The Making Of The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen
Thought The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was the worst experience of Terry Gilliam's professional life? Think again.
“I’m a bit lost at the moment as to where I am!” wailed director Terry Gilliam three weeks before he started filming The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen in 1987. A few weeks into shooting, he wouldn’t so much be feeling lost as completely devoid of hope.
The horrors that befell the making of Munchausen must have seemed that much worse for coming straight after the debacle that was Brazil.
The sort of extravagant fantasy William Blake might have concocted had he been good mates with George Orwell, Brazil took its toll both on Gilliam - at one point, stress robbed him of the use of his legs - and the patience of the studio, which very nearly dumped the movie entirely. Only after a self-financed press campaign by Gilliam and a war over the final cut did the picture finally make it into theatres.
After all that, Terry Gilliam should have made something on a smaller scale, intimate even. He certainly shouldn’t have tried to make a film about an 18th century explorer/liar whose efforts to save a town from the Turks see him swallowed by a sea monster, visit the moon, and hang out with Venus and Vulcan. But ‘intimate’ just isn’t Gilliam. If he thought small, he’d still be doodling in Minneapolis rather than receiving acclaim as a director of rare vision.
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