“What is Brazil”?
This is simply brilliant and something I’d never seen before, let alone heard of: A 1985 thirty-minute documentary called What is Brazil?. Directed by Rob Hedden and written by Hedden and Janice Miller, it is equal parts funny and shocking as no one involved in the production of the movie Brazil seems to have much of an idea of what it’s about. Here are some choice quotes from key players in the production:
Michael Palin [Actor]: What is Brazil? I don’t know.
Tom Stoppard [Co-Writer]: I don’t even know why it’s called ‘Brazil’.
Patrick Cassavetti [Co-Producer]: Nobody knows. It’s Brazil.
Charles McKeown [C0-Writer]: It’s like lifting the top off Terry Gilliam’s skull… and glimpsing inside.
Gilliam himself seems to have some clue saying at various points, “It’s the impossibility of escape from reality… It’s late night shopping and terrorist bombing… This is Franz Kafka meets Walter Mitty.”
Still the whole endeavor seems like one of those occasional cinematic miracles where the production accumulates gobs of footage, the director and editor pull together a cut, and somehow… it just works. Of course, the getting there — even in post — was fraught with turmoil. From Wikipedia:
US distribution was handled by Universal. Universal executives thought the ending tested poorly, and Universal chairman Sid Sheinberg insisted on dramatically re-editing the film to give it a happy ending, a decision that Gilliam resisted vigorously. As with the cult science fiction film Blade Runner (1982), which had been released three years earlier, a version of Brazil was created by the movie studio with a more consumer-friendly ending. After a lengthy delay with no sign of the film being released, Gilliam took out a full-page ad in the trade magazine Variety urging Sheinberg to release Brazil in its intended version. Eventually, after Gilliam conducted private screenings (without the studio’s approval), Brazil was awarded the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for “Best Picture”, which prompted Universal to finally agree to release a modified 132-minute version supervised by Gilliam, in 1985.