The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship "Long Ago and Far Away". Rabbit Ears Productions also produced an audiotape version, featuring Robin Williams, which was released on Showtime in 1991. It aired as part of Rabbit Ears' "We All Have Tales" series. In addition, Terry Gilliam's 1988 film "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" contains several elements inspired by this story, particularly the opening sequence set at the court of the Grand Turk. A couple had three sons, and the youngest was a fool. One day, the Tsar declared that whoever made him a ship that could sail through the air would marry his daughter. The older two
Baron Munchausen Baron stories as one of the most important influences on the American tall tale tradition. In a 2012 study of the Baron, the literary scholar Sarah Tindal Kareem noted that "Munchausen embodies, in his deadpan presentation of absurdities, the novelty of fictionality [and] the sophistication of aesthetic illusion", adding that the additions to Raspe's text made by Kearsley and others tend to mask these ironic literary qualities by emphasizing that the Baron is lying. By the beginning of the 19th century, Kearsley's phenomenally popular version of Raspe's book had spread to abridged chapbook editions for young readers, who soon became