After listening to this commentary, is it any real surprise that it's the number one rated commentary on this site? Terry Gilliam proves his artistic genius and the mania that comes with. You'll hear all the details of how his ideas came to bear, how his opinions of today's society inform his art, and just the general hysterics of this once member of Monty Python. If anything, maybe it's his manic laugh that you'll remember the most. This rampage makes the 12 Monkeys commentary come off sedated, and receives a flat-out TEN.

What a great track. Mr. Gilliam talks about everything. He talks about some of the special effects, the casting, the meaning of many of the scenes, the symbolism (or things that aren't symbolic), the studio, the sets, the locations, the costumes, the earlier and original draft ideas that didn’t make it through and many, many other things. One thing that is very surprising is that Mr. Gilliam had never read 1984 before making the movie. That's just really interesting. You also learn that the overall budget of the movie was around 13 1/2 million dollars. The actresses that auditioned for the Jill character are also touched upon – Michelle Pfeiffer and Ellen Barkin are some of the ladies mentioned. You also hear Mr. Gilliam talk about some of the absurdity in real life that inspired much of what happens in the movie, like Mrs. Terrain's complete confidence in her plastic surgeon even though it’s utterly unwarranted. He also talks about some of technical aspects of the movie like the choice of lenses and how some of the shots were achieved. All the scenes in the Ministry of Information Retrieval hallways, for example, were all done in the same hallway. You also hear much of Mr. Gilliam's philosophy about moviemaking, critics, Hollywood and the state of society as he sees it. It's an extremely informative and entertaining track. He almost never stops talking. A lot of new things are brought up by him that might not have been noticed before. It's very fascinating and will probably have to be listened to more than once to completely get what he has to say.

While Gilliam does get excited, and this makes it interesting, he also loses control of his own ego in the film, and spends much of it either complaining about how he was screwed over (even though he got the film released the way he wanted it, which most directors do not get) or how his philosophy regarding film is so great (it's nothing special, to be honest.) Still, he offers some good insights on the film and makes it a fun ride through the whole thing.

This commentary is interesting for comparative purposes only, really. In this track, Mr. Morgan basically states the differences between the director’s cut and the love-conquers-all version. What’s nice, however, is that he also expands on the differences. He mentions the differences, then explains their consequences and what those mean to this version of the movie. In doing that, he subtly tells you why this version of the movie is utter rubbish. For example, if you cut out the fact that a character knows something very important, then that character’s actions don’t make any sense anymore. (Example: SPOILER IN HERE: in this version of the movie, Sam doesn’t know that Mrs. Buttle’s husband is dead, so going through all the trouble with the cheque is inconsequential and quite useless. END OF SPOILER) It’s very interesting to hear.