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Saturday, September 28, 2019

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (2018)

The answer is . . . writer/director Terry Gilliam.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Sad doings here. And after a two-and-a-half decade struggle to get something on screen. Instead, watch the true tragicomic backstory of Gilliam’s initial attempt in LOST IN LA MANCHA/’02. Below, a slightly revised repost:

‘This documentary on writer/director Terry Gilliam’s aborted Don Quixote pic proves that you really do make your own luck. For insurance purposes, a fiercely destructive hail storm and a star too ill to work ended things, but this show was never more than half a step ahead of disaster. Lack of funds, lack of planning, lack of technical expertise, lack of production coordination. The only thing not lacking: facile ideas from the ever fecund Mr. Gilliam. He’s loaded with ‘em; all bad. What little we see and hear is awful, particularly the proudly referenced central idea of having modern day Johnny Depp dropped back in time as a slim Sancho Panza to Jean Rochefort’s tottering Don Quixote. Even at his best, Gilliam always had trouble separating the wheat from the chaff, and this one's all chaff.’

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Critically & commercially, casualty rates on directors' Passion Projects as dire as The Battle of the Somme. Now pushing 80, will Gilliam ever direct again?

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