The scene where Sam surprises him in his office didn’t work until I introduced one of Lint’s children – the juxtaposition of him playing with his little girl while still wearing his blood-soaked apron made all the difference. I wanted Michael Palin’s character, Lint, to be an ambitious family man who doesn’t recognise the great harm he’s doing – torturing is just his job. Luckily, they were good at avoiding getting hit. During those fast tracking shots through the clerk’s pool, the wide-angle lens meant I needed to get even closer to the extras than they appear on screen. The huge torture chamber was the inside of a cooling tower at Croydon power station, and a redressed flour mill became the Department of Records. I like to give actors space to play and surprise us all and Brazil is full of wonderful, enriching touches, like Ian Holm’s wrist going limp when he’s asked to sign the cheque and the range of reactions Kathryn Pogson crams into a couple of seconds when Sam treads on Shirley’s foot. Jonathan Pryce is breathtaking as Sam – funny, desperate and touching, and his physicality was extraordinary. We shut down for a week and I spent that time tearing out my favourite bits. There were a lot more fantasy sequences in the original screenplay, but 12 weeks into shooting it became clear we were going to go way over budget and would end up with a five-hour film. I worked on the script with Chuck Alverson and Charles McKeown, but it was Tom Stoppard who eventually pulled the whole thing together. ‘Twelve weeks into shooting, it was clear we were going to go way over budget and would end up with a five-hour film’ … Terry Gilliam.
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