Terry Gilliam returns to prominence

Terry Gilliam filmed his newest movie, Tideland, in Saskatchewan last fall, ra-cing to complete the location shots before winter set in. The Mitch Cullin novel on which the film is based is mostly set in West Texas, but Gilliam had substituted the Canadian prairie instead. The evening after he wrapped, it started to snow, and the cast, crew and director all saw this as an omen.

If this had been a Gilliam production beset by the kind of bad fortune that has sometimes clung to his movies, the snow would have blown in much sooner, lots of it; the cameras would have frozen, turning the fingers of the cinematographer, Nicola Pecorini, black with frostbite; the stars would have been evacuated by chopper -- or rather, the budget having most likely run out, by dog sled. Tideland went on to be finished on schedule and will have its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.

Meanwhile, the director has another movie, The Brothers Grimm, starring Matt Damon (with 19th-century bad hair) and Heath Ledger, opening today after more than a year of disputes and postponements. Together, the two films mark the end of the longest dry spell in Gilliam's 31-year career.

In the years since he left the Monty Python troupe, Gilliam has acquired a reputation for being both a visionary and -- in Hollywood it amounts to the same thing -- a bit of a madman, and has therefore done more than his share of stints in development hell.

Unless you count his starring role in Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, he has been absent from the screen since 1998, when his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas came out. And the documentary, about the Job-like streak of bad luck Gilliam endured while trying to work on a film version of Don Quixote, almost makes you wonder why he ever wanted to make a movie again.

Gilliam's critics believe that he brings some of his bad luck upon himself -- by wishfully imagining that he can make movies for less than they cost and by seldom holding his tongue -- and there is probably something to this. Gilliam admits to being combative, and he can be a little childish. (His production company is called Poo Poo Pictures.) And he takes an even dimmer view of Hollywood than Hollywood takes of him.

"It's an abominable place," he said over lunch recently in London, where he lives with his wife and three children. "If there was an Old Testament God, he would do his job and wipe the place out. The only bad thing is that some really good restaurants would go up as well."

Chortling and warming to the theme, he added, "Hollywood dominates the world so much it's scary. And it's just a village with a few people. It's very small and very provincial." He threw in some obscene imagery for good measure. "And there's always this accepted knowledge, `Oh, we can't make a movie with him, because his last movie tanked.' There's no long-term plan or view -- nothing." He sighed, then added, "But I need their money."

Gilliam's first brush with Hollywood came in 1985, with the dystopian fantasy Brazil, which Sidney Sheinberg, then the head of Universal, insisted was too long. Gilliam refused to cut it and after months of stalemate purchased an advertisement in Variety that said, "Dear Sid Sheinberg, When are you going to release my movie, Brazil?"