Tuesday, May 02, 2006

This is precisely the sort of thing nobody ever believes

I've made no secret of my love for Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," and the more I learn about it, the more it surprises me and the more I love it. For example, consider the scenes on the moon. When the King of the Moon is chasing the Baron and his companions, he rides atop a giant, three-headed griffon that sports vulture heads. For years, I'd just assumed the three-headed vulture was a simple manifestation of Gilliam's oddball creativity--he never accepts a simple idea without adding on to it and building it into something more elaborate and bizarre.

But here I am reading Palgrave's The History of Science Fiction by Adam Roberts, and in just the second chapter, "Science Fiction and the Ancient Novel," Roberts is discussing Lucian's Alethes Historia:
Landing on this 'sky island,' which is of course the Moon, the voyagers are captured by soldiers riding three-headed flying 'horse-vultures,' and taken to the lunar king, Endymion.

There's even a reference to vegetables, kind of tenuous in Roberts' context, but enough to think maybe there's allusional reference in the movie's "asparagus spears" as well. Damn, that movie's awesome. I need Jess Nevins to annotate it for me!

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3 comments:

  1. Chris Roberson10:51 AM

    I saw Munchausen on opening day, and must have listened to the soundtrack on LP about a million times in college (even now I find myself humming the tune to The Torturer's Apprentice at least once every few months). I found a copy of the original Munchausen in an early 20C edition in the UT reserve stacks, and was amazed to discover how much of the wacky stuff in the flick came directly from the original text. I, too, had assumed that much of it was Gilliam's invention, but he was actually being quite faithful to the source!

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  2. Jayme Lynn Blaschke1:51 PM

    You lucky dog! I've been trying in vain to score me a copy of the soundtrack on CD for about seven years now. I saw one at Half Price Books on South Lamar about four years back, but I literally had no money. Not even a credit card with me. When I returned later, it had vanished.

    The Texas State University library has about six different versions in its stacks, most dating from the early 1900s. Two even have those famous illustrations. I'd actually planned on serializing it on RevSF, but left the editor's chair before doing so. John Kendrick Bangs actually used Munchausen in his Houseboat on the Styx which I did serialize, so I did publish the good Baron, only not as much as I wanted to.

    Someday I'm going to get around to writing "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen Across the 8th Dimension" like I've been threatening. Someday.

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  3. Jess Nevins8:13 AM

    Nononono! Get thee behind me, Satan! I have more than enough to do!

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