"An extremely entertaining and hilarious presentation of every film director's worst nightmare" - Woody Allen
A tantalizing documentary as hilarious as it is tragic, the critically acclaimed theatrical hit, Lost In La Mancha, tracks maverick filmmaker Terry Gilliam's madcap mission to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. As he struggles to complete his masterpiece, he and his cast and crew are beset by obstacles more catastrophic than anything Hollywood could have imagined.
With an all-star cast featuring Johnny Depp (Chocolat, Donnie Brasco) and one of cinema's most daring directors at the helm (Brazil, 12 Monkeys), Gilliam's larger-than-life project seems destined for success. And yet, Gilliam's fanciful dream turns into a filmmaker's nightmare as a limited budget, the deafening roar of F-16s flying overhead, and a hailstorm straight from the Bible all conspire to halt the film's production. Capturing this mayhem on camera, the filmmakers were granted unlimited, behind-scenes access to Gilliam's frantic but inspired creation. With Jeff Bridges as narrator (The Big Lebowski), they include surviving footage from the film and intimate interviews with an infectiously energetic Gilliam, his cast, and his crew to reveal what must be the only 'unmaking of' in the history of cinema.
(32 votes)
2.
Because Terry Gilliam is unquestionably one of the great film directors of our time, Lost in La Mancha, a documentary that captures the collapse of his attempt to make a movie out of Don Quixote, makes for fascinating but painful viewing. Dogged by a reputation for being wasteful and out-of-control, Gilliam had to fight to gather the funding for the project, but the assembled cast (including French actor Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp) and the fantastic design elements promised something glorious. Then jets flying overhead, flash floods, and the ill health of a lead actor completely sideswiped the already delicate production. The increasing stress and unhappiness of the filmmakers is gripping, but what truly tantalizes are the few bits of film that Gilliam managed to shoot--only two or three minutes of screen time, but enough to suggest a magnificent vision. --Bret Fetzer
(36 votes)
3.
"Making a film is essentially about two things: belief and momentum"
-- Terry Gilliam
Lost In La Mancha may be the first "un-making of" documentary. In a genre that exists to hype films before their release, Lost In La Mancha presents an unexpected twist: it is the story of a film that does not exist. Instead of a sanitised glimpse behind the scenes, Lost In La Mancha offers a unique, in-depth look at the harsher realities of filmmaking. With drama that ranges from personal conflicts to epic storms, this is a record of a film disintegrating.
In September 2000, when the cameras began rolling on Terry Gilliam's adaptation of Don Quixote, the production already had a chequered past including ten years of development, a series of producers and two previous attempts to start the film. Gilliam had achieved the difficult task of financing the $32 million budget entirely within Europe -- a feat that would provide him with freedom from the creative restrictions of Hollywood. The uphill journey was not, however, inconsistent with Gilliam's career: his more than fifteen year history of battling the Hollywood machine had cast him, like Quixote, as a visionary dreamer who rages against gigantic forces.
Joining the Madrid based production team eight weeks before the shoot, Lost In La Mancha directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe witness the successes as well as the failures. Problems are quick to emerge: the multilingual crew struggles to communicate detailed ideas; actors remain absent as they run over schedule on other projects; and everything from untrained horses to a sound stage -- that isn't sound-proof -- threatens the film. But through it all, there is the palpable, mounting excitement that Gilliam's ideas will finally come to fruition: the crew watch test footage of marauding giants; puppeteers rehearse a troop of life-size marionettes; Gilliam and Johnny Depp brainstorm over the script. By the time Jean Rochefort straps on his Quixote armour, success, though far off, seems almost possible.
Not long into production disaster strikes: flash floods destroy sets and damage camera equipment; the lead actor falls seriously ill; and on the sixth day production is brought to its knees. Uniquely, after Quixote's cameras have stopped rolling, the documentary continues to record events as they unfold: the crew waits, insurance men and bondsmen scramble with calculators and interpretations of "force majeure" and behind it Gilliam struggles to maintain both belief and momentum in his project.
In the best tradition of documentary filmmaking, Lost In La Mancha captures all the drama of this story through "fly-on-the-wall" vérité footage and on-the-spot interviews. Gilliam's plans for the non-existent film come alive in animations of his storyboards, narrated and voiced by co-writer Tony Grisoni and Gilliam himself. And with the camera tests of the leading actors and the rushes from the only six days of photography, Lost In La Mancha offers a tantalizing glimpse of the cinematic spectacle that might have been.
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