Who is Dr. Parnassus?

Most if not all of you know by now how much I love Terry Gilliam movies. I've actually been working on a post for about a week on "My Top 10 Contemporary American Films," where I was confronted with a couple of depressing facts:

Not only was his most recent film, Tideland, ridiculously underrated, but his movies haven't had US financing since the 1990s. Don't even get me started--Twilight and Robert Zemickis' latest trip to Uncanny Valley make 7 million, and Terry Gilliam's films can't get financed?)

But, anyway, CNN has a piece on the making of Gilliam's new film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, with a lovely, emotional interview with the director and writer.

If you follow that link there's a shortened video version of the interview with shots from the film, as well as the longer text. If you love his films as much as I do you have to watch/read them both, but I thought I'd offer you these snippets (not included in the video).

CNN: Who is Dr. Parnassus?

Terry Gilliam: ...he's there to enlighten the world nobody's paying attention to.

Now I have to go around and tell the world to treat my child kindly. Learn to love it.

I'm depressed most of the time. Despair is a whole different animal.

I'm pretty good at making films, and if I wasn't making films, what should I do? I think the film is beautiful and I think it's wonderful.

It's a combination of a lot of people responding to tragedy and not letting the tragedy win.