h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the things which stuck me about Lost in La Mancha was the parallels between Gilliam and Welles, although that is probably a parallel Gilliam would like to escape from.

Although Gilliam started out in British cinema (despite his American nationality, I tend to think of him as belonging to the fantastical tradition in British filmmaking - the tradition that gave us A Matter of Life and Death and A Company of Wolves) he, like Welles, saw wonderful films fail due to studio mismanagement (Brazil and Baron Munchausen). He then did his utmost to play the studio way (The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys are, by Gilliam standards, models of restraint) but still endures a reputation as an over-spending visionary who shouldn't really be trusted with a decent budget. Just as Welles eventually came to Europe to finance his films, so Gilliam has returned here for his own Quixote. They both even turned to advertising to raise cash, although whether Gilliam selling Nike/Elvis is better or worse than Welles selling terrible sherry is debateable.

Ironically, despite being a massive Gilliam fan, I almost don't want his Quixote to ever be completed. Those brief glimpses of it in Lost in La Mancha allow each viewer to create their own imaginary vision of Gilliam's Quixote: a vision in which Gilliam for once never has to compromise his own and where every shot would be as he wanted it. That's a very alluring dream. Quixote broke Welles - I'd rather it didn't break Gilliam.

If he can't get the filmdone he should publish the script/screenplay...

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that the screenplay is his to publish. In film, the writers do not own the writes to their work. As soon as someone buys it, the buyer can do whatever they want with it. They could use it as toilet paper, if the fancy took them. In fact, own every possible variation on the script, since the Writer's Guild would have to eventually show that the new script was the same movie as the old one. Unfortunately, that's just the way the film industry works. As soon as someone decided to make Gilliam's movie, they owned the rights to it. The only way he could have avoided that was to finance the movie completely out of his own pocket, which he didn't do.