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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of a movie from the 1960s, The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, I was watching recently.

I couldn't help but notice how the wild artistic risks taken in the movie would likely never happen today unless the artists paid out of pocket for both the production and distribution

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1h7ozW9VQ

Putting money behind stuff like this is dead.

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Actually Munchausen was remade by Terry Gilliam in 1988. The same Gilliam in 2009 made The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which was also pretty wild.

> the wild artistic risks taken in the movie would likely never happen today

Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan would disagree. And there are plenty of brave films out there, just not necessarily from big Hollywood studios.

Not really a remake, though -- both were based on the 18th century German book.

You really see the two versions comparable in execution?

Here it is in full if you'd like to compare https://archive.org/details/the-fabulous-baron-munchausen

Also Monty Python. I think it never would be possible today to release such movies to theaters.

Funny that you mention Monty Python, they almost had to cancel the production of The Life of Brian since their original financier was apprehensive about the the film's content making fun of religion.

George Harrison of Beatles fame ended up funding the movie, I believe almost entirely out of his own pocket. This was back in the 70s.

The same was true for the holy grail too. Other financiers included (iirc) led zeppelin and other British rock greats.

The top marginal rate of income tax was ~90% and this heavily encouraged investments like this. It meant that there was more space for creative risk taking as well as more commercial/industrial capital investment.

The Beatles funded some very weird stuff. Ringo Starr in The Magic Christian is probably the best example, an extremely on-the-nose set of satirical sketches.

Recently they were doing a Life of Brian play, where they wanted to cut out a certain scene.

There was no one suggesting that the scene but cut, it was a clickbait-like appeal to the reactionary press to get some extra awareness of the project out there. And it worked.

It wasn't “someone has suggested/demanded it be removed, and we have refused” but “if someone did suggest/demand it we wouldn't”.

Monty Python was only ever possible with something like the BBC. There's no way a commercial network would have taken a risk with it, and even more so in the USA. Its popularity in the States began underground, with PBS affiliates getting the ball rolling in the 1970s. There's no way that major networks would have run the show, even in a late-night slot.

Back then, the short late-night voiceover, "Portions of the following program may be unsuitable for younger or more sensitive viewers," was the hallmark of Quality TV.

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