Genre: Dark Comedy/Period
Premise: An advertising executive shooting a commercial based on the famous literary character, Don Quixote, soon finds himself transported to the 17th century, becoming the sidekick of the real Don Quixote.
About: For those unfamiliar with this project, it’s one of the most famous in film history mainly because it embodied the reality of just how hard it is to make movies. The almost-film, originally starring Johnny Depp, was famously chronicled in the 2002 documentary “Lost in La Mancha.” It’s one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen and an absolute must for anybody in the entertainment industry. The film ran into every kind of obstacle possible (aging actors unable to do key scenes, floods, a complicated financing situation with dozens of separate investors, delays upon delays, a star with a quickly depleting scheduling window) until it was clear that there was no way it could continue. All this was made worse by the fact that it was director Terry Gilliam’s passion project. There is no one on earth who wanted to make a single movie as much as Gilliam wanted to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Well, good news, folks. While it was assumed the movie would be lost forever, Gilliam is hopping back onboard, and making the film his next project! Hooray for the power of perseverance! The original Don Quixote novel, published in 1605, is considered by some to be the greatest literary work ever written.
Writer: Terry Gilliam & Tony Grisoni (based on the character created by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)
Details: 113 pages (May 15th, 2000 draft)
Do I feel guilty that I’ve read Angels and Demons but not Don Quixote? Of course I do. But with so much stuff to read, I try to keep my historic cut-off at 300 years (correct, I haven’t read the Bible, either). But hey, if this isn’t more proof of yesterday’s “what I learned” section (adapt old books) I don’t know what is!
Despite that, this would be one of my most anticipated films of the decade, only because I know the history behind it. I want to see Gilliam realize his dream. I don’t think I’ve watched anything as gut-wrenching as aging actor Jean Rochefort (as Quixote) trying to ride that horse in “La Mancha.” It was clear he wanted so badly to do it, but was in so much pain, that even the slightest movement was unbearable. You could see Gilliam wanting to keep going, his manic determination fogging his perception. If not for the first assistant director calling a stop to it, he might have gone on. The reason that moment was so powerful was because it embodies moviemaking as a whole. The pressure and stakes are so high, you push beyond all reason, knowing that if you don’t, it could all fall apart. Which is exactly what happened in this case.
Toby Grosini is your typical douchebag advertising exec. He’s shooting a commercial in Spain for a dying power company based on the famous character Don Quixote. Normally, all Toby has to worry about is how many zeroes are in his bank account. But with the commercial’s shoot becoming more and more hectic, he’s starting to worry if he can keep it together.
One day, a local gypsy convinces him to visit a nearby castle, where he meets an old man claiming to be the real Don Quixote. That is correct – the man believes himself to be 400 years old. He certainly looks it, but Toby obviously thinks he’s a crackpot. That is until he wakes up the next day in the year 1605!
That same man is now calling him Sancho Panza (Quixote’s famous peasant sidekick from the book). Toby, in turn, keeps calling Fake Quixote crazy. But if that’s the case, why the hell does everything look so 1600s?? No sooner does this “reality” start to hit him than the duo is marauded by the local police. Some nearby prisoners get wrapped up in the fight and a straight-up brawl ensues.
Quixote is injured, so Toby takes him to a local Inn. Quixote then gives him a list of ingredients to get so he can put together a healing medicine. Only afterwards does Toby learn this “medicine” is some sort of immortal elixir, and as long as you take it, you never die.
Eventually, Toby gets fed up playing this game with Quixote and wants to go home. Of course, it’s unclear where home is. At times he believes this whole thing is a ruse. Not only do some of the commercial crew he worked with appear as 17th century characters (not unlike The Wizard of Oz), but he inconsistently transports back to the modern day with no rhyme or reason. Are they drugging him? What’s going on??
Toby finally betrays Quixote to escape the madness and makes it back to the modern world for good (where he learns that he was hit by a car – hence why this all might have been happening). But as he feels worse and worse about screwing his elder imaginary buddy over, he vows to find a way back to the fake and/or real world and save him before it’s too late.
Uhhhh, okaaaaa-y.
Not really sure how to address this one. They say that honesty is the best policy so let’s start with that. This looks to be an excuse for two totally deranged creative minds (Gilliam and Depp) to dick around. Granted, if there were two minds I would pay to see dick around for two hours, these two would be at the top of the list. Still, this one felt like it was conceived in the mind of an Alzheimer’s patient. It was so scattershot and all over the place, you never knew which way was ‘sane.’
Here’s the thing. Terry Gilliam loves to explore the theme of reality. What’s real? What’s in our heads? Is there a difference? Do we live in the matrix? All that good stuff. We saw it with Twelve Monkeys. We saw it with Tideland. We saw it with The Fisher King. Really, there are elements of it in every single movie he’s done. So it’s no surprise he’s taking on that theme again.
But I’d argue this script doesn’t need it. Quixote and Sancho appear to be two rich, wacky interesting characters all on their own. Why not just set this in the 1600s and tell one of their adventures? Trying to figure out if Quixote was real, how he was over 400 years old, if this was all a dream, how we were seamlessly drifting from 2000 to 1600 – it was so much work that I didn’t have time to enjoy the story.
I think Gilliam likes it this way – that you’re not sure which way is up – but I’m of the belief that before you start tripping up your audience, you have to set up a status quo. We need the constants before we can get to the variables. I can honestly say I never knew what the fuck was going on because I didn’t know what was going on with these two. I mean, think about it. Our main character, Toby, believes that our secondary character isn’t who he says he is. And our secondary character, Don Quixote, believes that our main character, Toby, isn’t who he says he is. I’m terrible at math, but doesn’t this mean that neither of them exists??
I’m not going to go off and tell Terry Gilliam how to write or direct. The man is a genius. I want to make that clear. But I think this speaks to the notion that if you go too far off the reservation, your story can fall apart, no matter who you are. I mean, if it’s happening to Gilliam, it will definitely happen to you.
And I bring this point up because I recently read an amateur script where I was having a discussion with the writer about this very issue. He’d basically created these characters that were three times removed from themselves. The sci-fi script had a body being invaded by a body being invaded by a body. Conceptually, that might certainly be interesting to explore. But in reality, it was really confusing to read.
I want to talk about this more in a coming article, specifically in regards to the movie Cloud Atlas, but for better or worse, we live in a cinematic universe where you don’t want to overcomplicate things. Movies aren’t books (8 hours to finish) or video games (20 hours to finish) where you have time to lead audiences in and out of a number of concepts, philosophies, characters and storylines. They’re only 2 hours long. Which is why you hear so often: “Cut out all the fat.” Movies just can’t hold too many concepts. You have to keep it simple, stupid, with small exceptions here and there. I just think this script didn’t need to be as complicated as it ended up being.
With all that said, I watch every Terry Gilliam movie (Twelve Monkeys made me a fan for life) and I’ll watch this one. I just hope he makes things a little easier to follow in the new draft.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A dirty little Hollywood secret is that a lot of actors determine their roles exclusively by director, in many cases never even looking at the script (Depp does this a lot. Matt Damon signs on almost exclusively because of directors these days. I just heard Bill Murray talking about this). For that reason, you want to write a script that’s going to attract a great director first, since they’re the ones who are going to attract the star, which is how the movie’s going to get made. While it didn’t work for me in today’s instance, generally speaking, playing with reality in your story is director catnip. Distorted reality allows directors to do all these cool exciting visual things that directors like to do. From all of Gilliam’s movies to The Matrix to Inception to Vanilla Sky to The Truman Show. You want to attract a director, these kinds of screenplays are a good place to start.
