Lost in La Mancha is a mesmerizing documentary about the unmaking of a movie—Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, starring Johnny Depp, which began filming in Spain in September 2000 and shut down several weeks later after a string of calamities. The moviemakers, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, had previously shot a documentary on the making of Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys and the director gave them complete access to the Quixote production, which they joined in Madrid eight weeks before filming began and stayed with until the post mortem. Gilliam even had himself wired with a special microphone that would allow Fulton and Pepe access to his every moan and whoop. To Gilliam’s credit, he kept the filmmakers around even after the point of no return. He probably realized that the only movie that was going to come out of this horrendous experience was
Lost in La Mancha
Directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe.
The Recruit
Directed by Roger Donaldson; starring
Al Pacino and Colin Farrell.