Terry Gilliam always knew that “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” would leave a cultural mark far outstripping its modest box-office returns. But he never thought it would morph into a kind of foundational text for the tinfoil-hat right.
“I’m responsible for QAnon,” he says, half in disbelief, referring to the amorphous conspiracy movement that seized on the idea of adrenochrome — a fictional hallucinogen invented by Hunter S. Thompson and later amplified and distorted by Gilliam’s 1998 adaptation.
“That’s how fucking stupid they are,” he adds, laughing. “There’s madness afoot. Adrenochrome is a complete invention — Hunter started that and we just carried it on. But what’s interesting about QAnon is this belief in secret cabals and hidden control. It’s not like that at all. It’s far more chaotic than they imagine. Really, it’s a desire to believe in structure — a displaced faith in God, except God was more open-minded than the world they’re talking about.”
That distinctly modern madness has led Gilliam to swear off what he calls “antisocial media,” though it has hardly spared him personally.
“The world hasn’t changed that much, but people have,” he sighs. Referring to anti-vaccine rhetoric, he adds, “It drives me mad. I grew up during polio — vaccines stopped it. Now polio’s rising in Gaza. Measles in Texas. Then there’s graphene — conspiracies about Bill Gates putting metal in our bodies to control us. It’s insane.”
Gilliam was speaking to Variety from the Torino Film Festival, where he will receive a lifetime achievement honor. Looking back, does he feel like the most American of British directors — or the most British of Americans?
“Neither,” he says. “Let’s be honest — that’s Ridley Scott.”
(Scott’s 1996 film “White Squall,” incidentally, also fed QAnon mythology, providing its rallying cry: “Where we go one, we go all.” Strange bedfellows indeed.)
“I’m an immigrant filmmaker,” Gilliam continues. “I’m the border guy. I’ve lived longer in England than in America, but I’ve never been able to shake my American accent or my American enthusiasm. But then, neither did Stanley Kubrick.”
The two American expats circled each other for years, exchanging phone calls without ever meeting. Those conversations nearly led to a collaboration.
“When Kubrick was doing ‘The Shining,’ he called because he really liked ‘Jabberwocky,’” Gilliam recalls. “He loved the look of it and wanted help finding an art director who could work the way he wanted. He had catalogs of door frames, window frames, everything. He wanted someone who could sit with him while he pointed and said, ‘That, that, that, that,’ then go away, draw it beautifully in 15 minutes, and come back.”
Gilliam tried. “I spent a month asking everyone I knew. Nobody wanted to work with him. He was a tough cookie.”
Gilliam also offered an update on his long-gestating biblical farce, “Carnival at the End of Days,” in which Johnny Depp is set to play Satan, charged with saving humanity. Though the project recently gained momentum and even scouted locations in Italy, it is once again stalled.
“I’m still waiting for the money,” he says, citing changes to Italy’s international tax credit, now reduced by 10%. “Because of that, a lot fewer films will be made in Italy — except for Mel Gibson [who’s shooting “The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One” in Rome]. He’s going to show you Christ as you’ve never seen Christ before: kicking ass in hell!”
Still, Gilliam remains characteristically unruffled. “The world doesn’t always give me what I want,” he shrugs, “but sometimes it gives me something better.”