Behind the scenes

It would be a dream come true: Terry Gilliam gets back on the horse that threw him during his ill-fated Don Quixote venture. In other words, he is making another film. A dream it remains for the moment but Gilliam is in negotiations on the project Tideland with one of the very few men who could make it happen - producer Jeremy Thomas. Tideland is typical Gilliam material - a kind of latterday Alice in Wonderland set in Texas.

"It's based on a book by Mitch Cullin," says Thomas. "Terry has written the screenplay with Tony Grisoni, who adapted Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. We are trying to put the finance together across Europe but we've hit a trough. Pan-European co-productions are very difficult at the moment, but it will happen."

Thomas's optimism is remarkably wellfounded. This is a man, after all, whose daily task is to make the impossible happen. The only UK film producer with a truly international vision, Thomas has spent 30 years in the business of facilitating directors he admires to make the movies they want. Through his company Recorded Pictures he has championed the work of Nicolas Roeg, Bernardo Bertolucci, David Cronenberg, Nagisa Oshima and Stephen Frears.

Few living producers anywhere could come up with a more eclectic list; no British producer could. In spite of the fact that Thomas has never gone for the obvious money-spinner - it is not his style - he has survived in a perilous business.

Even now, when times are very tough indeed, Thomas is more productive than ever. He was executive producer on Rabbit Proof Fence, Australian Phillip Noyce's film which has emerged to great acclaim; he has just completed Young Adam, the film of the Alexander Trocchi book starring Ewan McGregor, as well as the latest Bertolucci film, The Dreamers, set during the Sorbonne Riots in the Sixties.

Earlier this year he hauled To Kill A King to the shore when it was in danger of sinking with all hands. And that's just for starters. Aside from the ongoing negotiations with Terry Gilliam, he is in discussion with the Tibetan Monk director Khyentse Norbu who made The Cup for his next film; plus there is John Maybury's putative movie of JG Ballard's novel Super Cannes and a long-gestating project about the Kon-Tiki Expedition. Crisis? What crisis?

"My wife says I'm the last man standing in British film," laughs Thomas. "But I have been going a little longer than many others. And I've always had a totally independent mind-set. I've spent a long time building up a different catalogue and a portfolio of acquisitions.

"I run it more like a business, not a hand-to-mouth operation like the rest of the companies. It's just us and Working Title at the moment. And it's nice to have a proper hit with Rabbit Proof Fence."

Go Gwyneth

Is there no stopping her? Our Favourite US Import Gwyneth Paltrow will reprise her role in the stage play Proof on the big screen, reuniting her with Shakespeare in Love director John Madden.

The screenplay is being written by Rebecca Miller, daughter of playwright Arthur and wife of Daniel Day-Lewis. From suicidal poetess to enigmatic mathematician's daughter may not be a quantum leap of characterisation but it will certainly establish her screen credentials among the industry cognoscenti. As if proof were needed.

Washington condones the killing of a classic...

Denzel Washington is to play Frank Sinatra in the latest ill-advised remake from Hollywood.

Washington is to take Sinatra's role of Captain Bennett Marco in an updated version of The Manchurian Candidate, John Frankenheimer's immortal political-paranoia thriller.