Monty Pythons Terry Gilliam could be forgiven for thinking the whole Donald Trump presidency is a joke on him.
This is a man after all who renounced his American citizenship in protest at George W. Bush.
For years I was saying we are getting to the point of having a complete conman for a president, the film director and animator told AFP, And now here we are
For somebody who likes turning things upside down, I should be enjoying this but Trump is an idiot, said the maker of Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
And humour is no defence. Not even the Pythons in their 1960s pomp could match the surreal madcap nature of the presidency, he insisted: Its absurd.
The reality is funnier than anything one can do, Gilliam laughed.
The Life of Brian, their classic satirical take on a false messiah, now seems all too prophetic, he said, completely relevant to the world we are living in.
It makes me feel like Ive gotten very old and I am living through a nightmare, he added.
For his latest project, Gilliam, 77, is directing the opera Benvenuto Cellini in Paris
Its so crazy and there is no way you can do anything. So I have become apolitical, I am Candide, he said, referring to Voltaires naively optimistic hero. I am going to be tending my garden, thats what I am going to do.
Yet the madness of it all still gets Gilliams famously brilliant brain going.
Look at America under Trump, look at England under the Conservatives it is just a joke. Britain is part of Europe and to think it can be Great Britain again is utterly foolish.
Nor is Gilliam, now a British citizen, afraid to call out his old friend and fellow Python John Cleese for supporting Brexit, telling AFP bluntly: He is an idiot!
But even the political climate cannot curb Gilliams boundless optimism and creative fire for long.
At 77 he is still fizzing with ideas, with a stack of projects in his sights including a musical.
In fact, the maker of Time Bandits, The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys is on a high having finally finished The Man Who Killed Don Quixote after nearly two decades of development hell.
The movie has gone down in Hollywood history as one of the most cursed projects ever, beset by such a string of disasters that the saga spawned an acclaimed documentary.
Im free! Gilliam declared, I was the prisoner of Don Quixote for 26 years.
The best thing about it being finished is that I like it, because I thought for all those years I would only disappoint myself. But its great, Adam Driver (of Star Wars fame) and Jonathan Price are extraordinary, the whole cast is wonderful, he said.
#MeToo mob rule
Gilliam has dedicated the movie to the actors Jean Rochefort and John Hurt, neither of whom lived long enough to play Don Quixote.
Ever the mischief maker, the director said the film includes scenes of women behaving inappropriately.
It is his little jab at the #MeToo movement which he claims has morphed into something ugly and dangerous.
Its like when mob rule takes over, the mob is out there they are carrying their torches and they are going to burn down Frankensteins castle.
Its crazy how simplified things are becoming. There is no intelligence anymore and people seem to be frightened to say what they really think. Now I am told even by my wife to keep my head a bit low, he said, ignoring her advice.
While Gilliam condemned Harvey Weinstein as a monster, he claimed that he was not alone. The mogul was exposed because he is such asshole, he said.
I think some people did very well out of meeting with Harvey and others didnt. The ones who did knew what they were doing. These are adults, we are talking about adults with a lot of ambition.
Harvey opened the door for a few people, a night with Harvey thats the price you pay, said Gilliam, who is in Paris to direct an opera, Benvenuto Cellini next week.
He said power had always been abused in the film world and I dont think Hollywood will change. Power takes advantage, it always does.
The great irony, he said, was that while #MeToo has been in full flow a self-confessed pussy-grabber is the president of the US and is just walking around unchallenged, he added.
*AFP
Source: NAN