The Character According to John Lithgow
John Lithgow had no trouble inhabiting the demented mind of Don Quixote. After all, he has made a career of playing over-the-top eccentrics from his portrayal of a transsexual in the 1982 film “The World According to Garp,” to his turn each week on NBC as the commander of a group of aliens in “3rd Rock From the Sun,” a role that has earned him three Emmys. In fact, he confesses to a certain attraction to characters that tend toward the theatrical.
“I’m now pretty well-known as somebody who will go all the way with an eccentric character,” says Lithgow. “So if there’s an eccentric character to cast, they’re likely to seek me out.
“But,” he adds, “I like to think I could do a wide variety.”
The actor believes he has the best of both worlds when he portrays the title character of “Don Quixote,” in this latest adaptation of the 17th century tale of the aging, addled romantic who dreams of knighthood and deeds of bravery. Lithgow also served as a co-executive producer of the film, which is set to premiere next Sunday on TNT, along with Robert Halmi Sr.
For an actor like Lithgow, a character like Don Quixote presents delicious opportunities.
“The only way to play the part is with a certain flair,” says Lithgow, who gets wildly enthusiastic when discussing this role. Physically, Lithgow, at 54, is a good fit--lanky body, expressive-lean face, graying hair and a look of whimsy about him. He had wanted to play Don Quixote for years, but the timing never seemed quite right. But after seeing Halmi’s 1998 miniseries “Merlin,” he called the producer to pitch the idea of having another go at the mad Spaniard, captured perhaps most memorably in two early films, legendary German director G.W. Pabst’s 1933 “Don Quixote” starring Feodor Chaliapin and a lavish Russian adaptation in 1957 by director Grigori Kosintsev.
On television, Lithgow will be in good company, as it has twice been adapted for the medium, first with Lee J. Cobb starring in the 1959 “I, Don Quixote,” and again in 1973 with Rex Harrison as Quixote in “The Adventures of Don Quixote.”
For the TNT production, the cast and crew spent nine weeks shooting the film in southern Spain, and during that time Lithgow became quite intimate with his character.
“I became the great storyteller on the set because I was the only one who read the damn thing,” he says with a chuckle, speaking of the immensity of the Miguel de Cervantes novel. “I would tell people what we were missing, and with a certain wistfulness: ‘Gosh, I only wish we could have gotten this in.’
“Amazing stories like the people who imitated the donkeys in the two warring towns. The ones who brayed like a donkey and the ones who didn’t and they go to war against each other. Unbelievable flights of fancy.”
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Everyone knows that Don Quixote is a wispy, middle-aged gentleman who picks fights with windmills. But for those who only know the character as the impossible-dreaming, idealistic Man of La Mancha, Lithgow points out that Quixote really is quite mad.
“He lives in a world of fantasy,” Lithgow explains. “He thinks of himself as a heroic knight-errant from an antique age, and he plays the part to the hilt.”
Lithgow recounts one such part of the book with obvious relish. “One of my favorite comic moments in the book, which we couldn’t squeeze into the movie, is when they have brought him home and they feel that they have actually cured him. And the priest is so satisfied with himself that he has made such progress. But one of the things they’ve done is they have made an absolute rule that nobody says anything about knights-errant.”
Warming up to his subject, the actor becomes more animated--eyes filled with mischief, hands and arms punctuating words that are saturated with his resonant voice--as he tells the story.
“It goes on for months and he seems to be completely cured. And so the priest finally gets up his courage to bring up the subject gently. Something about Naples being invaded. And Don Quixote says, ‘Well, the Duke of Naples has a perfectly reasonable plan if he wants to defend himself.’ And the priest says, ‘What would that be, Don Alonso?’ And he says, ‘All he needs to do is to bring back all the knights-errant.’ ”
Lithgow bursts out laughing, as caught up in the moment as Don Quixote would have been.
“That’s my favorite moment in the whole book. Just when they think he’s perfectly sane, he’s gone again,” Lithgow says. “It’s so funny. It’s the one moment when I laughed out loud reading the book.”
This, like scores of other episodes in the 1,000-page book, fell victim to time and plot constraints. To hone the story down to two hours, the filmmakers tightened it up, structuring it around the efforts of Don Quixote’s friends and family to find him and bring him home.
“It makes it very moving, because everyone can identify with an old family member wandering away from home who has lost his mind,” Lithgow says. “If it hasn’t happened to you, you’ve at least been afraid it might.”
The filmmakers trimmed the story to 25 or so key plot lines, taking a few liberties along the way that might offend some purists. But Lithgow believes his movie stays faithful to the spirit of the book, if not always to the letter.
The basic elements of the story are still there, after all. Don Quixote roams the countryside, astride his bedraggled steed Rocinante, with his faithful squire Sancho Panza (Bob Hoskins) at his side. Sancho is one of many inspired casting choices in the film. As played by Hoskins, Sancho becomes a cockney commentator on his master’s strange doings.
“We went with Bob’s native cockney, because we figured the class difference between Don Quixote and Sancho was the most important thing to keep clear,” Lithgow says. “Besides which, it comes so naturally to Bob.”
Sadly, Rocinante is not as well-cast.
They had a Rocinante that looked perfect, and the horse wrangler took one look and told Lithgow, “This horse will never last nine weeks. So that was a compromise we had to make. I’m not quite skinny enough, nor is the horse.”
Isabella Rossellini takes on the enigmatic role of the duchess, who invites Don Quixote and Sancho to her home, where she and her husband amuse themselves at their guests’ expense. Rossellini, in particular, had the inherent texture of the character they were looking for.
“You can’t quite read her. She’s making fun of the Don, and yet it’s very hard to know that,” he says.
The filmmakers made the contrast between Don Quixote and the aristocrats more obvious by setting the story in the late 19th century, rather than the early 17th century, when the book was actually written.
“We felt it was very important that Don Quixote be seen as a character out of his own time,” Lithgow says. “A man walking around in armor should look completely out of place. He should look like a madman, and everybody looking at him should be laughing at him.”
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Throughout all this, the one person Don Quixote can really count on is his imaginary mistress Dulcinea, played by Vanessa Williams.
Somewhere between the fantasy plucked from a centuries-old tale and the reality of contemporary life, Lithgow hopes the story will still resonate with viewers today.
“They may be drawn to it for the wrong reasons--you know, the fact that a sitcom actor is playing Don Quixote, for example, and then be surprised by the variety and depth of it,” Lithgow says. The fact is, Don Quixote had fun, and Lithgow believes viewers will have fun with the story as well.
“Everybody who was involved in trying to get him home had fun too, even though they didn’t realize it,” says Lithgow. “When he dies, something wonderful goes out of their lives and they feel this terrific sense of loss, and what they’ve lost is the color of Don Quixote’s imagination.”