And then that phrase comes up. Witch hunt. “Yeah, I
said #MeToo is a witch hunt,” he says. There’s a silence. “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.”
“There are many victims in Harvey’s life,” he
adds, “and I feel sympathy for them, but then, Hollywood is full of very
ambitious people who are adults and they make choices. We all make
choices, and I could tell you who did make the choice and who didn’t. I
hate Harvey. I had to work with him and I know the abuse, but I don’t
want people saying that all men… Because on [the 1991 film] Fisher King,
two producers were women. One was a really good producer, and the other
was a neurotic bitch. It wasn’t about their sex. It was about the
position of power and how people use it.”
Being neurotic and being an alleged rapist are
not the same thing, though. Many women have made very legitimate
accusations against many powerful men. “And those are true. But the idea
that this is such an important subject you cannot find anything
humorous about it? Wrong!”
Gilliam mentions a famous actor he was speaking
to recently. “She has got her story of being in the room and talking her
way out. She says, ‘I can tell you all the girls who didn’t, and I know
who they are and I know the bumps in their careers.’ The point is, you
make choices. I can tell you about a very well-known actress coming up
to me and saying, ‘What do I have to do to get in your film, Terry?’ I
don’t understand why people behave as if this hasn’t been going on as
long as there’ve been powerful people. 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.” He holds up his hands. “I
didn’t do it!”
It is deeply frustrating to argue with Gilliam.
He is both the devil and his advocate. I try to say that it’s not that
white men are to blame for everything, but that they are born with
certain privileges that, too often, they exploit. He interrupts.
“It’s been so simplified is what I don’t like.
When I announce that I’m a black lesbian in transition, people take
offence at that. Why?”
Because you’re not.
“Why am I not? How are you saying that I’m not?”
Are you?
“You’ve judged me and decided that I was making a joke.”
You can’t identify as black, though.
“OK, here it is. Go on Google. Type in the name Gilliam. Watch what comes up.”
What’s going to come up?
“The majority are black people. So maybe I’m half black. I just don’t look it.”
But earlier, he described himself as a white male.
“I don’t like the term black or white. I’m now
referring to myself as a melanin-light male. I can’t stand the
simplistic, tribalistic behaviour that we’re going through at the
moment.” He smiles. “I’m getting myself in deeper water, so I have to
trust you.” I’m not sure what he’s trusting me to do.
“I’m talking about being a man accused of all the
wrong in the world because I’m white-skinned. So I better not be a man. I
better not be white. OK, since I don’t find men sexually attractive,
I’ve got to be a lesbian. What else can I be? I like girls. These are
just logical steps.” They don’t seem logical. “I’m just trying to make
you start thinking. You see, this is the world I grew up in, and with
Python, we could do this stuff, and we weren’t offending people. We were
giving people a lot of laughter.”
He’s right about that. But at its best, Python
was silly and whimsical, its more pointed satirical moments punching up,
not down. At its worst, it missed the mark, objectifying women when it
wasn’t depicting them as shrill and preposterous, and using racial slurs
that would rightly horrify people today. Gilliam doesn’t see the
difference.
“I’m into diversity more than anybody,” he says,
“but diversity in the way you think about the world, which means you can
hate what I just said. That’s fine! No problem. I mean, you can believe
whatever you want to believe, but fundamentalism always ends up being,
‘You have to attack other people who are not like you,’ and that’s what
makes me crazy. Life is fantastic, it’s wonderful, it’s so complex.
Enjoy it and play with it and have fun. That’s why I didn’t become a
missionary. That was my plan. I was quite the little zealot when I was
young, but when their God couldn’t take a joke, I thought, ‘This is
stupid.’ Who would want to believe in a God that can’t laugh?”
