First Screening Of 'Man Who Killed Don Quixote' Went "Terribly Well"

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Nothing about “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” has come easy for Terry Gilliam. After his first attempt to make the movie nearly two decades got washed out by weather, with one piece of bad luck coming after another (captured with tragic beauty in the documentary “Lost In La Mancha“), the director has forever been trying to get his film back in front of cameras. The curse continued to hang over the movie as casting and funding could never quite come together, but by some miracle, the stars aligned, and filming was completed this summer. Not only that, Gilliam may have finally hit it out of the park.

The Times caught up with the director who seems almost amazed that he’s managed to complete the picture, and reveals he’s already screened a cut of the movie.

“On the one hand I am delighted that we have actually pulled it off,” he said. “On the other hand there is some trepidation. Is it good enough? Is it worthy of 25 years of my life? We had a screening last week with just a bunch of friends and friends of friends and people I don’t even know and I am afraid it went terribly well. But there is always a side of me that right up until it is released will be ‘have we really got it as good as we can?’ ”

However, even with the film now in post-production, distributors Amazon have yet to see to single frame. “They may see it this coming month,” Gilliam said. “I guess being an old fart and having done this for so many years I get away with it.”

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Having carried the picture on his shoulders for years and years, ‘Quixote’ has not only taken an emotional toll on Gilliam, but a physical one as well. “By the end [of the shoot] I was in terrible shape,” he admits. “I won’t go into the whole thing, but I had a huge prostate operation when I got back to London. I did feel that I was going to die, not just that I was going to die but that I was dying.”

Gilliam has thankfully survived, and the film is now “in the final stages of effects and music.” The next question is where it will premiere. Unsurprisingly, one of the film’s producers wants the biggest movie stage in the world for ‘Quixote.’

“…we will premiere at Cannes next year,” Oscar Jaenada told Diario de Ibiza last month.

We can hardly believe it, but it looks like “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is actually going to arrive next year, and apparently, a release in date France for next May has already been set.