"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is one of my favorites. I love the book. Terry Gilliam is phenomenal. I love Terry Gilliam, I just love his mind. I love that, you know, he doesn’t even do drugs. The guy’s just f***ing crazy. Absolutely mad genius, and I love him to pieces. So, Fear and Loathing, to make that book come true, I mean, I can’t think of another book that would be harder."

"I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pitched something and said, “It’s like if Terry Gilliam directed ____.” I fell in love with this film and those of Jean-Pierre Jeunet while I was in film school at Northwestern. I would love more than anything to make a film with a Gilliam level of design and art."

"Terry Gilliam again, one of the best to ever do it. I think this film blew people’s minds when it came out. I wish I’d been able to see this one in a theater."

""Quirky, with humour and horror juxtaposed, and full of little details about the alternative world that Terry Gilliam creates. And Michael Palin outstanding as a nice man turned into a torturer by the system.""

"By Terry Gilliam, who is an amazing filmmaker anyway, and there are so many to choose from; Brazil, Fisher King… There are lots of his films that I love, but Twelve Monkeys, in particular, I thought was fantastic. I think it’s the best thing Bruce Willis has ever done, and also the best thing Brad Pitt has ever done as well. It’s just really intense, exciting and weird, and everything that I love about Terry Gilliam, so that’s up there."

"I love Time Bandits, and it obviously fits into the kids’-adventure-fantasy stuff that I’m into. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was actually the first film I ever saw in a theater when I was eight years old, and I was euphoric. After that I rented every Terry Gilliam movie. In Time Bandits, he mixes animation and live action, which is an important aesthetic element in the movies I make. When I was twenty I had a short at the London Film Festival, and I was there with my friend so we were traveling from party to party, drinking and eating, because we didn’t have any money. At one party we saw Terry Gilliam, and I started talking to this woman about seeing Baron Munchausen and how it made me want to make movies, and she said, “Well, my husband is Terry Gilliam, you should go say hello to him.” So I went over to him and said, “I just need you to know that I’m here because you made me want to make movies,” and he said, “I’m so sorry.”"

"Terry Gilliam does nothing by half measures, and Brazil is no exception. This hallucinatory take on George Orwell’s pessimistic and prophetic book 1984 is a marvel of black comedy and yet somehow embodies the anger and despair of the original. Astonishing to look at and sometimes chilling, this is one of Gilliam’s best films."

"If Terry Gilliam was my “wild man” hero in my youth, then Terrence Malick was my poet. Both of these films were textbooks on how films can transcend simple storylines with visual poetry. Both still hold a tremendous amount of power today, and I try to rewatch them at least once a year for a shot of inspiration."