Lost in La Mancha follows filmmaker Terry Gilliam who finally gets his opportunity to create his dream film he labored for a decade, 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote'. Assembling his film crew, he prepares his production in what promises to be the biggest budgeted feature film using only European financing. However for all his creativity and enthusiasm, the film is immediately plagued with an improbable series of disasters that threaten to doom the film. Lost in La Mancha is a documentary showing that there isn't always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and shows how some projects do fall through. It shows how Terry Gilliam was over ambitious with his project,a nd although there was an element of bad luck at fault, it seems his preparation for the project was lacklustre and things weren't thought through properly in each stage of the pipeline. One of the main problems that occurs is getting the actors in, and i feel that Terry Gilliam was way too ambitious with the casting on this one, after all, an actor like Johnny Depp was never going to have a flexible schedule. We also see how the most rational member of the crew, the assistant director, is the first to go despite seeming to be he only crew member to have his head screwed on properly. I really enjoyed this documentary because it was a great insight into what can go wrong during filmmaking and it's not often we get to see something like that, it's often overlooked by successful projects. After watching the documentary, however, i do feel that the film should be made because the story is very interesting which is hard to come by in a CG-consuming era. Will Terry Gilliam be the man to bring it to our screens, well it doesn't look like it after being turned down for funding and the project falling through again. What have i learned from this documentary, stay within your boundaries and don't be over ambitous, be well prepared and never skip stages in the pipeline, and stick to a realistic budget.
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