Glengarry Glen Ross

One of the dangers in adapting a stage play into a film is that you won’t be able to break out of the theatricality inherent with so many plays. Fortunately, film director James Foley seemed to be acutely aware of this when he decided to take on Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), an adaptation of David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name with the screenplay written by the man himself. Right from the start, Foley keeps things visually interesting by bathing the film in Giallo-esque lighting that would make Dario Argento proud. Cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia photographs two salesmen talking in adjoining telephone booths, bathing them in white and blue light respectively with contrasting red in the background. Not only are these colors of the American flag and thereby making a subtle allusion to the notion that this story is a damning indictment of Capitalism, one of the principles that made the United States what it is today. The two men bitch and gripe to each other about the potential clients they have to cold call and then turn on the charm once they get them on the phone. Welcome to Mamet’s cutthroat world of real estate sales populated by desperate, often cruel men that are driven to make as much money as they can, consequences be damned.


One night, an office of down-on-their-luck salesmen are given the pep talk from hell by a ruthless man named Blake (Alec Baldwin), an executive sent by their bosses Mitch and Murray, on a “mission of mercy” as he sarcastically puts it. He starts off by telling them that they’re all fired. They have a week to get their jobs back by selling as much property as they can. He gives them an additional incentive: first prize is a new Cadillac El Dorado, second prize is a set of steak knives and third prize is, as he puts it, “you’re fired.” If the salesmen do well they will get the new Glengarry leads and the promise of better clients and good money.

Blake delivers an absolutely punishing speech as he belittles them (“You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch?”), is downright insulting (“You can’t close shit, you are shit! Hit the bricks, pal and beat it because you are going out!”), and demoralizing by even questioning their manhood. He throws in all sorts of “encouraging” words, like “Get them to sign on the line which is dotted,” and “Always be closing.” Alec Baldwin delivers a blistering performance as Blake. His character was not in the original stage play, Mamet wrote him specifically for the film. In his brief amount of screen time, Baldwin dominates the screen against the likes of Ed Harris and Jack Lemmon as he delivers a devastating monologue with ferocious intensity. At one point, Dave Moss (Ed Harris) asks him, “What's your name?” to which Blake replies, “Fuck you! That's my name. You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name.” Blake is an icy motivational speaker that only motivates the salesmen out of fear of being unemployed, making this scene eerily relevant to our times as that is also the prime motivator for most people trying to hold down a job in our current economic climate.

If there was ever a film that deserved an Academy Award for best ensemble cast then this is it. Glengarry Glen Ross features a dream collection of acting heavyweights: Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, and Alan Arkin. Pacino plays the slickest salesman of the bunch – Ricky Roma, a smooth-talking, well-dressed bullshit artist of the highest order. This is evident in the scenes where Roma spins an incredibly long and convoluted story, seducing a mild-mannered middle-aged man named James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce). It’s a marvel of acting as we watch Pacino do a spectacular verbal tap dance around the actual pitch until the last possible moment when he’s got the guy’s complete and utter confidence – even then he presents the land he’s pushing as an opportunity as opposed to a purchase, preying on Lingk’s insecurity. It’s a brilliant bit of acting as Pacino commands the scene with his mesmerizing presence. Jonathan Pryce is also excellent as he portrays a weak-willed man susceptible to Roma’s polished charms.

Harris plays Moss as an angry man pissed off at the lousy leads (i.e. clients) and is plotting to defect to a rival, Jerry Graff. George Aaronow (Alan Arkin) is a nervous guy unable to close a sit (pitching a client in person) and seems keen on Moss’ plan to steal the new Glengarry leads and sell them to the competition. John Williamson (Kevin Spacey) is the office manager, a pencil pusher that shows little remorse in what happens to his staff. He’s a smug son-of-a-bitch who takes a particular interest in Shelley "The Machine" Levene’s (Jack Lemmon) plight. Levene is an older salesman trying to make enough money to pay off mounting medical bills for his sick daughter, which colors everything he does.

Levene is a pathetic character desperate to keep his job and still capable of a slick sales pitch (in a nice touch, he often refers to an imaginary secretary named Grace while calling a potential client on the phone), it’s just his judgment that’s off as he finds out with devastating consequences later on in the film. Jack Lemmon somehow manages to make him sympathetic. We see both sides of Levene in a scene where he tries to sell property to a man (Bruce Altman) in his home. The man is not interested and despite Levene's desperate attempts, asks him to leave. It is an increasingly uncomfortable scene that is hard to watch as the man finally and firmly rebuffs Levene. Your heart really goes out to Lemmon's character as he dejectedly walks back out into the pouring rain, looking very much like a drowned rat. It is to Lemmon’s incredible skill as an actor that he makes you care about such a pitiful man

Director Foley successfully transfers Mamet's play to the big screen by creating atmospheric visuals. There is a somber mood that permeates almost every scene. The first half of the film takes place at night during an oppressive rainstorm. Anchia's rich, textured cinematography is the key ingredient in giving Mamet's play a cinematic look. He relied on low lighting and shadows with blues, greens and reds for the first part of the film. The second part adhered to a monochromatic blue-grey color scheme. All the locations are given their own distinctive color scheme, in particular, the hellish red/navy blue of the Chinese restaurant that the salesmen frequent. The overall atmosphere is dark, like that of a film noir.

And then there is Mamet's trademark hard-boiled dialogue or “Mamet speak” as it is known. It has a sharp, staccato quality to it that cuts right to the point with characters often interrupting each other or their dialogue overlapping as evident in the scene where Moss tells Aaronow of his plans to rob their office. One thing that is evident in Glengarry Glen Ross is just how good Mamet is at writing amusing dialogue. For example, at one point, Williamson asks where Roma is to which Moss replies, “Well, I'm not a leash so I don't know, do I?” Mamet’s characters talk like they are thinking about what they are going to say next as they are saying it — much like in real life.

David Mamet’s play was first performed in 1983 at the National Theater of London and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. That same year it made its United States debut in the playwright’s hometown of Chicago before moving to Broadway. Shortly thereafter, producer Jerry Tokofsky (Dreamscape) read the play on a trip to New York City in 1985 at the suggestion of director Irvin Kershner who wanted to make it into a film. Tokofsky then saw it on Broadway and contacted Mamet. The playwright wanted $500,000 for the film rights and another $500,000 to write the screenplay to which the producer agreed. Washington, D.C.-based B-movie producer Stanley R. Zupnik was looking for A-list material and co-produced two previous Tokofsky films. Zupnik had seen Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway and found the plot confusing. He also knew of its reputation in Hollywood as being a commercially difficult project but figured that he and Tokofsky could cut a deal with a cable company.

During this time, Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin became interested in Glengarry Glen Ross but without any concrete financing both Kershner and the actors dropped out for various reasons. Pacino had originally wanted to do the play on Broadway but was doing another Mamet production, American Buffalo, in London at the time. Director James Foley read the script in early 1991 and was hired to direct only to leave the project soon afterwards. By March 1991, Tokofsky contacted Baldwin and practically begged him to reconsider doing the film. The producer remembers, “Alec said: ‘I’ve read 25 scripts and nothing is as good as this. O.K. If you make it, I’ll do it.’” This prompted Foley and Pacino to get back on board with Jack Lemmon agreeing to do it as well. Foley and Pacino arranged an informal reading with Lemmon in Los Angeles. From this point, Foley and Pacino had subsequent readings with several other actors. Lemmon remembers, “Some of the best damn actors you’re ever going to see came in and read and I’m talking about names.” Alan Arkin originally wasn’t interested in doing the film because he didn’t like the character he was asked to portray but fortunately his wife, manager and agent pushed him to do it. Tokofsky’s lawyer called a meeting at the Creative Artists’ Agency, who represented many of the actors involved, and asked for their help. CAA showed little interest but two of their clients – Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey – soon joined the cast.

Due to the uncompromising subject matter and abrasive language, no major studio wanted to finance Glengarry Glen Ross even with actors like Pacino and Lemmon attached. Financing ended up coming from cable and video companies, a German television station, an Australian movie theater chain, several banks, and, finally, New Line Cinema over the course of four years. Because of the film’s modest budget of $12.5 million, many of the actors took significant pay cuts do it. For example, Pacino cut his per-movie price from $6 million to $1.5 million. This didn’t stop other actors, like Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Joe Mantegna, and Richard Gere from expressing an interest in the film.

Once the cast was assembled, they spent three weeks in rehearsals. The budget was set at $12.5 million with filming beginning in August 1991 at the Kaufman Astoria soundstage in Queens, New York and on location in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn over 39 days. Ed Harris remembers, “There were five and six-page scenes we would shoot all at once. It was more like doing a play at times [when] you’d get the continuity going.” Arkin said of the script, “What made it [challenging] was the language and the rhythms, which are enormously difficult to absorb.” During principal photography, Tokofsky and his producing partner Zupnik had a falling out over credit for the film. Upon the film’s release, Tokofsky sued to strip Zupnik of his producer’s credit and share of the producer’s fee. Zupnik claimed that he personally put up $2 million of the film’s budget and countersued, claiming that Tokofsky was fired for embezzlement, which seems rather ironic considering the subject matter of the film. To date neither one of them has gone on to produce another film with the lone exception of The Grass Harp in 1995 by Tokofsky.

Glengarry Glen Ross received very positive reviews from most mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and wrote, “There is a duet between Harris and Arkin that is one of the best things Mamet has written. They speculate about the near-legendary ‘good leads’ that Spacey allegedly has locked in his office. What if someone broke into the office and stole the leads? Harris and Arkin discuss it, neither one quite saying out loud what's on his mind.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Mr. Mamet has the vision of a moralist outside of time. He never nudges the audience toward what it's supposed to think. He also has an evil angel's gift for a spoken language that sounds realistic, but is a kind of shorthand for psychic desperation.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “A peerless ensemble of actors fills Glengarry Glen Ross with audible glares and shudders. The play was a zippy black comedy about predators in twilight; the film is a photo-essay, shot in morgue closeup, about the difficulty most people have convincing themselves that what they do matters.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” rating and Owen Gleiberman praised Lemmon’s performance: “And Jack Lemmon, an actor I've seldom been able to watch without squirming myself, is a revelation. Lemmon hasn't abandoned his familiar mannerisms — the hammy, ingratiating whine, the tugging-at-the-collar nervousness. This time, though, he trots out his stale actor's gimmicks knowingly, making them a satirical extension of the character's own weariness.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, “Glengarry is a compelling look at one of the closed-out items in the catalog of American dreams.”

In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum praised Foley’s direction: “Foley's mise en scene is so energetic and purposeful (he's especially adept in using semicircular pans) that the unexpected use of a 'Scope format seems fully justified, even in a drama where lives are resurrected and destroyed according to the value of offscreen pieces of paper.” However, in his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe was not thrilled with Foley’s contributions: “But director James Foley's attempts to ‘open up’ the play to the outside world are dismal. The play takes place in the salesmen's office and a Chinese restaurant. Foley doesn't add much more than the street between. If his intention is to create a sense of claustrophobia, he also creates the (presumably) unwanted effect of a soundstage. There is no evidence of life outside the immediate world of the movie.”

It takes a certain kind of personality to sell something that people don't need but convincing them that they do. There is a whiff of pathetic desperation to Mamet’s salesmen. It seems like their best days are behind them. It’s a vicious circle of sorts – they can’t get access to new, potentially good clients unless they close some of their old ones and they are all deadbeats. These salesmen will say and do anything to keep their job, which begs the question: is that what it takes to be a good salesperson? Ed Harris believes that the film is “about the evils of the free enterprise system. You’ve got these guys selling bogus real estate and they’re upset because they can’t sell it.” The film is a rather timely one as it addresses tough economic times, something that we are experiencing now. One of the reasons Mamet’s characters have such a hard time selling these properties is because nobody has any money and what they do have they’re holding onto it. First performed on stage in the “Greed is good” 1980s, Glengarry Glen Ross was a scathing indictment of the free enterprise system. The film was made in the early 1990s when the economy was doing well and now it has become relevant once again in the lean and mean post-9/11 New Millennium.

Ronin

Most big budget spy films are often cartoonish action fare with an emphasis on spectacle (explosions, gunfights and car chases) and very little intelligence or interesting characters. Aside from the smart, visceral Jason Bourne films, the only mainstream film to credibly mix brains and brawn in the last fifteen years has been Ronin (1998). This is due in large part to the efficient direction of veteran filmmaker John Frankenheimer, a lean, no-nonsense screenplay written by J. D. Zeik and by David Mamet (under the guise of Richard Weisz) and a solid cast featuring the likes of Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgard, and Sean Bean.

The set-up is this: a group of mercenaries from all over the world assemble in France and are given a mission to steal a briefcase with unknown but what they believe to be very valuable contents inside. The group consists of an American driving expert named Larry (Skipp Sudduth); Spence (Sean Bean), a British weapons man; Gregor (Stellan Skarsgard), an ex-KGB computer expert; Vincent (Jean Reno), a French equipment man; and Sam (Robert De Niro), a veteran tactician from America. They are in turn briefed by a mysterious Irish woman named Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) who we later learn gets her information from a fellow IRA operative, Seamus O’Rourke (Jonathan Pryce).

Because they are all doing this for money no one trusts each other and there is palpable tension under a façade of bravado, dry humor and professional respect. This is exemplified by great one-liners, like when Spence asks Sam, “You ever kill anybody?” to which he responds dismissively, “I hurt somebody’s feelings once.” I love the scene early on where the newly assembled team sniffs each other out. This is where Mamet’s dialogue shines as the various personalities of the team surface: Spence is the cocky Brit; Sam is the sarcastically evasive American; Vincent is the quietly confident Frenchman; and Gregor is the no-nonsense ex-KGB man.

The first action sequence involves a gun deal that goes sour. What stands out in this scene more than the superbly staged action are the little details, like the look on Sam and Vincent’s faces when they realize that they’re walking into a set-up. Afterwards, Vincent thanks Sam for protecting him and a bond develops between the two men that comes from surviving intense, life and death situations. Their relationship is well-played by the two-actors. I also like that Frankenheimer takes the time to show Sam and his team discussing the plan to steal the case. They talk about tactics and, at one point, Sam and Deirdre scout the target and the team protecting it in order to get an idea of the exact number of opponents, how skilled they are and so on. We see just how clever and experienced Sam is in this scene. We also see that a lot preparation goes into a job like this and one can never be too prepared, especially when they are not given all the information.

The group gets the case but one of their own betrays them and takes off with it. This kick-starts a thrilling cat and mouse game through the streets of Paris as Frankenheimer orchestrates action sequences with the kind of ruthless efficiency that would make Michael Mann green with envy. For the most part, they are realistically depicted. Nobody wastes hundreds of rounds before reloading, the actual battles don’t last long, and innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire are killed. Ronin was justly praised for its very exciting car chase sequences. No laws of physics are grossly violated as these guys pursue each other in and around the narrow streets of Nice or through the streets of Paris. You can tell that actual stuntmen drove these cars at high speeds and they were actually crashed, not done later with computer graphics. These sequences work so well not just because they are exciting, well shot and edited, but because they are just as important to the narrative of the film as everything else. They have a purpose as opposed to many other action films where car chases are used as filler to distract the audience from the lack of story, character and so on. It should also be pointed out how cleanly executed these scenes are with refreshingly fluid camera movements so that you get an idea of what his going on and where. There is a nice lack of disorienting hand-held camerawork and these sequences are not hacked to pieces with frenetic editing but done in a way that conveys speed and urgency.

Ronin is also refreshingly free of simple good guy/bad guy roles. They don’t exist in this world because all of the characters are imbued with both of these qualities. For them, this job is strictly business and when it becomes personal that is when mistakes are made. Robert De Niro turns in his last truly great performance to date as the experienced soldier-of-fortune. Like his character in Heat (1995), he’s all business and dedicated to the job at hand and nothing else. He’s ably supported by the always watchable Jean Reno as the steadying hand of the group. He plays the reliable guy so well and exudes a quiet dignity that is fascinating to watch. Frankenheimer wisely plays up the mutual respect between De Niro and Reno’s characters. One wishes that by the film’s conclusion these guys would do another project together, especially as the characters in Ronin.

David Mamet’s lean script reflects the characters it depicts. These are professional soldiers who don’t have time to waste on idle chit-chat. They have been hired to do a job and do it well – that’s what they’re getting paid for. His screenplay also provides a window into the post-Cold War espionage world (as he would also do later on with Spartan). It’s an open market with all sorts of ex-soldiers from all over the world selling their services to the highest bidder. After all, what do career soldiers do in between wars? Mamet only hints at this early on when Vincent laments to Sam about their profession, “Seven fat years and seven lean years.” The “fat years” would seem to refer to the time when these guys were employed by their respective governments and enjoyed all kinds of perks. Now they are in the “lean years” doing jobs purely for money. This exchange also establishes early on the bond that begins to form between these two veteran warriors.

At the heart of Ronin is an intriguing discussion between Sam and Jean Pierre (Michael Lonsdale), Vincent’s former boss and the man who tends to a gunshot wound Sam receives in a skirmish. While resting from impromptu surgery to remove the bullet, Jean Pierre relates to Sam the story of the 47 samurai and the Warrior Code:

“The Forty Seven Ronin, do you know it? Forty-seven samurai whose master was betrayed and killed by another lord. They became ronin, masterless samurai, disgraced by another man’s treachery. For three years they plotted, pretending to be thieves, mercenaries, even madmen (that I didn’t have time to do). And then one night they struck, slipping into the castle of their lord’s betrayer, killing him … The warrior code, the delight in the battle. You understand that, yes? But also something more. You understand there is something outside yourself that has to be served. And when that need is gone, when belief has died, what are you? A man without a master.”

Sam speaks of surviving to retirement even though most of his friends have died before they could achieve it because in their line of work longevity is a rarity, eventually everyone’s luck runs. It’s a topic Mamet would explore in greater detail in films like Spartan (2004), Red Belt (2008), and the television show The Unit.

In 1997, president of United Artists Lindsay Doran met with director John Frankenheimer about a project shortly after she received the screenplay for Ronin. She was a big fan of his films and felt that Ronin was perfectly suited for him: “I’m a supporter of the idea of hiring people who have practically been forgotten. There are an awful lot of filmmakers who stop getting hired when they’re 60 or 55 or even 50.” When Frankenheimer read the script it reminded him of action films from the 1960’s and 1970’s: “What appealed to me too was that it was an intelligent suspense thriller. At heart it’s a film that questions our ethics and the meaning of honor and what it means to ‘do one’s job.’” Doran and United Artists decided to hire Frankenheimer based on his work on Andersonville (1996), television miniseries for TNT in which he won an Emmy for direction.

In terms of camerawork, Frankenheimer eschewed a stylized approach to create what he called a “heightened reality” and achieved this with wide angles and a depth of field. The director hired French cinematographer Robert Fraisse based on his work on the HBO film Citizen X (1995): “I saw that Robert knew how to work within the confines of a schedule, and knew the demands of an American production.” Ronin was shot in a brisk 78 days with an additional 30 days of second-unit work done by Frankenheimer and Fraisse.

For the three car chase sequences, Frankenheimer employed the same techniques he utilized on Grand Prix (1966). According to one of the film’s stunt coordinators and professional race car driver Jean-Claude Lagniez, 150 drivers were used with cars going as fast as 120 miles per hour. Approximately 80 cars were wrecked in scenes where whole sections of Nice and roadways in Paris were temporarily closed down. He and Michael Neugarten were among the drivers hired to do the stunt driving. The director had clearly done his research as both men had won their respective categories at Le Mans the year before. Lagniez said that Frankenheimer insisted the cars during the chases travel at full speed: “If I’m going to do a car chase, I’m going to do a car chase that’s going to make somebody think about whether or not they want to do another one!” The director did some shots with the actors in real cars by using English right-hand drive vehicles. The stunt driver would be actually driving the car and a fake steering wheel on the left would be for the actor. This allowed Frankenheimer to photograph the actors “driving” the cars. The director storyboarded all three chase sequences, generating hundreds of drawings that were used as a guide on location, allowing him to improvise at a given moment if he were so inclined.

A minor controversy broke out brief over screenwriting credit. J.D. Zeik wrote the original script and then David Mamet was brought in to either do a bit of script doctoring or rewrite it completely, depending on who you believe. Frankenheimer claims the latter as he said an interview, “We didn’t shoot a line of Zeik’s script.” Zeik’s attorney claimed that Mamet was brought in at the last minute before principal photography to “beef up De Niro’s role,” added Deirdre as a love interest for Sam and rewrote several scenes. The lawyer claimed that rather than give his client – a then-up and coming screenwriter – sole credit Mamet included his name in order to receive greater residuals. Zeik’s attorney appealed to Mamet’s lawyer to let his client have sole credit but was rebuffed. Mamet tried to apply for sole writing credit but the Writer’s Guild ruled that credit should be given to both Zeik and Mamet. Already burned by the WGA over credit for Wag the Dog (1997), and in protest, Mamet used the pseudonym of Richard Weisz on Ronin. Furthermore, Zeik’s lawyer then accused Frankenheimer of dropping his client “to curry favor with David Mamet.”

Ronin received mixed reviews from critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised Frankenheimer’s handling of the material: “Here, with a fine cast, he does what is essentially an entertaining exercise. The movie is not really about anything; if it were, it might have really amounted to something, since it comes pretty close anyway.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin raved about the film’s car chases: “Proving that the greatest excitement an action film can offer is the spectacle of real derring-do performed by real people, Mr. Frankenheimer stages three sensational French chase sequences in settings that prove astonishing, under the circumstances … these scenes are nothing short of sensational. Mr. Frankenheimer directs them in fast, efficient, no-frills fashion because no extra frills are needed.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Unvexed by boring details, which usually just compound the implausibility of action movies anyway, we are free to appreciate the sheer stylishness of Ronin. This derives from the counterpoint between Mamet's verbal manner—weary, knowing, elliptical—and director John Frankenheimer's bold visual manner.”

However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “I wish Frankenheimer had done more with Stellan Skarsgard's icy genius sociopath. Ronin is ''well-crafted,'' but it's also empty — a joyless thrill ride … In a movie like this one, speed itself starts out as excitement and ends as desperation — as a race out of the void.” In his review for the Washington Post, Michael O’Sullivan wasn’t nearly as taken with the film: “Despite some ingenious touches, as when Sam and Deirdre pose as tourists to snap photos of their elusive quarry, much of the time Ronin feels like a high-brow Steven Seagal film, with massive gun battles that casually disregard civilian casualties and too many overlong car chases through the twisty streets of Paris and Nice.” New York magazine’s David Denby concurred: “Ronin is well-made, but it's an act of connoisseurship for people who have given up on movies as an art form.”

Frankenheimer and Mamet created a fascinating world of international mercenaries that at once seems realistic and also very cinematic in nature with its exciting car chases and gun battles. The director brought years of experience as an excellent journeyman director to Ronin. He didn’t waste time with needless exposition and showy style. Like the characters in the film, he’s there to get the job done while also delivering an entertaining movie, harkening back to his Classic Hollywood contemporaries like Don Siegel. Ronin would be one of Frankenheimer’s last films (the less said about Reindeer Games the better) and it is a fitting swan song for the man who unfortunately died in 2002.

 

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Filmmaker Terry Gilliam once remarked in an interview that "when times are bad, I can't believe you can live without fantasy or imagination." This statement seems particularly valid in contemporary society when you realize all of the horrible things that are occurring. One only has to look in the newspapers or watch the news on television to see how rapidly society seems to be collapsing. Gilliam's statement becomes all the more true when you look at the success of a film like Forrest Gump (1994), which is beloved by many who see it as a hopeful reminder of better times. The problem with that film is that it is too literal in its fantastic elements, leaving little to the imagination. This is the strength of Gilliam's films – from his work with Monty Python to his own films – which transport the viewer to another world altogether. But this does not mean his films leave behind all traces of reality, but rather, like any good fairy tale, they play with and manipulate reality. To this end, watching a film like Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) is akin to reading one of those great fairy tales from your childhood. His film is the cinematic equivalent of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series or J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy in its ability to tell a good story, present colorful and unusual characters, and take us to places we can only dream about. And like these books, the film is set on an epic scale, spanning all realms, from the legendary city of Constantinople, to the Moon, to the insides of a giant sea monster.

Our story begins in the 18th Century, during The Age of Reason where a small, beleaguered town, ruled by an evil, bureaucratic Governor (Jonathan Pryce), is under constant attack from an equally cruel Sultan and his large army of Turks. Caught in the middle is an inept theatrical company trying in vain to entertain the battle-weary soldiers and shell-shocked villagers of the town with the fantastic tales of Baron Munchausen. During a performance, an old soldier appears, claiming to be the real Baron Munchausen and aims to not only set the record straight about his outrageous exploits, but save the town from the Turks. This sets in motion an epic adventure which has the Baron (John Neville) traveling the world and beyond for his former comrades, an eccentric group that includes Berthold (Eric Idle), a man who can run so fast that he must attach a ball and chain to both legs, Adolphus (Charles McKeown), a sharpshooter capable of hitting "a bullseye half way around the world," Albrecht (Winston Dennis), the strongest man in the world, and Gustavus (Jack Purvis), a small man who not only has unearthly hearing abilities, but can "blow over a whole forest with just one breath." However, the Baron faces many obstacles from the outset of his adventure. He is old and feeble with the specter of death literally and figuratively pursuing him in all sorts of guises, but most notably as a horrific, winged, skeletal demon. Only his love of adventure and the help of his youthful companion, a little girl named Sally Salt (Sarah Polley), keeps Death at bay and his quest on track.

The idea for Baron Munchausen had been running around inside Gilliam's head for some time. He had always liked the 1962 Czechoslovakian film version and the various stories about the famed teller of tall tales. But it wasn't until he had finished his previous film, Brazil (1984), did Baron Munchausen become a viable project. Gilliam had fought Universal studio to release his version of Brazil and not the one they wanted – a more upbeat "Hollywood" ending. Gilliam, exhausted and jaded, was anxious to put that horrible experience behind him. And so, he and producer Arnon Milchan approached 20th Century Fox, pitched the idea for the film, and got the go-ahead from the studio. But then disaster struck. After Brazil, Gilliam and Milchan parted company and Fox lost interest in the project because the people who had made the deal were no longer there. However, Gilliam had going on at that moment and continued to work on Baron Munchausen. The source of this momentum stemmed from Gilliam's desire to finish what he saw as his "fantasist" trilogy: Time Bandits (1981) featured a young boy as-fantast, while Brazil presented an adult as fantast theme, and Baron Munchausen would complete the series with an old man as fantast.

Gilliam finally acquired financial support from Columbia Pictures and began writing the script for the film with his good friend and screenwriter, Charles McKeown (they had worked to get together previous on Brazil). They used the book, Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia as their starting point. Written by Rudolph Erich Raspe and published in 1785, it was based on the inflated exploits of a real German cavalry officer. Gilliam found that the book was merely a series of tales with no narrative connection and so he and McKeown created a story about a town under siege with a group of actors trapped in it, trying to perform The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, only to have the real Baron showing up. There had already been two dozen screen versions of the Baron's endeavors in Europe alone. In addition George Melies had done a silent short, and two films, a German one filmed in 1948 and the aforementioned Czech feature in 1962, were in circulation when Gilliam decided to create his own take on the man. In writing the script, he and McKeown would talk about the scenes in detail and then McKeown would go off and write. Then, they would meet again and talk about what he wrote and the process would repeat itself.

These were the least of his problems. Gilliam had difficulty casting someone in the title role, but one person's name kept popping up – John Neville. At the time, Neville, a veteran British stage actor whose heyday was during the 1960s but had faded from the limelight over the years. He had become the director of the Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare Festival doing 15 productions a season with no time for films. Gilliam approached Neville’s agent and was turned down. Luckily for Gilliam, a makeup lady working on the film knew Neville’s daughter personally, called him up, and arranged a meeting. It turned out that the veteran stage actor was a big Monty Python fan and he agreed to do the film.

Unfortunately, Gilliam's headaches did not end there. The studio forced him to begin production before he was ready and as the filming progressed, the usual budget problems began to rear their ugly heads. Principal photography began on September 14, 1987 at Rome’s legendary Cinecitta Studios (where Fellini had shot his films). After seven weeks of filming, the production was shut down for two weeks with rumors that Gilliam would be replaced by Richard Fleischer or Gary Nelson (The Black Hole). The studio threatened to replace Gilliam if he didn't get back on track. He had to convince the film’s completion bond insurer, Film Finances that he was in control of the project’s increasing budget. This forced Gilliam to cut out portions of the script but he could not decide what to keep and what to remove. Two days before the deadline, Film Finances threatened to sue Gilliam for fraud and this upset McKeown so much that he and the director went through the script in less than an hour and came up with revisions that appeased the financiers. Ironically, despite all of the script revisions they made, and the presence of Film Finances, the budget increased, the filming didn’t move any faster, and the sets weren’t built any quicker. According to Thomas Schuhly, one of the film’s many producers, there was no danger that Gilliam would have been fired: “You must accept the rules of the game, and that’s to make money, not to lose it. We had a better chance of making money with Terry than anyone else.”

Gilliam wanted to make the film in Rome because it gave him the opportunity to work with legendary Fellini collaborators, production designer Dante Ferretti and director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno. However, working in Italy presented its own unique set of problems. "This film was terrifying difficult, even before those other pressures from the studio began. The fact that the film was falling apart at the seams was bad enough – the organization was terrible,” Gilliam said. In retrospect, he regretted filming there because they were ill-equipped to do special effects films and his crew were speaking four different languages: English, Italian, German and Spanish. This resulted in miscommunication among crew members. Gilliam said, “The moment you say something it’s instantly mistranslated.” Gilliam became bogged down by the slow pace of Italian filmmaking and their unusual working methods. Gilliam and Ferretti redesigned the film several times with certain locations in mind only to find out after several weeks that no one sought permission to use them. They had to start all over again.

Due to delays and studio demands, the King of the Moon character was recast with Robin Williams replacing Sean Connery. The budget constraints forced Gilliam and McKeown to reduce the Moon sequence from a world of 2,000 people with detachable heads to only two people. When this happened, Connery lost interest and left the project. Eric Idle was good friends with Williams, who just happened to be in Rome at the time promoting Good Morning Vietnam (1987). Gilliam had actually offered him the role of Vulcan but he wasn’t available until they had to recast the King of the Moon and he agreed to help out. The role of Vulcan had originally been written for Bob Hoskins but he was busy making Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Gilliam cast Oliver Reed instead.

Talk about being born under a bad sign. For months, the production trained horses for Baron Munchausen and then, just before going to Spain to film, there was an outbreak of horse fever and they could not bring them. In addition, the two dogs playing the Baron’s pooch came down with a liver complaint at the same time. A few days later, then Columbia studio head David Puttnam was fired. By the time the production got to Spain, the costumes hadn’t arrived because there wasn’t enough room on the plane to take them! Somehow Gilliam prevailed and finished the film with the help of good friends like Eric Idle providing support and a sense of humor. Gilliam remembered, "At one point, we were out in Spain, and things were at their very, very worst. I was ready to quit. I knew there was no way we would get through the film. Eric really came in there, saying, 'You've got to, if for no other reason, you must make this film to spite John Cleese!' That got me going!"

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was generally well-received by mainstream critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “The special effects are astonishing, but so is the humor with which they are employed … These adventures, and others, are told with a cheerfulness and a light touch that never betray the time and money it took to create them.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “With their remarkable contributions, Baron Munchausen is full of moments that dazzle, just for the fun of seeing the impossible come to life on the screen.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “A few episodes test the viewer's patience, and there is considerably more wit in the film's sumptuous design than in its dialogue. But anyone with an educated eye and a child's love of hyperbole can take delight in Gilliam's images and incidents.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “Thanks to such contradictions, the movie’s overall movement often seems closer to that of a boiling cauldron than to any logical progression. But this wild spectacle has an energy, a wealth of invention, and an intensity that for my money still puts most of the streamlined romps of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to shame … A fantasy in which literally anything can happen at any moment runs the serious risk of flying apart without a center; and there is hardly a moment in this movie’s 126 minutes when Gilliam isn’t taking that risk — both eyes open and full speed ahead.” In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe felt that Gilliam had “created another brilliantly inventive epic of fantasy and satire.”

With a budget estimated to be in the $40-45 million range (which sounds pretty small now but back then that was a big deal), Baron Munchausen harkens back to Gilliam's love of old epic "special effects movies" like The Sea Hawk (1940) and Thief of Baghdad (1940), which the filmmaker enjoyed as a child. As a result, Baron Munchausen is a stunning visual masterpiece on a grand scale that depicts all sorts of flights of fancy: characters ride cannonballs through the air, get swallowed whole by monstrous whales, and fly to the moon in a hot air balloon. Everything is set on an absurd mythical level that at times becomes wonderfully surreal. This is particularly evident in a remarkable sequence where the Baron and Sally travel to the moon. At first, it seems that the Baron's ship is adrift along a calm stretch of the ocean, but this gradually changes to the surface of the moon, a barren landscape where the constellations come alive, becoming what they are. One of the joys of Baron Munchausen is that every scene is filled with this kind of atmospheric, incredible attention to detail that sets it apart from any other feature you're likely to see.

As in all of Gilliam's films the large ensemble cast fills out their respective roles admirably. John Neville brings all of his knowledge and years of experience as an actor to the role of the Baron and makes what could have been a wacky caricature, a flesh and blood character. He has to perform the daunting task of portraying the Baron in three different stages of his life: young, middle-aged, and as an old man. Sarah Polley is the perfect foil for Neville's Baron. When he becomes tired and fed up with the quest to save the town from the Turks, she is there to inject some youth and vitality into the struggle, renewing everyone's energy without smugly mugging to the camera as so many child stars are seem prone to do nowadays. The rest of the supporting cast is also superb with Eric Idle and Uma Thurman (as Venus the Goddess of Love) creating memorable scenes with their characters. To top it all off there is even an uncredited cameo by a delightfully unhinged Robin Williams as the King of the Moon who bounces from lunacy to lucidity with the frequency of a schizophrenic on speed and who is also not averse to lobbing giant asparagus spears at our heroes. He would subsequently star in Gilliam's next effort, The Fisher King and expand on the trilogy with a fourth option: crazed man as fantast.

If there is a central theme to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, it is the notion that fantasy and fun complement science and reason. When the Baron first appears, he is an old man that feels pushed to the margins of a world he can no longer relate to. "The world is evidently tired of me," he says, "because it's all logic and reason now. Science. Progress. Laws of Hydraulics. Laws of Social Dynamics. Laws of this, that, and the other. No place for three-legged Cyclops in the South Seas. No place for cucumber trees and oceans of wine. No place for me." The film not only becomes a battle against the Sultan and his army, but against the stifling sterility of science and reason as represented by the corrupt Governor of the town (an wonderfully campy performance by Jonathan Pryce, who goes all out with his role) who sees a world "fit for science and reason," and not for the "folly of fantasists who do not live in the real world." And yet, Gilliam's film shows that you cannot have one without the other. As he once said in an interview, "Fantasy and reality, or truth and reality – whatever form it takes – that which the world perceives as truth, and that which really is truth. I like the idea that a good lie is probably better than what appears to be the truth – and maybe even more truthful!" Baron Munchausen constantly plays with these notions of fantasy and reality, constantly manipulating them throughout the film to keep us guessing. Eventually, it no longer matters as both blend together to form a new reality where one is not sacrificed for the other, but rather both co-exist peacefully.