King Ludwig II. I visited his castle in Bavaria recently. Picture this: He had a wild idea - to build a number of castles, surrounding his kingdom, fairytale castles at that, in a time (1800’s) when castles we going out of fashion. In addition, he did this all in tribute to Wagner’s operas. Each castle would be designed in one way or another with Wagner in mind. One of them even went so far as to put a Grotto where the operas could be performed for the King.

Everyone believed he was mad.

In many ways it is no different from a producer. Spending an insane amount of money trying to create fiction out of reality, and in some cases succeeding. The only difference here is that Ludwig was killed under mysterious circumstances, while your average producer is usually just killed at the box office.

So was he really mad, this “Mad King Ludwig?” Well, he was creative. And ambitious. And that in itself is its own form of madness.

But hey, look what he created!