FOR A DIRECTOR who rose to fame as part of Monty Python, there's something appropriately surreal in the fact that Terry Gilliam's first movie for seven years was almost scuppered by a prosthetic nose. The eccentric filmmaker, whose distinct cinematographic style defies easy categorisation, returns to the screen with an US$80 million reworking of the Grimm brothers' fairytales. Yet The Brothers Grimm, a visual feast shot in the Czech Republic, went into production only after the resolution of a dispute between Gilliam and Miramax producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein that might have been dreamed up by Messrs Cleese, Palin and Idle. 'It was unbelievably absurd,' says Gilliam at a Los Angeles hotel. 'But it was a fight to the death. They were seriously going to close the movie down - and that was the night before the first day of shooting.' The artificial proboscis at the centre of the dispute belonged to Matt Damon. He and Heath Ledger play the film's eponymous heroes, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm. Gilliam says he'd given Damon's beak a 'tiny bump' in order to accentuate the angular lines of the actor's face. 'I thought if we gave him a stronger nose, he'd look amazing. And he did. He actually looked like a young Marlon Brando. It transformed him. It was like Dumbo discovering he could fly.' Not everyone was impressed though, least of all Harvey 'Scissorhands' Weinstein, who wanted Damon's face to be easily recognisable in promotional material for the movie. 'The same thing happened with Finding Neverland,' Gilliam says. 'Johnny Depp was supposed to have a great big handlebar moustache and Harvey talked Johnny out of having that moustache because he wanted Johnny's pretty face on the movie poster.' Despite an initial refusal to back down, Gilliam was eventually bought off by the promise of extra millions towards the budget if Damon's nose was left alone. 'They're calling it the most expensive nose job in history,' says Gilliam, laughing, insisting that he harbours no grudges against the Weinsteins for dabbling in the production. 'I said to Bob Weinstein early on, 'Listen Bob, we're both very independent, we've both been successful in our own way, this could be a difficult marriage.' And to give them their due, I've dealt with studios when there's nobody that believes anything strong enough, which can be even more infuriating.' And besides, Gilliam says that a behind-the-scenes punch-up can often be a positive influence in the production of a movie. Ever since he fought tooth and nail to have his 1985 masterpiece Brazil released in the US in its original form, the 64-year-old has never been shy of manning the barricades where necessary, even if he's a reluctant combatant. 'It's always a fight,' Gilliam says. 'I don't know if it has to be. I've made films which weren't fights, but a good fight does tend to get the adrenalin going. And it often clarifies what's important and what isn't important to me in a project. It's not the worst thing to happen, but I don't particularly enjoy them.' Monty Python's catchphrase - 'And now for something completely different' - might be just as equally applicable to Gilliam's movie-making career. From Time Bandits, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen through to The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam has a style that's at once identifiable, yet impossible to pigeon hole. The Brothers Grimm, a mixture of action, comedy and drama, maintains this tradition, following Damon and Ledger around 19th-century Germany as they vanquish demons and break curses to order, conning superstitious villagers out of money through sleight of hand. The fun starts when the Grimms are ordered to tackle the supernatural forces responsible for the disappearances of several children in a terrified hamlet. 'I liked the premise of the conmen being caught up in this enchanted world,' says Gilliam. 'The script needed a lot of work in terms of bringing it into the fairytale world. It became more interesting once we developed the characters of the brothers - one being a pragmatist, one being a dreamer. It's like the two sides of my brain.' (Typically, Gilliam cast against type for the film, allowing Ledger to play the sensitive Jacob and Damon to play the hard-nosed ladies' man Wilhelm). The project also allowed Gilliam to indulge his penchant for the mystical. 'At the heart of almost everything I do is the borderline between fantasy and reality, imagination and dry facts,' he says. 'And I do it because I'm still trying to work out for myself what's real and what isn't. I think you need both of those things in life, to get through it. I've always loved fairytales, that's my problem. 'When I was young I didn't understand them, but they get you hooked - there's evil, there's darkness, there's complexity, there's wonder, there's magic. And it all ends with a happy ending. So they've built up my sense of optimism even though my experience of life has been different.' The fairytale that made most of an impression on Gilliam was written by Hans Christian Andersen, not the Grimm brothers. 'It's the Emperor's New Clothes,' Gilliam says. 'Everyone thinks he's wearing something and it's only the kid that can see he isn't. 'I think that's the way I approach things. Because whatever I'm doing, no matter how weird and strange the movies are, there's an innocence in there. I actually try and retreat from being intellectual or academic about what I do and be instinctive. So, when I finally get a film going, most of the choices are instinctive. I don't sit around and double think. It's just simply a question of, 'Does it feel good? Does it feel right? OK, let's go in that direction then.' And, hopefully, I can convince a few other people to go down that road.' The Brothers Grimm is set in a period of history responsible for shaping prevailing 20th-century attitudes not always to Gilliam's liking. 'The age of reason has produced the world we actually live and think in,' he says. 'Before that there was more superstition, more wonderment maybe. 'And now everything is a world where we have to measure it to see if it's any good - how long it is, how tall it is, how heavy it is, what's it worth?' Gilliam might also have added 'What's the box-office take?' Although his films have attracted a solid cult following, Gilliam remains convinced that poor promotion by studios is often as much to blame for a film's success or failure, giving short shrift to the suggestion that some of the themes of his work are lost on the wider public. 'Films are buried,' he says. 'Fear and Loathing was a box-office nothing. It was a terrible campaign. But it's huge in DVD sales. So it's reaching an audience. It just wasn't handled properly when it was sold. I'm not saying that's always the case, but often it is. 'Sometimes movies are just slightly ahead of what the public are looking for at the time. Look at Twelve Monkeys. It's a pretty intelligent film, very complex. And it was a huge hit all over the world. I prefer to give the public the benefit of the doubt and say there are a lot of intelligent people out there and I'd rather make movies for them. And if the movie can be promoted properly, maybe they'll come and it'll be enough to pay for it.' Despite his lengthy absence from directing, Gilliam was last seen in the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, which chronicled his doomed attempts to bring The Man Who Killed Don Quixote to the screen. The disastrous production was eventually cancelled, although Gilliam hasn't given up hope of resuscitating the film. 'I return to it every couple of weeks,' he says. 'I can't say too much because it's tied up in a legal situation, but there's some movement,' he says. And even if La Mancha captured Gilliam at one of the lows of his career, he was happy to let observers onto the set of The Brothers Grimm. 'I guess I'm just too lazy to write my own diary. And I've got a terrible memory. So when Alzheimer's takes over my brain I'll be able to look at a book or a documentary to find out what I was doing. 'My problem is I always remember the bits of a movie that I didn't get right, the bits which could have been better or where I made mistakes. So that's why I don't tend to watch them once I've finished them. Maybe in 10 years' time I'll fish it out and watch it and say, 'Hmmm, that wasn't so bad.'' So, does Gilliam believe in happy endings? 'Yeah, I think so. I know I'd like a happy death if anything else.' The Brothers Grimm opens on Thursday