The accursed, Troyer-felling labors of Dr. Parnassus behind him, Terry Gilliam has wheedled his way into Dubai, where he hopes all those oil riches make for better door-to-door panhandling in advance of his next film.

Gilliam was invited to the emirate to collect the regional film festival's lifetime achievement award, following which he has since brought his working-class exuberance ("Tonight, we're going to party with the Indian migrant laborers in their dormitories," he told The Hollywood Reporter) and his awards-season contrition ("My comment was taken out of context. It's been used to say that I didn't think that Heath [Ledger] deserved to have a posthumous award, which is utter and complete nonsense") to bear on Dubai's burgeoning moviegoing community. The endgame: Don Quixote, his aborted 2000 project that Gilliam plans to return to next year:

The widely traveled Monty Python veteran who years ago shot Life of Brian in Tunisia, is visiting Dubai for the first time and also plans a visit its giant new studios to "check out their attitude toward funding."

His long-interrupted Don Quixote, in rewrite come January, could be made in Dubai, he said, because "at least there are mountains here."

Dubai, Spain, oil wells, windmills — whatever works, we suppose. And we like his odds, with his contemporary Oliver Stone making the Dubai money rounds as well, surreptitiously leaving crescents, crosses, stars and other hobo-style markings on palace gates in accordance with each resident's film-funding largesse.