Bless Terry Gilliam's rebellious heart, the director of such classics as "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Brazil," "12 Monkeys," and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" has been pushing back on the PC movement these last few months, even attacking the #MeToo movement in March comparing it to “mob rule” and saying: “ It’s crazy how simplified things are becoming.”
Controversy will surely come again for Gilliam. Speaking at a press conference at the Karlovy Vary film festival, where he was screening his brilliant new film "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," which I reviewed at Cannes proclaiming it "the best movie Gilliam's made in over 20 years."
The director was asked about the recent BBC diversity debate, which had the chutzpah of referencing the overall whiteness of Monty Python as if that were a bad thing. Basically, what BBC Head of Comedy Shane Allen said was that Monty Python's lack of originality had to do with a surfeit of education and racist bias. Idiot.
Gilliam's response? 'I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian'
This pushback on the BBC follows fellow Python member John Cleese’s angry response to Allen’s comment, who recently tweeted these glorious words: “Unfair! We were remarkably diverse FOR OUR TIME ... We had three grammar-school boys, one a poof, and Gilliam, though not actually black, was a Yank. And NO slave-owners.”
The full Gilliam statement on Allen's dim-witted comments: “It made me cry: the idea that ... no longer six white Oxbridge men can make a comedy show. Now we need one of this, one of that, everybody represented... this is bullshit. I no longer want to be a white male, I don’t want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world: I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian... My name is Loretta and I’m a BLT, a black lesbian in transition.”
BBC had unveiled its new comedy programming, in which Allen emphasised the BBC's commitment to “the stories that haven’t been told and the voices we haven’t yet heard,” going on to say that “If you’re going to assemble a team now, it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes. It’s going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world.”
Gilliam added: “[Allen’s] statement made me so angry, all of us so angry. Comedy is not assembled, it’s not like putting together a boy band where you put together one of this, one of that everyone is represented.”
BBC's Head of Comedy puts Monty Python's lack of originality down to a surfeit of education and racist bias— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 20, 2018
Unfair ! We were remarkably diverse FOR OUR TIME
We had three grammar-school boys, one a poof, and Gilliam, though not actually black, was a Yank. And NO slave-owners