Diary of a troubled shoot

• Director: Terry Gilliam
• Writers: Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown
• Producers: William Vince, Amy Gilliam,
Samuel Hadida, Terry Gilliam
• Production companies: Poo Poo Pictures,
Parnassus Productions
• Key cast: Christopher Plummer, Heath Ledger, Andrew Garfield, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole, Tom Waits, Jude Law, Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp
• Distributors: E1 Entertainment (Canada),
Lionsgate (U.K.).
• International sales: Cinetic Media
• International copro: Canada (50%)/U.K. (50%)
• Budget: $25 Million

Terry Gilliam’s fantastical The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is headed to TIFF for a gala premiere, and so far so good.

This Canada/U.K. copro has a reputation to live up to: a cursed movie set with two sudden deaths and three white knights rescuing a project as tortured as its surrealistic script.

And now, after a Cannes bow, Imaginarium has an opportunity in Toronto to become Oscar 2010’s Cinderella story.

‘I have a big smile,’ says Bryan Gliserman, co-president of E1 Entertainment Canada, Imaginarium’s Canadian distributor. ‘I think Terry has done great, great work.’

TIFF offers the movie’s distributors a second chance to position Gilliam’s effects-laden travelling carnival adventure as anything but Heath Ledger’s last macabre pic after the young co-lead (opposite Christopher Plummer) died from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in the middle of shooting. With the movie in jeopardy, A-listers Johnny Depp (who previously starred for Gilliam on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Jude Law and Colin Farrell heroically stepped in to fill Ledger’s shoes in unshot scenes. It worked because Ledger’s character goes through a looking glass and transforms.

The story doesn’t stop there. Tragedy and uncertainty struck again when Imaginarium’s Vancouver-based producer William Vince died after a long bout with cancer shortly after the pic wrapped production.

Gilliam and cast members Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Verne Troyer and producers Samuel Hadida and Amy Gilliam debuted Imaginarium out of competition in Cannes, where critics lauded Ledger’s last performance, but offered mixed reviews on the final result.

Imaginarium is now coming to Toronto with Sony Pictures Classics as its rumored U.S. distributor. ‘That box is ticked off in my mind,’ says Gliserman – heralding a staggered fall theatrical release schedule worldwide and a full-throated Academy Awards campaign.

‘There’s numerous [Oscar] categories where this film deserves nominations, both in front of and behind the camera,’ Gliserman insists.

Film Diary

November 2006: Former Monty Python player Terry Gilliam and writing partner Charles McKeown start the script for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a modern-day fantasy adventure about a theater troupe and a devil-dealing 1,000-year-old doctor.

March 2007: Vancouver-based producer William Vince of Infinity Pictures receives the new Terry Gilliam script after the director’s daughter, Amy Gilliam, then working in Vancouver at Infinity Pictures, initially championed the project.

Dave Valleau, Vince’s production partner and now head of newly established Foundation Features, recalls excitement at the prospect of working with director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

‘We were huge fans of Terry’s work, and he was someone we always wanted to work with,’ he says.

May 2007: As work begins to finance the picture, Frenchman Samuel Hadida of Davis Films joins Vince and Amy Gilliam as a coproducer on the project after he released Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (2005) in France. Also key to financing Imaginarium is John Ptak, a longtime CAA packaging agent now a partner at Arsenal, which advises on private equity funds.

August 2007: Preproduction gets underway in London.

September 2007: Heath Ledger, then acting in London on The Dark Knight, hears about the Imaginarium project and tells director Gilliam he wants the lead role.

Terry Gilliam agrees, and also rings Christopher Plummer to play Doctor Parnassus.

‘He probably called because there are very few old men left who are actors who can actually speak,’ Plummer recalls, ‘and I’m one of them.’

Additional hires include Verne Troyer, Tom Waits and Lily Cole, a model-turned-actress.

Dec. 9, 2007: After the movie is structured as a $30 million U.K./Canada coproduction, with financing from Infinity and Grosvenor Park, principal photography starts in London. During a 23-day shoot, practical locations are shot in London, before production is to shift to interiors and special effects production in Vancouver.

Plummer recalls shooting outdoor scenes after midnight in London in mid-winter that took its toll on cast and crew: ‘We all came down with walking pneumonia, including Heath Ledger.’

Jan. 18, 2008: A Friday afternoon, Vince and Valleau are hard at work nailing down bank financing for the film, as Hadida continues to cash-flow production.

Jan. 22, 2008: Infinity receives the final bank financing, but later that afternoon, word arrives that lead Ledger has died from an accidental prescription drug overdose while on a New York stop-over, en route to Vancouver’s Bridge Studios.

‘My phone lit up,’ Valleau recalls. ‘All the lines started ringing at the same time.’

In their Vancouver production offices, the producers pull out the film’s insurance policy, uncertain how to proceed without a lead actor.

Shock spreads to cast and crew, especially director Gilliam, DOP Nicola Pecorini and film editor Mick Audsley, all of whom worked closely with Ledger, and have viewed his impressive performance on set or in the dailies.

Co-lead Plummer remembers the dark cloud that suddenly hung over the production, and consuming grief for a friend. ‘[Ledger] had an enormous amount of talent, huge talents in theater and film. He had everything to live for. That’s what was so shocking about it. That was an accident.’

March 11, 2008: Filming restarts in Vancouver after director Gilliam, deciding against abandoning the project, rewrote the film’s script. The producers, led by Amy Gilliam, meanwhile, scrambled in Los Angeles for replacement actors. Eventually, Colin Farrell, Jude Law and Johnny Depp agree to play different versions of the Ledger character. ‘The balance of Heath’s fee owed went to [his daughter] Matilda. They [Law, Depp, O’Farrell] basically did the movie for nothing, a favor in memory of Heath and to get the film completed,’ says Valleau.

April 15, 2008: Production on the troubled Imaginarium shoot wraps.

Post-production begins, a crucial step, given the film’s distributors were looking to see whether Imaginarium, a movie inspired by elaborate imaginative maneuvers and special effects from Gilliam’s mind, was still viable without Ledger.

‘It worked terrifically, almost better than the original script. You have three other actors at the end of the movie that lift the story significantly,’ Plummer says of the final product.

E1’s Gliserman agrees the elaborate workaround of the Ledger character is seamless on screen. ‘No one could have foreseen the twists and turns that the production went through. They took what was an absolutely heartbreaking circumstance and propelled it into a fitting and brilliantly realized tribute to Heath and the story.’

June 21, 2008: Another blow, not as sudden as Ledger’s earlier death at the height of production, but still as tragic: Infinity’s Vince dies after a long battle with cancer at age 44.

‘It was very difficult for everyone, because Bill had been there from the beginning with Terry and Amy and Samuel in getting the film made and it wouldn’t have gotten made without him,’ Valleau remembers.

May 22, 2009: Imaginarium debuts at the Cannes Film Festival, with director and cast, including Troyer, Cole and Garfield on the red carpet.

September 2009: The movie has its North American bow at the Toronto International Film Festival, and is dedicated to the late Heath Ledger and William Vince.