Yielding to Pedestrians

Just found out that J.K. Rowling wanted Terry Gilliam to direct the first Harry Potter film. The butthead studio execs said no, flat refused. This happened years ago—nobody tells me anything, see—but I'm outraged. Anyone who's seen at least 15 or 20 seconds of any Gilliam film should instantly understand that he would have been perfect for the job. Who else, since the invention of cinema, has created intensely hallucinatory dreamscapes the way he so consistently has? Who? Who? He described the resulting Chris Columbus films as "terrible. Just dull. Pedestrian." I couldn't agree more. Really a stupid loss for the world's collective imagination.

So. Anyway. I found out about this because it happens to be the 40th anniversary of the Monty Python show. It was also recently the 30th anniversary of the end of Fawlty Towers, and of course I did mention the 50th anniversary of Twilight Zone, and in a few days it happens to be the anniversary of me. I was born on Columbus Day, which from now on I will think of resentfully as the original Columbus Day.