Lost in La Mancha

I used our day off today to watch LOST IN LA MANCHA, a documentary about one of Terry Gilliam's many failed efforts to produce a film adaptation of Cervantes' Don Quixote. In the year 2000, Gilliam mounted a doomed effort to make this film which ended with a $15 million insurance claim after production fell apart.

LOST IN LA MANCHA depicts a producer's worst nightmare, where a project's every vulnerability is besieged by terrible luck. After watching, I stopped to count our blessings. We're a mere 3.5 days from wrapping principal photography, and even Sush is cracking smiles on set. Major scares from preproduction - like losing our primary location and lead actress in unbearable proximity to our start date - seemed to be, in retrospect, opportunities for Sush and Kanchan to show off their resourceful determination. From afar, all I could do was watch in awe as the production came together.

One thing that's only possible to appreciate up close is Sush's impressive faculty for working with the actors. The gulf between the first take and the last take in some scenes can be quite terrifying for the uninitiated. On my first few days, I noticed a pattern: After the end of the first take, when I'm just starting to grasp what might improve the performance, Sush has already coached the actors and returned to the monitor where an impressive second take is underway. This continues with each subsequent take until we're moving to a new camera angle. Some scenes gel more quickly than others, but Sush always has his finger on which elements should be amplified or trimmed.

Special shouts out to Kislaya, our first AD, who has maintained order and punctuality while solving creative problems under pressure; Nuthan and Pankaj, our two cinematographers, who have never been anything less than completely absorbed with the nuances of capturing each scene; and Alex, Sush's writing buddy in early drafts of the screenplay, who has flown to India to sit in the production office every day transcoding and backing up all of our footage. It's a thankless yet indispensable job that would be terrifying to put in anyone else's hands.

Of course, as we gear up for the last few days, we remain on our toes. A few major production challenges remain for our crew, and we'll need all the luck we can get. Thankfully, Terry Gilliam finally shot his DON QUIXOTE in 2016 after 29 years of failed starts. Here's to our own happy ending.