![Jonathan Pryce, left, and Adam Driver in The Man Who KIlled Don Quixote. Photo: Diego Lopez Calvin/Umbrella. Jonathan Pryce, left, and Adam Driver in The Man Who KIlled Don Quixote. Photo: Diego Lopez Calvin/Umbrella.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/fdcx/doc74sb5u0iakiw3tpjfq.jpg/r0_392_4834_3234_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
To describe a Terry Gilliam film as having a troubled production seems almost redundant. Think of the hassles the filmmaker had trying to get his cut of Brazil released, or how Heath Ledger's death almost derailed The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. And that's just two of them.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
But The Man Who Killed Don Quixote tops them all.
Taking on any kind of adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote seems, well, quixotic. Most of the films adapted from or inspired by the novel seem to languish in obscurity. And making them hasn't always been easy.
The 1972 film version of the Quixote-derived hit musical Man of La Mancha had a difficult gestation and flopped. Orson Welles had earlier attempted to film Don Quixote: despite 12 years of intermittent shooting it wasn't finished when he died in 1985.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has, finally, been completed after three decades. Gilliam suffered many setbacks: you can only admire the man's perseverance.That he is now 78 only adds to Gilliam's achievement. After a decade of preparation - with a story inspired by the novel, rather than based directly on it - between other projects, Gilliam finally secured funding. He cast Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp as the leads and filming began in 2000. But problems mounted: aeroplane noise ruined takes; storms damaged sets ; and Rochefort bowed out with a double herniated disc.
The film was abandoned and the troubles were chronicled in the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha.
But Gilliam kept at it and various actors were considered for the leads including Ewan McGregor, Robert Duvall and John Hurt. In 2015, Gilliam was about to start filming with Adam Driver and Hurt when the latter was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (he died in 2017).
Gilliam then cast Jonathan Pryce but still there were money problems and Gilliam suffered a stroke that robbed him of part of the vision in his left eye.
His artistic vision was unimpaired, however, and with Pryce and Driver, he finally began production. .
The film premiered at Cannes as scheduled and received a long standing ovation. How well it will fare elsewhere - including Australia - remains to be seen. But at least Gilliam's labour of love - or object of obsession - has been completed.
Dolly is back!
On Saturday, April 13 at 1.30pm, Dendy is screening the lavish 1969 film version of Jerry Herman's musical Hello, Dolly! Pixar fans will recall clips from the Gene Kelly-directed movie were memorably used in Wall-E.
It won an Oscar for its art and set direction recreating 19th-century New York (and two more for scoring and sound). Barbra Streisand plays the widowed matchmaker Dolly Levi, who's pursuing "well-known half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau).
This was another troubled production. Matthau said of Streisand, "I have more talent in my smallest fart than she does in her entire body." The screenwriter and producer, Ernest Lehman, said Streisand and Kelly were not "meant to communicate on this Earth".
Matthew Kennedy in his book Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, summed it up: "Everyone, it appears, hated everyone." dendy.com.au.