Fan Forum - View Single Post - THE AMAZING TERRY GILLIAM! His art, direction and the Python years.

Lady April · 05-07-2008, 08:19 AM

Thanks sanna or this over at MP thread!

"Palin set to be a film star again... as an explorer

14/08/06
A decade after his last appearance on the big screen, Michael Palin is set to make a surprise comeback, we can reveal. Palin, 63, these days better known for his televised travels across the world, has been in talks with former Monty Python colleague Terry Gilliam about a new movie.

Coincidently, given the amiable star's globetrotting career, he will play an explorer. "Mike and I keep talking about a project which is based on a book called Water Music by T Coraghessan Boyle, about Mungo Park, the famous 19th century Scottish explorer who discovered the Niger River," reveals Gilliam, 65.

The director, who has just released his latest film Tideland, adds: "It's not as comic as a comedy, it's funny yet it's also very bleak and strange. It's basically an adventure story, how a guy is reduced to behaving as an animal to survive." It will be Palin's first major film role since appearing in John Cleese's Fierce Creatures back in 1997.

Following his career in Python, he starred in such films as A Private Function and A Fish Called Wanda (memorably with a a pronounced stutter), as well as Alan Bleasdale's gritty television drama GBH. He also surprised fans with a brief cameo in Australian soap Home And Away nine years ago.

However, since the late Eighties, he has preferred to focus on his career as a TV traveller and was reportedly the main obstacle to a planned Monty Python reunion - much to the annoyance of fellow Python Eric Idle, who was behind the idea.

Gilliam, who as well as the legendary Python films has previously directed Palin in the popular flicks Brazil and Jabberwocky, admits that their next project cannot get up and running until his old friend has finished his latest travel series on Eastern Europe.

"I keep telling Mike he's got to stop travelling, sit down and do some films again," he adds."

For myself, on the topic of Michael Palin as an actor rather than just the HOT guy, Michael Palin has proved to have many uses for Gilliam.
]ack, in Brazil, was the character you would normally dispise. Didn't someone on here post a comment by John recently that if Michael was the worst person in the world you would still love him and it is hard to hate him? That is the always smiling, always aloof Jack. Evil Jack! With the baby head or without. A charming bastard all around!
Although MP was not in Time Bandits too much, his short appearances with close friend Shelly Duvall were very funny in their every appearance as star-struck,virginesque lovers whos intimacy was always foiled, in every period of time, by the midgets. I particularly like the first appearance when they are tied to the tree, stripped and tortured!
There is also, of course Jabberwocky. I think we have all seen that, Michaels beautiful bum

et all.

Anyhoo, my 2 cents.