Don Peyote

Plot

Warren (Dan Fogler) is an unemployed artist and pot head who has crazy dreams. That is the only remarkable thing about him until a day comes when a crazy homeless man confronts him on the street. From that day on, Warren descends into himself, insanity and a confusion of mind and body, spurred on by drugs, along with Doomsday and conspiracy theories.

Cast

Production

Fogler recruited the large cast of cameos in part by allowing them to co-write their characters and improvise. The film was shot between 2010 and 2013.

Release

XLrator gave Don Peyote a limited release on May 16, 2014, and released it on DVD on July 8, 2014.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 8% of thirteen surveyed critics gave the film a positive rating; the average rating was 3.5/10. Metacritic rated it 14/100 based on eight reviews. Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "To call Don Peyote a mess would be putting too fine a point on it. The hallucinatory odyssey of a conspiracy-theory-obsessed New Yorker is a bad trip, destination nowhere." Daniel M. Gold of The New York Times called it "a cautionary tale of drug-fueled decline" that may not have been realized by its creators. Gary Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times called it "a tedious, incoherent look at a paranoid stoner's emotional and spiritual unraveling". Calum Marsh of The Village Voice wrote that the film becomes increasingly incomprehensible as time goes on. Christopher Schobert of Indiewire rated it D and wrote, "Perhaps in the hands of a Charlie Kaufman or Michel Gondry, this story could move beyond the unexceptional, but in Fogler's hands, Don Peyote is a slow-moving dirge." Vadim Rizov of The Dissolve rated it 0/5 stars and wrote, "In practice, Dan Fogler's sophomore directorial effort (co-directed/written by Michael Canzoniero) is merely execrable, segueing incoherently from one stand-alone fragment of a terrible movie to another." Matt Donato of We Got This Covered rated it 2.5/5 stars and wrote, "Don Peyote is a delusional, hallucinogenic journey into the mind of an apocalypse obsessed lunatic – a jumbled puzzle of ideas missing a few crucial connections."