The Army of the 12 Monkeys on Arte: a shoot full of problems for a cursed director

A look back at the chaotic production of Terry Gilliam’s sci-fi film with Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt.

Summit of nightmarish and dystopian science fiction, Army of the 12 Monkeys is one of the emblematic works of Terry Gilliam’s filmography. The ex-Monty Python, creator of unparalleled visual and narrative universes, took as a model a classic of SF cinema, and a French one at that: the medium-length film The pier by Chris Marker, released in 1962. From this experimental project, he created a strange and captivating work carried by Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt to be seen again this Monday evening on Arte (and in streaming on Arte.TV)

Anyone who knows anything about Terry Gilliam’s filmography knows that the director is as brilliant as he is cursed. He is certainly even the worst filmmaker in the world, accumulating troubles with a staggering consistency in each of his projects (he was even wrongly declared dead in 2015 by the site of Variety). And so much so that we tend to confuse the films a little and forget what exactly happened to each of them. Army of the 12 Monkeys is no exception, quite the contrary, so on the occasion of its rebroadcast, a look back at its very difficult genesis.

A tense production
It all started when, in the early 1990s, executive producer Robert Kosberg convinced Chris Marker to let him adapt The pier in the United States on behalf of Universal. But the major is very reluctant to finance a project that seems risky, especially since the studio must recover from the financial abyss of Waterworld by Kevin Costner released a few months earlier. If Universal ends up committing, it will at a minimumoffering Gilliam only a very low budget for a film of this type of $29.5 million, despite the assured presence in the casting of Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt. The budget was so low that the filmmaker had to convince the first director to reduce his fee so that the film could be made.

The negotiations turned out to be tough and long because Gilliam, who had just abandoned the adaptation of Tale of two cities by Charles Dickens, has painful memories of his previous collaboration with Universal on Brazil. This other sci-fi classic had been ten years earlier at the center of an open war between the studio and the director, which had resulted in three different versions of the film, the producers’ version having been reduced by more than three-quarters of an hour compared to Gilliam’s. The latter then does not commit to Army of the 12 Monkeys only on one condition: that Universal gives up the final cut. Universal accedes to its request but sets two conditions: the film must not be rated R (i.e. reserved only for adults in the United States) and must not exceed 135 minutes.

A chaotic shoot
Filming began on February 8, 1995 in Philadelphia and also included the city of Baltimore. But as always with Terry Gilliam, nothing is really going to go as planned, especially since the film team has to deal with an extremely tight budget and shooting schedule. Winter filming in these two cities in the northeastern United States is marked by major weather problems which also cause mechanical problems. The futuristic sphere with television screens is experiencing numerous glitches, all the more damaging as it is one of the most expensive creations of the shoot.

Worse still, in haste, the first rushes reveal enormous continuity errors due to the non-linear structure of the film, which generate numerous reshoots even though filming is not yet finished. Additionally, Gilliam’s perfectionism stretches out some filming days. And to top it all off, the filmmaker is the victim of a fall from a horse while filming, from which he emerges injured (no doubt a premonition of all the obstacles he will encounter in wanting to adapt Don Quixote).

To juggle budgets and not explode the ceiling, the film team invests, sometimes wildly, in abandoned places such as a prison, a hospital or an abandoned cinema. Marked by the failure of Adventures of Baron Munchausenon which the budget had doubled during filming, Gilliam competed in inventiveness to allow the film to take shape at the time of the last clap, given on May 6, 1995.

Despite all the glitches encountered while setting up this Army of the 12 MonkeysTerry Gilliam will have great success with the film. Partly thanks to its very modest budget, it became a big success at the box office with more than 150 million in revenue, attracting 2.3 million spectators in France. For his performance in the film, Brad Pitt won the Golden Globe and received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. And almost twenty years later, the cult film has been adapted into a series, 12 Monkeyswhich intrigues enough spectators to be available in 4 seasons.

The story of Army of the 12 Monkeys : The year is 2035. The few thousand inhabitants remaining on our planet are forced to live underground. The surface of the globe has become uninhabitable following a virus that decimated 99% of the population. The survivors pin all their hopes on a journey through time to discover the causes of the catastrophe and prevent it. It is James Cole, haunted for years by an incomprehensible image, who is designated for this mission.