Terry Gilliam has blasted on-line reports that his new film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus--not to be confused with Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium or any dream projects of Troy McClure's--can't find a U.S. distributor. "There's this story running round," says Gilliam, "that has absolutely no basis in truth at all. It started from a little blog and it's all over the place but it's good, it gives us free publicity." Imaginarium is a project in which much of the public has a special interest, as it contains the last, never-to-be-completed performance by its star, Heath Ledger. Ledger's participation was essential to getting the movie funded in the first place, and when the star died, Gilliam, who had worked with him previously on The Brothers Grimm (2005), chose to forge ahead with the aid of a triumvirate of stars--Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell--who were assigned the task of playing different aspects of Ledger's character. Gilliam concedes that this "was very difficult but somehow we got adrenaline going and everybody was so determined to make it work and we did it and it ended up in some ways a more extraordinary film because of that. The main thing is that it really works and that was what I was concerned about and I can say, hand on heart, that it's really good. I just didn't want to waste any moment of Heath in life or on screen and that's Parnassus." Backing him up are the members of Ledger's family; Heath's sister Kate has announced that they have "seen a little bit of footage and I think it's going to be amazing. Terry Gilliam is amazing and Heath always had such an interest in whatever Terry was doing."

Even those of us who think the world of Terry Gilliam and who are rooting for him might be taken aback by his suggesting, even in fun, that what he needs at this point in his career is more publicity. So far, the director hasn't been having the greatest millennium. His Don Quixote movie, starring Depp and Jean Rochefort, crashed and burned in the early stages of filming, as was documented in Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's 2002 film Lost in La Mancha. The Brothers Grimm, which was his first completed film since 1998's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with Depp, was a disastrous attempt at a commercial crowd-pleaser, and his subsequent Tideland, which came out the same year, was an equally disastrous attempt at something ambitious and personal and deeply disturbing. For now, Gilliam says that Parnassus, which also features Christopher Plummer, Lily Dale, and Tom Waits as the devil, will hit theater screens this fall. In the meantime, Gilliam is set to begin shooting on his next project, Zero Theorem, on the first of May. The Richard Zanuck production stars Billy Bob Thornton as an eccentric computer genius.