Warren 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.
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
, a review aggregator, reports that only one 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 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."
