The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys

Gilliam is not a difficult man to understand. He's a painter, not a filmmaker, so he is all about scenes and richness of the moment. Everything has to be delivered now; there is no notion of building so that bigger things can be delivered. There's no long form conveyance, no structure at the scale of life: only powerful effect in the moment as if you were on a drug that erased most memory and all anticipative cognition.

There's a place for this. Usually it isn't as the filmmaker.

But there is a class of films where the inadequacy of the filmmaker is the point: his foibles becoming entangled with what we see on the screen. This was the case with "12 Monkeys" and it is the metastory of this film.

Simply put, Bruce Willis' character has no idea what is real or not. He has no concept of narrative continuity. Everything reflects a past future, meaning no future.

What he has is what he sees and he has no ability to project. As it happens, Gilliam gets entangled with this project in a way that messes with his life while bending the manner in which the story is told to reflect this quiet madness. So the way the film is broken is the point, and we have this here as the real story.

Its pretty cool. You need to see the two together, plus the remarkable "la Jette"

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

This is a documentary on the "making of" of Twelve Monkeys, found on the Collector's Edition DVD. It consists of interviews, behind the scenes footage, clips of the movie and a little bit of marvelous, Gilliam-esquire animation(!). Coming in at almost 90 minutes, this is thorough, going over every aspect of the process of putting the film together, as of Terry joining the production, thus, the script-writing isn't dealt with much. You get a lot of insight into how he approaches the craft, the issues that arise with him in the director's chair(him being something of an uncompromising perfectionist), and how he manages to inject such a massive amount of surrealism and food for thought into one single motion picture. This also goes into the marketing, the preview screenings, and the casting of Willis and Pitt. It's all well-edited, sharp and not wasting any time. Well-paced, as well, you're never bored during this. It's pretty funny, too, maybe especially if you're into the ex-Python, and if you're considering watching this, chances are that you are a fan. There is strong language in this, if not in copious amounts. I recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about the subject. 8/10

Most "making of" documentaries are little more than puff pieces in which the director and lead actors bs about what a wonderful experience it was to make the film and why you should go see it. The Hamster Factor is quite a bit different. Fulton and Pepe were brought on as "witnesses" rather than promoters. The documentary is refreshingly honest about the process including the moments of doubt, the temporary loss of vision, the angst following test screenings and the eventual success of the movie. The Hamster Factor also does a better job at describing the technical details of how the film gets made from pre-production debates in bare-walled offices with distressed office furniture, to on-location production to editing in bare-walled offices with distressed office furniture.

This documentary does a good job of showing the true face of the movie industry. It takes away all of the glamour and ease that many of general public attach to movie making.

It is also put together exceptionally well. There are lots of shots that the existence of seems almost impossible.

For those interested in what the film industry is really like - this is a very insightful documentary.

This documentary is included in full on the DVD of Twelve Monkeys that I have.

It documents the difficulties encountered in trying to make a relatively un-Hollywood movie inside of the Hollywood system. It tells the story of how Twelve Monkeys got to be made under exceptional circumstances, and is very effective at conveying the frustrations and problems encountered in dealing with the various collaborators.

Nevertheless, it remains light-hearted and candid, and is presented in the true off-beat style of Terry Gilliam. It also gives us a fascinating look at Terry Gilliam's unique style of filmmaking.

Very interesting.