PLUME: What kind of mindset did that battle leave you with moving on Baron Munchausen?

GILLIAM: Well, it was kind of, “We won that war…” and we were on a roll in a strange way. Munchausen started well, but I was wanting to do something really spectacular and was being promised that Rome was the answer to all of this, and we could do it for the kind of money we had. It just was not the truth – that was the basic problem. It was a terrible production. Film is very much about organization, and if you don’t have organization – if you don’t have material when you need it – you’re in trouble… and we were very soon aware of how deep the s*** was we were in. Before we started shooting, I thought we would never finish the film, because nothing that we needed was there when we needed it. But by then, I had been in it for eight months and there was no turning back.

PLUME: To my thinking, it’s much worse to have a film taken away from you in the middle of filming than in the editing process…

GILLIAM: Yeah, but by that time you’re so tired and so fed up that it’s almost a relief. I said, “Great… Take it…” By then, I was just out of steam. But you don’t really give up – you’re in there. The reality is, it’s very hard to have someone takeover a film that is as complex as that – and one that is as deep in ordure as that was. I can’t think of many directors who would want to walk into that nightmare.

PLUME: Or have…

GILLIAM: Exactly. They’re too smart for that. Any good hack director is smart enough to know what things to avoid – and that was one of the things that you avoided, because it was just an impossible situation. We just soldiered on, and we got through it.

PLUME: Personally, I still enjoy the film.

GILLIAM: I think it’s – in the end, despite everything – a pretty good film. It’s not as good as it could have been, but it’s one that still stands. People are actually discovering it now and saying, “Oh, that’s a really good film.” Because the scars are rather deep on that one, I never know what to think about it, but one of the great joys is walking down the street in America and somebody coming up to you and saying, “I just loved Baron Munchausen. It’s one of my favorite films.” And there are enough people out there that think that to make it all worthwhile.

PLUME: How much of the reputation of that was spin on Hollywood’s part after the Brazil battle?

GILLIAM: It was something they were waiting for. It was kind of like Orson Welles and The Magnificent Ambersons… getting your comeuppance is what it was about. Some of the trade press were so delighted that this was going on – “The guy who got cocky with the system – now we see what he’s really like… He’s an overblown, out of control madman.” So it made a lot of people happy.

PLUME: And no one ever cares to dig to see what the facts truly are…

GILLIAM: It was even more complex – behind the scenes Ray Stark was using it to put a final nail in David Putnam’s coffin. Putnam was at Columbia and started the thing, Putnam got fired just as we were about to start shooting, Ray Stark hated Putnam – in fact, he was very instrumental in getting Putnam thrown out – and Munchausen was a Putnam project. The negative stories about the shoot that were turning up in the Hollywood press were coming, we found out later, from a source at Film Finances – which was the completion bond company on the film. Their lawyer was a guy named Steve Ransohoff, whose father was Martin Ransohoff – who was Ray Stark’s friend and partner.

PLUME: It’s such an inbred little community…

GILLIAM: Yeah. I thought it was quite extraordinary, because the stories were doing two things – they were making me and the whole project look like it was completely out of control and all my fault, and that Film Finance, the completion guarantors, were the only thing holding it together – the people trying to bring control to it… the fact was, they were absolutely useless. The joke of it is that you read books about it being one of the great financial disasters of all time, and it’s simply not true. I was talking to Neil Jordan, who made We’re No Angels with Bobby De Niro – and that film went over budget more than Baron Munchausen did, but you never read a story about that one.

PLUME: Well, it’s all perception and spin, isn’t it?

GILLIAM: Yeah, that’s what Hollywood is about. It seemed actually appropriate that Munchausen – the greatest liar in the world – should be a victim of some of the greatest liars in the world. So I don’t mind this stuff being out there, because it’s really funny – but it’s not the truth.

PLUME: I was talking to somebody about the fact that there’s always one film each year that the Hollywood press feels that they have to bite the hand on…

GILLIAM: Yeah. It goes on… it’s like a Hudson Hawk with Bruce Willis, it’s like Last Action Hero with Arnold Schwarzenegger – there’s always a moment that everything conspires to attack and destroy.

PLUME: It’s always interesting to see Hollywood put its hype machine to work to build something up only to tear it down…

GILLIAM: Yeah. And this one was such an odd one, because there were a lot of knives going in for a variety of reasons. The ultimate fact was that when the film was ultimately released, there were only 117 prints made for America – so it was never really released. 117 prints! …an art film gets 400. We were ultimately the victim of Columbia Tri-Star being sold to Sony, because at that time all they were doing was trying to get the books looking as good as possible. We weren’t the only film that suffered, but we were the most visible one. And what happened – to complete the story in a neat and tidy way – was that they were not spending any money on advertising to promote any of the movies started by the previous regime – by Putnam’s regime. They were burying films left right and center by spending no money on them – and the books looked really good at the end of that.

PLUME: Very neat and tidy…

GILLIAM: Right, and we were just the visible one.

PLUME: It’s ironic that – for one of the films they made out to be such a turkey – it was one of the first films that they released on DVD…

GILLIAM: Yeah. The joke is, if you look back, we got the best reviews and we were doing the best business in the opening weeks of any film they had released since Last Emperor. We actually opened well in the big cities – we opened really well. A friend who had bought the video rights said he had never seen anything so weird – Columbia was spending their whole time looking at exit polls to prove the film would not work in the suburbs, and so it would be pointless to make any more prints. He said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” There it was. Then it becomes this kind of legend – which it deserves to be… even if it’s the wrong legend.

PLUME: But people are rediscovering it and loving it, so that’s the ultimate revenge…

GILLIAM: Yeah. The thing lasts. To me, it’s an artifact – it’s out there and people find it. With DVDs and video, films have very long lives now – and people will eventually get around to it. Those that like it will like it and be surprised – and for a lot of people, they’ll be able to discover it for themselves and not be hyped into it.

Continued below…

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