Lost in La Mancha

Colour, 35mm
United Kingdom, USA, 2002, 89 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

“The making of...” – a film which documents the story of how a major feature was made – has become an almost indispensable part of a big movie’s marketing. The situation was no different when Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe began documenting Terry Gilliam’s latest project, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. But what they ended up recording was the disintegration of one of the most expensive film projects ever attempted relative to the European film industry. Terry Gilliam had already invested ten long years in preparations for adapting Cervantes’ famed novel, and he even managed to raise the requisite $32 million for the budget. But when the cameras started rolling in September 2000 it was merely the beginning of the end of his long-awaited dream. The young documentarists joined up with the film crew eight weeks prior to the start of shooting and from then on their camera lens witnessed chronic problems: language barriers between the Spanish and English elements of the crew, flighty actors and a storm which destroyed sets and equipment and shut everything down. And because the insurance company hemmed and hawed over what truly constituted an “Act of God,” Terry Gilliam eventually even lost his own script – when filming stopped the insurance company claimed it.

About the director

Keith Fulton (b. 1965, Boston) studied art at Haverford College and later film at Temple University. Louis Pepe (b. 1966, Philadelphia) first studied film at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but transferred to Temple University, graduating as a research student in film; while there he met Keith Fulton. The pair also documented the making of Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys under the title The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys (1996).