Jan 23 movie: Lost in La Mancha. Fascinating documentary of Terry Gilliam's doomed attempt to make a movie about Don Quixote. This was an eye-opening look at the practical side of movie-making: scheduling and fund-raising and so forth. It reminded me a lot of the book The Devil's Candy, about the production of Bonfire of the Vanities. But while Bonfire of the Vanities suffered a sort of death by a thousand cuts -- an endless series of small bad decisions which added up to a very bad movie -- the problems that beset Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote are more of a train wreck. It's sad to watch Gilliam go from giggling with joy at his screen test for three burly giants, to waiting helplessly while insurance agents decide the fate of his movie.
(Also, Georg is right: the actor who played Denethor in Return of the King looks a lot like Terry Gilliam. I'm glad I didn't notice it at the time, that would have been distracting.)
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The only conclusion to draw from Lost in La Mancha is that God did not want Terry Gilliam to make that movie. Damn Him.
For the extraordinary-but-true stories of two of Gilliam's earlier glorious disasters, I recommend the books The Battle of Brazil by Jack Mathews and Losing the Light by Andrew Yule, both published by Applause. Both are heart-rending, and I find it astonishing that after those two experiences Gilliam is still in films, let alone still making movies of such awe-inspiring vision.