Neither of us was sure whether or not we were really making a film until the day Terry Gilliam came round to the house for a cup of tea. He looked at the sheet of paper we had covered with lines and scribbles to tell ourselves the shape of the film. “That,” he said, “looks like a movie.”

Ah, we thought. Maybe it did, at that.

The unreliable juggler character was called “Puck” in the first draft, and we knew we needed a better name for him. It was the second week in February, and we were surrounded by posters and signs telling us it was nearly Valentine’s Day, so we called him Valentine. It was a slightly more flamboyant name, and he suddenly seemed, to both of us, a slightly more flamboyant character.

We sent the script off to Henson’s, and we waited, nervously. They had comments, of course, extremely sensible ones—they wanted more ending and more beginning.

Dave sent us pictures of characters and moods and places, to try to show the kind of things that he meant: how the White City would feel, what Valentine would be like, all that.

The strange thing about looking at those pictures now, for me, is that they make complete sense. I can see exactly what Dave meant and why he sent them. At the time they came in I looked at them and wondered how they could possibly relate to the script we’d written.

Dave knew, though. Dave always knows.

Now, my theory about films is that it’s probably safer to assume that they won’t happen. That way, when, as you expected, they don’t happen, you won’t find yourself with six months’ free time you have to fill. So while we did another draft of the script, and while Dave sat down and carefully storyboarded the entire film (the same storyboards you’ll see in this book), and while Henson’s seemed quite certain that it really was going to happen, it seemed easier to assume that at some point someone would wake up and see reason, and that it would never happen. Nobody ever saw reason.

What you’re waiting for, in the world of filmmaking, is a “Green Light.” It’s like traffic lights—the Green Light means it’s a go. Everything’s happening. You’re making your film.

“Do we have a Green Light on MirrorMask?” I’d ask. Nobody ever seemed quite sure.

And then it was May 2003, and I was in Paris, at the end of a European signing tour. Dave phoned and said, “We’re having a read-through of MirrorMask.” I got on the train to London and found myself sitting in a small room at Henson’s London offices, where a bunch of actors sat around a table, and read. I was introduced to Gina McKee and Stephanie Leonidas. Brian Henson read many of the small odd creatures (I was particularly impressed with his reading of the Chicken). I scribbled on the script some more, cutting bits, adding lines, and feeling pleased whenever something that I’d hoped was a joke actually got a laugh from the people around the table.