Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

In 1994 I had the great pleasure of talking with the veteran film actor Martin Landau for over two hours about his role playing Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s wonderful movie Ed Wood. Mr. Landau went on to win an Academy Award the following year.

I also had the pleasure of talking with the rising young actor, Christian McKay about playing Orson Welles in a film I believe he may well be nominated for as the “Best Supporting Actor” Academy Award. However, I’m afraid the odds are now rising against him, due rather ironically to the publicists of his own movie!

In fact, I must say these mistakes seem to have been made primarily by a former New Line Cinema publicist, Elissa Greer-Arko, who I gather is the lady in charge of the terrible publicity campaign that Freestyle releasing has mounted for Me and Orson Welles.

As Mick LaSalle notes, in his article in The San Francisco Chronicle, Christian McKay is being touted as best actor in the DVD screeners that are being sent out to Academy members.

Yet every award Mr. McKay has so far received has been as “Best supporting actor.” So you can see how foolish it is to try and position Mr. McKay as a nominee for “Best Actor.”

All I can say, is if I was in charge, and of course, I’m not, I would immediately terminate Ms. Greer-Arko. She clearly knows nothing about Orson Welles or anything about the film she is supposed to be promoting!

Every indication shows that the film tracks well with older viewers, but the so-called Zac Efron fans have not showed up. This can easily be confirmed by market research, but Freestyle has marketed the film as if teenagers will be rushing out to see it.

What I can also say is what a terrible job Elissa did as a New Line Cinema publicist on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies.

I can personally attest I actually had to call and implore producer Barrie Osborne to get photos released to me for the over 100 pages of favorable material I wrote on the the three films in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy!

Thankfully, as can be seen in my interview with Cristian McKay, below, he insisted talking with me for more than the scant 15 minutes that were initially “allotted” by Ms. Greer-Arko.

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CHRISTIAN McKAY: You know I got another nomination today and it surprised the hell out of me. I got a text message from a friend saying congratulations for your nomination from the Independent Spirit Awards. I didn’t even know what they were. But how did you like my performance in the movie?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Oh, I really liked it. In fact, I think you have a very good shot at an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, although Elissa Greer, the woman in charge at Freestyle Releasing told me they will be pushing you in the “Best Actor” category. I must say I think she is making a terrible mistake, because it will only confuse Academy voters and probably split the vote, so you will probably end up not getting nominated in either category!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Well, it seems to me it’s none of my business. They all go off in these little huddles and meetings, and I’m a rookie so I really don’t know. I haven’t read many reviews, but they tell me occasionally about a good review but they don’t tell me about the bad ones. Of course actors are more interested in the bad ones, because all actors are masochists. (laughter.)

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Elissa also refused to allow you to talk to Wellesnet for more than 15 minutes while you were in San Francisco, so I must say I don’t think she knows what is best for the movie or any thing about Orson Welles, for that matter!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Well, they started to tell me that today and I said “NO.” They said, but you have to have your dinner, and I said, “well, we can have our dinner together.” I told them there is no problem as far as I am concerned. The most important person for me to talk to is the Welles scholar! But sometimes they over complicate things and I don’t have a a personal publicist and I wouldn’t want one, quite frankly.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Do you really prefer to look at the bad reviews?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Only from a safe distance, but sometimes they can be very useful, especially if they are constructive. This is a very honest admission, but we both love the old man so I don’t mind admitting it, but I almost feel guilty when people say they like the performance!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: There really haven’t been many bad notices for the movie, and almost none for your performance, but I did read one I thought was completely absurd because they complained that nothing dramatic happens in the story. Apparently they were expecting to see explosions or car crashes!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, as if the recreation of the greatest American Shakespeare performance isn’t dramatic enough.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: If you do get nominated for best supporting actor, you will be up against Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds? Did you see that movie?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, I did and I thought he gave a really marvelous performance!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Besides Christoph Waltz, there is Christopher Plummer to consider, who did quite a fabulous job as Leo Tolstoy. And Christopher Plummer has never even been nominated! He also recently did King Lear on Broadway, and it was a big critical success.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: I’d love to play King Lear. It’s so exhausting, although Laurence Olivier played it when he was only two years older than me, but he was Olivier. Somebody asked me what my ideal Shakespearian role would be and I said Richard III. I’d also rather play King Lear than Hamlet, although I’d still love to play Hamlet.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: That reminds me of something Morris Carnovsky told me. “Everything in Shakespeare is rewarding. You can’t compare one part to the exclusion of another.” So if you are a Shakespearian actor, as both Morris and Orson Welles were, you’d like to play in as many of the the great parts Shakespeare wrote as is possible. Then, later on when I talked to Vincent Price he told me the three roles of Shakespeare’s he really wanted to do where King Lear, Shylock and Prospero.

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CHRISTIAN McKAY as Orson Welles

Nomination and Awards tally:

Broadcast Film Critics Association

Best Supporting Actor

Nominated for a British Independent Film Award in ‘Most promising Newcomer’ category

Variety on Christian McKay’s chances as a nominee for “Best Supporting Actor.”

“McKay turns in one of the year’s most compelling turns as the iconic filmmaker working on the 1937 Broadway production of “Julius Caesar.” McKay captures both Welles’ brilliance and high-strung temper.

–Stuart Levine.

Christian McKay chances as a BAFTA nominee for “Best Supporting Actor.”

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Frank Lloyd Wright said architecture was the cathedral of the arts. I think the cinema is.

–Nicholas Ray

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Richard Linklater’s new movie Me and Orson Welles will open in 44 cities across America on December 11 and for anyone interested in the arts, it should be a sheer delight. As Nicholas Ray notes, the film combines poetry (John Keats Ode to a Grecian Urn), theatre (Julius Caesar), photography, music, literature, fine art, and of course the cinema.

Perhaps what is even more important is that it is easily the most important film to have been made about Orson Welles work as an artist since he died in 1985. As such, it can have an enormous effect on future Welles projects, such as finishing The Other Side of the Wind, if it should meet with even a modest commercial success.

Which is why I would urge anyone reading this to try and go and see the movie this weekend if you possibly can. If Me and Orson Welles becomes an art house hit, it can only help to open up the logjam of Welles projects and material that has yet to see the light of day!

A listing of the cities and theatres where Me and Orson Welles will be opening this weekend appears after part one of my interview with Christian McKay and Richard Linklater.

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LAWRENCE FRENCH: You first played Orson Welles in 1994 in your one-man play, Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles, which I understand was written with you in mind.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: It was actually written with me! What happened was we were looking for a one-man show to do and (director) Josh Richards suggested Orson Welles, but I didn’t want to play Welles because I thought they were having a go at my weight. While I was at RADA somebody said I looked like Orson Welles in The Third Man, but I was ignorant of the earlier Orson Welles at the beginning, being someone from my generation who only knew him as this gargantuan 350 lb. man, “that ton of humus” as Falstaff says. I had only remembered him from his Sherry adverts and his appearances on Michael Parkinson. Then, because I thought they were having a go at my weight, I didn’t want to play him. So I was suggesting we do Peter Sellers or Winston Churchill, Churchill being my favorite, my great hero, but I had never played a real life person before, I had always played fiction, so I thought it was an intriguing idea to do a one-man show and felt it would be a good theatrical lesson to learn. But it kept coming back to Orson and so I started reading about him and then of course, you get obsessed, don’t you?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Yes, that can happen quite easily.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: I needed to know everything about him and at some point I found Wellesnet which was a great aid to me in the research I was doing and that I continued to do while I was doing the play and of course, when I did the film. There is one thing I won’t read though. I notice on your discussion page there is something about Me and Orson Welles. That is the only thing I won’t look at, although I’m very tempted, but it’s the only thing I can’t read on Wellesnet.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Of course there’s a real danger of becoming too identified with Orson Welles, although I think it would be wonderful if you could play Welles again one more time in the screenplay Welles wrote about all the incredible events surrounding the staging of The Cradle Will Rock.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, but I don’t want to play him again, although I do have a very lucrative offer to do Rosebud. Rick and I have dreamed about re-visiting Welles again in about 20 years, as a bookend. We’ve talked about that and I really owe Rick so much, because it would have been so much easier for him to have just found a famous Hollywood actor and he could have made the film in America. The producers kept saying to him “get rid of the unknown limey! Who the hell is this guy” Richard just kept saying, “no, this is my Orson Welles.” They were even talking about doing a comedy skit, for publicity purposes and I said, “No, I can’t play Orson, no way.” It’s all right for Orson to do Dean Martin, but I couldn’t play him on Dean Martin, no way. It’s extraordinary because somebody asked me how he thought I would have gotten on with Orson and I said, “We wouldn’t have gotten on.” I really assert that. We wouldn’t have got on. I loved playing him and I feel very close to him, and I feel very protective of him. I’m not an apologist for him, but I will stick up for him.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Richard, you worked with Vincent D’Onofrio on The Newton Boys, and Christian says he suggested several Hollywood actors to play the part when you first met, although he wouldn’t say who they were. Did you ever consider Vincent D’Onofrio to play Orson Welles?

RICHARD LINKLATER: No, because although I know Vince, that scene he did in Ed Wood convinced me all the more to go with an unknown actor. Look at how you see the one scene Vince did in Ed Wood. You are saying, “Vince is looking kind of like Welles, but he’s not quite like him,” so your critical antennae is going up, because you are judging the performance and you are not really experiencing the performance. So I thought the magic of the cinema could only take place if we used an unknown actor to play Welles. I felt it would happen more naturally if we went with somebody who was unknown. I thought you might more readily think you were hanging out with Orson Welles in 1937.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Had you seen Ed Wood when you cast Vincent D’Onofrio in The Newton Boys?

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