![]() A dark comic fantasy, Time Bandits featured six dwarves who felt that their work for the Supreme Being in helping to shape Creation has gone unappreciated. And it ended up this brilliant ending that wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for Sean and his tax problems.In 1981 Monty Python member Terry Gilliam released Time Bandits, his first major step away from his work with the British comedy troupe and a film that distinguished himself as a fantasist whose work demanded attention. And I managed to get him to come out the middle of nowhere to just put on a fireman’s helmet, wink and get in the truck and go, and that was it. “He was back in England for, I think, a day meeting his accountant. as the production was drawing to a close. “But Sean said something when we were first talking about the part, and he’d said, ‘Oh, it’d be so great to come back as a fireman at the end.’ And luckily, I remembered that moment,” says Gilliam, who grabbed Connery during a brief trip back to the U.K. Having run out of time with Connery in Morocco, the intended reappearance of Agamemnon leading a team of archers into a battle royal (alongside knights and cowboys) had to be scrapped. The moment appears perfectly planned, but the filmmaker admits it was a last-minute addition that only came about as a result of “Sean’s tax problems.” “I just think he didn’t think it’d be elegant.”Īt the end of Time Bandits, as part of a Gilliam-style “it was all a dream, or was it” final scene, Connery reappears briefly as a fireman. Here’s what I’ll give you: I’m going to be standing in the stirrups and I’ll sit down,” Gilliam laughs. But this time it was more about saving face than saving time. One of the elements Connery insisted be removed was the moment, after defeating the Minotaur, where he was due to mount his horse. And we got through that first day thanks to his pragmatism and not my ambition.” Anything he said, it was ‘Yes, sir.’ I suddenly felt like I was in the hands of an incredible actor with great experience. “Sean looked at my storyboards, and says, ‘Forget about that, you’ve not gonna get this done, kid,’ ” claims Gilliam. In extreme heat, with pages and pages of storyboard to get through, and with Time Bandit’s central 10-year-old child star Craig Warnock, in his movie debut and now standing opposite James Bond, having frozen, Connery stepped in. ![]() On the first day of the shoot in Morocco, which Connery knew well having shot The Man Who Would Be King there several years earlier, Gilliam says the star’s presence proved critical. “And here was a chance to be a surrogate father.” “I’m convinced the reason he said yes was that he was having some guilt feelings about having been an absent father,” Gilliam says. ![]() I guess he was a Python fan,” says Gilliam, who also claims Agamemnon’s role in the film as an adoptive parent (briefly to the central, time-traveling character Kevin), was also appealing. “He mentioned the possibility of being in this film, and Sean liked the idea. Yet Denis O’Brien - George Harrison’s manager, who had recently co-founded The Beatle’s groundbreaking HandMade Films production banner - just so happened to be playing golf with the actor. Naturally, this was only really supposed to be a bit of fun among the filmmakers and he had little hope of actually casting Connery. ![]()
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