Photo: Mike Marsland/Mike Marsland/WireImage
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Please allow Vulture to pitch a cool new game as we enter 2020: The Terry Gilliam Stop Doing Interviews Challenge. The Monty Python star and tenured director did a new interview with Britain’s Independent under the guise of discussing his eternally-gestating film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but, a few minutes in, he sharply turned the conversation to the intricacies of #MeToo and modern masculinity instead. “I’m tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world,” Gilliam explained. “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 behavior that we’re going through at the moment.”
Gilliam, who joked that he’s decided to become a “black lesbian in transition,” added that this type of remark was the backbone of the Python’s humor — but they weren’t “offending people” because it made others laugh. “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,” he said. “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.” Gilliam also got riled up thinking about the #MeToo movement and how women have been blaming higher-ups for abuse of power. “We’re living in a time where there’s always somebody responsible for your failures, and I don’t like this,” he explained. “I want people to take responsibility and not just constantly point a finger at somebody else, saying, ‘You’ve ruined my life.’”
Gilliam, echoing director Michael Haneke, also compared the hundreds of #MeToo accusations within the Hollywood community as a “witch hunt.”
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