5. What is the title BRAZIL supposed to mean?

Certainly BRAZIL is an enigmatic title for a movie that seems to have nothing to do with the country of Brazil. One of the drafts of the screenplay was entitled _The Ministry of Torture, or Brazil, or How I Learned to Live with the System — So Far_, and Gilliam also considered calling his screenplay 1984 1/2. Many of the drafts appear to have simply been titled “The Ministry.” In the book _The Battle of Brazil_, Gilliam explains where the inspiration stemmed from, while he was in Port
Talbot, Wales:

“Port Talbot is a steel town, where everything is covered with gray iron ore dust. Even the beach is completely littered with dust, its just black. The sun was setting, and it was quite beautiful. The contrast was extraordinary, I had this image of a guy sitting there on this dingy beach with a portable radio, tuning in these strange Latin escapist songs like ‘Brazil.’ The music transported him somehow and made his world less gray.”

Sid Sheinberg didn’t like the title, and had the Universal staff submit suggestions for a new title. These suggestions included the titles:

If Osmosis, Who Are You? Vortex What a Future! The Works You Show Me Your Dream… Arresting Developments Lords of the Files The Staplegunners Forever More Explanada Fortunata Is Not My Real Name Chaos Disconnected Parties Erotic Maelstrom The Man in the Custom Tailored T-shirt Can’t Anybody Here Play the Cymbals? The Ball Bearing Electro Memory Circuit Buster This Escalator Doesn’t Stop At Your Station Gnu Yak, Gnu Yak, and Other Bestial Places.

Some Day Soon Day Dreams and Night Tripper Litterbugs Skylight City Access Nude Descending Bathroom Scale Dreamscape Progress The Right to Bear Arms All Too Soon Where Were We? Blank/Blank Shadow Time Forces of Darkness Fold, Spindle, Mutilate Sign on High

I get the sense that the Universal staff was just screwing with Sheinberg with most of those. They read like a list of Monty Python episodes — right up there with “Owl-Stretching Time,” “The BBC Entry For the Zinc Stoat of Budapest,” and “Whither Canada?”