Word: gilliams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...movie house. For months the film had been held hostage in the continuing guerrilla war between movie artists and the industry that bankrolls their dreams. In Hollywood, such skirmishes are usually waged behind paneled doors and result in compromises, ulcers and the final sullen handshake. But Director Terry Gilliam is no gentleman warrior. Finding his picture in distribution limbo after Universal Pictures refused to release his film (which he had shot according to the approved script and delivered on budget), Gilliam went public with a full-page plea in Daily Variety to the president of Universal's parent company...
...Gilliam has his answer. The film that had been declared "unreleasable" won prizes for best film, director and screenplay from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. This week Universal is playing it in Los Angeles and New York to qualify for Oscar consideration. It opens in ten cities next February...
...Gilliam has called Brazil "Walter Mitty meets Franz Kafka" and describes its unique, post-Orwellian setting as "somewhere on the Los Angeles-Belfast border." The film's hero, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), shambles efficiently through his job at the Ministry of Information records department but lives for his dreams, in which he is girded like Lochinvar, aloft like Icarus, fighting to save a fair heroine from giant samurai and evil, baby-faced thugs. One day he meets Jill Layton (Kim Griest), a truck driver who lived in the flat above the late Mr. Buttle's and looks exactly like...
During the nine-month wrangle with Universal, Gilliam, a Monty Python alumnus who directed the 1981 surprise hit Time Bandits, felt as forlorn as his hero. The studio, which had just emerged from a noisy battle with Director Peter Bogdanovich over the cutting and scoring of his film Mask, demanded in March that Gilliam reduce his 2-hr. 22-min. Brazil, already in distribution in Europe, to the contracted 2 hr. 5 min. (The average running time for the last 25 winners of the Best Picture Oscar is a leisurely 2 hr. 26 min.; Universal's only other Christmas release...
These days the riot squad would have to look for Gilliam in seventh heaven. "The turnaround has been amazing," he says. "A week ago, this film didn't exist. Now it is winning awards and qualifying for the Oscars." For his part, Sheinberg sounds resigned. As he sees it, Gilliam is not the underdog of Brazil but the terrorist. "I personally wouldn't work with Mr. Gilliam again," he says. "But it has nothing to do with his talents as a director. I don't respect his talent as a human being." Cheer up, Sid. A terrific movie has escaped...