Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

The members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have voted on this years nominees, and Christian McKay’s performance as Orson Welles has not been nominated.

This is not really too much of a surprise, since there was absolutely no support for the film in terms of trade ads, or given the fact that everyone at Russell Schwartz’s Anemic Marketing screwed things up so badly. Pandemic Marketing can now be branded as the Peppercorn-Wormser of this decade. A crew of publicity hacks who know next to nothing about the work of Orson Welles! I’d like to suggest that all independent producers hire them for their next project, especially if you want to have a huge failure!

Meanwhile, getting back to the actual Academy Award nominations, I found the selections to be quite interesting, especially since from my own ten-best list, every one of my choices received one or more nominations, excepting of course, Me and Orson Welles.

However as Christian McKay recently wrote to me, “the work is it’s own reward.” It certainly should not be based on the baubles and trinkets of getting any kind of award after the fact.

That may be true, but I still hoped Christian McKay would get nominated. I even thought I might bring him some good luck, because I had talked extensively with Martin Landau before he won the Oscar for playing another actor in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. I also spoke to two-time supporting actor Peter Ustinov, when he visited San Francisco during the restoration showing of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and he explained in great detail what happened on the night of his first Oscar win in 1960.

In any event, the Academy did nominate the great Canadian actor, Christopher Plummer, after 52 years of being in the wilderness. Ironically, Mr. Plummer’s movie debut came in the same year as Welles’s Touch of Evil, for playing the early environmental crusader Walt Murdock in Nicholas Ray’s Wind Across The Everglades. Of course, neither Touch of Evil or Wind across the Everglades was nominated for a single Oscar in 1958. Gigi, however, won (at the time) a record nine Oscars that year. Which is why nobody I know really takes the Academy Awards very seriously.

Christopher Plummer, it should be noted, was a big fan of Orson Welles, although they never got to work together on a movie. But in 1967, after Welles met Plummer on the set of Oedipus Rex, in Greece, he asked Plummer to play Marc Antony in a proposed film version of Julius Caesar, with Paul Scofield as Brutus and Welles playing Caesar. Of course, that project never happened, but Plummer would have been a ready and willing participant to appear with Welles, even if there was no money to pay his salary!

Naturally, the money never did appear, and a few years later there was a terrible movie version made of Julius Caesar. It featured several actors Welles knew and had directed beforehand, including Charlton Heston, John Gielgud and Christopher Lee. Ironically, both Heston and Gielgud were great fans of Welles work as a director of Shakespeare, so one has to wonder why they didn’t try to get Welles to direct this awful film version of Julius Caesar, rather than Stuart Burge!

Since Christopher Plummer was such a great fan of Welles, I find it especially interesting that he should be nominated this year for playing the great genius of letters that was Leo Tolstoy. Here is what Plummer told Susan King at The Los Angeles Times, about playing Tolstoy:

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER: How do you play a genius? It’s impossible. And how do you write a script about a genius? Since you can’t play a genius, you play absolutely the opposite, and that’s what I tried to do with Michael (Hoffman’s) encouragement. Playing great people or greatly fascinating historical figures, the way to do it is to play against it.

Now with Leo Tolstoy as a prelude, here is part three of my talk with Christian McKay about playing another genius of the arts…

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LAWRENCE FRENCH: Did you use anything you learned from other directors you worked with for creating the role of Orson Welles as a stage director?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: No, because I have never worked with a director who came anywhere near the Old Man. Richard is the closest. He carries the film in his head like Orson, but is very different in personality.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: You’ve also played a stage director before this in the play Memory, which was seen off-Broadway.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, and perhaps I will be a director of actors someday. I hope my little production company, Atomic80, can put on my revised Orson Welles play, Moby Dick Re-Rehearsed. Norman Lloyd wants me to play in Galileo, by Bertold Brecht, which he produced with Jack Houseman, that was directed by Joseph Losey and starred Charles Laughton. Norman has also suggested a marvelous Chekhov short story as a one-man show for me and I would love to direct Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. There are lots of possibilities, but first things first and this year it is my Goyescas documentary.

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On Tuesday morning we will find out the five nominees for best supporting actor. Might Christian McKay’s portrayal of Orson Welles be among them? We will shall know shortly…

In the meantime, after talking extensively with Christian McKay when he visited San Francisco, I still found I had many unanswered questions left, so Mr. McKay graciously agreed to e-mail me his replies for the readers of Wellesnet. Part II is below and will be followed by Part III on February 2 — whether Mr. McKay is nominated for an Academy Award, or not.

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LAWRENCE FRENCH: Me and Orson Welles began with the novel by Robert Kaplow, who also was responsible for introducing you to Richard Linklater. When did you first meet Robert Kaplow?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Robert’s friend, Marc Lanzoff, patiently waited outside the theatre for me (in New York, where McKay was playing Orson Welles in his one-man play, Rosebud). I often think that he could have left at any time and that would have been that, but Marc waited and set the whole roller coaster going. He insisted that Robert should see the show and make the journey in from New Jersey to Manhattan. I remember meeting Robert after a Saturday matinee and he was a little shaken. We became friends immediately and would send each other confidential reports during the whole financing process.
Robert informed Richard Linklater about my performance. Richard had a sports injury and the doctors insisted that he do no flying. So the story goes, he was intrigued but was following the doctors orders. However, when he got off the phone with Robert The New York Times review was on his desk, and Richard caught the next flight.

I remember assigning the role of Rita Hayworth in the play to the New York Times critic, who I’d been informed was sitting in the middle of the second row and was quite a looker. Also recounted in the play is the wonderful story of the critic Percy Hammond of the Herald Tribune, who gave the Voodoo Macbeth a bad review. The real Voodoo witch doctors in the cast sought permission from a disbelieving Orson to put beri-beri on the hapless critic, who was in the hospital within twenty-four hours and dead within forty-eight. I then asked the audience: “Do we have any critics in tonight?” and the wonderful tag “check out your life insurance”. Never did a critic raise their hand. The New York Times critic hated the play, but saved herself by being very generous about my performance!

I looked at Orson’s entrance in the script Richard had sent to me, just before walking on stage one night. I threw it against the wall because it was so excellent and I wanted to do it! I read Robert’s book in one sitting in my apartment on West 70th street.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: If you’ve seen RKO 281 or several of the other movies that have featured Orson Welles as a character, sometimes the actors who have played Welles have sometimes been viciously attacked. Were you at all concerned about that if you didn’t pull off the performance?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: I have watched them all, although I didn’t know they were viciously attacked! It seems a little over the top in reaction to an actors performance! I’m afraid in my cocoon of ignorance I never contemplated not pulling it off. I am very optimistic in my work, more so than in my life.

I have been asked several times, unfairly, what I thought of the other actors portrayals. Actors are naturally proprietary about their roles; if I were playing Richard III or Hamlet, I would view Olivier with suspicion. The question reminded me, mischievously, of a wonderful anecdote between two great Bach interpreters. I think Landowska won the day by saying “You play Bach your way and I’ll play it his.” Of course, I dug myself into a hole telling this story in relation to Welles, as I was immediately required to explain myself!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Richard Linklater flew you to Austin to film a screen test. What was that like for you, having had such little movie experience?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Richard used his own money, like Orson, to fly me to Austin, and put me up at The Driskill (which reminded me irresistibly of the Amberson Mansion – as did Orson’s last home, but more about that later), and we shot the screen-test. I remember doing the Amberson’s radio scene in the back of a cab. Rick had hired a 1930s car and actors to play Richard Samuels and Jack Houseman, very fine actors, too. We also did one of the confrontations with Houseman and a George Coulouris moment. Screenwriter Vince Palmo worked on the crew and I also met Holly Palmo, too and we became friends immediately. However, when I saw the screen-test, several months later, I was shocked at how theatrical my acting was. It was a harsh first lesson in screen acting, but Rick told me not to worry and that he would get me there. He’s a truly wonderful teacher. There’s a good story about a Hollywood mogul asking Rick who he had in mind to play Welles. Richard handed him my screen test and said, “I’ve got Orson.”

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