Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Animator and director best known for Monty Python's Flying Circus and films such as Brazil and Twelve Monkeys.
On the island
Eight records
I was sitting in a car somewhere in Southern California one night and suddenly the song came on. I thought, uh-oh, the world has just changed. It turned ninety degrees and dragged me with it.
This is uh the kid in Minnesota uh going to the movies and seeing Walt Disney and Pinocchio, and it's When You Wish Upon a Star.
It's again America, and it's Tom Waits, who I just think is the great musical poet in America, and it's a song called Alice.
When I was making The Brothers Grimm in Prague, I started falling into this other wonderful world, which was Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, gypsy music. And one group I really loved was a group called Parnograst, and this is them.
This is the Beatles, of course, have to come in because they've been so much an important part of my life, in particular George Harrison, with handmade films. And we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for George.
Ein HeldenlebenFavourite
The thing I love about Strauss, again, his orchestrations go from the deepest, darkest to highest, thinnest, most beautiful. And the end of Ein Heldenleben, after all these battles and turmoil throughout the whole piece, suddenly you come to this end and it's this fine, fine violin, which is the last bit of his spirit. He dies.
There's somebody I really admire, and his name is Van Dyke Parks... And he made an album called Jump, which, when I was making Brazil, which was a long nine months, I played it every morning on the way to work. And it made me happy.
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
I love this piece because it's based on a painting by a man named Arnold Berkelin... And it's called the Isle of the Dead. And Rachmaninoff wrote a piece which we were inspired by, or we stole, I can't remember which, for the figure of death in Baron Munchausen.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:17How close to normal are you right now, Terry?
Oh, God I always thought I was normal, and then and then I discovered I wasn't, and now I'm just weary, I think is the word. It's creeping in weariness.
Presenter asks
2:46Do you worry about running out of sources of originality?
Yeah, I've always felt that the well is very shallow. My wife thinks I keep making the same movie. I just change the costumes and the sets. It's invariably somebody trying to fight against the system... And I do find myself repeating myself, or I suspect I'm repeating myself, and I don't want to be caught out.
Presenter asks
4:51Were you working as part of the [Monty Python] team? Were the team inputting, or were you left to your own devices?
I suppose I had the most freedom of anybody in the group because what I was doing was clearly different from what they did... my animations gave it, I suppose, another level, a different colouring and a part for the non-verbal people to enjoy.
The keepsakes
The book
The biggest dictionary I can find
if it's big enough, I can probably hollow out a bit of it and uh smuggle along with me a pistol in there that when I get bored with my company I can shoot myself.
Presenter asks
When did you give up on the idea of becoming a missionary?
Oh, when uh at church they found my jokes about God or unseemly, I think was the word, they didn't laugh. And I said, What kind of God do you believe in that can't take a joke? My little jokes are going to undermine the whole structure that you believe in? This is nonsense. I'm out of here.
Presenter asks
24:23How did you hear about [Heath Ledger's death]?
on my daughter, Amy, said you've got to come into my office and there it was on the BBC uh website. And I said, It's just a joke, this is not not possible, because we'd just all been together two days earlier.
“I've always liked the extremes, the edges. I like to know where the cliff is, where the cliff face is, but you only find out by stepping off.”
“I've always been reactive. I don't know what I want. I don't know but I do know what's wrong. I do know what makes me angry. And so I respond to that immediately.”
“The point with depression to me is you've got to go all the way down to the bottom before you can come back up. And the bottom is very deep. It's not much fun.”
“The world just turns again. Sometimes you get crushed by the wheel as it turns. Sometimes you rise to the top. It goes on. The world is an extraordinary place. It's a great ride. But I've only got a few more turns before it's over.”