Terry Gilliam Opens his Cabinet of Wonders in Cannes with "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"

In cinema -- and in opera -- one of the things that matters to most, to Opera Chic, is that artists shouldn't really talk down to their audience -- they should assume a modicum of intelligence on the viewer's, and the listener's, part. Just a tiny bit of it.

Someone who has never tried to sell bootleg goods to his audience is Terry Gilliam:
A man who, by assuming he's not dealing with utter morons, gave us films such as the intensely weird "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas", the deeply unsettling "Brazil", the badly misunderstood "Tideland", the darkly gleeful "12 Monkeys", the strangely moving "The Adventures of Baron Munchahusen" (not to mention, of course, Monty Python). All from a man that in a sheer, and rare, moment of complete brilliance had been chosen two years ago by la Scala to direct Andrea Chenier and eventually the deal fell apart, as Opera Chic warned her readers quite some time before the press reported on it -- and Gilliam spoke to the Times about his new film, to be introduced at Cannes. It's also Heath Ledger's final film, as the young Australian actor died of an accidental overdose in January 2008, only completing about half of his scenes for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepped in after Ledger's death to portray the character in the remaining dream sequences.

Here's Terry on audiences:

They try to lower the standard as much as they can to reach what they think is this great dumb audience. And I have always resisted that and wanted to believe in the audience’s intelligence. But if you keep feeding people baby food for long enough they begin to like it.