Word Soup

Terry Gilliam is no stranger to having his ass repeatedly kicked by the studio system, which considers him unruly and difficult (that's code for he won't make pieces of shit like Shooter, and sometimes comes in over budget).

I was reminded how bad the guy has it when I tried to see his latest film, Tideland.

Based on the Mitch Cullin novel, the film tells the tale of a young girl whose drug-addled parents both die, leaving her in the Texas wilderness to hang out with her father's bloated corpse. She falls backward into her imagination, developing a child-like romantic relationship with a retarded young man and an insane, one-eyed taxidermist while having sophisticated conversations with severed doll heads.

You know, real mainstream fare.

While the film is occasionally weird, it wasn't nearly weird enough to warrant the treatment it received on the American market. The film was only released in a few theaters. Critics generally hated it. I wandered around the other day curious if I could find it at retail. No copies of course at Target or Walmart -- I found one copy stuffed among the old releases at Barnes and Noble, nowhere near the new release racks -- its retail holster apparently pre-empted by Carmen Electra videos.

Anyway it's a great little film. A bit disturbing to those with their brains on too tight I'm sure, but it tries something new -- which is saying a lot these days.

Terry Gilliam is one of those living artists who'll have to be dead thirty years before full credit is applied to his bill.