SPOILER ALERT!!! The Terry Gilliam Update Edition
As most of you know, I have an unhealthy obsession with Terry Gilliam, so the news I present today has sent me into all sorts of spasms. We’ve known for awhile that The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnasus, Heath Ledger’s official last picture, has been steadily moving forward with IMDB telling us that it’s now in post production (here’s my original article about that (first news bulletin at the end of the main article)) which should get everyone excited. And then yesterday I learn that The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Gilliam’s epic based on the unfilmable novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, is moving forward. Many directors have attempted to do this , including Orson Welles who spent the better part of his life trying to put it together, and Gilliam himself even tried unsuccessfully to make it several years ago (a documentary about the whole ordeal, Lost in La Mancha, is a must see for anyone interested in making movies). And then, on top of all that, we discover that Gilliam is first tackling The Zero Theorem, scripted by Pat Rushin. What is The Zero Theorem, you ask? Mr. Brendon Connelly of /Film gives a script review here. I have yet to read the thing myself and may not at all. I’d rater let Mr. Gilliam surprise me. Thanks to Russ Fischer of Chud for pointing all of this out.
R. K. Haney
Lost in La Mancha is a great documentary, and I think it does a great job of showing Gilliam’s obsession with the obscure, the difficult, and the surreal.
But Cervantes’ book is fucking huge. It could more easily be filmed by chapter into hour-long episodes and made into about a two-year television series. Moreover, Cervantes had his own razor-sharp sense of humor, which probably isn’t the same as Gilliam’s. I almost believe that a less talented, less unique director has a better shot at putting the Don Quixote story together than Gilliam does.