Jack Matthews has supplied a heartfelt, nicely-written profile of Brothers Grimm director Terry Gilliam in today’s N.Y. Daily News. There’s no reading this and not falling in love all over again with Gilliam’s scrappy way of dealing with studio chiefs like Miramax’s Bob Weinstein, who was in Gilliam’s face over this and that during the ’03 Grimm shoot. That said, Matthews’ piece is also a reminder that the charm of Gilliam’s rambunctious personality and the filmmaking experiences he goes through and subsequently passes along to journalists are sometimes (often?) more intriguing and inspirational than the films he makes. I mean no disrespect when I say that my favorite Terry Gilliam movie, far and away, is Keith Fulton and Luis Pepe’s Lost in La Mancha, an ’02 doc about the disastrous non-making of Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. That is because it is simply more engaging in terms of human charm and rooting interest than Brazil, The Fisher King, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, et. al. Gilliam is an auteur with a creative signature that is recognizable and totally respected around the word, but his movies are always about applying his brushstrokes in precisely the right Gilliam-esque way first and then enchanting movieogers second. The scripts he goes with are never as well developed as his elaborate production designs. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing Gilliam’s Tideland at the Toronto Film Festival and especially the pleasure of speaking to Gilliam and hearing his latest regalings.