It was the fall of 2000, and Terry Gilliam, the director known for his series of brain-opening works such as Time Thief (1981), Fantastic Imagination (1985), and Twelve Monkeys (1995), was sitting in his improvised office in Spain.
The used telephone handset was still a little hot in my hand, but the message it conveyed was cold.
"No, the sick Jean Reshev can't get back on set yet."
"No, the legal dispute between the crew and the insurance company has not yet been resolved."
"No, a lot of the staff have given up hope and started looking for another position."
And Gilliam himself, as a director, did not know what to do next. He just waited in the office all day. Wait for the next situation to appear, wait for someone to come to the rescue, wait for a miracle.
Terry Gilliam, who has always been vibrant, is overwhelmed by the harsh reality of life
"There is no motivation anymore... I seem to have forgotten about this movie. It doesn't exist and can't exist. And once it does exist, it's extremely painful. ”
This movie that makes Gilliam loveless, called
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
Gilliam had been planning the film since 1989, but it wasn't until 11 years later, in September 2000, that it was finally financially supported to start production.
But the good thing is that in October of that year, it was decided that there was no doubt that the abortion would be aborted.
In less than two months, the main actors were not in place, the machine malfunctioned, the venue flooded, the funds were not guaranteed, and the crew ran to things... A series of disasters that gilliam, who had concocted the classic comedy Monty Python, couldn't laugh.
Monty Python, The Monty Python Theatre Company, Originator & BBC, is a well-known surreal performance group in the UK, spawning a series of films and plays
However, just a few months ago, also in this office, Gilliam was rubbing his hands with the crew to look to the future. He once said, "You're going to stop me from doing stupid things." ”
But maybe making this film itself is a stupid thing to be silly.
Anyone who tries to accomplish it falls into the curse of Don Quixote. And the seeds of this curse were buried deep in Gilliam's crazy genes long before the attack.
In fact, Gilliam also understands that the tragic experience of the crew is not a curse. He tries to be Don Quixote himself, and is therefore doomed to endure the beating of reality for the challenge of being out of his power.
Outside the window, a strong wind whistled through, blowing the clouds in the sky far to the west. But in Gilliam's eyes, this gust of wind also blew Don Quixote out of Spain forever. The wind told him with certainty, "It's all over." ”
Gilliam traveled thousands of miles to the place where Don Quixote was born, but there was no room for him to make a movie about Don Quixote
This desolate scene appeared in "Help! At the end of Don Quixote. This less than 90-minute video was originally filmed to record the completion of "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote". No, the above series of misfortunes almost made it an epitaph of the latter.
The documentary "Help! Don Quixote is a complete account of a series of setbacks that Don Quixote suffered when filming first began in 2000
Who would have thought that this was just the beginning of this 17-year-long nightmare.
But can a gust of wind extinguish a person's dream for ten years?
Maybe to the others, I can't answer for sure.
But if the Dreamer is Terry Gilliam, then I dare say that ten gusts of wind would be impossible for him to give up.
The man who killed Don Quixote
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Director: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Michael Palin (as Don Quixote)
Adam Dreifer (as Tony Gleasony)
Expected release date: 2018
Although the film features Don Quixote as the protagonist, Gilliam's main reference is based on Marco Twain's novel "The Connecticut Yankees Make a Fuss Over arthur's Dynasty".
"The Evil Door" Don Quixote
In fact, Gilliam wasn't the first to try to recreate Don Quixote on screen.
His predecessor, Orson Wells, also dedicated the last 20 years of his life to this masterpiece. The ups and downs of his experience made me have to admit that Don Quixote was really a bit evil.
Orson Wells suffered as much as Terry Gilliam for Don Quixote, and he didn't finish the film until his death
In 1955, Wells prepared to shoot a 30-minute short film for CBS called Don Quixote Passing By.
Like Gilliam, his adaptations were not faithful to Cervantes' original. He also allowed Don Quixote and Sancho to travel through the modern cityscape.
"Those outdated values are very appealing to me, and I often feel like they're still talking to me. That's why I'm addicted to Don Quixote... He couldn't possibly survive in the moment, but in a sense he did live, and might even be roaming on horseback somewhere in Spain. ”
"I will write in my own way that he is out of place with the times, and my films will show that Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa are immortal."
Wells made a color mockup of his ambitions, but CBS didn't like his idea and canceled the plan. This color sample has also disappeared from film history.
By 1957, Wells had been kicked out of post-production of "Lady Of The Dead" by Universal.
Enraged, he returned to Mexico City to pick up Don Quixote's dream of adapting, and this time, he decided to make a black-and-white feature film.
Wells during the filming seems to be possessed by Don Quixote's soul. He didn't prepare a script, he just wandered around Spain, filming wherever he wanted, like a ranger in the book.
He told Bazin at the time that his Don Quixote should be a purely improvised comedy silent film.
Orson Wells originally chose Spanish actor Francisco Reguela as Don Quixote (right) and Sancho as Russian actor Aggie
But it was just one of many of his thoughts. In fact, every time he visits Spain, he generates new inspiration in different landscape stimuli.
Initially, he planned to have Patti McCormack, then a child actor, play a little girl who had encountered Don Quixote and Sancho in modern society. But in the years when Wells repeatedly changed his shooting mind, Patty gradually grew up and was no longer able to play her original role.
Wells communicates plots with Patty, and as Patty grows up, Wells considers having his daughter play her in her place, but he seems to change his mind later
Wells did not give up on this, but considered it separately, to turn the film into a thesis-style film that explored the changes in Spain.
However, this idea has not really been implemented.
No producer who has not lost his mind would not allow Wells to do so. They divested one after another, and in the end the burden of the entire project had to be absorbed by Wells himself.
The remuneration he received from films such as "Summer Spring Love", "Zhumen Evil Seed", and "Hong Kong and Macau Ferry" was all used for Don Quixote's projects. Fortunately, his good friend Frank Sinatra also gave him a $25,000 sponsorship.
By 1969, Don Quixote of Wales, Francisco Reguela, had passed away. But even though the protagonist is dead, he still doesn't give up on his plan to finish the movie.
By the 1980s, Wells had written more than a thousand pages of scripts. He thought of countless possible endings, but he couldn't decide how to present the film to the audience in the end.
Don Quixote, played by Reguela, sits in the cinema of modern society, and he is playing the old knight's surprise and inadequacy to the times, but unfortunately he does not have a chance to see it
Wells himself died in 1985.
Previously, he had said, half seriously, half sarcastically, that he was going to name the unfinished film "When Exactly Will You Finish Don Quixote?" 》（When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote）。
In 1992, several Spanish filmmakers cut a Don Quixote from wells's accumulated images, but this only represented their speculation about the film, and definitely did not represent Wells's true vision.
But even Wells himself couldn't figure out what his vision of Don Quixote really was.
Bertomey said the film was "doomed to be unfinished because it is inherently unfinished, a typical example of all of Wells's fantastic ideas for cinema." ”
So we can only let Don Quixote get lost in Orson Wells's ever-changing vision. And the filmmakers who want to present this romantic ranger story must start another stove.
That's what Gilliam did.
The beginning of the tragedy
If Wells's fascination with Don Quixote comes from a dialogue of the heart, then Gilliam, who is several times more mad than he is, is more likely to see himself in Don Quixote.
If it weren't for this powerful resonance, he probably wouldn't have dared to launch The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in 1998 with a grossly under-budgeted $32.1 million.
Gilliam's vision of the film was completely over budget, and after don Quixote was forced to interrupt filming, he drew the comic for self-deprecation
That number seems like a lot at first glance, but the money comes entirely from European investors, and the movie Gilliam wants to make has the potential of Hollywood's blockbusters. This imbalance between supply and demand may have laid the groundwork for the first miscarriage of "Kill Don Quixote" long ago.
In addition, Gilliam, like Wells, was irredeemably infected with the problem of unlimited indulgence in creative inspiration in the process of shooting Don Quixote.
In "Help! In Don Quixote, we can see Gilliam, immersed in the pre-production of the film, like a child who has stepped into the playground, his eyes shining through the props and sets made by the staff.
The picture shows Gilliam when the project was just started, and he was having a lot of fun and didn't know what kind of difficulties were waiting behind him
Before the film could even begin, he had already produced many new ideas that were different from the original script. Director of Photography Nicola Peccolini said, "Terry has a tendency to complicate everything. Nothing could be simple and straightforward in his hands. ”
Gilliam's assistant, Phil Patterson, called him "Captain Chaos." The crew often felt that they had to cut through Gilliam's infinitely divergent thoughts.
The hurricane of uncertainty surrounding Gilliam is creatively passionate and fascinating, but it's quite dangerous to complete a film. Films based on Don Quixote's story in particular require the caution of their executors.
Unfortunately, Gilliam's crew didn't do a good job of that.
They chose to shoot on location in a wasteland north of Madrid, which did have a very good view, but near a military base.
As a result, Reshev, who plays Don Quixote, has just made a brilliant appearance, and his first line that has been brewing for a long time is drowned out by the roar of military planes flying by.
In the face of the military plane in the sky, Gilliam's face was full of helplessness, but this was clearly a mistake that could be avoided in advance
Later, the plane stopped, and the crew prepared to shoot again, but found that the sky had suddenly changed, and a large cumulonimbus cloud had drifted above the actors at some point. This not only destroys the lighting, but also means the arrival of a heavy rainstorm.
People scrambled to pack up their equipment and props, but the onslaught of rain caused a small flood that washed away a considerable amount of equipment. The shooting plan for the day was obviously not completed, and the crew had to spend energy to find an insurance company to liquidate the loss compensation.
Apparently, not preparing for the weather conditions in advance was another mistake on don Quixote's crew.
The staff did their best to rescue the equipment that had been swept away by the floodwaters
In addition, God really did not send a little shelter to this passionate but ill-prepared team.
When the weather improved, Depp was in place, and the plane did not come to disturb him, the lead actor Reshev suddenly fell ill and could not continue filming. He was later diagnosed with bilateral hernias and quit the crew altogether.
You know, Reshev, as the protagonist, is one of the three basic elements of Gilliam's contract with the capital.
His withdrawal led directly to the dissolution of the agreement. European investors pulled out of the project, and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote became an asset for insurance companies.
Looking back, I see that Gilliam's luck was really not good. After Reshev, he also considered other actors, but all of them gave up because of the inappropriate schedule. Among them, John Hurt was also invited to star in Don Quixote, but he died of cancer before walking on the set.
The final actor to play Don Quixote is Michael Palin, who has worked with Gilliam many times in the Monty Python series, and perhaps only him
But good luck and past failures never determine the future.
Gilliam, who was hit hard in 2000, also knew that as long as he chose to persevere, even if the situation was worse, there was still a way to advance the shooting.
Investors can find them again, and insurance companies can redeem their scripts. The problem was that Gilliam wasn't sure if he was going to continue. This is the most deadly for a dreamer.
In Cervantes' original work, Don Quixote is awakened from his illness. He no longer voiced himself to be "Don Quixote of La Mancha" and gave up his imagination of "Tobosso's Dulcinea."
Don Quixote "regained his sanity" before he died, but this drained his last breath
Lying on his sickbed, he became an ordinary squire, Kaihana. He spurned all the romance knight novels he had read in the past, and stressed to his niece that he should never marry someone who had read such a book.
Ironically, friends and family who had not understood his actions before began to orchestrate some lies to him about the lifting of the magic, the prince and the grandson, and Miss Dursinea. Because they know that don Quixote, once awake, will die.
If it were not for the maintenance of the dream of a knight who traveled all over the country and fought unevenly, such an old man could not have endured the hardships of the road for many years.
Similarly, if it weren't for the self-deluded belief that he would be able to finish the film, Gilliam might have given up on the day the rain washed away the crew's equipment.
Today, 17 years have passed since Spain's defeat.
During this period, don Quixote and Tony's actors changed hands several times, and the film's investors also changed one after another.
But the emperor did not pay off, the local tycoon Amazon from the United States finally took over gilliam's dream in June 2015, and the old man also wrote a new script for this hard-won restart.
In June, a dynamic appeared on Gilliam's Facebook. In just a few lines, he announced the completion of the filming of Don Quixote and thanked all the crew and those who supported him. His tone was always energetic, as if the person who had collapsed on the couch and said he was going to give up was not himself.
Gilliam's dynamics give us hope for the film
Memorabilia of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
1989 Planned preparations
1998 The plan was launched
September 2000 First funding
October 2000 Abortion and suspension
In June 2015, the script was rewritten and the restart was planned
June 2017 The film was released
There is no doubt that we need Gilliam.
His whimsy is different from anything we already experience in the world. As Vatimo puts it, we can choose to think of such works as "a true allegory and utopian conception of some harmonious existence." ”
Creators who choose to make this presentation will inevitably maintain some kind of judgment standard and ideal scale in their own utopia.
This is probably why Don Quixote endured— Cervantes's romantic, beautiful, and seriously divorced ideals resonated with many idealists, including Orson Wells and Terry Gilliam.
But, forget it, I don't believe this serious modernist axiology is a reason to support Gilliam's finish of Don Quixote.
He overcame many difficulties to complete his dream because he needed Don Quixote more than we did.
He probably didn't think much of it at all, just did it, ignored it, and stalked it. This is his nature and instinct, the soul power that he has repeatedly strengthened in his previous fantasy works.
With this power, which he called "pig-headed", he completed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and showed us that Don Quixote could not be killed.
Now when I reread the story of Don Quixote vs. Windmills, I don't laugh at myself.
Gilliam's experience convinced me that when the romantic old knight, wearing a helmet made of a washbasin, rode the weak Ruoxi to the windmill, and stabbed the worn-out spear into the canopy with all his might, what he saw was really thirty lawless giants.
First published in the official account Adventure Movie: cinematik