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104 P E R S P E C T I V E | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 8 reshoots by Katie C. Shipley, Associate Editor THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN was made in 1987 by director Terry Gilliam. It is the last installment in his "Trilogy of Imagination," following TIME BANDITS and BRAZIL, the common theme being the "craziness of our awkwardly ordered society and the desire to escape it through whatever means possible." 1 The film was designed by Italian Production Designer Dante Ferretti. The images shown are Uma Thurman as the "Birth of Venus," and a hot-air balloon, made of underwear borrowed from the ladies of the town. This shot was captured at the very end of a long shoot day when conditions were just perfect. Gilliam decided to shoot BARON MUNCHAUSEN in Italy, away from many of the crew he had grown accustomed to in England. With this came a fair amount of "chaos" in the unfamiliar Italian system. Working at Cinecitta Studios, just outside of Rome, production ran into some bureaucratic roadblocks, one of which left Ferretti just a few days to dress one of the most complicated sets in the film. The screenplay, written by Gilliam and actor Charles McKeown, is based on a fictional German nobleman, created by Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book, BARON MUNCHAUSEN'S NARRATIVE OF HIS MARVELLOUS TRAVELS AND CAMPAIGNS IN RUSSIA. McKeown describes the screenplay as a parody of the accounts given by those who travelled the world in the 18th century and returned with embellished tales of the creatures and sights they had seen. Gilliam calls Munchausen the "greatest liar of all time." The Baron makes many fantastical stops on his adventures: the moon, the centre of the earth, the stomach of a whale and he gets there by sailing through the sky on a ship. Gilliam refers to himself and his crew as "…over reachers. We've all gone far beyond what we should have tried. The film is like the stories; they are impossible. You can't do it." He goes on: "Dante Ferretti is absolutely brilliant, but it's trying to get him into my brain." 2 Gilliam storyboarded the film and with his background in animation, was able to draw and tweak a lot of the set designs. Ferretti compared Gilliam to his former director, saying, "Terry is very similar to Fellini in spirit. Fellini is a wilder liar, but that's the only difference! Terry isn't a director so much as a film author. He is open to every single idea and opportunity to make the end result work. Often the best ideas have come out of something not working properly and coming up with a new concept as a result. He is very elastic and that's one quality in a director that I admire the most." 3 1 Jack Matthews, Dreaming Brazil. 2 Terry Gilliam and the making of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: Hot Air & Fantasy 3 Smart.co.uk