Film Details:
Directed by
Keith Fulton (The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys)
Louis Pepe (Moments of Doubt, The Hamster Factor)
Written by
Keith Fulton (The Hamster Factor )
Louis Pepe (The Hamster Factor)
Starring
Terry Gilliam (Monty Python's own pet American)
Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
Narration by Jeff Bridges (The Fisher King)
Review: by Melissa (e-mail your faithful reviewer)
I was in Spain in the spring of 2000, working on an archaeological dig near Madrid. I lived in Toledo for a month. You know, Don Quixote country.
I remember clearly one particular day, when I was looking out over the arid plains and fields of olive trees. I said to myself, "Someone needs to make a Don Quixote movie, and Terry Gilliam needs to direct it."
Little did I know that Gilliam himself was trying to direct just that story, only about hundred miles north of where I was living and working. I found out about that once I was already home in the United States. I kicked myself. Hard.
It think I'll kick myself again. Ouch.
Lost in La Mancha is a new twist in the world of "making of" documentaries. This is a documentary about the unmaking of a film... namely, the disastrous production of Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
For those of you who haven't been following Disaster Magnet Terry Gilliam's directorial career of late, here's a summary. For over ten years, he worked on writing and securing private funding for his version of Cervantes' Don Quixote. In the year 2000, he started filming in Spain, with Johnny Depp and veteran French actor Jean Rochefort on board. Then disaster after disaster struck the set: the 70-year-old lead fell ill, a flash flood washed away much of the equipment and one of the critical locations, army aircraft delayed critical shoots, and everything just fell apart. In fact, things went so badly that the production was scrapped after only six days.
Thus, we get an excellent film version of Filmmaking 801: Advanced How to Not Make a Movie
Sample curriculum taught to budding filmmakers:
- Don't film on a flood plain
- Don't invest so much in any of your leads that they are completely unable to be replaced
- Get a good insurance company
- Don't film on a schedule that leaves absolutely no room for error
- Terry Gilliam is a can make dreams come to life on the big screen, but he is also probably cursed.
It is hard to say whether there has ever been such a grand demonstration of Murphy's Law caught on film before. Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe were on the set, probably planning to make this footage into a DVD special after The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was completed. Happily, they didn't scrap their work along with the film that it was about -- instead, they assembled it into a feature-length documentary that details the hardships, unforeseen mishaps, and legal nightmares that swirl around the making of a major film.
The movie is, at turns, witty, heartbreaking, funny, bitter, and infuriating. You watch as each disaster tops the next. You feel the inevitable pull towards the destruction of Gilliam's dream. You laugh in spite of yourself when someone on the production makes a remark that seems oddly precognizant of things to come. Usually, knowing the end of a story ruins a bit of it's draw; here, knowing the ending lends tremendous drama to the antics of these real people struggling against the film's fate.
It's hard not to get angry and sad along with this movie. Along with the footage that Fulton and Pepe shot, they have also archived the only existing footage of Gilliam's six days of shooting. It's heartbreaking -- these few yards of film are beautiful, and you can't help but dream about what The Man Who Killed Don Quixote would have been like. It looks like it would have been Gilliam's return to his gloriously snarky and layered Time Bandits style, only tempered with the gravity that he learned from making Twelve Monkeys. It's heartbreaking to see this stuff scrapped, I tell you.
Besides being lucky enough to get this stuff on film, Fulton and Pepe are also quite talented at presenting their work. As they tell the story of the ill-fated movie production, they enlist in the aid of animators to help flesh out the backstory behind the movie. It seems like an odd choice until you see the film. Each animated segment either animates one of Gilliam's own storyboards, or it is done in his unique Monty Python's Flying Circus cutout-and-stop-motion style. The entire documentary is a love letter to Gilliam and his work, even though this particular project failed so spectacularly.
The documentary does have its problems. You get the sense that there wasn't quite enough footage or subject matter to fill all the space they needed, so the film drags a bit in places that could have been edited down to better effect. Plus, not enough of "the human effect" was really explored; you get a sense that there were more personal battles going on as well, but you mostly just wind up looking at the tales of insurance and legal issues.
However, I'm willing to forgive that, since I love the fact that this movie exists at all. Every once in a while, a documentary appears in which life and art parallel each other, and this is one of those films. At the end, you are left rooting for Gilliam. You hope that Gilliam keeps tilting at those windmills, and that someday we might see his vision of Don Quixote on screen.
