This always happens with my stuff -

'the essence of the film

'becomes what the making of it's about.

'It's a big-ish film with some big stars in it,

'so it should have bigness to it, but it doesn't.

'It's all in little pieces.

'I can see an image of her,

'and you think, "Poor helpless thing. "'

And then she goes wham!

And it's so violent and you get thrown back.

And then she would do that

and she hits you with the second one.

And then she's on you. Is that...?

OK. I don't agree.

I'll certainly try it.

I think we have a can of worms - she's a frail woman.

I'm saying give her a weapon

because I could stand there

and she could kick me eight fucking times

and I wouldn't be going anywhere.

I'll do anything to make a movie.

Are you in focus on that one?

Oh, yeah.

That's what it's like.

'Midway through the production,

'Terry goes horseback riding

'and suffers a near-fatal accident.

'On his first day back to the set,

'he jokes that if his ability to manage a production

'is anything like his ability to control a horse,

'the film's in serious trouble. '

I don't have a clue what the film is any more.

I've lost it totally.

I just know we do one scene after another

and try to make the scenes as good as we can.

But as far as having a real sense of where we are,

I'm not certain because we're making pieces of the jigsaw.

Each one we make - that's beautiful.

I'm just worried about how it all goes together.

'With time and money running low,

'Terry focuses all his anxieties on the interrogation room,

'the film's last futuristic set.

'For months now,

'the crew has been working steadily here,

'trying to realise Terry's ideas for the room.

'Although no-one seems clear exactly what those ideas are.

'Except that the room includes

'the production's most expensive piece of set design,

'the video ball. '

[Man] Move faster.

'Fearing that the arm that supports the ball

'is not capable of smooth motion,

'the producers have arrived for a surprise inspection. '

[Man] Straighten it and stop it.

Bring it down and stop it.

Stop.

Something went like that.

We've gotta fix this.

It looks terrible and it doesn't work.

When we're doing his point of view, looking at the ball,

the camera's gonna look and the thing's gonna shake.

It'll look like shit.

When you're combining the three moves slowly,

you can disguise a lot of that.

That movement's disguised and that movement's disguised.

All right. It'll still look like shit.

No, no, no, no. If we can... Chuck, Chuck.

Why don't you guys keep rehearsing on it?

Sometimes it shook and sometimes it didn't.

He's saying it's always gonna shake.

When it shakes a little there,

it's amplified because of the distance.

We need it not to shake.

[Terry] 'I think it's a very disjointed crew.

'It isn't like everybody's united

'in our approach to making this film.

'Fear seems to permeate Hollywood film-making.

'There seems to be too much desire

'to please the director or the star. '

"But we wanna please you, Terry. "

I said, "I'm not interested in you pleasing me,

"but doing what's best for the film,

"and that may not please me. I may be the problem. "

'At lunch today,

'hovering over a scale model of the video ball,

'Terry, the producers and the special effects team

'shout at the top of their lungs.

'We're afraid to turn the camera in their direction.

'From somewhere behind the fruit salad,

'we hear Terry tell Chuck Roven

'that he should find someone else to direct this film.

'Terry spends the next hour locked in his trailer. '

[Terry] 'The function of that room,

'as far as I'm concerned,

'is to be like, you know...

'It should be, in a strange way,

'the inside of Cole's deranged mind. '

The jigsaw of the film should be in that room.

All the key bits and pieces around it,

not necessarily in the right order.

[Man] 'We had this whole discussion

'about what kind of technology they did have. '

[Terry] 'They're underground, it's rough,

'they're scraping an existence together. '

[Man] 'Everything that they have in the future

'is based on pre-1996 technology.

'We're dealing with the future,

'but we didn't want anything to look Star Trekian.

[Terry] 'I wanted angles and strange shapes,

'anything you couldn't quite make sense of. '

[2nd Man] 'Nothing is too slick or streamlined. '

'Everything's got a damp stain, is a little rusty. '

[3rd Man] 'Everything relates to something else,

'so you feel comfortable, in a way, in the room. '

[2nd Man] 'He's communicating to people,

'not directly, but through these videos.

'It's kind of like distances. '

[3rd Man] 'They seem to be pack rats. '

[3rd Man] 'They're trying to piece together what happened. '

[Woman] 'If you're doing a scientist in a lab coat

'with a plastic cover on it, that says, Don't Touch. '

[Terry] Shit! Cut!

'I find sometimes I just overcomplicate things.

'I put too many things in. '

'I'm just desperate to say, Stop. '

'I've encouraged people to go for too much detail

'and they've lost track of the basic narrative,

'the key information that has to come through.

'And it seems impossible to communicate

'what we need in the room.

'The script dictates certain things,

'and it's getting basic information across. '

It's like I've set this machine in motion.

In all the pre-production meetings,

I've said I want dwarves and giants and...

Everybody goes out and does it

and on the day, there they are, 10,000 of 'em doing stuff!

What have I done? But it's too late.

The machine is just running over you.

I'm assuming that's it.

OK, that...

[Man] We can put it down low.

And action!

[Woman] Close your eyes, Cole.

[Man] Tell us in detail what you've seen in this room.

How old were you when you left the surface?

What does he look like, the man who just spoke?

Were you alone when you left the surface?

Oh, fuck!

Cut.

You said, and I just wanna make sure,

was it that you were depressed or frustrated or...?

[Terry] All of those things are there all the time.

The reality of making films for me

is just hard work and not...

and, um...

and disappointment that I can't actually achieve

what I can imagine.

[Terry] 'Where the fuck is this?

'Where the fuck is it? '

That!

'While much time and energy is spent

'on the more visually bizarre scenes,

'the real dramatic work of 12 Monkeys

'takes place in relatively mundane environments.

'It is in these scenes that the relationship

'between Cole and Railly slowly develops. '

[Bruce as Cole] 'I'm mentally ill.

'I imagine these people in my head. '

'For Terry, the subtlety of Bruce's performance

'is the most critical aspect of these scenes.

'Bruce must appear both tough and vulnerable,

'rational and delusional. '

But you're still rational.

You're still following the logical path of questioning.

Like a doctor would.

I'm trying.

A lot more than I am.

I'm just fielding these things, not very well.

On the other hand,

you're starting out with the thought

that you understand what's wrong.

You're mad.

That's bullshit. I'm just...

That's where you're starting with,

the idea that you're mentally divergent.

She keeps saying, "You're not insane. "

I'm mad. This is all in my mind.

It's not. Look at this. Look at this.

The stuff we've done in the car the other day,

I just felt it was a bit flat.

It didn't have, you know, something...

- OK. - It was too flat, yeah.

That's why I think anger, or...

a kind of bitterness in there. But not whining.

We were just...

Wait. I'm sorry.

I'm thinking about...

You're not talking about the stuff we did the other day?

No, no, no.

Glad that's not flat.

- This was flat because I knew... - Yeah.

I thought you meant that whole day's shooting.

No. Where you jump out the car.

I was told that wouldn't be used.

You made sure it wasn't!

'Bruce and Madeleine's most dramatic scenes

'take place on the road.

'Terry's been dreading these car shots.

'They're visually dull

'and it's difficult to communicate with the actors

'during a take.

'But Terry's determined to capture

'the right emotional intensity from these scenes.

Ain't this the life?

[Video tape played at speed]

'As the shoot progresses,

'the film's editor, Mick Audsley,

'has already begun piecing together

'the puzzle of 12 Monkeys. '

The filing system.

'The film editor's job is to edit the film

'but also to troubleshoot for the director.

'With so many scenes shot out of order,

'the editor's advice can be invaluable

'for ensuring that the actors' performances

'remain consistent throughout the film.

'The driving shots have also been a problem area

'for the editorial staff. '

[Mick] 'Hello? '

'Hi, Terry. '

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not actually on that yet.

OK. It's still in the numbering machine, I think.

Shall I drop everything?

Right. Let me have a close encounter with it

because I'm hot on to that reel.

It's called The Reel from Hell in here.

'Wait. Stop. Here - right here. '

[Mick] 'Terry and I shared a concern early on

'about that whole area,

'which was why we called it The Reel from Hell.

'It's a transitional part of the film.

'And the logic of Railly's character, I think,

'is most under scrutiny at that point.

'Cole is... You know, he's the aggressive one.

'So we had to create a situation

'in which she is both terrified

'and yet, uh, magnetised to him in some way.

'We had concerns about Bruce. '

Occasionally, he would veer off, perhaps,

into an area which wasn't

useful to this film.

And we'd be concerned

about monitoring that

and bringing it back on board again.

'You people don't know what you have.

'And it's all gonna be gone.

'You see? '

Fascinating, isn't it?

I think we nailed it.

[Woman] It's great.

I thought he was very good on his close-up.

In a way, when he does that, you think, "Oh, he's... "

When he nails it, you think...

There's a shyness and toughness in conflict.

I think it's wonderful seeing this man sentimental

because it confuses you

as to whether this...

You know, whether it is a truly-felt emotion

or, uh, or he's barking mad.

I'm sure The Reel from Hell

will be the one we love in the end. Exactly.

Please do. And, um, the alarm bells aren't ringing.

As foggy as it is in here,

the sense is that... that something's happening.

All right, Terry. Take care. Bye.

We break for lunch, move over to the stage.

We get to the stage by seven.

'With the last days of production approaching,

'Terry and Chuck struggle to squeeze in the remaining shots. '

I think this one. I think of this as Eden.

I just kinda like that.

'Ironically, the shoot will conclude

'with the last shot of the film,

'a shot which has caused considerable conflict

'between Terry and Chuck.

'Chuck wants to follow the original script,

'which ends with young Cole in the airport parking lot.

'As far as Terry is concerned,

'he already has his final shot -

'the shot of young Cole in the airport,

'witnessing his own death. '

Mm-hm.

All right.

Very sad.

Perfect, Joe. Thanks.

[Terry] 'From early on,

'reading the script and in discussions,

'I've felt that the ending of the film

'would take place in the airport

'between Railly and the boy. Their eye contact. '

'That's why I start on his eyes and end on his eyes.

'The boy is touched, scarred, damaged by what he's just seen.

'Something that'll stay with him for the rest of his life.

'The scene that came after that'

was a scene in the airplane

where Dr Peters and his viruses meet the astrophysicist.

'And we know that... that somehow...

'the astrophysicist will get the virus

'and will be able to save the human race. '

Jones is my name.

'There was an argument that we needed that scene

'because otherwise, Cole's death would have been in vain. '

He wouldn't have achieved anything.

This way, the audience can see that he has achieved something.

His death has led them to the virus and he saves the future.

And I was convinced that was all nonsense anyway,

and it was unnecessary,

and it would weaken the emotional ending.

'And so once we'd agreed to the airplane shot,

'Chuck kept lobbying for the parking lot shot.

'I said no, 'cause we're not using the airplane shot. '

'You're still a dreamer, I see. '

'I didn't have a shot in my head

'for the boy in the parking lot.

'And Chuck was adamant that we do the shot. '

Finally, I said, "OK, I'll do it.

"But we need to have this huge shot.

"We gotta see thousands of cars.

"We gotta see the entire world. "

I encouraged everybody to come up with expensive solutions

so that Chuck would say we can't afford to do it,

and I wouldn't have to do it.

'Suddenly, we got a crane on top of another crane.

'We're in a parking lot,

'we've got the whole world there. '

Isn't it an amazing thing, that?

[Man] And... action!

Chase 'em.

That's quite... Ooh, that's nice.

That's a very nice angle.

[Terry] 'Slowly... take it down...

'OK, now we're getting...

'Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow...

'slow, slow, slow, slow slow, slow...

'That's a strong shot.

'So that shot got in,

'and the shot wouldn't have been made

'had not Chuck persisted'

and me being just spiteful,

and coming up with the most expensive solutions.

But the result is a really good shot.

[Terry] 'And the camera comes right down

'and finds the boy as he gets into his car,

'and into his face, and into his eyes.

'And his eyes have changed

'from the boy that was in the air terminal.

'This is a boy with determinations,'

the guy that's gonna become Cole.

The guy that's gonna be a social misfit,

that's gonna cause trouble.

[Lloyd Phillips] 'I think Terry... needs angst. '

That's good.

'... Uh, to fuel his motor. '

[Man] And... action!

[Lloyd] 'His creative motor thrives off having... arguments,

'having arguments with himself. '

I think that he needs to...

In his... in his battle of David and Goliath,

which he revels in,

and which he's had in Hollywood and with the studio.

He wants to feel as though this movie is... is...

'the little champion fighting the great, big Goliath. '

[Man] What are you gonna cut this on, Ediplex?

No. This.

I mean...

No. I'm just doing it the old-fashioned way.

[Railly] 'OK, you were standing there looking at the moon.

'You were splashing through the water... '

[Terry] 'I'm waiting to go into the editing room

'and see what we've got.

'Putting the last pieces of the jigsaw together. '

I am mentally ill.

I imagined all these things, these people.

- No. - L-I know they're not real...

[Terry] 'If it at least works on the love story, we're OK.

'But the building up of the dreams

'and Cole's character -

'how we build up sympathy for him

'and a reason for her to be attracted to him.

'Those are the things I'm still not certain about. '

[Video tape played at speed]

'Eight weeks into post-production in London,

'Mick and Terry add the finishing touches

'to the first full cut of 12 Monkeys. '

[Music begins]

[Terry] 'Hey, we're in the movies!

'Why do we then disappoint...

'so many people so badly? '

And then it goes black.

'Universal Pictures presents... '

That was brilliant. And then...

[Terry's words are muffled]

Atlas... thingummy.

I think we should actually start with an announcement.

Yes.

It's the first thing we should hear.

[Muffled voice] Now boarding at gate...

'Although it is a very rough first version,

'Terry can finally screen the film for an audience

'and gauge the response. '

[Applause]

[Terry] 'I'll show it in England a lot

'before it's shown over here.

'To try to get friends in and we talk about it.

'Is it working? Do you understand what's going on?

'Are you confused?

'People come in and then you go and talk about it,

'in a relaxed kind of way. '

There were so many layers to the film.

Yeah.

Which is good.

You're sitting there the whole time working it out.

Did it feel redundant at all?

That's, in a sense, what Peter is saying.

I worry about giving too much away.

It's trying to get enough information

that people feel they're not in the hands of bad storytellers

who don't know what they're doing.

'With the first cut as a point of departure,

'Terry and his creative staff discuss strategies

'for completing the film within the next four months. '

[Terry] 'When you're shooting,

'it's just constant pressure

'because every day there's another $125,000 being spent.

'And you're part of this huge machine

'that just is churning forward.

'There's 150 people there every day. There's questions.

'The pressure is incessant.

'With editing, you're not dealing with any of that.

'At this stage we're down to an editing room

'with a few people.

'Production matters, they're in the distance.

'This is the quiet, reflective part of film-making. '

[Music from the opera Carmen]

'We're just trying to make something out of these pieces

'and it really frees you. '

[Mick] 'I think the difficulties with this film

'were the puzzle of it as an overall piece. '

Which is certainly why I was attracted to it.

I knew it'd be an editorial challenge/nightmare.

Anything that deals with time, or the fragmentation of time

'editorially is always the toughest thing to achieve.

'I think the challenge for us was really finding out

'if certain confusions or ambiguities'

are, in effect, the pleasure of this particular film.

Or have we failed in communicating ideas?

That's what this whole editorial process has been about.

[Terry] 'Time travel always goes to another time,

'not to a time when you were young. '

All I'm saying is that I'm going through the argument

that I think we wanna think he's crazy.

And it's not a time travel film.

I don't see how you lose that

by telling them it's 1996 before he goes.

[Terry] The point of the future stuff is psychological.

And, "We're gonna send you to 1996... "

By putting those specifics in at that point,

it weakens it. That's my feeling.

Why does it matter?

If it's in your head, you wouldn't do that.

- Why not? - You're in 1996.

Then you don't know that he went to the wrong place.

Maybe he thinks he went to the wrong place

but the scientists sent him to the right place.

The scientists haven't told us and him where he's gotta go.

How big a deal is it that it's 1990 instead of 1996?

[Terry] 'I think the difficulty is

'that it's a hard thing

'for most people to get their heads around.

'How can he be two people at the same time? '

But it makes total sense

when one sits down and thinks about it.

But I don't want people to have to sit down and think about it.

They've gotta believe it at that point... Yeah. Yeah.

One of the problems

is everybody became fixated with the future world

and spent an enormous amount of time and energy

on the detail of the future world

when we only see it in the engineering room.

And the engineering room is not about detail

so much as about the emotion or internal confusion

that Cole should be feeling.

You sent me to the wrong year. It was 1990.

[Scientists] 1990?

[Terry] 'My intention is to let the audience

'maintain total uncertainty about his mental state,

'whether the future was in his mind or was real.

'And I think the music's gonna amplify his mental state

'so we can make more of it. '

[Abstract music played over film]

[Imitates possible instrumental effects]

[Terry] Yes.

And some stuff like that.

Then there's Cole's theme

as he tries to get out through the molasses of his drugs,

trying to reach the door.

But one can play counterpoint.

[Imitates a musical instrument]

[Terry] Yeah.

But that's...

It's exactly the feeling that has to be communicated.

It's like that. Slow-motion music.

It's against this other stuff going on.

The thing is that the audience

should never be aware of the music, as such,

but should just be aware of their own...

What's going on with their hormones.

[Terry] I agree.

I tried this over this stuff

and it slows it down.

[Terry] 'Robin, the music editor,

'found a great violin concerto

'that he laid over the dream.

'And to me, it's wonderful. It's got the right quality.

'That's the voice that calls him into the dreams

'and is a good way to die. '

[Concerto for Violin and Percussion by Jacques Loussier]

[Music plays over film]

Well, this is, you know...

The cutting, the editing is beautiful.

That tempo of the piece is absolutely right.

That's the right beat and the right kind of mood.

It's the direction we want to go in?

It's so simple. It's not cheap sentiment.

No, it's not.

It's real beautiful and tragic.

It's expensive.

It's great when she starts looking for the boy.

[Haunting violin music]

[Man in film] 'Excuse me. '

[Dr Jones in film] 'It's obscene. '

All the violence, all the lunacy.

Shootings even at airports now.

You might say that we're the next endangered species.

I've often wondered about taking this scene out

and going to the parking lot.

I mean, does this almost sort of suggest a sequel?

No, no, no.

We're doing two endings of the film...

to test.

I see.

One is this one with Dr Peters

and the other just ends on the boy.

One version ends...

[Terry] With or without the scene inside the plane.

There are two camps here

about whether that detracts from the ending

or enriches it a little bit

by tidying up certain plot...

I mean, I recognised her,

and when it was all over,

you're thinking... You're working it out, really.

They are there and they're gonna save the world.

She's actually come back from the future,

and Cole, effectively, has led them to this point.

Right. That didn't...

Didn't come through?

Didn't come through for me, no.

I got that.

Quite a few people don't.

It opens a Pandora's Box of questions.

That's what drives me crazy.

It could be so open to...

such a different interpretation.

[Terry] 'I'm constantly pulled

'because I don't wanna confuse people unnecessarily

'but I don't wanna explain too much.

'We're fighting that right now. '

Whatever I do, I seem to accept the fact

that I'm trying to make a film for a broad...

a broad number of people.

I'm trying to communicate to a large number of people.

Then how far can we push it?

How far can we be obscure for the sake of obscurity?

We talked a little bit about the symbol

of the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

Graphically, there's so much strength involved with that.

And we see a sort of wide-ranging campaign,

teaser applications, etcetera.

You'll see a lot of versions of it,

the way we wanna do it.

We're not really sure how that will work

but we thought, as a newspaper campaign idea...

[Terry] That's great.

It's so provocative and, "What is it?"

And then the final payoff... Bang!

What I liked about this... It's interesting.

It's sort of rough.

And it's... it's... it's...

It's been stamped and stencilled

and what is it? They're coming this winter.

The rougher you make it, the better.

The paint didn't get in certain areas.

Another idea we had was to do bus sides.

Perhaps buses synchronous with each other would have,

"Question everything. " "The future is history. "

All with that stamp of the monkey

in some configuration.

Again, to be provocative.

[Woman] And be deliberately obscure. In the early print,

it doesn't matter to define what the 12 Monkeys are.

If it works with the trailer

and the confluence of things happen,

people will know. And those that don't know...

They'll ask.

Exactly. It's interesting enough.

The enigma is the good thing.

It's extraordinary to do anything that simple.

Everybody in the industry would say,

"What the hell is that?"

The idea was that the circle...

That's the world going round,

following each other's tails.

Relentlessly round and one broke loose.

The next group are trying to use the three faces.

[Terry] This is for the Academy Award campaign?

[Man] Yes, it is.

I love Brad's face in that. It's so twisted.

This is kinda wild, isn't it?

Metropolis.

Yeah, Metropolis.

That's actually very good.

Here are some other, kind of,

time travel ideas that we did.

- Wonderful garish colours. - OK...

- You need counters. - That one's pretty bizarre.

Pretty bizarre.

I was haunted on that one.

It's brilliant. Imagine that up big.

Whoa. What is this?

The future is in the hands

of a man who has none?

Excuse me?

What is that?

He has no future.

It sounds like he has no hands.

[Everyone laughs]

Wow! That is fuckin' out there!

That's where we should've...

I love the tattoo up here. That is fuckin' out there.

The audience that's gonna go to see that

is gonna like this film, I think.

Aren't they?

[Imitates noise of editing machine]

When it bursts through,

it's the mighty pimple-popping sound.

The more we do this, the more it's clear.

Is it in his head or not?

It's just more ambivalent about what it is.

'As the days in the cutting room speed by,

'and the editing process moves closer and closer

'towards its completion,

'Terry and his staff focus on the few remaining problems.

'Even after refining the driving scenes

'and cutting out some of the future world sequences,

'Terry and Mick still wonder

'whether they're telling the right story. '

'Terry's most worried about the love story,

'and is now searching for ways

'to make Cole and Railly's relationship more believable. '

What it does, to me, is it makes her more part of the thing.

It was so much on him before.

'Is this real? '

[Terry and Mick] No, it's a wig.

'While Terry and Mick still have critical decisions to make,

'they must now drop their creative work

'to prepare for test screenings in the States.

'The testing process has never been

'one of Terry's favourite pursuits. '

Well, no, we're gonna go to Washington DC.

Because everybody says New York is...

They're ruthless, vicious there. Yeah.

In Washington, we thought they would be nicer

so we thought we'd go to a nice place.

[Film] 'It is our intention to send you back

'to the year 1996.'

'It is our intention to send you back

'to the year 1996.'

'We have a very fast programme. '

'Something very different. '

'We're going to send you back to 1996.'

'A routine step in post-production

'is the replacing of dialogue recorded on location

'with new dialogue recorded in the studio.

'The process is known as looping, or ADR.'

[Film] 'And possibly play an important role

'in returning the human race to the surface of the Earth. '

- Spot on, I'd say. - Wow!

'In order to polish the film as much as possible

'for the test screenings in DC,

'Chuck Roven has asked Terry to do the ADR sessions

'in an uncomfortably short period of time.

'To make matters worse,

'no-one back in the States has bothered to track down

'Bruce or Madeleine. '

It's just a waste of time.

Tell them we won't ADR for the thing.

Unless it's done properly, it's a travesty.

We're not gonna rush into it.

This is just stupid!

I don't get the problem.

It's the typical LA thing.

You wait 'till the last moment then you rush like mad.

Everybody feels good

'cause they get a lot of adrenaline going.

This is, like, bullshit.

This is the Hollywood way of doing things.

[Phone rings]

[Phone still ringing]

It's all right.

Hello?

Hi, Chuck. Terry?

How can anybody get any work done around here

if they're on the phone all day, is the question.

[Terry] Last week it was known we needed Bruce and Madeleine.

We still don't know if Bruce...

We're sitting here saying, What the fuck is going on?

It was all known last week.

Right.

And that means the sacrificial lamb in that one is me.

[Terry sighs]

[Terry] 'We're now in this situation

'where we're going to the States to show the film to the public

'and let the public vote and see what happens.

'It's a thing that seems to be standard procedure.

'You gotta do it, so we'll do it.

'But the minute we start getting screenings,

'suddenly there's a panic again.

'I just try to keep it calm.

[Terry] That's how it feels.

That's what I still feel like when the phone rings.

And it's like, "Oh, no!

"Here we go again. "

[Terry] 'Please check all of the following items

'that you feel describe the movie. '

Entertaining. Confusing. Dull. Boring.

Action-filled. Too violent. Well-acted. Suspenseful.

Stupid. Dumb. High-quality. Heart-warming.

Different. Original. Dramatic. Romantic.

My age group would enjoy it.

That's how I describe it.

Predictable. Has likeable main characters.

Why do we want them to be likeable?

Involving. Not my kind of movie.

My age group would enjoy it.

That's the one I like.

Can we put Intelligent in here?

D'you think that's a good one?

No. What they sometimes do is Thought-provoking.

I like that one. Thought...

What about Thought-provoking?

That's a good one.

Just like Die Hard 3!

[Both laugh]

A cerebral feel-good movie?

Treats its audience intelligently.

Oh, the great thing about Brazil,

a lot of them scrawled - people who got it and liked music -

"No more paperwork!"

And those were all discounted.

[Terry] 'This is where the public

'gets to be film-makers for a moment.

'You show the film to the public,

'they fill out questionnaires about the film. '

That's how it was begun.

And then it became a tool

for the studios to cover their ass.

Because there was this specious scientific methodology

that'd tell you if a film would be successful or not.

'But so many times, you see a thing play

'and then you look at the results on the cards,

'and they don't seem to match. '

[Film music begins]

[Whispering] I really... I think we got 'em.

Do we have to get to Brad quicker?

[Terry] I've never heard an audience quite that focused.

I know.

Yet as I was watching it

I was beginning to think,

I can't make sense of this movie!

Thank you.

Good night.

Thank you.

The audience loved it. They go crazy.

It was very nice to hear an audience just still.

Yeah.

There wasn't anything in there.

Terry, it's great. It's marvellous.

It's good, yeah.

And it has so much...

First question is the overall rating.

Excellent, very good, average, fair, poor.

Let's see where we stand.

How many people rated the film excellent?

Nobody?

There was a guy sitting in front of Mick, the editor,

and towards the end, as he walked into the terminal,

he's like that.

He just did that the whole time, watching it unfold.

You don't get that in movies today.

How many felt it dragged in spots or moved too slowly?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

How many people feel that the romance doesn't fit in?

Almost everybody?

You didn't think there was a certain

film noirishness in the romance?

Did anybody enjoy that element of the film?

You gave Willis a chance to really act.

He was very touching.

Poor fellow's eyes.

It's the best thing Bruce has ever done, I think.

It's a really good...

It's a solid performance.

It's an interesting audience.

I wasn't certain whether they'd go for Bruce.

We haven't really talked about the big star in the film.

How many people liked the character of James Cole

and/or Willis' performance?

Four, five, six.

How many felt that the ending seemed unresolved?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

OK. In ten words or less,

when you see family, friends, co-workers, whatever,

and they say, "How was the preview?"

What are you gonna say?

Loved the stars, suspense, the story.

The story draws the audience in immediately.

Bad character study in a science fiction setting.

It seemed far-fetched that a woman doctor

would fall in love with a stinky, crazy Bruce Willis.

Confusing plot. Unsatisfying ending.

I loved everything except the violence.

It was very depressing and anti-climactic.

This movie is more intelligent than most movies like it.

I didn't understand what was going on.

One of the best movies I've seen.

One of the worst movies I've seen.

It was a B-movie with a plot that is fairly unclear.

Dull. Boring.

Pathetic and confusing.

Has likeable main characters!

Thought-provoking.

Too violent.

A waste of potentially good talent.

I can't rate it. I'm too confused.

[Terry] 'The numbers don't match

'what I saw that crowd do last night. '

And those cards are really low compared to what I'm used to.

Except where they've walked out.

Munchausen, I got cards like that

but you could see 'em walking out.

They don't...

Well, several things.

People may not like the movie. Fuck 'em.

It may be a weird one. You know the story of Airplane.

The scores on Airplane were phenomenally low

and the picture was a huge hit.

And what people finally realised

is people... The humour was so vulgar in Airplane,

that nobody dared admit that they loved it.

But they all loved it and told their friends to go see it,

with great embarrassment.

Now that's not, I hope, 12 Monkeys.

I think the focus group wanted us to know

that they think it's a black comedy.

If you say that, they can go with it.

People are gonna knock us

and try and get us to explain more

and I'm saying that that's not what the audience wants.

They wanna know what kind of movie it is.

Once they know what kind of movie it is, they'll go with it.

What they wanna know is it's not a Bruce Willis movie.

Hm. Gotta have a smile in front of another smile.

Lots of smiles.

Keep a happy face going,

no matter what.

It's deeply disturbing, all of this.

[Mick] It is deeply disturbing.

I liked the movie a whole lot last night

but it was painful to sit through the focus group

and listen to 'em

because I value their opinion.

You had to be prepared for that.

We set out to write a very entertaining movie, hopefully.

[Phone rings]

But in doing so,

we set ourselves certain obstacles, right,

to not make it as easy.

Yeah 'cause, we're...

That's it.

As we march towards the abyss...

I think I'll have another smile too.

Whatever's going on here,

however bad it goes,

however hard it is shooting this thing,

strap on the smile.

Like I said, you know,

you just never know.

Yeah.

[Terry] So...

Do they hate it?

Do they hate the film we've made?

[Terry] That's, uh...

This is very bad.

I won't sign this one.

It's not up to the proper standards.

I know what I'll sign it.

Alan Smithee.

That's the name they use

when directors take their name off the film.

[Flight announcements]

[Terry] 'I know we got a good...

'I know the film is there. '

We're not gonna be doing many changes.

I don't wanna jerk all over the place.

I wanna aim towards the finish of the thing.

All these other things are interruptions

that may or may not be informative

but they're constantly jostling with the main objective,

which is to make a film that nobody likes but us.

[All laugh]

And your only goal is...?

Inexplicability is what the really good stuff is about.

I've never understood the really good films.

There's great chunks I don't get.

We're trying to make art. Art never explains itself.

You've got your "Art is"...!

This T-shirt is appropriate.

This is very relevant.

There are the 12 reels over there.

Take it or leave it.

[Terry] This process is supposed

to help you make the best possible film.

It often doesn't.

There are moments when the film is at its best

and you go beyond it and fuck it.

I've watched that happen too often.

That's why that pressure is really bad.

It's usually the result of people panicking

and trying to make the film into something it isn't.

It's a hippopotamus and they wanna turn it into a giraffe

because giraffes are popular this year.

And it ain't gonna be a giraffe.

It's only gonna be a really deformed hippopotamus, at best.

[Terry] It's a family I thought you were giving me.

Mommy, Daddy and the little one.

[Terry] Personally, I just like that or that.

The black one...

[Charles Roven] 'I've always said to the studio

'we can't be governed by numbers. '

'Even though the scores weren't good in that first preview,

'we all agreed that we believed in the movie

'and the problem with the movie

'wasn't gonna be solved by huge changes. '

We sat in that audience for two days.

We felt that they, by and large, were with the movie.

Yet they were coming out of the visual experience

not feeling as positive

as we felt that they were while watching it.

What was that? Why was that?

Do you make huge changes? You know.

Well, we decided not to.

[Violin concerto]

[Terry] 'It's a very dangerous time,

'that's all I know.

'And our job is to keep pushing the barriers,

'because Hollywood is all about closing in.

'"Let's have one film that'll work every time. "

'So I'm intrigued to make this film successful

'because the kind of film it is

'is not considered the material for successful films. '

[Cole] 'The movie never changes. '

'It can't change. '

'But every time you see it, it seems different

'because you're different. '

'You... you see different things. '

And I think it's also that we're telling a story

that does demand a certain intelligence

and... and patience.

And that's why, in the end,

I'll be curious to see how many people are out there

that will put up with it.

[Music from the opera Carmen]

[Photographers clamour for Terry's attention]

Over here!

Mr Willis!

Mr Willis!

Madeleine! Madeleine!

Madeleine!

This way! This way!

The story itself, how would you describe it?

Quite mad. I'm dying to see it

so I can figure it out. I haven't seen it yet.

I think it's a love story.

Other people think it's something else,

I think it's a twisted love story.

How are you celebrating New Year this year?

Probably going out to promote this film.

Any New Year's resolutions?

No. Never make those.

'Cause they never are fulfilled.

'Gilliam is the cinema's most accomplished trickster. '

'A dystopian fantasy from a master of the genre. '

'The irrepressible, iconoclastic director is back in action. '

'Gilliam revisits the narrow divide

between sanity and madness. '

[Terry] Sit up straight, shake off that turkey torpor.

If you're going to see 12 Monkeys,

you have to practise paying attention.

That's great. Good for them. That's the stuff we like.

Poised on a perceptual knife-edge. Wow!

[Terry] 'Four stars. '

'What is this? The Village Voice. '

'Willis Lifts Monkeys Above Bulky Mechanics. '

Here's one we need to read. Mm-mm!

'Takes its time getting to the heart of the matter. '

This is what's awful.

They think I put this thing together.

I was just a hired hand.

Five stars on this one. Look at that!

Three stars out of... five?

Oh!

Oh, they're mean.

Liz...

You bitch, Liz.

[Terry] 'This end result of film-making

'is getting less and less satisfying to me.

'I don't get much out of it. '

I keep thinking there's gonna be these moments

of utter joy - "Wow! A success!"

It never feels that way any more.

'It's a worrisome thing

'because whatever those measures of success were,

'they were kind of a driving force.

'And that's gone. '

[Man] What d'you think of the intro?

What intro?

Welcome one of Hollywood's true creative visionaries,

Terry Gilliam.

I'm not gonna say...!

Hollywood? I've now become a Hollywood director.

Well, there's just no stopping these folk.

'Our next guest was one of the founding members of Monty Python

'and has since gone on to direct such films as Brazil,

'The Fisher King and now 12 Monkeys, which opens today.

'Welcome one of Hollywood's true creative visionaries,

'Terry Gilliam. '

Hollywood? I've now become a Hollywood director.

[Cheering and applause]

Oh! Now you wanna know what I feel?

[Terry chuckles]

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