OxfordPress.com

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
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Filmmaker Terry Gilliam dreamed the impossible dream -- a movie based on the 16th-century classic, "Don Quixote" -- and it turned into a nightmare.

In the summer of 2000, after years of preparation and fund-raising, Gilliam was finally set to begin shooting "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote." The movie was intended to be a free-wheeling adaptation of Cervantes' novel, starring the amazing Jean Rochefort as Quixote and the equally amazing Johnny Depp as a modern ad exec who is transported back in time and becomes the mad knight's servant, Sancho Panza. Gilliam invited filmmakers Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe -- who'd documented the making of his earlier picture, "Twelve Monkeys" -- to do the same thing for this project. What they got was a documentary about Murphy's Law and moviemaking. Everything that could go wrong, did. And did again. And again.

With full access to the director, the stars, the investors and the horse wranglers, the pair captured every torturous moment. Daily, things went from bad to worse. Near the end, one of the grips turns and says straight to the camera, " I'd just like to know, for the record, where is the director of this film?" (His language is more colorful.)

The result is bitterly funny and oddly poignant. Plagued by everything from fighter planes to ill health, the production shut down after only six days.

An elfin man in his late 50s and the only American member of the legendary Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy troupe, Gilliam is no stranger to tilting at windmills. Though he's had hits ("The Fisher King," "Time Bandits"), both "Brazil" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" were notoriously difficult projects, as Gilliam desperately tried to preserve his vision in the face of corporate bean counting from the studios. The parallels between Gilliam's quest and that of Cervantes' tragicomic knight are appallingly clear; they both reached for the unreachable star (and I don't mean Depp). At one point, Gilliam even tells Fulton and Pepe that he wants them to keep shooting because, that way, at least somebody would get a movie out of this train wreck.

The bits and pieces we see of the film-that-could've-been are tantalizing -- whether it's the racks of beautiful costumes or some jolly extras, cast as imaginary giants, flexing their naked bellies (one has castanets ... only in a Gilliam movie). We mostly see Rochefort -- the perfect Quixote -- on horseback. He is a consummate rider, which is one thing that made him so right for the part. What little we see of Depp shows him sitting around in full costume and make-up, waiting for his scene -- though there is a hilarious moment in which the investors are invited to the set to watch Depp get nudged from behind by his horse, and the horse just won't nudge.

What "Macbeth" is to the theater -- an infamously bad-luck play, so cursed that most theater people superstitiously refuse to say its name, referring to it, instead, as "the Scottish play" -- "Don Quixote" is to the movies. Previous attempts to film a version of "Don Quixote" have also failed. Orson Welles kept trying on and off for decades; in fact, he kept trying even after the actor playing Quixote died. Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren starred in the film version of the musical, "Man of La Mancha," and it was one of the biggest flops of their careers.

"Lost in La Mancha" isn't as all-encompassing or awe-inspiring as "Hearts of Darkness," about the madness of making "Apocalypse Now," or "Burden of Dreams, " about the madness of making "Fitzcarraldo." That's possibly because the movie in Gilliam's mind has a more fantastic bent; its struggles seem more foolish than deranged.

Still, at least those movies finally got made. Gilliam's film remains a dream deferred.

Buff note: If the narrator's voice sounds familiar, it should. It's Jeff Bridges.