By The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is not quite dead. In fact, it’s getting better and feels happy. Gilliam may resaddle the plagued production in spring 2012 with Robert Duvall as Quixote. (You can watch the original production crumble in the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha.) After winning the annual Fellini Foundation Prize over the weekend, Gilliam admitted that Don Quixote was again looking for funding, but he teased in a separate interview, “There’s somebody new come along with a new bit of energy… a person who can get money.” Worse comes to worse, Terry, there’s always Kickstarter.
In addition to Don Quixote, Gilliam is still interested in adapting Paul Auster’s novel Mr. Vertigo. The story concerns a boy named Walter Rawley (“a pus-brained ragamuffin from honky-tonk row”) who is taught to levitate by the mysterious Master Yehudi. And then it apparently gets weird from there. (Kind of wonder if anyone will adapt Auster’s New York Trilogy, Book of Illusions, or Brooklyn Follies one of these days.)
Hearing about Gilliam trying his darndest to make a movie is always inspirational, whether it’s his battles over Brazil or his struggle to make The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (RIP John Neville). There’s a dignity in the face of failure that all great heroes have. He reminds me of those lines from Samuel Beckett’s Westward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” (Or was that from Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'”?) In him is a quixotic spirit that will not — cannot — die.
[Via IndieWire]