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PHOTO COURTESY OF IFC FILMS
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Terry Gilliam, a member of Monty Python and famed director of "12 Monkeys" and "Brazil," sees every aspect of his movie fall apart in the documentary,"Lost in La Mancha."
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By Mark Betancourt
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday April 3, 2003
There's something exhilarating about the first day of production on the set of "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote." The costumes are ready, the set pieces built. The cast and crew are on site, ready to perform. Director Terry Gilliam arrives on the scene and beams with excitement and pride, ready to put years of painstaking planning behind him, and believing with all his heart that things are going to be great from here on in. Poor bastard.
What Gilliam doesn't know, and what documentary film makers Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe have cashed in on, is that "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" is going to be one of the most disastrous productions of all time.
"Lost in La Mancha" is the heartbreaking story of how nature, an insurance company, and an uncanny run of bad luck conspire to utterly ruin Gilliam's pet project, a "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" spin on the story of Don Quixote.
The film begins with a little background on Gilliam, ex-Monty Python member and director of "Brazil," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "The Fisher King" among an equally eclectic host of others. While his imagination is boldly unique (he's responsible for those wacky clip-art-type cartoons in Monty Python), Gilliam is known for his inability to conjure up pragmatic shooting ideas.
One prime example from the film is when he's standing above this tiny model of a windmill, turning his head upside down and gurgling "oh, it'd be great if we could shoot it from this angle" while the director of photography and set designer exchange disdainfully apprehensive glances.
Despite Gilliam's tall production orders, the crew prepares to shoot with a hopeful optimism. They're used to relying on their skills and intuition to get them through anything.
Then the Spanish fighter jets, monsoon floods, clueless extras, disinterested horses and prostate problems arrive.
Needless to say, it keeps getting worse. Every day the crew encounters some new problem, often "acts of God" that seem tailor-made for their destruction; it becomes absurd, funny and heartbreaking at the same time.
All of this might serve to discourage aspiring filmmakers in the audience, who have enough to worry about just trying to get into the business. Then again, young auteur should take comfort in knowing that, by measure of sheer statistics, chances are their films will never go half as wrong.
At times "Lost in La Mancha" seems a little too much like the making-of documentary they planned to put on the DVD edition of "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote." In fact, that's probably how this film started out. How could they have known how bad it would get? In any case, you have to give Fulton and Pepe credit for salvaging something from the wreckage.
Still, there isn't much to this film but the cold hard truth of Gilliam's demise. It's worth a watch though, just so you can walk out at the end and say, "Well shoot, I'm glad I'm not that guy."
