Dreams and Nightmares: Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Grimm, & Other Cautionary Tales of Hollywood

The surprising thing to me about this diary of the making of The Brothers Grimm is that my sympathies were not wholly with the nominal director, Terry Gilliam. He is my favorite director and I have felt steadfastly in his corner during his fights over Brazil, Munchausen, and the aborted "Quixote". But here, it is hard to see him as heroic. Time after time when reading this admirably fair book, I found myself thinking that for all that it was a chaotic production (and Gilliam's certainly not wholly responsible for that)...you know what? He TOOK the JOB. He knew he didn't have a script he liked, and he also knew Miramax/Dimension's reputation. Matt Damon repeats here the story he told to Peter Biskind relating Harvey Weinstein to the scorpion in the tale of the scorpion and the frog, and he seems right. Gilliam and others speak here of his feeling "raped" by the Weinsteins in the pre-production nightmare, but he is a victim who welcomed a known rapist to his bed. Two voices I wish could have been represented in this diary are original screenwriter Ehren Kruger and female lead Lena Headey. Kruger's voice might have served as a reminder that however much of a mad dreamer Terry Gilliam may be (and he is that, gloriously so, and god bless him for it)...this was not his dream. This was not Brazil, which sprang from the well of his head, and which he made exactly as the script Universal bought...and which they then tried to take away from him. Nor was it Fisher King, which had a script so great he didn't need to "fix" it, only interpret. Gilliam made the mistake I am convinced is responsible for more mediocre films (which Brothers Grimm definitely is)than any other element: He accepted a script he didn't like in the egotistical belief that he could "fix" it, just because he wanted to get back on the treadmill again. And he was wrong. Headey was forced upon Gilliam by Weinstein, and evidently had and/or gave something of a hellish time on the production. Periodically we hear of dinner conversations she had with Gilliam that helped her performance (which IMO turned out to be one of the strongest things in the film). I would love to have seen what they said to each other, and her thoughts on the excruciating way (for all concerned) she entered the movie. It seems Gilliam got a strange case of "buyer's remorse" after taking the job and went, by his own admission, into a kind of catatonia. Believe me, I understand how it can feel for a creator to have his "baby" taken away from him...but there were other people involved who needed Gilliam to engage them. Damon and virtually everybody else involved with the film tells McCabe their biggest if not their sole reason for wanting to work on the movie was this: The chance to make "A Terry Gilliam film." It seems the only person who didn't want to do that is Terry Gilliam.