The difficulties of writing the offensive things Terry Gilliam told me

How should journalists write up conversations with people whose views they vehemently reject, asks Alexandra Pollard

The director said he was ‘tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything wrong with the world’ (Getty)

It was around five minutes into my interview with Terry Gilliam that I realised I had a challenge on my hands. He had just voluntarily brought up the #MeToo movement and compared it to a witch-hunt, and was about to facetiously claim to be a black lesbian in transition. Things would only get worse from there.

There have been plenty of times when I’ve interviewed someone frustratingly reticent, who’s unwilling to give any opinions, and brings every conversation back to the safe confines of their current project. “I’m talking about this film, and that’s it,” Mads Mikkelsen once told me.

But what do you do when it’s the opposite? When not only do they express an active desire NOT to talk about their film – even though, in this instance, the former Monty Python member had been trying to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote made for 20 years – but voluntarily wade into deeply offensive territory?

In this instance, the only saving grace was that Gilliam did not have an unpleasant demeanour. Despite the misguided, disappointing things coming out of his mouth – that he was “tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world” – he wasn’t an intimidating presence. I felt emboldened to push back against what he was saying.

Of course, I had a responsibility to do so as well. Had I implied that I agreed with him, it would have felt unfair to reveal only in the write-up – once I was safely behind my computer screen – that I vehemently didn’t.

As for writing it up, figuring out the right tone was difficult. How much of my own responses should I include? How much editorialising should I do? Should I simply report his words without putting myself in the piece at all, and let the reader make up their mind on whether he’s right or not? And was it irresponsible to even give him a platform at all?

I decided the answer to that last question was no. Unlike many of the outlets currently inviting Laurence Fox to come and spout his anti-progressive views, we weren’t interviewing Gilliam simply because he is a provocateur. We were interviewing him because he is a comic and directorial legend. He decided to take the conversation in the direction that it went in. But I decided that I did have a responsibility to at least attempt to rebut his beliefs in the piece.

A few times, I recounted our back and forth verbatim. For example:

“It’s been so simplified is what I don’t like. When I announce that I’m a black lesbian in transition, people take offence at that. Why?”

Because you’re not.

“Why am I not? How are you saying that I’m not?”

Are you?

“You’ve judged me and decided that I was making a joke.”

You can’t identify as black, though.

Only once, towards the end, did I veer away from the words of our actual conversation to explain why I felt Gilliam’s views were out of line. I’ll leave it to you to decide if I got the balance right.

Yours,

Alexandra Pollard

Arts writer and commissioning editor