I have always believed (don't know where I got the idea) that there was a documentary made about the making of this film. Does anyone know if this is true, and the title, director, etc?
sharetake a look at the trivia section of the movie page for Fitz.
It gives you the name of the doc and the director's name.
AP
It is called "Burden of Dreams" and it was directed by Les Blank
shareIt's not that good, really; Les Blank was only there for five weeks. "My Best Fiend" is far better.
shareI saw the documentary first and found it fascinating. Particularly interesting were the parts about getting the natives to pull the boat up the mountain and how this was parallel to the theme of the movie itself. The accidents, the mud, the hard work, the insanity...a great prelude to a great film.
shareplease don't be put of by MetalMiike's comments.
i haven't seen "My Best Fiend", but i've just seen Burden of Dreams and thought it was an amazing exploration of determination and single minded genius / madness.
admittedly they (intentionally, for anti sensationalist-reasons) leave out Klaus Kinsky's tantrums - but to dismiss Burden of Dreams as "not really that good" is surely missing the whole point of the film.
but, to each his own etc etc
Forget what anyone else says. Burden of Dreams is a great documentary about the making of this film. Any true Herzog fan would agree. His audaciousness is extraordinary. For yet another inspiring and deeper layer of what Herzog endeavored to accomplish with Fitzcarraldo, check out Roger Ebert's website at www.rogerebert.com where he talks about this film and "Fitzcarraldo" in the "Great Movies" review for "Fitzcarraldo."
A vote for Bush is a vote for Bush
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'Burden of dreams' (1992) is one of the two great docus that are commonly seen as better than the actual movie they're all about, the 1991 documentary about 'Apocalypse now', 'Heart of darkness: A filmmaker's apocalypse', being the other.
You always find movies like these under the headline 'movie connections' to the left.
CRITERION COLLECTION is actually planning a DVD release of BURDEN OF DREAMS in May of this year:
"For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete the most ambitious and difficult film of his career—Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made all the more perilous by Herzog’s determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of natives to pull a full-sized, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded passion of one of cinema’s most fearless directors."
If BURDEN OF DREAMS is nearly as well done and fascinating as HEARTS OF DARKNESS - which I've e-mailed Criterion several times about looking into the DVD rights - then I look forward to seeing it. For both APOCALYPSE NOW and FITZCARRALDO, it would be a terrific idea to release the documentary with the film if possible? Seems like a no-brainer. Perhaps the argument is, aside from legal issues, that the documentary and the subject-film should be regarded and released as completely separate works? That idea was suggested to me in conversation... maybe I expect too much.
Hey Clift - thank for this tip at the end.....
share