Customer Reviews

Lost in La Mancha

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After nearly ten years of obsession and persistence, maverick filmmaker Terry Gilliam finally gets the opportunity to realize his dream of making a movie about that other impossible dreamer, Don Quixote. This extraordinary documentary, produced by the team who gave us "The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of the Twelve Monkeys", covers six weeks of pre-production of this ambitious and already troubled work and the six days of actual production which destroyed it.

With an exclusive, almost uncomfortable closeness to Gilliam's project, we get a glimpse at other attempts to film the story (Orson Welles entertained the notion for nearly twenty years, achieving mere minutes of test footage); in-depth looks at storyboards with dialogue; screen tests of "giant" performers (as Terry quips "This is our trailer!" with his trademark Amadeus giggle); meticulous detail being applied to elaborate props and sets; auditions for character actors, and prep work with the film's would-be stars Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp, and the overall excitement of launching a project of epic (though underfunded) vision .....

Then the cameras roll. The crew are forced to film in an area adjacent to a military testing range, and the actors can barely hear their director or own spoken lines over the roaring jets. Misunderstandings between members of the multi-national crew result in a lack of preparedness on a ridiculously tight shooting schedule. A sudden storm literally washes valuable filming equipment down a muddy gully, and transforms the locale to one totally different from the one filming was begun in. Star Rochefort suffers multiple herniated discs, causing excruciating pain while on horseback, and has to leave the production for an indefinite time. A well-rehearsed horse becomes nervous in the presence of visiting financiers to the set, and can't perform.

Production is put on hold while Terry and company await word on their afflicted star, and the assistant director resigns. It becomes apparent that the production must be aborted, the only option being to assess the damages with insurance operatives, and clearly define a clause known as Forces Majeurs.

Lost in La Mancha is an excruciating and candid look at a genius filmmaker confronted with a failed project, and the grace and stubborn optimism with which he faces it. Like his hero Sam Lowry from "Brazil", the realization may indeed be one of hopelessness, but the dream never really dies. Terry Gilliam's "un-making of" record makes for a viewing experience that is simultaneously agonizing and inspiring, a must for filmmaking hopefuls who want to be truly prepared for what can happen.

Poor Terry Gilliam. He spends time, money, energy, and I'm sure eaten a lot of antacids, and it comes to naught. But I guess the worse part is not being able to fulfill his dream. For the uber-creative director of many marvelous films, including personal fave "Twelve Monkeys", you'd think he'd be able to whip up a nice little Don Quixote film. But without Hollywood's resources, the money, punctuality from the actors, and cooperation from the weather his film, and his dream, came crashing down. It's unfortunate, because it looked really, really good.

Unlike the glossy "making of" features on many films that are standard DVD extras these days, this documentary goes underneath the smiles and compliments and "best time of my life" statements and makes you wonder how films even get made. Although Gilliam's "Quixote" had more than it's fair share of problems to deal with, this documentary shows very well the perpetual purgatory of panic that can befall a production.

From the very beginning we see Gilliam struggling with props and sets, and his exhausted and frustrated crew wondering what exactly he wants while struggling to find resources that aren't as abundant in Spain as they are in London or Hollywood. We see Gilliam's right hand man, 1st Assistant Director Phil Patterson, and various producers trying to reel in actors, Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis, and Jean Rochefort, from all over Europe on schedule (while making the said schedule). Once shooting, a hail storm from nowhere strikes, fighter planes do test runs over the set, a studio is actually a warehouse with horrendous sound, Rochefort comes down with a prostate problem, and calamity after calamity hits the weary production. It's painful, and by the time Patterson informs Gilliam that his film is basically dead, it's the emotional, inevitable climax of a very taut and stress-packed narrative. It never was going to happen from the beginning, and we see almost every minute of it. The filmmakers of this film don't interfere with what's going on, and most of the input we get is a more honorable (and very visual) form of eavesdropping, with the exception of a few knowing glances here and there and short explanations from producers, Gilliam, and crew members. And Johnny Depp shows up totally at ease and laid back (with sympathetic worried glances and tension breaking wisecracks when needed), to the delight of this Depp fan.

I think this is one of the best films about the making of a film, a subject we really don't get to hear much about although it's remarkably fascinating. It's up there with DVD commentaries and the similarly apocalyptic "Project Greenlight" series in it's dive into the real machinery of a film. Where "Project Greenlight" gave us an idea of what a line producers do, behind the scenes relationships, and budgetary fidgeting, this gives you a good idea the enormity of the movie set and everything that could possibly go wrong. According to these, it's more akin to managing a company or running an army and trying to win every battle than creating the vision of a renegade artist.

In the end, Gilliam is Quixote, an irony not lost on the filmmakers, Gilliam, or viewers. And the project? It's that blasted windmill.

Lost in La Mancha is a documentary film focusing on Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to film "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote". For ten years director Terry Gilliam (Twelve Monkeys, Brazil, The Fisher King) had been trying to get a movie made of Don Quixote made. It is his dream project. Unfortunately for Gilliam, it is also a film he has never gotten to make. Lost in La Mancha covers the six weeks of preproduction and the six days of actual production on the film.

Lost in La Mancha is a document of what can go wrong on a film shoot. During this documentary, a crew member states that if someone would write this story, nobody would believe him. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

We see a brief bit about the history of trying to film Don Quixote including Orson Welles' twenty year obsession and ultimate failure to get the movie off the ground. This leads into Terry Gilliam and his ten year obsession with the same thing. We begin with the six weeks of preproduction and the principal actors do not have signed contracts and the ones that do are not quite living up to the requirements of the contract. Costume fittings and rehearsals are being missed and the studio for some of the filming is nothing more than a warehouse with no acoustics to speak of. Things just have the feel of slipping out of control. It is suggested that this is the way Gilliam works, but even Gilliam feels that things are slipping. He mentions the fiasco of Baron Munchausen. Gilliam states that things are similar. Munchausen had actors but no costumes or sets. Don Quixote has costumes and sets but no actors. The film is slipping away from him.

Finally the actors arrive (including Johnny Depp). There is minimal rehearsal but they are ready to begin. They are filming the first scenes nearby a NATO bombing range in Spain. Supposedly NATO only uses it an hour a day. Filming begins. NATO flies the fighter jets overhead so that sound is ruined for these scenes. An extra wasn't there for rehearsal and ruins another shot. A storm that was not mentioned on any weather report for three days rains down and floods the set. Not only is equipment partially damaged, it changes the color of the landscape. Gilliam selected that location because of how it looked. The color of the dirt has changed because of the rain and mudslides. The lead actor playing Quixote (a Frenchman) has a prostate infection and can't sit on a horse. He'll be gone a day, a week, another week. The film has come to standstill and there has only been six days of actual filming.

Finally, Gilliam's movie is done. Nothing more can be salvaged and it is taken as a loss. Lost in La Mancha is a fascinating look at the breakdown of a movie (and one that looked like it could be good, too). I didn't know that a documentary about how a movie didn't get made could be so interesting, but it was.

"Lost in La Mancha" chronicles the attempts of Director Terry Gilliam ("Brazil," Monty Python series and movies) to bring the story of Don Quixote to the screen. The movie, entitled "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," could have been a spectacular adaptation of what is considered one of the greatest books of all time. Other directors have struggled to adapt this difficult novel to the screen and hammer out a workable script; however, Gilliam seemed to have solved that problem by adding a new character from the present (played by Johnny Depp), who travels back in time and meets Don Quixote. Sounds like more fantastic mind-bending Gilliam fare, doesn't it?

This documentary was obviously intended as a behind-the-scenes short to be included on the DVD release. However, "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" was plagued with a series of mishaps and bad luck, including a sick leading actor (Jean Rocheport) and a storm (caught magnificently on tape) that destroyed the set and equipment. The movie ended up being abandoned, but we do get to see a few tantalizing minutes of film - and it looks like it could have been extraordinary. Although the film seems to have been cursed, many movies every year are announced but never get finished. Thus, "Lost in La Mancha" shows the lay public what actually happens when film-making goes awry.

The directors (Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe) know their topic well, as they've worked with Gilliam before; they made the behind-the-scenes documentary that appears on the DVD for "Twelve Monkeys." As such, they had a great deal of access to Gilliam, and he seems very comfortable discussing the catastrophes. The narration by Jeff Bridges is fair but a bit too sparse. Ultimately, the documentary is interesting but somewhat insubstantial and no-frills, which does impinge somewhat on the overall enjoyment of the movie. Make sure, though, that you watch it all the way through the end credits - the "coming soon" gag is hilarious.

This is a fascinating but ultimately heartbreaking disaster movie clothed as a documentary about a failed attempt by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python and BRAZIL fame to make the film THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE. It is also a highly informative glimpse into the way films get made, or, in this case, how they fail to get made.

To be honest, I have never been an especial fan of Terry Gilliam's films. I generally find them a bit too metaphysically bleak, a tad too desparing and pessimistic. I'm not sure what his personal philosophy is, but it has always struck me as something like, "First you're born, and then you die." The events leading up to the disaster of this film production would certainly have fortified this view. From the earliest moments of the documentary, it is clear that things are not going well. The various performers have never met each other. Sets are unfinished. Much of the design is incomplete. Even as filming begins several of the major performers are not even there. And from there, everything goes downhill, or in the case of a flash flood, downstream.

If one has heard anything about the documentary, one knows that the film failed to get made. But watching one disaster after another take place is like watching a film of two trains colliding head on. You know that only bad things are going to happen, but you can't take your eyes off the screen. What is stunning is the sheer variety of problems. On the first day of shooting, on a location shot in arid mountains, they discover that they are underneath the flight paths of military aircraft that continually pass overhead. They are then hit by a sudden storm that not only washes away much of the set but also changes the coloration of the landscape, making all of the footage they had previously shot unmatchable. Then the sun disappears behind a thick cloud cover. The clincher comes when they discover that Jean Rochefort, their Don Quixote, is physically unable to undergo the role, at first bothered by a prostate infection, but later diagnosed with a double hernia of a vetebrae.

As the cowriter of the script points out about Quixote, the more he suffers, the more we love him (Vladimir Nabokov declared DQ a sadistic novel because of the massive amount of physical pain inflicted on Quixote in the novel). Much the same applies to this film. The more things go wrong, the more you wish they would go right. But they don't, and by the end of the documentary the production is abandoned. A closing shot informs the viewer that Gilliam hopes to repurchase the script from the insurance company, and that he still hopes to make the film. But it seems unlikely.

The only positive note is that at least two of the principles in the film have managed to get back on track. Johnny Depp followed the experience with an Oscar nominated performance in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, while Terry Gilliam has completed THE BROTHERS GRIMM with an all star cast headed by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. These are good things to know, because while watching the film you wonder if it might have taken others down with it.

One peripherally nice thing about the film is that it provides some great visual panoramas of Spain. I'm currently reading the Edith Grossman translation of DON QUIXOTE, and I have been very grateful to have some idea of what that part of Spain looks like.

This documentary follows Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to make a film based on Cervantes' novel Don Quixote. The film follows the rising wave of disasters that culminate in the canceling of the film only 2 weeks into production.

I think this documentary should be watched by all aspiring filmmakers who can see how bad things can get on a film shoot. There was only one major problem with the film: lack of personal conflict. Everyone who has taken part in a bad shoot knows the amount of back-biting, cover-your-ass, and blame assignment behavior that occurs. Except for a few brief scenes, we don't really see any of this. Whether the cast and crew were on their best behavior while on camera or the documentary filmmakers decided to censor this in editing, these common scenes are noticeably absent.

One interesting opinion I reached while watching the film was that the 1st Assistant Director (1st AD) almost certainly should have been fired. For one, the location scouting was horrendous. Anyone who has ever done location scouting knows that for such a major exterior shot, daily noise pollution and environmental factors should have been checked first hand.

Additionally, when the extras didn't attend their weekend rehearsal (making impossible a shot on the assigned day), the 1st AD had no idea. It strikes the viewer that Terry Gilliam likes the 1st AD and stood by him because the AD was as disorganized as the director. It made me think of the classic line in Spinal Tap: "It's not your job to be as confused as Nigel, is it?"

All in all, an excellent behind the scenes look at an attempt to make a film with a large scope.

Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"

The Windmills of Reality Fight Back.....' -Terry Gilliam

In the theater there is an old superstition. Your not supposed to say Macbeth, it's bad luck and sure to destroy your production. I sometimes wished someone would have walked into CATS in 1984 and done that but hey you can't win them all. In film you probably shouldn't say Don Quixote. It could spell disaster as well, just ask Terry Gilliam.

If ever there was a story that needed to be filmed it's Cervantes classic novel of a man near the end of his life that reads romantic stories and sets out on an adventure of a life time. Terry Gilliam is very much like Quixote himself. Every film he touches is full of the same whimsy and adventure that Quixote was famous for. You'd think a project entitled THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE would be the perfect Gilliam film and I think it would have. That's what makes Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA so tragic.

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe probably have the greatest job in Hollywood. They follow Terry Gilliam around with a camera. Their earlier film THE HAMSTER FACTOR is an insightful look into Terry Gilliam's visionary science fiction film 12 Monkeys. SO this is probably why they were hired to follow Gilliam around again. To make a short documentary for a future DVD release of THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE. It's lucky they were there or this story would have never been told.

LA MANCHA begins very straightforward. Sure there are problems with the pre-production of QUIXOTE, but nothing that is hindering progress. We learn that the budget for the film is much less than it probably should be, but Gilliam as a director has been there before. So he's not worried. The actors begin to show up for costume fittings, schedules are finalized and everything is set to go.

Then all hell breaks loose.

LOST IN LA MANCHA is a film scholar's dream. Fulton and Pepe have unlimited access to the crew in this movie and each person becomes a character. Not only that, but they also they get mostly unfettered access to Gilliam. I wonder if any other major director would put himself out on a line like this. Gilliam has guts,

There is so much to love in LAMANCHA; I especially loved of the completed footage that was shot for the movie. Just seconds of the film are shown and they are breath taking. It makes me sad to think I will never get to see this movie. But alas such is life.

The documentary does run about 15 minutes longer than it has to. I found some moments dragged on much further than they needed to. But the film is so captivating I can forgive it this one small fault.

I just realized how hard it is to try to review a documentary film like this. There are so many great little moments; Gilliam's eyes sparkling as he gets that first shot. His anger at NATO planes flying over head. His little laugh that I'm not quite sure was genuine after Johnny Depp (On of his actors) makes a silly observation about his character. It's so hard to paint a picture of just how interesting this movie is.

There have been many films made that have never been released. There have been many films that started to get made, but that were forced to shut done for one reason or another. However, until LOST IN LA MANCHA there had never been a film about the unmaking and unraveling of a movie.

LOST IN LA MANCHA started out as being a documentary about the making of Terry Gilliam's THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE. Gilliam had been planning a Quixote movie for over a decade and after gaining backing from solely European investors, he finally had secured the funds he needed to make his dream picture. The crew of LOST IN LA MANCHA had planned to make a documentary illustrating the difficulties that occur during the pre-production of a movie. However, six days into the actual production of the THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE, the film was forced to shut down and this version of Gilliam's dream came to an end.

The result is a spellbounding documentary that is humorous, yet tragic. Reality really can be much more fascinating than fiction. The filmmakers capture the de-evolution of the film, from the excitement of Gilliam in the early days of pre-production to the confrontations between himself and various crew members to the first day of shooting when fighter jets fly overhead and drop bombs just miles away to an almost epic storm full of rain and hail that washes away an entire set and dramatically changes the very physical appearance of the filmming location to the day that the lead actor is forced to leave the set because of major health problems. Viewers know from the beginning what is going to happen, but they want to see Gilliam's film made despite the circumstances.

LOST IN LA MANCHA is a delightful movie. It's a film that offers a glimpse into the world of movie-making that often happens, but is rarely experienced by those outside of the business.

The DVD version of LOST IN LA MANCHA includes a 2nd disc full of extras. There are interviews with the cast and crew, interviews with Gilliam and Johnny Depp, an interview by Salman Rushdie with Gilliam, and a special IFC interview with Gilliam. Some of this extra material repeats itself, but the stories are so good they are still enjoyable to listen to again and again.

to enable him to complete his movie and i don't even like the story of Don Quixote that much! But what very little of the Gilliam's Don Quixote we are able to see of the movie is enough to left one hungry for more (which makes La Mancha worth buying all by itself, really, as even a taste is better than none)... It IS a shame that the movie can not be completed not because it is heatbreaking (which it is) but because proves Gilliam he IS a real visionary and his movie is a real masterpiece and it is everybody's loss that the movie is not completed...

Lost in LA mancha is known for showing the sad and ugly side of movie business but actually it also still manages to show the magic and glamour of it in the dedication and spirit the crew show through out. The project is clearly Gillam's baby, and the way he visions and plans every aspect of it is breathtaking... His chuckle at the "high" points of the production process (which actually was stresful thorough-out) is suprisingly up-lifting and shows an unyielding fighting spirit that throughly enjoys and savours what he is doing no matter what. And the fact that, even at such horrible conditions and such short time the crew and actors were able to work their magic immediately says a lot about their proffessionalism and talent...

Sure La Mancha documents the story of a failure, but it does actually leave the viewer with the feeling that this was not the end but the beginning and somehow, someday Gilliam's Don Quixote will make a legendary come-back... Given he actually managed to bought his script yet, maybe even sooner than later!

But no matter what the faith of Don Quiote is, one thing is certain: La mancha is a must-see for anyone who would call themselves a fan of movies as it is the most sincere, insightful and "real" look into the making of a movie...

A documentary about the making of a film that never got past the shooting of a couple of scenes doesn't seem to promise much, but the story of what was to turn out to be a real-life "disaster movie" is riveting stuff.

Terry Gilliam's obsession with "Don Quixote" is infectious and his enthusiasm for the task he faces coupled with glimpses of what it could have been really make you wish that things had turned out better. The insights into how a film is planned and the hugely complex logistics of a "live shoot" are fascinating, while the build-up to the almost inevitable collapse of the project, compounded by unbelievably bad weather and the illness of the central actor, coupled with the impacts of it all on those involved, is about as far removed from the typical self-congratulatory "making of the movie" add-on as you can get. Finally, the whole sorry affair - in particular Gilliam's persistent & unbridled optimism in the face of virtually insurmountable odds as he pursues the chance to realise a long-standing dream - becomes a quite bizarre, tragi-comic parallel to "Don Quixote" itself.

You may only watch this once, and renting is therefore probably the best option, but you won't be disappointed.