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Kirkinson wrote:When Gilliam started having arguments with Sid Scheinberg (a Universal executive) over Brazil's length and ending, he held a private screening for Spielberg in the hopes that he would talk to the executive (they were friends) and try to convince him to release the movie Gilliam's way. After watching the film, Gilliam asked Spielberg how long he thought it was, to which Spielberg replied "I don't know, an hour and a half?"

The other half of this story that is often told by Gilliam is that Gilliam feels Spielberg stole his "breakfast machine" idea and used it at the begining of Back To The Future (which was a second unit pick-up, shot latter, and not featuring any of the actors)

Ah yes, I forgot about that. Interestingly, there was yet another movie that came out that year with a more elaborate breakfast machine than the other two...Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I guess 1985 was just the year for breakfast machines.

BWilson wrote:The other half of this story that is often told be Gilliam is that Gilliam feels Spielberg stole his "breakfast machine" idea and used it at the begining of Back To The Future (which was a second unit pick-up, shot latter, and not featuring any of the actors)

I'm not saying it didn't inspire Spielberg, but are you sure he called it "his idea"? He credits the machine as an homage to Charles Chaplin's Modern Times.

I don't know if he called it "his idea" precisely. He just said he felt that Spielberg took the idea.

This might be a bit out there, but wouldn't it be fair to say that there's a tiny bit of Robocop in this as well? I kinda think of the Max Von Sydow character as in the first half the character of The Old Man and the second half as the Dick Jones character. Also the fact that part of D.C. is portrayed as what the future might hold for us, juxtaposed to a more current version of it, in the same way Detroit was portrayed. It's strange for me to write this, since I like Minority Report and fucking loathe Robocop.

Also, I don't believe that the ending is Anderton's fantasy. Otherwise the man who took his son would have been revealed. Just my 2 cents.

I just watched Minority Report on Cinemax the other day and was surprised how much Spielberg borrowed from Lucas in some of his designs and scenes. The vehicle cops used to fly around their teams is the same as the vehicle Boba Fett uses on the Star Wars movies. Also the scene at the Lexus factory with Tom Cruise and Colin Farrel was very, very similar to the scene Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman had at the robot factory in Attack of the Clones.

But, um... doesn't MINORITY REPORT pre-date CLONES?

HarryLong wrote:But, um... doesn't MINORITY REPORT pre-date CLONES?

If you're referring to the Dick short on which the film is liberally based, then yes. And the film was quite a while in development, too, I believe. But Clones was released about a month earlier and filmed about a year earlier. I'm not sure where exactly the films' respective designs and effects fit into this scheme, but I'm sure The Beard must have toured the Clones set at some point.

Ah, that's what I get for paying insufficient attention to George Lucas. I was confusing ATTACK OF THE CLONES with CLONE WARS.
Apologies.
To you, not Lucas.