The Adventures of Baron Munchausen got fired, and all these deals were oral deals. ... Columbia's new CEO, Dawn Steel, said 'Whatever David Puttnam "[has]" said before doesn't interest me'". Regarding the new regime's apparent animosity towards all of Puttnam's projects and "Munchausen", Gilliam added in the same documentary, "I was trying very hard to convince Dawn Steel that this was not a David Puttnam movie, it was a Terry Gilliam movie." Similarly Kent Houston, head of Peerless Camera doing the film's special effects said in "Madness and Misadventures" that they were promised a bonus if they would finish the effects in time, but when
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen 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. 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