Or perhaps not. On Saturday Quick Stop Entertainment took a break from promoting Kevin Smith projects to run a teaser of sorts for Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. While about half the clip’s running time is built from footage of past Gilliam films, some of which is rather shamefully cut into an actual discussion of Parnassus in a way that might fool less aware viewers into thinking they’re seeing new footage, the rest of the spot is Gilliam running down the film’s basic plot and positively bubbling over with enthusiasm for this piece of work.
The spot has since been taken down, though it lives on at Daily Motion. Whether the clip came down because permissions were not acquired for the many scenes from other films used within, or because the whole thing feels slightly amateurish, I don’t know. Problems aside, there are sights within that suggest an outrageously broad scope for this film. If even half of the production ideas represented here make it into the final edit, it will at least be a film able to rival Gilliam’s wildest in terms of sheer ideas and scale.
If for no other reason, this is worth watching because the end features stills of most of the cast in character; it’s the first time we’ve seen a lot of these people as they’ll appear in the film. Heath Ledger’s appearance is significantly downplayed, and sadly there are no images of Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp and Jude Law in the roles they took on to fill in for the deceased Ledger.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus remains unsold but is planned for a 2009 release.