The Untold Truth Of 12 Monkeys

Before there was "12 Monkeys," there was a short science fiction French film called "La Jetee" (via Films Lie). Directed by Chris Marker in 1962 and composed mainly of still shots, "La Jetee" is a study on the illusion of cinema and the false perception of time that all film conspires to create. The film's plot revolves around a soldier in a post-apocalyptic Paris who is used as a test subject for a series of experiments in time travel. Through clever editing and voice-over commentary, "La Jetee" manages to create a multi-layered 28-minute film about the unreliability of memory, the whimsical nature of time, and how it traps us all in its never-ending labyrinth. It's easy to see the similarities with "12 Monkeys."

David and Janet Peoples were the scriptwriters in charge of adapting "12 Monkeys" from "La Jetee," and, according to Cinephilia and Beyond, both felt it was the perfect film and had initial reservations about its remake. In an interview, Terry Gilliam described "La Jetee" as "technically brilliant." He also equated the film to music or poetry because of the editing, which he coined, "the most extraordinary I have ever seen." Although quick to sing the praises of "La Jetee," Gilliam admitted in an interview with Film Scouts, that prior to, and during the filming of "12 Monkeys" he refused to watch the film. Gilliam explained, "I've never seen "La Jetee." If I do something based on something else I make it a principle not to read or see the original. I'll be intimidated by it or I'll feel an awful sense of responsibility."

Although in the mid-nineties, Bruce Willis was riding the crest of a wave and a huge box-office draw, Terry Gilliam initially felt that the Hollywood "tough guy" was the wrong fit for a damaged, vulnerable and confused character such as James Cole. Willis had built his reputation playing wisecracking alpha males such as John McClane in the "Die Hard" franchise, and Gilliam revealed to Inverse that although he liked him as a person he wasn't a fan of Willis as an actor. The director confessed that Nicolas Cage and Tom Cruise were also in the running to play Cole. With pressure to attach a big-name movie star to the production, Gilliam decided to take a punt on Willis because he was smart and funny, and Willis, who was looking to try out more challenging roles, agreed to a pay cut.

Adamant that the superstar meet certain conditions to play the part, Gilliam explained he told Willis how much he hated that, "Pursed-lip expression he does in his films when he gets a little nervous. It's a Trumpian mouth. For a moment it goes all Trumpian. Rectal. It's like I'm looking at somebody's a**hole." Spotlight reported that Gilliam also recalled saying to Willis, "You've got to come here basically naked; you can't come with all the entourage, the trappings of the superstar. This character is basically alone, that's his nature." Gilliam admitted that, to his credit, Willis, "Worked his a**off" because the actor "was desperately feeling he wanted to escape the trap of success."

Everything about the "12 Monkeys" — from the set to the dialogue to the direction to the plot and the performances — has a haunting quality that is both unsettling and captivating. The musical score is no different. Suite Punta Del Este composed by Astor Piazzolla has an unrelenting quality like a snake consuming its tail or time collapsing in upon itself. As such it's perfect for a film such as "12 Monkeys." Suite Punta Del Este is played over the main titles and repeated occasionally throughout the film until it becomes like an earworm working its way into the fabric of your soul.

In an interview with Wide Angle/Closeup, Terry Gilliam revealed that his musician friend Ray Cooper recommended he listen to some Argentinian tangos by Carlos Gardel. Gilliam couldn't get his hands on any of the traditional styles of tangos that Gardel was renowned for. Instead, he stumbled across a CD by a guy called Piazzolla. The music stayed with Gilliam and he explained, "I was convinced they were right for the film and I wanted to use them." Yet when he attempted to use them as a soundtrack to certain scenes in the film, such as when Cole and Reilly were in the car, "It just felt like driving music; it didn't work. And I put it somewhere else and I was getting frustrated." And then out of the blue, Gilliam had a eureka moment. "It just hit me — it's the '12 Monkeys' theme."

As is only fitting for a film that in part deals with the apocalyptic outcome of humanity's hubris, many of the locations in "12 Monkeys" were what Terry Gilliam branded as "cathedrals of technological progress" (via Film Scouts). Disused power stations, factories, and even nuclear plants were scouted out and used for locations in a film that Gilliam described as being about nostalgia and decay. Gilliam said, "These great spaces were considered to be providing the solution, yet now they're just wasted, lying there, rotting." In an interview with Wide Angle/Closeup, production designer Jeffrey Beecroft explained that a lot of the set design on "12 Monkeys" was heavily influenced by deconstructionist architecture.

A book on the architecture of Labbeus Wood proved instrumental in setting the stage for the unique look and atmosphere of "12 Monkeys." Beecroft explained, "He's an artist that no one's ever built anything he's drawn because it doesn't stand up. So I built it! And it doesn't make sense, but it works." Beecroft explained that Gilliam would often say, "Make this Labbeus-looking!" Yet the production designer points out, "To make Labbeus-looking things is very hard, so we used the language of tin, and things we could find that were not real expensive and had really good metal workers, and we just started forming stuff." Art News reported that upon seeing the chair attached to the wall on which Bruce Willis's character is interrogated by the scientists on, Wood saw red and sued Universal. The late conceptual architecture visionary claimed the set was a copyright infringement on his 1987 design Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber. An agreement between Universal and Labbeus was settled out of court.

Terry Gilliam has always had a reputation as a director who works outside of the Hollywood system and is not afraid to go toe to toe with bigshot studio executives to fight for his vision. Although "12 Monkeys" was more mainstream than anything the director had filmed previously, the studio still considered it a financial risk. To compound matters, Gilliam already had a track record of locking horns with Universal. 10 years earlier, the studio had initially refused to distribute what is widely hailed as Gilliam's masterpiece, "Brazil" (via Ringer). Universal was adamant that unless drastic cuts were made and a happy ending put in place, it would never see the light of day. Gilliam held his ground and eventually Universal agreed to release a slightly shorter version when it was awarded best film, director, and screenplay by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association which had been given secret screenings of "Brazil."

Gilliam feared a similar merry-go-round with "12 Monkeys," particularly when executives began to ponder post-filming if it was perhaps too artistic for a mass audience. Things took a turn for the worse when the feedback of two National Research Group screenings was largely negative. Yet this time the angels were on Gilliam's side in the shape of the movie's big-name stars who backed the director's version of "12 Monkeys." Gilliam explained he always makes allowances "for the big battle at the end" of any film and was pleased to see Brad Pitt, Madeleine Stowe, and Bruce Willis had his back "in the foxhole." He added, "They all stuck together with me, and the studio just couldn't do anything about it."

Much like the passing of time, there's beautiful and elusive chaos about "12 Monkeys." As Willis' character James Cole said toward the film's end, "This is the present. This is not the past. This is not the future. This is right now." Yet, little did Terry Gilliam realize way back in 1995, that the world-destroying virus that serves as a backdrop to events in the movie would eventually take on the tone of a prophecy. In 2002, film critic Elvis Mitchell wrote in the New York Times that the biblical floods, plagues, landslides, and heatwaves that were ravaging modern times were like the world catching up with "the lyric paranoid streaks" of Gilliam's imagination. In 2020, the warnings inherent in "12 Monkeys" became even more apparent when Covid-19 broke.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Terry Gilliam revealed to Film Scouts that one of "12 Monkeys" themes was, "People putting layer upon layer to protect themselves from a potential infection, end up in a sense isolating themselves from one another." It sounds like a grim prediction of the worldwide lockdowns that followed in Covid's wake. "12 Monkeys" producer Charles Roven told The Ringer, that during the first half of 2020, the film "had a whole new life" as audiences began re-watching a film where life was seemingly imitating art.