How Terry Gilliam Finished His Film
Source: Wall Street Journal
Source: Wall Street Journal
When director Terry Gilliam called on Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to finish his picture, they all jumped in, taking turns in the role vacated when Heath Ledger passed away. "I was casting friends of Heath. Then you're thinking deeper than the character—you're thinking about Heath," Mr. Gilliam says.
The emergency casting was only possible because of the movie's fantasy storyline. In "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," the traveling show of the mystical title character (Christopher Plummer) features a mirror that gives way to a parallel world where anything goes. Because this cartoonish reality is shaped by its visitors' imaginations, Mr. Ledger's character, a con man who joins Parnassus's menagerie, could feasibly take on multiple appearances there.
Mr. Gilliam is sanguine about how "Parnassus" has been overshadowed by the loss of Ledger's. "I don't care [if that's the reason they come]," the director says. "Whatever brings them in is fine with me."
The director's vision for the film began with a prop: Parnassus's horse-drawn caravan, which also contains a stage that unfolds creakily at show time. Mr. Gilliam, a cartoonist, designed the contraption, drawing on sources such as the toy theaters at the V&A Museum of Childhood in London. He envisioned the wagon's stage and cramped interior as the primary set. "It was a way of keeping the budget under control" and saving money in the $25-million budget for his imaginary world's costly digital effects. But the wagon had problems. It was top-heavy, the mechanics were unreliable, and during shipping, the wood rotted. "I got to hate that wagon," Mr. Gilliam says.
Mr. Ledger's character, Tony, takes up with Parnassus's team after they discover him hanging from a rope below a bridge. As Tony warms up to his role, he dons a mask on stage, where he's part carnival barker, part Casanova, enticing women to pay for a trip through the magical mirror. "He got to be so seductive, so oily." Mr. Gilliam says the actor acknowledged that his puppet-like movements were done in the style of Mr. Depp. "Then Johnny takes over. That's what's really spooky."
Within two months of Mr. Ledger's passing, production had resumed. The three substitute actors received a reference DVD of Mr. Ledger's previously shot scenes. The script remained virtually the same, the director says, but the new stars would stand for facets of Tony's character. Mr. Depp, for instance, puts on a sinister air as he squires a woman through her imagined tableau. There was no time to rehearse the scene. "We had Johnny for one day and 3½ hours."
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