PLUME: I’ve heard about this in the past, but what were the problems between you and George Harrison regarding the film?

GILLIAM: There were not problems – it’s just that George was in the middle and he didn’t really enjoy the fights I was having with Denis O’Brien. At one point, I think when he wrote the song at the end – I didn’t realize for a long time that the lyrics were applying to me – but Ray Cooper, who has worked with me on every film including Time Bandits, said, “You ought to listen to the lyrics one day – they’re about you.” And they’re very funny – it’s just George giving me a couple of notes, and I thought that was wonderful and really clever and very sweet. He’d been party to a couple of real ugly scenes between me and Denis.

PLUME: Didn’t the main blowup between you and Handmade and Denis come shortly after Time Bandits?

GILLIAM: Yeah. What happened was that Denis was expanding the company – he went into distribution – and to do so required having films to put in the pipeline, and he started buying these really awful films. Python, as a group, said we don’t want to be associated with these things – so we just left Handmade Films. We just handed it back, and said, “We’re out. Goodbye.” There were still continuing individual relationships because Mike Palin did a couple of films there as did John Cleese. So those guys still collaborated with the evil Denis O’Brien.

PLUME: Oh, don’t pull your punches, Terry…

GILLIAM: Some of us had the decency to leave and stay true to our principles. Some interesting films were made there, and it’s a pity that ultimately Handmade disappeared.

PLUME: Again, it’s as companies start moving towards commercialism, the doors start to close…

GILLIAM: And the needs of the organizations start dictating what is done and the choices that are made – and that, in a sense, is why I sort of run from real organization… because organizations are built on their own needs.

PLUME: What direct effect did the success of Time Bandits have on Brazil getting made?

GILLIAM: Well, ultimately I became a more desirable director in Hollywood. It’s a long story that I don’t want to get into, but ultimately I was in Cannes with Arnon Milchan – who I had met and thought was a good pirate… the guys in Hollywood really didn’t like him, and I thought, “That’s a good thing.” So we ended up in Cannes and, through a variety of events, started a bidding war between 20th Century Fox and Universal – two companies who had both turned the film down, but in the bright sun and warm wine of Cannes, things started happening and we somehow got the thing going. And we made it. Again, with Arnon in there, I had total freedom on Brazil. That’s what’s been amazing – how lucky I’ve been to be in these positions and have the freedom to do it the way I want to do it. The making of Brazil was pretty difficult – we were supposed to have a 20-week shoot. We ended up shooting nine months, but we came in a million dollars under budget.

PLUME: And how does that work?

GILLIAM: I don’t know! I think that’s one of those mysteries in life that never will be cleared – they’re just facts.

PLUME: How radically different, or similar, was your initial concept of Brazil to the way it eventually turned out?

GILLIAM: The original thing was probably a five-hour film. The balance between the fantasy elements and the real world was roughly equal. About five weeks into the shoot, we realized we were going to have this five-hour film and were going to be way over budget, so we stopped shooting for a couple of weeks and started tearing pages out of the script. Charles McKeown and I just battled away, and most of the things that were ripped out were the fantasy sequences. We were able to do so because some of the stuff in the reality sections was getting so weird that it seemed to we had done it already.

PLUME: So you were getting rid of repetitious elements…

GILLIAM: There was that, but there was a whole lot of amazing stuff in there – like a landscape of these giants eyeballs. There was a whole story about the day being stolen and held prisoner and darkness taking over the world and blah blah blah blah blah, and Sam in his hero guise rescues him – freeing the day. It’s another film. There’s a whole other film in there, so we pulled all that stuff out and ended up with what we ended up with – which ended up saying the same things I suppose, but in a less long version… but not less long enough to satisfy Universal.

PLUME: Would you say that the final version was a more concise version?

GILLIAM: I think so… it was a more watchable film. The other one was just me cramming in everything I wanted to cram in all of the films I should be making over a long career, but wanted to get them all into one film.

PLUME: A lot of people know about the very public battle with Universal over Brazil, but I’ve always been interested in knowing what were your personal thoughts at the time…

GILLIAM: It was terrifying, because it was like they had taken the film away. It was extraordinary to get these editors from Universal calling up and wanting my input, and I’d say, “What do you mean ‘input’? I’m not talking to you…” And they said, “Don’t you want the film to be released?” And I said, “Yes, I want the film to be released the way I made it. You’re asking me which limb of my child I want to be cut off. I’m not going to cooperate with this.”

PLUME: Wasn’t it basically the same argument that the Pythons have had with ABC?

GILLIAM: Yeah. I’m not going to collaborate in the destruction of something… If you guys are going to destroy it, then be it on your heads. So that went on, and I had no idea what was going to happen. Thank God for Jack Matthews at the L.A. Times, because he started this public dialogue between me and Sid Sheinberg, the head of the studio, without Sid and I ever speaking.

PLUME: Which was your preferred method, wasn’t it?

GILLIAM: Yeah. The only way one deals with this is that you don’t take the battle into their battlefield with their weapons – you do it with guerrilla warfare… Vietnam War, here we go! What Sid could never understand was that the sillier I got, the more deranged and crazed he became – and so it was just madness. The whole thing was six months of utter horror, but the only way to approach it was to be as outrageous as one could – going on television with Bobby De Niro – and Maria Shriver asking me, “I understand you have problems with the studio…” and I said, “I don’t have problems with the studio, I have problems with one man – his name is Sid Sheinberg and he looks like this…” and I’d pull out an 8×10 glossy and hold it out in front of millions of Americans is saying, “This is the guy!”

PLUME: Is that when Sid popped another Aspirin?

GILLIAM: Yes. It was just that the only way I could do this fight was to personalize it, and not let him be a corporate voice. He was one man standing in the way of America seeing one of the greatest films ever made. The film had been released in the rest of the world, so there were several people who’d seen it in Europe – columnists who wrote about it – and then we started secret screenings for the L.A…. basically just waged underground warfare.

PLUME: How different do you think that battle would’ve been if it had been waged today?

GILLIAM: I don’t know, because what was good then was that I didn’t have a lawyer or an agent in L.A. – if I had, they would have advised me not to do this, and I don’t know whether I would have listened to their good advice – or not.

PLUME: How would the Internet have changed that battle?

GILLIAM: The Internet is a great thing, because all sorts of stuff can be leaked – everything can be put out now. The Internet is like the People’s Wall in Beijing 10 years ago, where you could post notices and say anti-government things – and it’s great. The Internet is great because all of the corporations – who like controlling things – are very vulnerable to negative information being released. But you don’t see that many people going into these kind of public battles – it’s something a bit crazy to do. You’ve got to have been lucky enough to have been as free as I’d been – and others in Python had been – over the years doing what we wanted to do and getting away with it and being successful, so at a certain point you just say, “I’m not going to play their game. I’m going to play my game.” The sad thing about most young filmmakers just starting out now is that they’re not going to do it, most of them, because too many of them are just trying to get in to the system. And the people that are in the system aren’t going to do it, because it’s all done behind closed doors.

PLUME: And you were lucky enough in your fight with Universal that you had already established yourself with Time Bandits…

GILLIAM: Exactly, so it wasn’t like I was just starting out and unknown – I had done a very successful film, and Python had been out – we were known quantities. But in no way was I part of the system in Hollywood – which I am now… to the extent that I’ve got representatives out there. On the other hand, there’s a side of me that thinks I was itching for that fight ever since I left L.A.

PLUME: That was your way of blowing some steam…

GILLIAM: It had been more than 10 years building up… 15 years of resenting Hollywood and the way the system worked. It was a battle waiting to happen. I doubt whether I would have done different now or not. But, I still demand the right to make my mistakes and not somebody else’s. That’s the only right I demand in life.

PLUME: And Hollywood loves to assign blame…

GILLIAM: And I’m happy to take the blame if it’s mine to take. I said to Sid, “Sid, you do your cut – you put your name on it and I’ll be out there promoting the film for you. I’ll promote you all the way… but put your name on it.” That’s all it’s about. It’s all about responsibility. At the same time I was having that battle, Ridley Scott was at also Universal, also with Arnon Milchan on Legend, but he was busy collaborating with Sid – then Legend came out, and Legend died a death. Ridley was screaming at Arnon saying, “You’ve got to go in there and do something about Sid!” And Arnon said, “What do you mean? You’re Sid’s friend…”

PLUME: Well, that’s what happens when you get in deep…

GILLIAM: Yeah. I mean, it’s really dangerous. One’s got to be very careful about who your friends are in the film business.

Continued below…

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