Lost in La Mancha

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Lost in La Mancha
Lost in La Mancha - poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed byKeith Fulton
Louis Pepe
Written byKeith Fulton
Louis Pepe
Produced byLucy Darwin
Starring Terry Gilliam
Johnny Depp
Jean Rochefort
Narrated by Jeff Bridges
Music by Miriam Cutler
Distributed by IFC Films
Release date
30 August 2002
Running time
93 minutes
Language English/French

Lost in La Mancha is a 2002 documentary film about Terry Gilliam's first attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote , a film adaptation of the 1605/1615 novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. The documentary was shot in 2000 during pre-production and filming and it was intended as a "making-of" documentary for the film. However, Gilliam's failure to complete his film resulted in the documentary filmmakers retitling their work as Lost in la Mancha and releasing it independently.

Contents

Written and directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, Lost in La Mancha presents Gilliam's effort to make Don Quixote as a parallel to Quixote's quest to become a hero. It co-stars Johnny Depp, Jean Rochefort, and Vanessa Paradis, who were cast as stars for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. It is narrated by Jeff Bridges.

Gilliam ultimately succeeded in making The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which was released in 2018. Fulton and Pepe have made a follow-up documentary, titled He Dreams of Giants , which covers Gilliam's entire scope of work on the Quixote project.

Background

Finding the source material written by Miguel de Cervantes too vast, Gilliam and his co-writer decided to create their own version of the Quixote story. They made a major change inspired by Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court . They planned to have the character of Sancho Panza appear only early in the film. He was to be replaced by character Toby Grisoni, a 21st-century marketing executive thrown back through time, whom Don Quixote mistakes for Panza.

Gilliam was excited about the film, as he felt that the story of Don Quixote embodies many of his own themes (such as the individual versus society, the concept of sanity, etc.). He intended to film it entirely in Spain and other nations in Europe. Jean Rochefort was cast to play Don Quixote, in preparation for which he spent seven months learning English. Toby was to be played by Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis would have been his love interest.

Fulton and Pepe had previously filmed a making-of documentary about Giliam's earlier film 12 Monkeys .

Production

Lost in La Mancha explores how the film's production issues soon overran schedule and budget. Gilliam tells his crew not to be afraid to tell him that something is too complicated or expensive to be done, because he needs to be restrained sometimes. In another interview, he says he wants his films to be seen and enjoyed by the widest audience possible. But natural forces were more important than his excesses.

On the first day of shooting, the crew discovered that their outdoor filming location, in the area known as Bardenas Reales, was plagued by nearly constant noise from a nearby NATO aircraft target practice area. Gilliam decided to continue shooting footage, knowing that he could replace the audio in post-production. But during the second day of shooting, hail and a flash flood damaged equipment. In addition, it permanently changed the appearance of the location, where some shots had not yet been completed. The entire sequence would have to be reshot.

More significantly, days later it became apparent that Rochefort was injured. Within a week Gilliam learned that Rochefort had a herniated disc [1] and would be unable to continue filming. This ended production completely, resulting in a record $15 million insurance claim. The insurance company owned the rights to the screenplay for several years, until they were transferred back to Gilliam. He restarted production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in 2008. [2]

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe had previously made a documentary about the making of Gilliam's film 12 Monkeys titled The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys. They were strongly supported by Gilliam throughout their filming on the Don Quixote project. Gilliam reportedly often has people documenting the making of films so that should something go wrong, he has a record of the events from his perspective.[ citation needed ]

Reception

Released in 2002, Lost in La Mancha received positive reception from critics. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of critics have given Lost in La Mancha a positive review based on 103 reviews, with an average rating of 7.60/10. It also holds a "Top Critics" score of 89%. The website's critical consensus is "A remarkable behind-the-scenes look at a movie that wasn't, Lost in La Mancha is an incisive, entertaining document of the difficulties inherent in the moviemaking process." [3] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 35 critics. [4]

Critic Leonard Maltin has described Lost in La Mancha as one of the best films about the process of filmmaking. [5]

It was nominated for various awards, including a BAFTA Award and a Satellite Award for Best Documentary Film. It won a Satellite Award for Best Documentary DVD.

Sequel

In May 2018, a few days before the premiere of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote , Fulton and Pepe said they would release a follow-up documentary, to be titled He Dreams of Giants . [6] It would cover the entire history of the film's making, with particular focus on what happened after the events depicted in Lost in La Mancha. [7]

Pepe said that the film would be "more introspective" than Lost in La Mancha, saying,

"This is more a film about an internal struggle in an artist’s mind. What is it like for an artist to be standing on the brink of actually finishing this project finally? [...] Even on the set we would say the conflicts raging around Terry right now of making the movie are not nearly as interesting as what’s going on inside his head." [8]

The film premiered at DOC NYC on November 10, 2019. The filmmakers have not said whether it will be a bonus feature on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote's home media release, or will be released independently, as was Lost in La Mancha. [9]

Related Research Articles

<i>Don Quixote</i> Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. Considered a founding work of Western literature, it is often labelled as the first modern novel and one of the greatest works ever written. Don Quixote is also one of the most-translated books in the world and one of the best-selling novels of all time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terry Gilliam</span> British filmmaker, comedian and actor

Terrence Vance Gilliam is an American–born British filmmaker, comedian, collage animator and actor. He gained stardom as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe alongside John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman. Together they collaborated on the sketch series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974) and the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life (1983). In 1988, they received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. In 2009, Gilliam received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement.

<i>Man of La Mancha</i> Musical

Man of La Mancha is a 1965 musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, and lyrics by Joe Darion. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes and his 17th-century novel Don Quixote. It tells the story of the "mad" knight Don Quixote as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. The work is not and does not pretend to be a faithful rendition of either Cervantes' life or Don Quixote. Wasserman complained repeatedly about people taking the work as a musical version of Don Quixote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">La Mancha</span> Natural and historical region in Spain

La Mancha is a natural and historical region in the Spanish provinces of Albacete, Cuenca, Ciudad Real, and Toledo. It is an arid but fertile plateau that stretches from the mountains of Toledo to the western spurs of the Cuenca hills, bordered to the south by the Sierra Morena and to the north by Alcarria. The La Mancha historical comarca constitutes the southern portion of Castilla-La Mancha autonomous community and makes up most of the present-day administrative region.

<i>Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse</i> 1991 American documentary film

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a 1991 American documentary film about the production of Apocalypse Now, a 1979 Vietnam War epic directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sancho Panza</span> Character in Don Quixote

Sancho Panza is a fictional character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos, that are a combination of broad humour, ironic Spanish proverbs, and earthy wit. "Panza" in Spanish means "belly".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda</span> Authors pseudonym

Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda is the pseudonym of a man who wrote a sequel to Cervantes' Don Quixote, before Cervantes finished and published his own second volume.

<i>The Man Who Killed Don Quixote</i> 2018 film by Terry Gilliam

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a 2018 adventure-comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Tony Grisoni, loosely based on the 1605/1615 novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Gilliam tried to make the film many times over 29 years, which made it an infamous example of development hell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cide Hamete Benengeli</span> Fictional character

Cide Hamete Benengeli is a fictional Arab Muslim historian created by Miguel de Cervantes in his novel Don Quixote, who Cervantes says is the true author of most of the work. This is a skilful metafictional literary pirouette that seems to give more credibility to the text, making the reader believe that Don Quixote was a real person and the story is decades old. However, it is obvious to the reader that such a thing is impossible, and that the pretense of Cide Hamete's work is meant as a joke.

I, Don Quixote is a non-musical play written for television and directed by Karl Genus. It was broadcast in season 3 of the CBS anthology series DuPont Show of the Month on the evening of November 9, 1959. Written by Dale Wasserman, the play was converted by him ca. 1964 into the libretto for the stage musical Man of La Mancha, with songs by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion. After a tryout at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, Man of La Mancha opened in New York on November 22, 1965, at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre.

<i>Man of La Mancha</i> (film) 1972 film by Arthur Hiller

Man of La Mancha is a 1972 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman, with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion. The musical was suggested by the classic novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, but more directly based on Wasserman's 1959 non-musical television play I, Don Quixote, which combines a semi-fictional episode from the life of Cervantes with scenes from his novel.

Tony Grisoni is a British screenwriter. He lives in London. His first feature film, Queen of Hearts, directed by Jon Amiel, won the Grand Prix at the 1990 Festival du Film de Paris.

Don Quixote (1933) is a British-French film adaptation of the classic Miguel de Cervantes novel, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, starring the famous operatic bass Feodor Chaliapin. Although the film stars Chaliapin, it is not an opera. However, he does sing four songs in it. It is the first sound film version of the Spanish classic. The supporting cast in the English version includes George Robey, René Donnio, Miles Mander, Lydia Sherwood, Renée Valliers, and Emily Fitzroy. The film was made in three versions—French, English, and German—with Chaliapin starring in all three versions.

<i>Don Quixote</i> (1947 film) 1947 Spanish film by Rafael Gil

Don Quixote or Don Quixote de la Mancha is the first sound film version in Spanish of the great classic novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It was directed and adapted by Rafael Gil and released in 1947. A huge undertaking for Spanish cinema in its day, it was the longest film version of the novel up to that time, and very likely the most faithful, reverently following the book in its dialogue and order of episodes, unlike G.W. Pabst's 1933 version and the later Russian film version, which scrambled up the order of the adventures as many film versions do. Characters such as Cardenio, Dorotea, and Don Fernando, which are usually omitted because their respective subplots have little to do with the main body of the novel, were kept in this film.

Don Quixote is an unfinished film project written, co-produced and directed by Orson Welles. Principal photography took place between 1957 and 1969. Test footage was filmed as early as 1955, second-unit photography was done as late as 1972, and Welles was working on the film intermittently until his death in 1985. The film was eventually edited by Jesús Franco and was released in 1992, to mixed reviews.

<i>Don Quixote</i> (Picasso) 1955 sketch by Pablo Picasso

Don Quixote is a 1955 sketch by Pablo Picasso of the Spanish literary hero and his sidekick, Sancho Panza. It was featured on the August 18–24 issue of the French weekly journal Les Lettres Françaises in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the first part, published in 1605, of the Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote. Made on August 10, 1955, the drawing Don Quixote was in a very different style than Picasso’s earlier Blue, Rose, and Cubist periods.

<i>Donkey Xote</i> 2007 film by José Pozo

Donkey Xote is a 2007 3D computer-animated children's film produced by Lumiq Studios. A co-production between Spain and Italy, the film is directed by José Pozo and written by Angel Pariente, based on the Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote, and features the voices of Andreu Buenafuente, David Fernández, Sonia Ferrer and José Luis Gil. The film has gained notoriety as a mockbuster as the lead character Rucio bears an intentional resemblance to Donkey from the Shrek film series, along with the poster having the tagline "From the producers who saw Shrek".

<i>He Dreams of Giants</i> 2019 documentary by Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe

He Dreams of Giants is a 2019 follow-up documentary film to 2002's Lost in La Mancha. The film follows director Terry Gilliam's making of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a long-gestating project that had suffered multiple delays and cast changes, which was finally released in 2018.

References

  1. Review: Lost in La Mancha, RTE.ie, 15 August 2002
  2. Alica-Azania Jarvis (4 August 2008). "Opinion: Pandora: Don Quixote rides again, says delighted Gilliam". The Independent . Archived from the original on 19 August 2008. Retrieved 4 August 2008.
  3. "Lost in La Mancha (2003)". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved 1 December 2023.
  4. "Lost in La Mancha Reviews". Metacritic . CBS Interactive . Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  5. "Leonard Answers More of Your Questions" on YouTube
  6. "Terry Gilliam's Quixotic Journey Chronicled in New Film From 'Lost in La Mancha' Team (EXCLUSIVE)". 10 May 2018. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  7. "The Making of Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote Is Getting Another Documentary". 11 May 2018. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  8. "'Lost in La Mancha' Sequel to Capture Terry Gilliam's Most Recent Struggles Making 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote'". 11 May 2018. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  9. "Terry Gilliam et Don Quichotte : Un nouveau documentaire par l'équipe de Lost in la Mancha" (in French). 15 May 2018. Retrieved 15 May 2018.

Further reading

Dominguez, Julia. "Luces, cámara… inacción en Lost in La Mancha: la realidad de una ficción que nunca existió." Cervantes 27.2 (2007): 23-42