I’ve had the occasion to meet two directors who I admire enormously in these last couple of days. I’ve been doing the final sound work on SK this past week so when I went to the post production studio yesterday I used my security pass to go to the sound stage, forgetting that my show wasn’t in there any more but ‘Prince of Persia’ was. I felt a little bit of a fool standing there looking at what seemed to be a pretty cool action sequence and thinking - that’s not my movie. Anyway, a few minutes later I passed Mike Newell in the corridor and, though, I don’t normally do this (being English and quite reserved) I stopped him, introduced myself and told him that I thought Donnie Brasco was a work of near genius. Very graciously his reply was that it was all just a lucky accident. He’s wrong, the film is awesome and if what I saw of PofP is anything to go by, that’s going to be just gigantic and fun too.And talking of awesome I finally got to meet a genuine hero of mine - Mr Terry Gilliam. We’ve been circling each other for a few months as we’re sharing a producer in the form of Samuel Hadida who’s kept both Solomon Kane and Dr Parnassus going for a year or so. Kane has been easy but long winded whilst Parnassus has been a nightmare for obvious reasons. I had the opportunity to take a look at an unfinished cut of that movie last week but had to pass up the chance to concentrate on Kane (it was a tough choice but my baby is the priority). By all accounts the film is stunning and with the new shape of the picture the tragic loss of Heath Ledger hasn’t destroyed the story. It seems to flow organically and amazingly well. But finally I got to meet Terry via Sam Hadida and though it wasn’t a long conversation I did manage to tell him that he has made some of the touchstone pictures of my life with 12 Monkeys being a crowning achievement of both visual bravado, borderline insanity and narrative drive (mucho credit to David Peoples there, of course and the source material itself). Still, he was exactly like imagined - a terrific ball of manic energy and enthusiasm, even though he was looking pretty damn tired. He said he was looking forward to seeing Kane as he’d heard such good things about it, now it had REALLY better be a good movie.Oh yeah, I held the door open for Robert Downey Jnr the other day too