Bad news everyone! Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam is back with more terrible and offensive opinions. The 79 year old Brazil director is currently on a press tour for his long-gestating film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which he has struggled to make for over twenty years. In a new interview with The Independent however, Gilliam was more interested in talking about the victimization of white men. Oh man, if he thinks white guys have it tough, JUST WAIT until he hears how bad everyone else has it!
Journalist Alexandra Pollard summed up her interview on Twitter quite succinctly:
I can't say it was a pleasure to interview Terry Gilliam https://t.co/05FNz8sDVW
— Alexandra Pollard (@alexjpollard) January 4, 2020
In his rambling interview, Gilliam shares his thoughts on the current cultural climate and the Me Too Movement, saying “We’re living in a time where there’s always somebody responsible for your failures, and I don’t like this. I want people to take responsibility and not just constantly point a finger at somebody else, saying, ‘You’ve ruined my life.’”
Curiously, Gilliam’s expectations of taking responsibility don’t extend to men in power who abuse women. The director added, “No. When you have power, you don’t take responsibility for abusing others. You enjoy the power. That’s the way it works in reality.” Yeah dude, we know that’s how it works. That’s how it has always worked. That’s the problem.
He went on, saying “Yeah, I said #MeToo is a witch hunt … I really feel there were a lot of people, decent people, or mildly irritating people, who were getting hammered. That’s wrong. I don’t like mob mentality. These were ambitious adults.” Gilliam, like many opponents of the Me Too Movement, conflates the long overdue reckoning with an indictment of men in general. He shares an anecdote about a female producer who he described as a “neurotic bitch”, as evidence that … women can suck too?
Pollard calls him out on there being a staggering difference between someone being unpleasant to work with and a serial rapist, but Gilliam pivots, saying that these things shouldn’t be taken so seriously. That is, until he perceives call-out culture as being directed towards him. “I understand that men have had more power longer, but I’m tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world … I didn’t do it!”
Over all, the director comes across as that obnoxious guy in your freshman dorm who argues about everything just for the sake of arguing (you know, the one always playing devil’s advocate). Much like his comments on Black Panther, it’s a tiring take from an old man desperate to shock his way out of irrelevancy.
Gilliam, much like Don Quixote, is chasing the dream of a less evolved era, looking to slay political correctness and accountability. But in reality, he’s just an old man swinging blindly at the windmill.
(via The Independent, image: KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)
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