Comedian Terry Gilliam could measure his life in reels, from Monty Python skits to turns behind the lens directing such films as Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In Gilliamesque, he chronicles his outlandish and enchanted life with insight, insouciance and whimsy in dense, color-saturated pages.
Told in a first person, off-the-cuff style, each chapter ferries the reader through distinct phases of Gilliam's life--childhood in the wilds of Minnesota, a move to California, falling in love, the onset of the Vietnam War and the formation of what would become the Pythons. Gilliam's easy way with words and one-liners shines in every seemingly extemporaneous paragraph, like sitting down to tea with your funniest friend.
Like the brushes with fame it describes, the book is splashy and colorful, but the hand-scribbled notes, photographs and errant dribbles of paint make this a coffee-table book for those who take their brew with a dash of irreverence. --Linnie Greene, freelance writer