Stars: Terry Gilliam, Jean Rochefort, Johnny Depp

Director: Keith Fulton

Summary: The story of the film project 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote' that was forced to shut down just days after filming started, Features surviving footage and interviews with the cast and crew.

Directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, LOST IN LA MANCHA documents Terry Gilliam's disaster-prone attempt to make THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE, a film largely based on the classic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. The movie first encounters difficulties in its preproduction stage, starting with an uncomfortably small European-funded budget. Then Gilliam must wait for the lead actors, Johnny Depp and French actor Jean Rochefort, to show up on location in Spain. When Depp and Rochefort finally arrive, shooting commences, but within the first few days a torrential rainstorm hits the set, washing away much of the equipment and significantly altering the dry desert landscape. And to make matters much worse, Rochefort, who plays the central role of Don Quixote, falls ill and returns to Paris for medical treatment. As the days of the Quixote-less production go by, tensions among the crew members increase and Gilliam faces the frustratingly real prospect of scrapping the film.
LOST IN LA MANCHA provides a fascinating look into both the mind and the method of maverick director Terry Gilliam. No stranger to film production problems (most notably with BRAZIL and THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN), Gilliam sets out to make DON QUIXOTE with imagination and determination that echoes the noble delusions of its title character. As in the story, however, fantasy finds a fierce opponent in the form of reality, and Gilliam and his crew must decide what to do with a production that seemed jinxed from the start. The fly-on-the-wall footage, candidly captured by Fulton and Pepe, makes for an intriguing film within a film that combines behind-the-scenes frustration and heartbreak with genuinely funny moments.

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Lost in La Manchais not so much a "making of", more an "unmaking of" documentary which follows director Terry Gilliam through eight weeks of pre-production, six days of filming and finally the aftermath as his long planned feature The Man Who Killed Don Quixotefalls apart. Documentarians Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe--the team who produced the excellent feature-length The Hamster Factorabout Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys--reveal a tragi-comedy about the director's struggle to bring to life another of his wondrous stories of madness and sanity, fantasy and reality. Unfortunately Gilliam's take on Spanish classic Don Quixoteis mirrored all too closely by reality, as everything goes wrong, from noise-ridden locations to flash-flooding to a seriously ill star, Jean Rochefort. Gilliam goes from boyish enthusiasm to bad tempered frustration to near despair, the victim of circumstances beyond his control which turn a cherished dream into a farcical nightmare. Meanwhile, we get glimpses of what could have been and are left hoping that someday, somehow, Gilliam will realise his remarkable vision. --Gary S Dalkin

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Interviews With Terry Gilliam Johnny Depp Keith Fulton And Louis Pepe, Deleted Scenes, 2 Alternate Openings, Video Portraits, Costume Design And Story Boards From The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Year:	2002
Release Date:	February 24, 2003
Runtime:	93 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	O P T D 0022
Keywords:	Lost, General, Mancha, La, Documentaries, Biographies
Genre:	Documentaries & Biographies