GILLIAM’S LATEST DON QUIXOTE PLANS SHOT DOWN

Reminiscent of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who continues to fight King Arthur despite losing both arms (“It’s just a flesh wound!”), Terry Gilliam has told Daily Variety that he still intends to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote despite the fact that “the financing collapsed about a month and a half ago.” The stars of the movie remain committed to the movie, he indicated. “Robert Duvall is Quixote, Ewan McGregor is also there, and we are looking for new financing right now,” he said. A 2002 documentary, Lost in La Mancha, chronicled the series of disasters that befell his first attempt to produce the movie. Interviewed at the Deauville (France) American Film Festival, where he is being honored with a retrospective of his work as a director, Gilliam said, “Don Quixote gives me something to look forward to, always. Maybe the most frightening thing is to actually make the film.” In a separate interview with the French-American blog Mister T’s Movie Clic, Gilliam said that while it is relatively easy to raise the money for a low-budget film costing $10 million or less or a blockbuster costing $100 million or more, “when it’s a budget of $20-30 million, it is much more difficult to find financing.” He said he had worked the past year and a half on Don Quixote and felt like “an athlete who prepares for the Olympics, comes onto the track and suddenly it’s announced that the race is canceled.”