What's your favourite part of Cervantes' "Don Quixote"?
The second book really amazed me. It's so extraordinary because Quixote's caught in a world where his fame has preceded him, and he goes out trying to live his life not according to what was written. Tony Grisoni, my co-writer, and I have tried to re-invent the book by taking the bits we like, and creating a story around them that's totally quixotic.
What are your feelings towards the documentary, given how unsparingly it chronicles the collapse of your film?
It's a really fine bit of film making, but I don't like watching it because it usually takes me a week to recover. But it would have been even worse if the events had happened and there'd been no one there to document it. At least there's some visible, tangible memory of the thing, and some images that might encourage future investors to come forward.
Why was it so important to make the film entirely with European money?
Hollywood was dominating everything so much, I thought it would be nice to show them that we don't always need them. It might give other people confidence to say, "Ah, there are others ways of doing this," and financiers confidence that they don't need Hollywood involved all the time to make money. What will happen in the future, I don't know. I'm happy to take money from anybody now.
Was it difficult actually living the experiences we see in the documentary?
It happens on almost every film I do that the making of the film becomes what the film is about. When Tony and I were writing the film, we always said it was about sacrifice and suffering, and it all came true.
Orson Welles also failed to complete his version of "Don Quixote". It's as if the book is jinxed...
He is one of my heroes and I've always thought, "Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a great film maker like Welles?" I was more interested in the first half of his career, but it sort of turns out that I have been inflicted with the second half. So I'm trying to get out of his footsteps right now.
