Terry Gilliam who directed the webcast of the Arcade Fire’s concert on Thursday night, has said he was surprised, in a good way, when he got the phone call from the manager of the band. He has been a fan of Arcade Fire since ‘Funeral’, and Win Butler has apparently been a fan of Gilliam since he saw ‘Brazil’.
But Gilliam is defending himself from directing the whole thing, and in an MTV interview he declared:
‘I hate the fact that this word “directing” is being slammed all over the place. I’m not directing. I’m just hanging out with them. I’m just a really old groupie. […] The reason I’m so relaxed about it is that the show is so good that I don’t have to do anything. You just point some cameras at it and it’ll be great. The cameras and the team that does that are already in place. All I’m trying to do is make sure what they capture is true to what the band is doing. The band has got guys mixing their own cameras up on the screen and pulling in material that they’ve already assembled. When I saw that, I realized, “I don’t have anything to do!” which is good, because they’ve got great stuff, and anything I might do is just unnecessary and may end up being too much Terry Gilliam.’
Gilliam also explained he felt ‘completely incompetent’ and said he did not have a clue of what to do, being voluntary unprepared.
So what was the point to have Terry Gilliam if he did not do anything? If any technician could do it, why did they ask for the most visually crazy director? And why did he accept?
He and the band have nevertheless some common plans for the future, although they are not sure which ones.