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Article by E.C. McMullen Jr. |
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TIME BANDITS |
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TIME BANDITS was the second successful movie pitch that Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin made to Chief investor and producer, George Harrison.
The first being The Life of Brian, for which Harrison's company Handmade Films, was created.
Life of Brian had all of the controversy that the major studios expected, but it also gained the box office clout that the studios never expected.
With such a successful first venture for his fledgling company, George liked the idea that TIME BANDITS would be a movie starring members of Monty Python, without being an actual Monty Python movie. As before when no studio would touch Life of Brian, none would touch TIME BANDITS. George and his business partner, Denis O'Brien loved Terry's physically animated pitch, acting out the different roles, to the point where once again, they "Want to see this movie!"
Palin and Gilliam were convinced that they had sold their vision and set about polishing the script and into pre-production we go!
However...
Harrison was convinced that he had a friendly working relationship with the two guys that would give him ample room for creative changes.
After all, Gilliam was known for changing characters at the drop of a hat merely because the actor thought they could make it funnier if they said the lines their own way, or dressed in a different way.
In 1979 George was coming off of three critically drubbed albums that were poorly received by his fans as well. Since music was his first love, he thought that adding his own songs to TIME BANDITS was a winning way to promote both.
Then George got it into his head that TIME BANDITS should be a musical of his songs.
That's when the fight that neither Harrison or Gilliam expected began.
Both Terry Gilliam and George Harrison needed a hit.
George needed a hit album and, because he was personally putting up most of the budget for Time Bandits, he needed a hit movie too.
TIME BANDITS was Terry's second outing as a feature film director. His first being the 1977 low budget ($500k) Jabberwocky, released through Python films. The budget was so low they could barely afford the rolls of film to make it, couldn't afford second takes, and they hired big name actors who decided they wouldn't follow Terry's direction...
"I won't pick my nose for this scene. I'd rather do it nude."
...and got their way because there was neither the time or money to replace them.
Worse, Jabberwocky broke the company with its poor distribution, making only around $200k in world box office.
To Terry and Michael, George Harrison rescued the Pythons so they could make their hit, Life of Brian (all the Pythons had a writing credit and Terry Jones directed - though Jones wanted Gilliam to direct with him).
Gilliam and Palin found George and Denis easy to work with even if the Pythons didn't work so well with each other. Unfortunately, Terry and Michael made a few wrong assumptions about their working relationship.
And how did George and Denis O'Brien see it
Harrison rescued the Pythons so they could make Life of Brian, found all of them easy to work with - even if they didn't work so well with each other. Unfortunately, George made a few wrong assumptions about their working relationship.
George and Denis were courteous, but they needed to turn TIME BANDITS into a musical featuring George's songs. Michael and Terry were courteous but they sold TIME BANDITS according to their vision, which was absolutely, positively NOT a musical and never could be.
The differences quickly escalated and the fighting began.
With everything else going on in his life, the last thing George needed for his tiny boutique film venture was a "troubled production".
With everything else going on in his life, the last thing Terry needed for his fledgling career was another troubled production. Cast and crew may make all the creative demands they want, but as always when the movie flops, they let the director swing in the wind.
Big studios with their massive catalog of fan favorite films can afford to throw money at any problem a "troubled production" may have, but that method doesn't apply to a tiny niche studio working on its second production.
Meanwhile big name actors, all Monty Python fans, were already signing up to do the picture. Sean Connery - riding an audience high but at a career low (for notoriously fighting with his directors and producers) - was delighted to have his part as King Agamemnon. Shelly Duval, coming hot off of her blistering term in Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING, said Yes. The esteemed Sir Ralph Richardson was onboard and so was the future "Sir" Ian Holm.
Back in Pre-Production, George gave Terry almost full reign as Writer, Producer, and Director. Writer and Actor, Michael Palin opted for calm negotiations but invariably sided with Terry. George was an executive producer. He could suggest but not enforce his creative input.
As executive producer Harrison could also go through the arduous nuclear option of withdrawing his money (George and Denis mortgaged their Handmade Films office building to fund TIME BANDITS. George had "pawned" his London home and office building to fund 1979's Life of Brian).
Withdrawing their money from the movie is exactly what Lord Bernard Delfont of EMI did to the Pythons when he decided that the script big studio EMI bought for Life of Brian was "Blasphemous". And of course, if little studio, Handmade Films, withdrew, it would make news across the international movie press, poisoning the waters of George's fledgling production company in only its second outing.
Meanwhile John Cleese came aboard, but only if he could play the part that Michael Palin wrote for himself, otherwise he was out. The more Pythons the more audience draw after all. Terry and particularly Michael gave in and, in doing so, felt they were already compromising enough. Fucking Cleese, man! Also, Sir Ralph Richardson set about red-inking his lines in the script.
"A Supreme Being wouldn't say that."
Back in pre-production, George was seeing no compromise in his behalf at all. What's wrong with making it a musical? Up to now, Michael and Terry repeatedly said they adored his music! What's more, the first movie they all did together ended with a big musical number written and sung by Eric Idle!
In George's view, Music critics were writing him off, fans were abandoning him, and all while the rest of his former bandmates were putting out one hit album after the next: Now this?
With George's insistence on being part of the creative team, he suddenly found himself within the roiling, warring, argumentative sphere of the Monty Pythons. He was no longer a bemused outsider looking in on the quixotic spectacle of these chaps and their artistic methods.
Harrison was getting more upset than you would expect because he'd been here before.
George soon recognized the dynamic he put himself in (and was too late to undo), having gone through it during his time in The Beatles and their bitter break-up. Harrison expected movie making with the Pythons to be fun and enjoyable, like it was on Life of Brian. Yet Terry's behavior was starting to look like John Lennon. Also, while Terry and Michael may argue creatively with each other, they stood together against George the same way Paul and John always had1.
Not wanting Harrison to go through all that stress again, Denis stepped in to act as a buffer between George and Terry, but Gilliam already had a George/Terry buffer with Michael.
Then Denis decided that he wanted Creative Input too.
This turned the clashes into shouting matches, made all the worse because Terry saw the dwarf actors in TIME BANDITS simply as funny people, the way all the cast members were funny people. Denis saw the dwarf actors as funny little cartoony characters like The Seven Dwarves. We know this because Denis wanted George Harrison to write "Hi-Ho" style songs for them to sing.
TRIVIA1 This despite the fact that, during production, George and Denis tried to sweeten their alliance with Palin by privately offering Michael the opportunity to do his own personal production after TIME BANDITS, which became The Missionary (1982). Michael graciously accepted their offer, but still stood by Terry. 2 "Right In the eye" or "Right in your eye"* is a multi-layered meaning in that era of England and all of it a direct statement from George to Terry. For fans of cinema pioneer Georges Méliès, like George and Terry were, Right In The Eye (En plein dans l’œil) was a series of 12 multimedia films, the first ever of their kind, that Méliès is most famous for. This is the shared vision that both men felt with each other. Also - The Cambridge English Dictionary definition of the phrase, "Look someone in the eye" May refer to either honesty or deception. * What I wrote is by no means definite and it's important to know that George Harrison fans still debate over whether George was saying this or something else. Here are a few links to that, |
Terry would at least listen to George Harrison. After all, the man was a musical genius, worked in the trenches to create one of the best bands of all time, started his own record label, and had plenty of experience on movie sets.
But where did Denis get off? He was a tax attorney and a banker for crying out loud! The most creative thing he ever did was bookkeeping!
To shore up their argument, Harrison and Denis hired well-regarded music producer Ray Cooper to represent their point.
Cooper brought the honed experience of his industry confident gravitas to a sit down meeting with a typically animated and gesticulating Terry Gilliam. He listened as Terry and Michael acted through their vision for the movie, and at the end of the meeting, told Harrison and O'Brien that Terry and Michael were right: The movie cannot work as a musical.
Frustrated, George made a final demand. That he would write and perform the movie's closing song over the end credits like Eric had done before. By this time Terry was suspicious of any contribution from George, leaving an exasperated Harrison to remind Terry that without him, there would be no TIME BANDITS or The Life of Brian. Terry - still respecting if not liking George - relented.
So George wrote and performed his song, Dream Away: a poison pen attack on Terry and what George viewed as betrayal.
Written between the sweetly sappy folk song chorus of "Oh ry in eye ay, oh ry in eye ay" ("Oh, right in your eye, eh?"2) you'll find lyrics like these,
Greedy feeling, wheeling, dealing
Losing what you won
See the dream come undone
Stumble you may with the elementary
Lucky you got so far, all you owe is apologies
Measure the mystery and astound, without taking up time
Still the handiworks remain, only a dream away
Oh ry in eye ay, oh ry in eye ay
When the movie was finished and they played it for the distributors and crew, Terry turned his attention off as the end credits rolled. He heard the song without listening to the lyrics and didn't make the connection†.
During distribution the movie became a smash hit, grossing over 8 times its budget just in North America (U.S. and Canada) alone, thus forcing George to realize that everything Terry fought for was the right thing to do.
Was it fresh introspection and a touch of shame over his pettiness that made George choose not to release a movie soundtrack? I've never found an interview where he mentioned that. Yet Harrison's fans were clamoring for the soundtrack that they never got. George eventually, quietly, released his spiteful little tune on his Dark Horse recording label album, Gone Troppo.
The soundtrack itself was eventually released, long after Harrison's death, in a 2020 limited edition in France.
Ray Cooper, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin would go on to make more movies together, but Terry never worked with George Harrison again.
Instead, Terry would go on to find that his battles with Handmade Films were nothing compared to what Universal put him through five years later with BRAZIL.
If nothing else, George's fights were over artistic differences.
†Decades later in 2011, in the Martin Scorsese documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Terry Gilliam said he'd known about the lyrics while still in production, saying, "I thought it was the most brilliant, subtle, clever thing a man could ever do, to write a song. He's writing about things that he felt strongly about and yet he's too polite and decent and, I think, respectful of other artists, whatever form that takes, to interfere."
George and Denis would go on to be sure they had more creative control over all of Handmade Films future releases, only to find that their ironclad input produced a string of flops, most barely able to break even, and they were forced to sell off their film company only ten years later in 1991. The biggest hits they ever had were the ones that Terry Gilliam was involved with.
Still, despite the imbroglio, consider what was lightning fast accomplished by these people with TIME BANDITS: first concept to first filming, all in the space of about a year!
Sources -
TIME BANDITS Special Edition DVD - DiviMax (2-Disc)
LIFE OF BRIAN The Immaculate Edition Blu-Ray
George Harrison: Wikipedia
George Harrison: Living in the Material World, a documentary by Martin Scorsese
IMDb: Time Bandits Trivia
This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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