Terry Gilliam still living a real-life Don Quixote by trying to make Don Quixote movie again

By Sean O'Neal | November 18, 2013 | 9:24pm

Aux Features Film

Continuing his noble quest to make the world’s most meta realization of Don Quixote since Jorge Luis Borges, Terry Gilliam has said he plans to once more tilt at the windmills—windmills that, hopefully, won’t be destroyed in a flash flood—of his long-simmering Cervantes’ adaptation. As viewers of the documentary Lost In La Mancha and anyone who’s read a showbiz blog since before they had big colorful buttons everywhere will remember, Gilliam has been working on his Don Quixote movie off-and-on for more than a decade, only to be plagued by never-ending production problems.

Yet, in a thematic parallel to a story Gilliam can’t bring to life on the screen, at least, he tells Coming Soon he’ll try Don Quixote again as his next movie—never mind the past, nor the threat of a Johnny Depp-starring Disney competitor—as “this is kind of my default position, going back to that,” Gilliam’s natural resting state being “frustrated in the desert.” Still, although he added that he just wants to “make it and get rid of it… get it out of my life,” Gilliam is nevertheless word-that-means-idealistically-yet-unrealistically optimistic about his chances: “I think this is the seventh time. Lucky seven, maybe,” Gilliam said, whereupon he was struck by lightning seven times.