So throughout this month until March 22nd, which is my last day of hosting and producing Think Again,

I am running a series I'm calling Jason Plays Favorites, eight of my not only favorite,

but definitely fondly remembered episodes from our five-year history. This week, it's Terry Gilliam,

legendary director of films such as Brazil, a former member of the Monty Python troupe. And listening

back, there are a couple of things that struck me. One is just the crazy energy of this man and of this conversation.

It is so, it's like, it's like a fragmented crystal that, you know, bursts apart in a thousand directions and then kind of reassembles itself periodically throughout the course of the conversation. And I think that's

really appropriate because he, we talk a lot about order and chaos and kind of this state of

tension that seems to keep him motivated, this state of tension between contradictions, which I think he would say is probably

the human condition generally. I mean, right? We live and then we die. And then later on in the

episode, he talks about ego. And I think that kind of ties it all together, how the greatest

thing is to find a thing at any given time that you're passionate about, dive into it actively, be all about that thing, and, you know, get yourself out of that in-between mind that sits around worrying about yourself, about where you've been, where

you're headed, et cetera. He says, if, you know, if I can be anything, I just want to be a maker of

things for as long as I can. Hi there. I'm Jason Gots, and you're listening to Think Again,

a big Think podcast.

Faith in anything is its own special form of madness. It's a challenge to entropy, and entropy takes no challenge lightly.

If there's any better metaphor for this struggle than trying to make a big budget movie with even a shred of integrity,

I haven't found it.

On the one hand, you've got this impossible dream, this faith in the beautiful thing that's

supposed to emerge at the end of the process.

On the other hand, the process is a hellish sausage-making machine of studio bosses, financing,

and acts of God like four days of flash flooding in the middle of your big shoot.

You might as well be Don Quixote doing battle with a windmill.

...