MONTY Python star Terry Gilliam has been attracting the wrong headlines of late, squeezing the credibility of the #MeToo movement.

Now, Gilliam has softened his argument a little. While declaring that disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein has “got his just deserts”, he admits that he laid his argument on “a bit crudely.”

That’s not reason for focusing the spotlight on the film director today. After a quarter of a century, the man behind Monty Python and The Holy Grail and The Life of Brian has pulled off the film challenge of his life.

Gilliam has finally managed to complete his movie The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, in which Jonathan Pryce plays a Spanish cobbler who becomes convinced he is a medieval knight, supported by a television director, played by Adam Driver, who becomes his Sancho Panza wing man.

Gilliam explains why he didn’t give up on his magic realism project, despite a quarter of a century of Sisyphean boulder- pushing that saw lead actors die, huge legal battles commence, and financiers pull out.

Gilliam, like Don Quixote, mounted his horse, put on his armour – then stumbled and fell from what he thought was a stallion but turned out to be a tired old nag.

READ MORE: Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote to screen at Cannes after court battle

But the American director continued to remount. Why? “Because I was surrounded by nice, intelligent, reasonable people who said ‘Let it go’”, he says, grinning. “I don’t want to listen to reasonable people. They may be right, but I think you have to continually push the boundaries to see what’s out there, to stop all these reasonable people limiting you.”

Orson Welles failed to make a Quixote movie. Gilliam was more determined. Or perhaps slightly off his head. Finally he raised the last of the money, not from the market place, but from an elderly fairy godmother who said: “Bing! Terry, you’re going to the ball.’”

What Gilliam’s fortitude does underline, however, is most of us need a reason to get out of bed in the morning, especially as the older years weigh down like a crushing blanket. We need that sense of purpose. We need to challenge ourselves, in whatever form.

It’s no real surprise to discover that playwright Tom Stoppard has, at 82, written a new play, Leopoldstadt, which has opened in London. Stoppard’s play, a partly autobiographical tale, set in the vibrant European city of Vienna nearly three decades before the Third Reich, took over a year to write but was many, many years in gestation.

He had to write it, he explained: “It’s a belief in a metaphysical dimension which operates really almost on every side of my life and I believe in it and depend upon it. I’m furtively competitive, which is one of the things which made me want to keep writing.”

Novelist Philip Roth says he always felt immortal when he needed a novel to finish. It was only when he stepped back from writing that he seemed to slow down rapidly.

The website Positive-Psychology.com says we need goals. “Setting goals helps trigger new behaviours, helps guides your focus and helps you sustain that momentum in life,” it says. “Goals also help align your focus and promote a sense of self-mastery.”

We often need to re-align our sense of focus. We often need to re-evaluate our positions in life, make a project happen we feel decidedly incomplete without. It’s perfectly understandable that my chum Dorothy Paul, in her early 80s, is looking for her next writing challenge.

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It’s even understandable to see why Gwyneth Paltrow has decided to capitalise on her world acting fame and throw herself in the world of commercial project with her Goop website.

Paltrow’s acting career looked to be on the slow down, with a short Iron Man cameo. Then she decided to release a new scent that contained a whiff of her lady garden. It may be a lot of old nonsense, but she’s found a way to maintain a high profile, unconsciously coupling from acting, that is worth more than a quarter of a million dollars. (No wonder Paltrow has a constant smile on her face, or perhaps it could be down to the vaginal eggs which she also sells online.)

Sadly however, Terry Gilliam’s muse has now left him. During his career, he’d finish a film, always knowing he’d then turn back to trying to make Don Quixote happen. He’s now lost, he says. The Python legend, without his dream to fulfil is now facing a void. We need to grab life while we can, especially given the death of his comrade-in-arms, Terry Jones.