It's never pretty when a fight breaks out in Hollywood.

No, we don't mean Woody Harrelson smacking down the paps - we mean directors clashing with studios.

The most recent dust-up is between Alex Cox and Universal, with the studio both renaming Repossession Mambo to Repo Men (startlingly similar to his own cult classic Repo Man) and warning him he can't use the title Repo Chick for his upcoming film.

Why? Apparently it violates their copyright, though he says he has first dibs on anything to do with Repo Man and Repo Chick is an unrelated story anyway.

Which got us thinking about clashes in the past. Fight! Fight! Fight!

The Director: Terry Gilliam

The Studio: MCA Universal (as it was known in 1985)

The Fight: So famous it has a title - The Battle Of Brazil - and an entire disc of the Criterion DVD set dedicated to it.

It breaks down like this - Gilliam submitted his director's cut of the film, a downbeat, dystopian vision of the future to the studio. Which hated it, citing a belief that it would flop.

MCA Universal boss Sidney Sheinberg demanded that Gilliam recut it, and when he refused, ordered the studio to make its own version, a forced happy ending known as the Love Conquers All edit.

Gilliam launched a campaign, roping in famous American film critics and even taking out a full page ad in Variety to demand that Universal release his version.

The Victor: Gilliam. Universal did release his version, and we're all the better for it.

Still, if you really want to see the studio's cut, you can always buy the Criterion set...

Next: Superman II