Terry Gilliam will be at the Guardian's offices from 7pm tonight for the online premiere of his new short, The Wholly Family.

The Wholly Family Production year: 2011 Country: Italy Runtime: 20 mins Directors: Terry Gilliam Cast: Cristiana Capotondi, Guido Primicile Carafa, Pietro Botte More on this film

Sponsored by the Italian pasta manufacturer Garofalo, Gilliam's film sees a young boy dream of a nightmare-ish dinner after he's sent to bed without any supper by his tetchy parents. We have a stream of the film here, which we'll be hosting exclusively for two weeks – and you can stream it up to five times for a fortnight, from noon today.

Our own Peter Bradshaw will be interviewing Gilliam tonight, but we'll also be a holding a readers' Q&A, so we'll need your questions too. Post your queries below and we'll get the best of them answered at the event, which we'll be live-blogging here from 6.45pm.

Until then we have a rich spread of Gilliam goodies to get your teeth into, including a Q&A with the director from this weekend's Weekend magazine, Xan Brooks's extended interview, Peter Bradshaw's blog on the film and Esther Walker's piece on Gilliam's food demons.

Plus, you can feast your eyes on the entries we had for the Terry Gilliam scene recreation competition, the winners of which will be coming along this evening.

Hello liveblog crowd. Terry Gilliam's in the room. Peter Bradshaw's getting settled in. The readers (we're going to call them The Gilliamettes) are grabbing cold drinks and warm popcorn and are settling in for an evening with The Wholly Family.

First up is Peter's interview with Terry (we'll kick that off in 10 minutes or so), then we'll watch The Wholly Family and have an audience Q and A. You can join Terry, Peter and The Gilliamettes in watching The Wholly Family here and Tweet us using #gdnwhollyfamily. Post your questions for Terry in the comments below and we'll put them to him in the Q and A.

It's a welcome, welcome and thrice welcome from our own Peter Bradshaw, who's delighted to introduce "a true, organic original", Terry Gilliam.

The Wholly Family is a an online short film. Does this make Terry a born again online film-maker wonders Peter?

In short: No, says Terry. A man came to his house in Naples with a big box of pasta and offered him the job. The man worked for pasta company Garofalo and they wanted to pay him to make a movie - simple as spaghetti.

Peter wonders if this is a route back into conventional film-making. Not really, says Terry, but it seems to be what people want. He doesn't want to make films for the internet - movies are for the big screen, but that's the way the world's going.

Terry's talking about the Italian premiere of his version of the Damnation of Faust. "Last year was my year of experimentation - short films and operas. I'm trying to work out a career for myself".

The Wholly Family was a way to work in Naples. The only conditions from the pasta company was that it was set in the city (it is) and nobody dies (they don't).

Terry says that short films like this are a realistic prospect for him because the middle group - those who don't want to make blockbusters, but need a mid-range budget to realise their ambitions - are getting squeezed out of modern Hollywood.

How about animation?, asks Peter. Animation implies total control, says Terry, and he's not interested in that. He likes the chaos of real people.

Terry's talking about the BBC4 dramatisation of his Monty Python years. He didn't catch much of it, but what he did showed "Terry Gilliam" played by someone "short and ugly". That gets an appreciative backing titter from The Gilliamettes.

The other Pythons were portrayed as tall and attractive, naturally.

Terry's talking about the nature of offence in modern culture. Anglo-saxons are far too quick to offend he reckons. We're so gentle with each other.

"What was fun before was ideas could be fought over - it was a wonderful battle," he says. And it seems like we're not fighting any more.

Gilliam on Facebook: It's a place for discussion. Not all of it pleasurable. He relates a story about interacting with one of his Facebook fans who called him [SOMETHING VERY RUDE]. he managed to argue the guy down to [SOMETHING MILDLY LESS RUDE]. The wonder of debate in action there people.

It had to come up: Don Quixote. Terry says he won't say it's close to finally getting made, but ... whisper it ... it's close to finally getting made. Glory be.

We've been thinking of some other projects for Gilliam to get his teeth into and - says Peter - how about a Terry take on the Costa Concordia disaster? It's bad taste but the combination of tragedy and comedy seem to fit with the Gilliam blueprint. Would he be interested?

Yes, says Gilliam. But it doesn't seem like the story is either comic or tragic enough for him.

We're onto this year's Oscar contenders. Terry (an academy member) is a sucker for The Artist. And everything else? "We've seen it before. It's so depressing".

Peter asks Terry about Tim Burton, who Peter says could be described as the Diet Terry Gilliam.

"He's a friend," says Terry. "I'm not trying to draw you into offending him," says Peter. "You are!," says Terry (we're pretty sure he is too).

Burton's great, says Gilliam. But he wasn't a fan of Alice in Wonderland and "hasn't ever been scared by anything Burton's done".

Which actors would Terry like to work with?

"Leo's a wonderful actor, but he's got a very long neck".

Jeremy Irons in Margin Call and Tom Hardy in Inception were fantastic, but Terry's so out of watching mainstream movies that he didn't recognise Hardy.

Jean Dujardin's agents were apparently in touch to get The Artist star working with Terry, but he's just not right for anything the director has in mind at the moment.

Robert Duvall is still connected to The Film That Dare Not Speak Its Name [Don Quixote]. When he sent Duvall the script he was terrified of his response. Terry got in bed, pulled the covers over his head and then forced himself to call him. And yet, when he did, Duvall was as enthusiastic as a teenager.

We're back on the Oscars. What are they about?

"They're about 5,000 older people making decisions," says Terry. "The average age is probably 89". And Harvey Weinstein is a genius because he's managed to control the Golden Globes crowd in preparation for the real deal in February. "It's not that difficult to control people their age".

Peter wraps up the interview with a question about whether Terry will ever make another biopic (other than Don Quixote)?

"I have," says Terry. "I made Fear and Loathing ... and he [Hunter S Thompson] was still alive."

We're having a quick loo break. The Gilliamettes are rising from the chairs and jostling for popcorn. It's a good idea. The Wholly Family's a foodie film. You don't want to watch it hungry. So grab a snack, fill your belly and shoot over here to watch it with us in around five minutes.

A bit of help here from @AnnaEHiggs who fleshes out Gilliam's comments on Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland by tweeting this quote: "There is a great difference between nonsense & no sense."

Join Anna in tweeting your thoughts on all things Terry using the #gdnwhollyfamily hashtag

Here we go then. The lights are dimmed and we're into the opening moments of The Wholly Family. A weird, twisted waltz introduces the film and we're up and out into a busy Naples market filled with grizzled stall holders, dopey tourists and a family consisting of a tetchy mum and dad and our hero, Jake.

Jake's in for a rough ride over the next 20 minutes. But we're not going into too much detail here. Instead why not head over here and watch the film yourself?

Jake's been sent to bed without any supper, but with one of the Pulcinella he managed to pinch from the market (pictured below).

Before he knows it he's being sucked into a dream world where the same strange masked characters insist on feeding him the finest food Jake can imagine, including a couple of surprise dishes you wouldn't expect (or want) to see on a menu in any normal restaurant.

Want to find out what they are? Head over here for your place at the table.

Now we're in a hospital, where Jake is watching himself being born from a giant egg. Jake's mum and dad are squabbling over him. He's wailing and crying and they push and pull and grab him from each other until WHOOPS ... baby Jake falls from their arms and breaks like a toy doll. This, by the way, is a Terry Gilliam film.

A masked attendant picks Jake up and drags him to ... click here to find out (last plug, promise).

Finito. The credits are rolling after an ending that is happy. And sinister. And very, very weird. Who expected anything else?

We'll be liveblogging Terry's answers to the questions you've being posting today in just a moment ...

Here we go then. We're going to start with a question from The Gilliamettes here.

It's a techie one - was the film shot on an Alexa (camera)? Most of it, says Gilliam, with a few of the early shots done on a 5D. Terry's line producer says that shooting digital (with memory cards) saves the crew up to a week of production time, which Terry says is "amazing".

Another in-house question: Do you take the budget into account when you write?

Not really, says Terry. You just write. This was a bit different because they only had a week to shoot. There's a few special effects in The Wholly Family that include the main character Jake's face superimposed onto a baby - that took a lot of green screen work and meant pulling actor Nicolas Connolly around to match the natural movements of the baby they'd shot earlier.

Terry's talking about how the Pulcinella dolls inspired the story. According to local lore in Naples if you steal one of the dolls you'll be haunted as Jake is in the film. "Did you steal one?" asks one of our Gilliamettes. "I have someone who does that for me," says Terry with a sly grin.

"Why do you like the waltz so much," asks a reader here. "You include it at the start of this film and it's prominent in The Fisher King".

No reason, says Terry. 3/4 is just a cool time signature.

An online question!

@Calvin32 Frank Zappa supposedly said about you that you're "so funny it's hard to believe he's an American". Do you have something equally memorable to say about Zappa?

Zappa always made the ordinary interesting, says Terry. He remembers bumping into Frank in Hyde Park and being invited to the Mothers show at the Albert Hall. The Mothers' keyboard player climbed up a giant concert hall organ and started playing 'Louis, Louis', which seems to have tickled Terry - then and now.

@PookieFugglestein says:



Do you read the critics reviews of your movies, and do they ever influence your subsequent movies?

Peter looks a bit nervous at this point, but Terry is gracious in the extreme. It's too late by the time the critics get to it he reckons. It's out there and there's not much you can do. He's not going to let critics dictate what he does in future.

Is Don Quixote a passion project, wonders a bod here. And is that worrying?

Terry worries we might have seen the best of Quixote in Lost in La Mancha (the 'making of' movie that was released after Quixote collapsed). "You can take that and imagine what the rest would have been like. There's a few finished scenes in there."

Someone else asks which film Terry is most happy with. Fear and Loathing was loads of fun to make. As was Tideland. The Fisher King was the easiest.

More from our popcorn-munching Gilliamettes.

Great news about Quixote says one. "No, no. Don't jinx it," says Terry.

Then a question about Gilliam's planned adaptation of Paul Auster's Mr. Vertigo. It's about a nasty St Louis pickpocket who gets hauled up by a stranger and promised the gift of flight.

What resonated with you about the book? "I've always wanted to fly," says Terry. "It's not flying with imagination. It's about flying with discipline and pain. That's the difference between me and Tim [Burton]. Tim just does escape. He doesn't confront the complexities of life".

He says that the image that encapsulates all of his films is that of Ian Holm holding onto Jonathan Pryce's legs as he flies away ...

@conanthebarbarian Which film that was done by someone else do you wish you had done?

The Unforgiven, says Terry. He'd die happy having made that film. And The Apartment, but "you can't beat Billy Wilder. You just can't". Also Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks, for which the bongo-ing method man was torn apart by critics. "He was trying to be David Lean and he wasn't allowed to be," says Terry.

@artmod South Park or Family Guy?

Gilliam loves both. Because they both try and do what Python was trying to do - push boundaries. "There just seems to be no end to the awfulness they try and propagate".

What do you imagine it's like working for a major studio now, asks someone here.

Terry says his three studio pics - The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing - were the easiest films he ever made, because the stars he had protected him from the studio. "They don't need me, but they need Bruce and Brad". As long as you keep the core group of film-maker and stars together, you're fine.

Terry's talking being under studio pressure to cut scenes. There was a scene including Tom Waits in a wheelchair (just before the Grand Central waltz) that the studio felt slowed down The Fisher King and wanted out. Terry refused.

Was there ever an unhappy ending for Brazil? Or is that the one we see now, asks another office-bound questioner. The only difference between two "unhappy" endings is that smoke fills the room in the American version, says Gilliam.

Did you see The Rum Diary and what did you think, asks a chap here.

Yes - Terry saw it. And it's probably not a question that should have been asked. Did the reader enjoy it, he asks back. "Yes". "Well - I'm glad somebody did," says Terry with a growl. The Giliamettes take up a chorus of nervous laughter.

Another in-house: Which of his films is Terry most proud of?

Brazil. He still gets teenagers coming up to him and asking him how he knew the world was going to be like that today (not literally, we don't think - but you get the idea). He's also incredibly proud of Parnassus, but says it's a shame he and Heath Ledger didn't get to make the film they had originally imagined (the actor died during the production).

We're waltzing crazily to a close here. Peter thanks the audience and asks them to show their appreciation for Terry. Give me a second - I'm going to give him a hand too ...

Right. Terry's asked me to mention that the stream of The Wholly Family was hosted by Distrify and says that it's companies like the online distributor that are really helping new film-makers get their work seen. The Wholly Family stream will be available through Distrify exclusively on guardian.co.uk/film for the next two weeks.

Thank you very much for reading, apologies if we didn't get around to putting your questions to Terry. Perhaps you'll find the answer you were looking for in Xan Brooks's extensive interview with the director, which we ran last week?

We're off before these damn bats bite us to pieces. What's that? You don't see them. You will soon enough ...