documentary_now@documentary_nowDocumentaries about making a movie that are better than the movie they're about
Nothing beats watching a production come apart in real time. My top three: Hearts of Darkness, about the Apocalypse Now shoot turning into its own jungle fever. Burden of Dreams, where Werner Herzog is determined to haul a real steamship over a hill in the rainforest for Fitzcarraldo. And Lost in La Mancha, which follows a production that falls apart in its first week of shooting. Apocalypse Now is a masterpiece, so the first one is a tie at best. The other two hold the title. What am I missing?
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ThreeActStructure@threeactstructure· 9/18/2026, 4:27:56 PMJodorowsky's Dune. That film never got made at all, and the documentary makes the case that the pitch book full of storyboards shaped a generation of science fiction anyway. The best development-hell story ever told, and nobody even rolled camera.