Terry Gilliam may be lucky in love, but he’s rather unlucky in filmmaking. Lost in La Mancha chronicled the mishaps and catastrophes that plagued his version of Don Quixote, which eventually had to be scrapped. For his current production, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, he cast the late Heath Ledger as the lead. When Heath tragically passed, many thought the production would need to be scrapped since it was already about halfway through filming.
Gilliam has creatively found a way to save the film by relying on it’s fantastical nature. The main character passes from the “real world” to various fantasy realms through a magic mirror. Luckily for the production, all the real world scenes had been filmed. Now, when Heath’s character passes into a new realm, a different actor will play that part. The three actors taking the roles are Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law. I don’t think Gilliam could have asked for better actors, and the box office appeal will surely skyrocket because of their involvement. And we all benefit by getting to see Heath’s final performance, which will not be edited or enhanced in any way.
Wow. We had just talked about this last week: how unlucky is poor Terry Gilliam?? He seems to be involved in one mishap after another. And when the movie gets finished, we get Tideland. Which he had to defend both popularly and critically. Ouch.
This is wonderful news, and what a creative way to turn a bad, tragic situation into something good that honors the memory of Heath Ledger. And now I can’t wait to see it.
I will rent Tideland and make up my own mind. It sounds like something right up my alley. Without the hallucigenic drugs.
Tideland sneaked under my radar. Perhaps you’ll post a review here after you see it.
On an unrelated note, I was in the Pioneer store today and they had the Blu-ray version of the 5-disc Bladerunner “Final Cut” in a collector’s case that looked like an aluminum briefcase. If it really was aluminum (instead of plastic) that might have justified the $100 price tag.
Yes, the Voimf Kaumf (sic) briefcase is quite a souvernir. It really looks like a scaled-down version of the movie prop. But it is pricey, even after you factor in the prices of the little model of a police car and origami unicorn included within.
There’s also some sort of 3-D sequence using that old plastic fresnel technology, but the only real thing you get is the 5th disc which contains the workprint version of the movie. It was screened by accident some time ago with additional scenes, different music, different titles, etc. It sounds intriguing but it is, in my opinion, not worth it. I can see some of those unseen movie sets in the documentary which is included in my 4-disc version. That’s enough of a collection for me.
As for Tideland, what are you doing this Saturday evening??