The Terry Gilliam movie almost buried by the studio: “That’s when the shit hit the fan”
There was a strong possibility that Terry Gilliam could have gone down in history as the ‘silent’ member of Monty Python. That was until the American-born animator began directing his own films. Now, he’s remembered as the twisted mind behind some truly bizarre projects, including but not limited to 12 Monkeys, The Fisher King, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
One of the madman’s best-loved and most boundary-pushing endeavours is the 1985 black comedy Brazil. Jonathan Pryce plays Sam Lowry, a bureaucrat who has grown tired of his humdrum existence. He escapes into a world of fantasy, picturing himself as a heroic vigilante who rescues a beautiful woman. One day, he meets Jill Clayton (Kim Greist) and is shocked to find that she is the spitting image of the lady from his dreams. This stunning coincidence changes his life forever.
Brazil is a mad, genre-bending experience that borrows from some of the greatest authors of all time, from George Orwell to Franz Kafka to Tom Stoppard, who co-wrote the screenplay. It is a beloved oddity and widely regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made in a variety of categories, with most critics lauding it as Gilliam’s undisputed masterpiece. Considering how out there it is, you won’t be surprised at all to learn that Universal Pictures were not initially keen on it.
“The studio did not like the movie at all,” Gilliam told The Hollywood Reporter on their It Happened in Hollywood podcast. He recalled how Sidney Sheinburg, the long-serving CEO and president of the company who also had a hand in destroying Back to the Future 4, despised Brazil and tried to get it killed when Gilliam refused to make a raft of changes. This led to the director taking out a full-page ad in Variety magazine, simply reading, “Dear Sid Sheinberg: When are you going to release my film, Brazil? Terry Gilliam.”
“That’s when the shit hit the fan,” he said. “They literally did everything to stop [the release]… The film was released in Europe already and received really good results, but in America, they weren’t going to do it. This fight went on and on.” Sheinberg refused to speak directly to Gilliam about Brazil, so conversations were had through a conduit named Jack Matthews, a Los Angeles Times journalist who had seen the film and thought it deserved a chance. Just when all hope was seemingly lost, help came in the form of one of the movie’s stars – Robert De Niro.
“Maria Shriver was running that show Good Morning America. They had wanted to interview De Niro for a very long time. Bobby never did publicity for films,” Gilliam recalled. The double Oscar winner plays a terrorist named Archibald Tuttle in the movie, and upon hearing of its plight, he stepped in to save the day. De Niro and Gilliam both went on Good Morning America and called Sheinburg out. This led to Brazil developing a reputation as an unreleased masterpiece, and finally, after mounting pressure, the studio relented and agreed to let it out into the world.
The story of how Brazil finally saw the light of day is just as absurd and gripping as the movie itself. Gilliam, Matthews, and De Niro’s work proves that if you believe in something, you should fight for it because the chances are that other people will believe in it, too.
