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 Dedicated to the memory of John Hurt and Jean Rochefort, two
deceased actors who starred in earlier, abandoned versions, the
movie has long-time Gilliam collaborator Jonathan Pryce as
Quixote, alongside Star Wars' actor Adam Driver.
"I was the victim of Don Quixote, he wouldn’t leave me alone. He
stalked me for 24, 25 years," Gilliam told Reuters in at the
Cannes Film Festival.
"It’s not the film I set out to make, it’s a much better film.
The film I set out (to make) was just not a patch on what this
film is. It’s taken all those years of marinating in my life to
get there," he said ahead of the world premiere.
A version starring Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis made it to
the screen only in a 2002 documentary, "Lost In La Mancha" which
charts the film's descent into oblivion.
Initially, the plot was about a man who wakes up in the 17th
century, believing he is the hero of Miguel de Cervantes' novel.
In the final version, Driver plays an obnoxious director of TV
adverts who realizes the Spanish location he is filming in is
near where he made his film-school movie, "The Man Who Killed
Don Quixote", a decade earlier.
He tracks down the man he cast as the lead, now a deluded
geriatric convinced he really is Don Quixote living in the age
of chivalry.
"SURREAL"
Driver, who stars in another prominent Cannes movie, Spike Lee's
"BlacKkKlansman", said it was "surreal" to be working with
directors whose work he grew up watching.
Having acted in Martin Scorsese's 2016 "Silence", which also
took decades to make, he was not daunted about joining
"Quixote", in the shoes of Johnny Depp.
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"Any movie that actually comes together is always a miracle," Driver
said.
"If anyone’s been living with something for that long and they have
that strong a will to get it done, then it inevitably will be
interesting."
Pryce, 70, whose breakthrough movie was Gilliam's 1985 dystopian
classic "Brazil", said he had watched "Lost In La Mancha" in tears
while the audience of non-filmmakers in the cinema laughed at the
tragi-comedy.
"It was a bit scary that the two guys who made the documentary were
there on the first day of this film, waiting for it to burst into
flames," he said.
The makers of "Lost In La Mancha" are working on a sequel, about the
continued problems of the film which was subject to legal challenges
that almost prevented it playing in Cannes.
Pryce said the real reason it took Gilliam so long to make "The Man
Who Killed Don Quixote" was that he was waiting for his lead actor
to be old enough for the part.
Gilliam, who chuckled his way through the interview, has another
story.
"(Pryce) used to come knocking on the door every few weeks saying:
'I'm still available.' It was always embarrassing trying to say:
'Jon, I’ve got John Hurt,' or somebody else. Until, basically, he
got the part because finally his eyebrows got so bushy we didn’t
have to have extra makeup for them."
"The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" is playing, out-of-competition, as
the closing film of the Cannes Film Festival which ends on Saturday.
(Reporting by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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