He Dreams of Giants
“He Dreams of Giants” – Darwin Films and Low Key Pictures Production.
This covers Terry Gilliam’s making of the film “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote”. Raindance 28th Film Festival 2020. Whetting your appetite for a truly sumptuous story?
Making films at the top end of the market in terms of actors and actresses, scenes, props, location, costumes and action is tremendously different from shorts or low budget features. Terry Gilliam is known for films which are essentially high budget, sometimes period and “top end”. For example, The Monty Python Era, Time Bandits, Brazil, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Making the film, “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” with a screenplay actually by Terry Gilliam, was a long, drawn out task and was based on the book Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605/1615). Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe painstakingly filmed the film of the making of the film and Gilliam is known to have said, “The truth is, I don’t actually like making films.” This is Fulton and Pepe’s second film about Terry Gilliam’s creative processes in filmmaking. Footage covers the difficult weather conditions, the storyboards being drafted, stunts being practised, some light relief with comic actors in costume performing smile raising antics, and poor Terry Gilliam’s health issues.
Filming was finally completed in 2017, which was 17 years after it started. Jonathan Pryce played Don Quixote and Adam Driver played Toby. However there is a roll call of actors whilst raising a budget and other issues were going on who were approached but did not appear in the final film, including Johnny Depp, Ewan McGregor, Jack O’Connor, Robert Duvall, Michael Palin and John Hurt.
The film cost millions (I don’t have the actual figure) to make and Amy Gilliam is one of the Producers. A nice quote I picked up is “The Madness of all is to see life as it is, not as it should be”. AND I don’t really believe the ultra talented Terry saying he doesn’t actually like making films, BUT he does choose very demanding projects – no kidding!
The screening of “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” premiered in 2018 on the closing night at The Cannes Film Festival. It is a follow-up to “Lost in la Mancha”.
I really believe that this film(s) is one to put on your TO WATCH list. With Gilliam at the helm it can hardly disappoint. ENJOY.
Penny Nair Price
412 words inclusive.