My Malata PAL/NTSC converter came in handy again, since I was able to watch the Lost in La Mancha documentary last night. It only opened around here a couple weeks ago, but the UK DVD is already available since the movie premiered last year overseas. The documentary follows director Terry Gilliam’s failed efforts to mount a production of Don Quixote. Those efforts were subverted by the forces of Man, Nature, and, we can’t forget, Darkness, and resulted in a documentary that is more like an “Un-making of” featurette. Or a DVD supplement without the Disc One.It’s heartbreaking to see how close we got to having another Terry Gilliam movie come to the silver screen. It’s been five years since his last movie and we have been waiting to find out what his next project would be. Now the years of preproduction have come to nothing, and Gilliam has to decide whether to try and reassemble funding for Don Quixote or move on to something new. As a huge Gilliam fan, I can’t help but wonder why he has so much trouble getting his movies off the ground… He’s one of our most original and visionary directors, so one would think Hollywood would be eager to force-feed him movie scripts just to see what wonders he could conjure up.
As Moriarity said in his perfect review of Lost in La Mancha: “Why God? Why does Freddie Prinze Jr.’s bankroll keep expanding? […] Why will you let studios spend billions of dollars on mediocre […] movies and ignore your faithful servant, Terry Gilliam, who has done nothing but push the boundaries of filmmaking?” Why indeed.
It can’t be because of Time Bandits. It was well received by critics and especially by children, and made back many times its small budget. It can’t be Brazil. Although its post-production resulted in stormy arguments between director and the studio heads at MCA/Universal, the movie won great critical acclaim and is still highly regarded. And the movie is also scarily prescient, since we are ourselves living in Brazil-like world where civil liberties are trampled in the name of dealing with a terrorist situation that may not even exit. (As well as, let us not forget, a world where computer screens become so tiny, giant magnfiying glasses are needed to read them.)
It can’t be Fisher King or Twelve Monkeys since those were successful films that not only garnered Academy Award nominations but were also made within the “studio system”. So it must be Baron Munchausen, poor unfortunate Baron Munchausen. The punching bag in every discussion of Gilliam’s career. Even the makers of Lost in La Mancha takes cheap shots at this sadly underappreciated gem.
Yes, the movie was a so-called “bomb” at the box office. But there’s one small point everyone seems to overlook. Munchausen is a great movie. Where else can we see the glorious visuals of a flight to the Moon in a hot air balloon, a spat between Gods and Goddesses, a ride on a cannonball (and a mortar shell), a waltz among the clouds, the strongest man, the fastest man, a colorful rascal who literally defies Death, and, let us not forget, Uma Thurman naked. And all this was filmed and completed for forty million bucks. That’s a pittance. Seriously. Forty million bucks is now Schwarzenegger’s salary, but Gilliam was able to make an entire fantastical and brilliant movie for that!
So what if the movie only made a fraction of its budget. And this is not Gilliam’s fault. He came through on his end of the bargain, so the fact the movie lost money is entirely the blame of Columbia/Tri-Star, who completely abandoned the movie when it was released. Around here it only played in one measly theater. I had to drive an hour to see it on the big screen! But I did it, and it was more than worth it. I bought a laserdisc player just so I could watch The Criterion Collection’s excellent release of Munchausen (and why is this not on DVD?!). I love Munchausen and it pains me that people keep dismissing it as a failure — simply because the marketing department didn’t know what gold they had on their hands. (And, of course, the fact new studio boss Dawn Steel was not interested in bothering with something old studio boss David Puttnam had green-lighted.) So, leave off picking on Munchausen (rent it instead…if you can find it) and please please please someone make sure Terry Gilliam gets lots of money so he can make many more movies.
