Did you know the Movie Geek owns the NuArt theater? I just found it out last night, standing in line to watch Lost in La Mancha. He took my ticket. Cool. Ra Ra for him, using his powers for good.
I spent the next hour and a half watching Terry Gilliam’s dream fall apart. Not because he’s one of the world’s most eccentric directors (what the hell does that mean, anyway), and not because of an extravagant budget, but because of the Quixote Curse. He explains it early on, telling his 1st AD, “Quixote is cursed. Every production of Quixote has been cursed. It’s like the Scottish Play.”
The first hour of the movie is pre-production. The last half hour is watching the whole movie fall apart in just three days. Watching Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote drown. Literally. In just three days, it gets a bullet in the head. And then, there’s ten days of waiting for it to die.
Remind me, if I ever try to tackle Quixote, of what happened to Terry Gilliam.