Lost In La Mancha
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Lost in La Mancha is a documentary movie about Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a movie adaptation of the novel Don Quixote. Lost in La Mancha presents Gilliam's quest to make this movie as eerily similar to Quixote's quest to become a hero.
Terry Gilliam was very excited to make this movie, since Don Quixote emblemized many of the themes that run through his own work (such as the individual v. society, the concept of sanity, etc.). The entire movie would have been filmed in Spain and throughout Europe. Jean Rochefort was picked to play Don Quixote, for which he spent seven months learning English and preparing. Sancho was to be played by Johnny Depp, for whom the role was changed from a short fat man to a marketing executive thrown back through time. Vanessa Paradis would have been his love interest.
The film was on a very delicate schedule and budget, which completely unraveled once production began. The very first day of shooting featured a flash flood, hail, and an injury to a principal actor, Rochefort. Within a week Gilliam learned that Rochefort had a herniated disc and would be unable to continue filming. This ended production completely, and resulted in a record $15 million insurance claim. The insurance company currently owns the script to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
The Lost in La Mancha filmmakers, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, previously made a documentary about Gilliam's film Twelve Monkeys, titled The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys, and were strongly supported by Gilliam throughout their filming.
External links
- http://www.smart.co.uk/lostinlamancha/lm_index.htm
- Internet Movie Database (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0308514/)