A fascinating, no holds barred look at the making of Terry Gilliam’s masterly Twelve Monkeys (1995), a ‘making of’ documentary for those of who usually hate this sort of thing. Wary of the way that Hollywood treated his masterpiece Brazil (1985), Gilliam wanted a visual record of the progress he was making on Twelve Monkeys and, wanting it done relatively cheaply, he shopped around the film schools in the Philadelphia area (where the bulk of his location work took place) and found Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. It was a fortuitous discovery.
Fulton and Pepe were given greater freedom than most other making-of documentarians who are usually in the pay of the film companies with a brief to paint the subject film in the best possible light, all the better to aid the film’s chances at the box office. Here, they were given access to most aspects of the production and captured all the frustrations, personality clashes and monumental struggles involved in bringing a modern Hollywood movie to the screen.
Although Gilliam was the instigator of the project, his collaborators on Twelve Monkeys were initially less sure of its wisdom – the producers weren’t keen on having a couple of film students loose on the set of their big budget, high profile movie; Bruce Willis was still smarting over the warts-and-all expose of The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) in Julie Salmon’s book The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco; and Universal were the very same studio that Gilliam had battled with over Brazil and were no doubt unsure of Gilliam’s motives. But Gilliam was adamant that The Hamster Factor be made and, as with most things, he stood his ground and got his way, even financing the initial stages of film out of his own pocket when Universal refused to get it off the ground.
Because of its status and the freedom that Fulton and Pepe were afforded, The Hamster Factor emerges as a brutally honest look at the modern film making process, with Gilliam particularly laying his emotions bare for the cameras. Coming in a month and a half after production had begun, Fulton and Pepe were on the set for every day of the rest of the shoot and then followed Gilliam through post-production hell and even beyond to the traumas of the preview screening.
The real test of a film of this nature is whether or not one actually learns anything about the subject – and in this case, we are left in no doubt that Gilliam is as much the subject of The Hamster Factor as is Twelve Monkeys. And we certainly get a much more personal portrait of Gilliam here than from any other source. We see him at his most vulnerable (as in the moment when he admits that he’s lost control of the film), aggressive (Fulton and Pepe were unable to capture a blazing row between Gilliam and producer Charles Roven, though are creative enough to get the tension across on camera nonetheless) and despondent (his reaction to the dreadful preview screening results is remarkable and very moving). Gilliam is presented here as a highly professional and driven man (with a highly infectious high pitched laugh!) and not quite the the maverick, oddball visionary that many printed sources have tried to present him.
Nothing demonstrates his devotion to his craft more than the scene that gives the documentary it’s strange title – suggested by co-producer, ‘The Hamster Factor’ refers to Gilliam’s obsession with a hamster, barely seen in the corner of one shot, and his desire to get the animal to ‘perform’ exactly as he wishes, almost at the expense of everything else in the frame. Gilliam explains that it is this attention to the minutiae of the image that defines a Gilliam film, that adds what the documentary calls, logically enough, “the Gilliam factor”.
The film is at its very best when it presents the grittier, less glamorous, often unseen side of Hollywood film-making – the arguments, the depressions and the frustrations. Gilliam’s stubborness and unwillingness to compromise his artistic vision leads to some of The Hamster Factor‘s most watchable moments – his admission that he originally hated the ending imposed on him by the producers and went out of his way to think up difficult and expensive final shots so as to assure they would never be shot, only to end up loving what he was forced to do; the shocked reaction to the preview, where audiences reacted in the cinema exactly as Gilliam had wanted them to do, only for them to then give the film appalling reviews on their score sheets; the worrying moment when Gilliam realises that he doesn’t actually know where he’s going with Twelve Monkeys any more. All of these are the key moments in The Hamster Factor and are the elements that differentiates it from the overlong commercials that most making-of documentaries clearly are.
If only more making-of documentaries were as willing to capture the darker side of the film’s production as The Hamster Factor, perhaps they wouldn’t be so unlikable. Fulton and Pepe are happy enough to show the good moments too, but aren’t afraid to home in the disagreements and the hitches and the temper tantrums, making it the production executives nightmare, but a real joy for anyone interested in the nitty gritty of film making.
In an interview published in Samhain no.61, Fulton and Pepe admitted that they hadn’t originally intended the film to dwell quite so much on Gilliam, though given that Gilliam was The Hamster Factor‘s champion on the set and that his personality is just so fascinating, it was perhaps inevitable that he should become the focus of attention. His manic personality is truly infectious, even when he is at his lowest ebb – even the rare interviews with the reclusive Bruce Willis are gatecrashed by an exuberant Gilliam.
The Hamster Factor is required viewing for anyone who appreciates the genius of Terry Gilliam in general and the poetic beauty of Twelve Monkeys in particular. It’s also essential viewing for anyone interested in the film making process and should be physically forced upon anyone contemplating a career in the industry. It is that rarest of films – a making of documentary that is not only honest and frank, but worth spending some time and money on too.
The EOFFTV Review 