Terry Gilliam has done a lot of things in the past 50 years: he’s been a cartoonist, animator, writer, artist, actor, opera director, title sequence designer. But we can safely say that directing films has been his main calling, and where the bulk of his remarkable work lies since his first film directing credit back in 1975.
That film, of course, was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which Gilliam co-directed with Python’s other Terry, Terry Jones – and an instant classic if ever there was one. So, to mark the occasion, Gilliam will be interviewed on stage as a Guardian Live event, and we’re looking for questions that we can put to him in the Q&A portion of the evening.
Amazingly, though, there’s a whole string of Gilliam anniversaries in 2025. Forty years ago, in 1985, Gilliam gave us Brazil, a brilliant recalibration of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, containing performances from Jonathan Pryce and Michael Palin. Ten years after that, in 1995, we got 12 Monkeys, another stone-cold classic, with Bruce Willis as a convict sent back in time to try to find the cure for a future pandemic. And 10 years after that, in 2005, Gilliam released The Brothers Grimm, with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger – part of another thread of Gilliam’s work, about stories and myths and the tale-tellers behind them.
Gilliam clearly has something about years ending in five, and these films in some way represent the spine of his work. But of course there’s much more to Gilliam’s CV, from his solo directing debut Jabberwocky, to his Hunter S Thompson memoir Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, right up to his most recent film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
So, leave your questions in the comments below, and we’ll do our best to put as many of them as possible to the man himself.
• Terry Gilliam will be interviewed at a special Guardian event on 29 October to celebrate his 50 years in film, live at Cadogan Hall in London and online. Book tickets here.
