Search - Lost in La Mancha on DVD

MPAA Rating: R Content Advisory: Not For Children, Profanity Movie Release: 2002 DVD Release: 06/24/2003 Format: DVD - Pan and Scan Audio Tracks: English SwapaDVD Credits: 2 Number of Discs: 2 Run Time: 1 hrs 33 mins Studio: New Video Group Members Wishing: 8 Genres: Film, TV & Radio, Film & Television History, Media Studies

For years, one of filmmaker Terry Gilliam's great dreams was to make a screen adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's classic tale -Don Quixote, and in 2000 it looked as if his dream was to become a reality. In collaboration with Tony Grisoni, Gilliam had written a script called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, in which a 20th century advertising man accidentally travels back in time and is mistaken by Don Quixote for his faithful companion, Sancho Panza. After ten years of shopping the project to American studios with no success, Gilliam and his producers had secured financing for the film from a consortium of European sources, and Johnny Depp had been cast as the time-tripping adman, with the venerable French actor Jean Rochefort as Don Quixote. However, as the production moved closer to its start date, more and more things began to go wrong -- contracts went unsigned, key cast and crew members had not yet arrived, and the carefully prepared budget seemed stressed to the breaking point. Nevertheless, Gilliam soldiered on, but after a mere six days of shooting, during which Spanish Air Force jets ruined several takes, flash floods destroyed several sets, and Gilliam struggled to keep his dream afloat, Rochefort suffered a severe back injury. The film's financiers decided to cash in their chips and pulled the plug in order to cash in on their insurance, though Gilliam struggled for months afterward to find a way to put the production back on track. Documentary filmmakers Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe had been invited by Gilliam to make a film about the production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and after shooting 80 hours of footage of the chaotic pre-production process as well as the aborted shooting schedule, they instead created Lost In La Mancha, a look at the "un-making" of the film, which along with the story of the project's brief rise and messy collapse, featured a look at several completed scenes from the film, as well as animated versions of the film's storyboards which offered a glimpse of the look and scale of the film Gilliam was attempting to create. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Bernard Bouix
René Cleitman
Johnny Depp
Benjamin Fernandez
Terry Gilliam

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's documentary Lost in La Mancha, concerning Terry Gilliam's failed production of "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," comes to DVD with a standard full-frame transfer that preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The English soundtrack is rendered in Dolby Digital 5.1. There are neither subtitles nor closed captions on this release. Supplemental materials include interviews with the cast and crew, storyboards, and costume sketches for the film, an IFC interview with Gilliam, and a conversation between Gilliam and author Salman Rushdie that transpired at the Telluride Film Festival. This is a strong disc from that offers plenty of information on both the making of the documentary and the failed film as well. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide