Sarah Polley is looking back at a formative experience from her childhood in an excerpt from her new collection of essays, Run Towards the Danger.
In the excerpt, published in The Guardian, the Canadian actress and director shares her recollections of starring in “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”, directed by Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, when she was just 8.
Polley writes of one scene in particular, running through a gauntlet of special effects explosives going off all around her, that left her sobbing and shaking in terror.
Then there was another scene, filmed in a water tank with a horse that became spooked by the pyrotechnics, which apparently led to an explosion detonating closer to the actors than it should have.
“I remember a hard, crushing sensation in my chest and being carried towards an ambulance as the crew looked on, alarmed. I remember that the doctors were kind, that my parents were told there was nothing wrong with me and that I went back to work the next day. The scenes with explosions continued, each one terrifying me more than the last,” Polley wrote.
She also shared written exchanges between herself and Gilliam when she was an adult. In one, she wrote, “I know i had some fun as well, but it’s pretty much obliterated by the sense of fear and exhaustion and of not being protected by the adults around me. And again, the adults who should have been there to protect me were my parents, not you. This of course took some time to arrive at. I admit i was pretty furious at you for a lot of years.”
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Sarah Polley To Pen Book Of Personal Essays ‘Run Towards The Danger’
In Gilliam’s response, he insisted she was never in any danger, asking if she could recall which scenes featured her and which featured her stunt double.
But then she referenced a tweet from “Baron Munchausen” co-star Eric Idle, who confirmed her remembrances when he wrote, “She was right. She was in danger. Many times. It was amazing we never lost anyone.”
She concluded the excerpt by condemning Gilliam for allowing such a chaotic atmosphere on his sets. “Though he was magical and brilliant and made images and stories that will live for a long, long time, it’s hard to calculate whether they were worth the price of the hell that so many went through over the years to help him make them,” she added.