S01E11 - Troubled Productions

Published: March 18, 2018, noon

This week we have four very troubled productions, two of which never got made. We start with the documentary Burden of Dreams (1982) about the single-minded quest to push an ego over a mountain by pushing a 30 ton steamboat over a mountain in Fitzcarraldo (1982). Francis Ford Coppola is convinced Apocalypse Now (1979) will be a failure and his wife Eleanor tracks his downward spiral in Hearts of Darkness (1991). Gilliam ignores the advice of a kindly Jeff Bridges and tries to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) in Lost in La Mancha (2002). We’re left blown away by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s indirect contribution to Hollywood as told through Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013). Can you spoil the ending for a film that doesn’t exist? Also: Joe picks up on white man savior complexes through several of this week’s films. Neither of us can do a decent Werner Herzog impression. Dee discovers Yoda isn’t real and admits E.T. terrifies him. We suspect Orson Welles might be the center of the universe. We play a game of “Who Said It?”