Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

David Frost and Orson Welles

Orson Welles appearance on The David Frost Show recorded on May 12, 1970 came before most of the numerous biographies about Welles had been published, providing us with Welles' own point of view on some very interesting aspects of his life and work.

This interview also took place in the midst of the cultural revolution of the late sixties, when Welles was still at work on his planned TV show, Orson's Bag, and in a few months would begin shooting on The Other Side of the Wind. Both projects related rather heavily on various aspects of the counter-culture and youth movement that was so much a part of (more...)

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...

*****

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.

(more...)

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.”

(more...)

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?

(more...)

Since Me and Orson Welles was written by Robert Kaplow, a New Jersey English teacher, and concerns a fictional student who discovers the world of the lively arts in 1937 New York, it's only fitting that the movie will become a subject in classroom discussions.

To this end, Film Education in the UK has put together a marvelous study guide for Me and Orson Welles that explores in great detail the historical background of the film and the myriad of different ideas it contains.

As their website explains:

It features study materials and film clips designed to stimulate debate, discussion and reflection on Orson Welles, Shakespeare, performance, theatrical production and filmmaking.

The study guide addresses core elements of learning in English, Media, Film and Theatre Studies. The materials are most suitable for students aged 14-18.

You can download the study guide HERE.

In America The Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) has also put out a statement for teachers about Me and Orson Welles:

As a film that tells the story of the process of opening a show, Me and Orson Welles will be of particular interest to English and theatre students as well as educators who are well-acquainted with this exhausting, but profoundly gratifying process. Because Mr. Linklater and the film's producers intend for this movie to be an exploration of theatre history, Shakespearean drama and the theatrical work of Orson Welles, as well as all that is learned in the process of producing a show, a study guide has been developed and will be made available to educators free of charge. The study guide will provide educators and their students with a way to use Me and Orson Welles as a tool to study these important aspects of the film, as well as a springboard to study the history and context in which the film's story is told.

The producers plan for the study guide to be available in time for the film's New York City and Los Angeles release on November 25.

(Unfortunately, I haven't found the link to their study guide yet, but will add it when I do.)

In the meantime, EdTA's online site has an article by Jeffrey Sweet which contains some great photos of Orson Welles. It is entitled: Orson Welles: Finding New Ways to tell the Story.

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(more...)

As Me and Orson Welles expands this week to theatres across America, one of the primary audiences who may be especially interested in seeing the film and talking about it will be teachers and their students.

Therefore, here is a short excerpt from Orson Welles chapter taken from Everybody's Shakespeare, the book he wrote in 1934 with Roger Hill, which became a big success with teachers and students in schools across the country, especially after Harper & Brothers issued the books as companion volumes to the first full-length audio recordings of William Shakespeare’s plays, as performed by Welles and his Mercury Theatre actors. The three plays released were Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night, followed a few years later by Macbeth, all of which were “edited for reading and arranged for staging” by Roger Hill and Orson Welles.

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ON STAGING SHAKESPEARE AND ON SHAKESPEARE'S STAGE

By Orson Welles - Director of the Mercury Theater
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Shakespeare said everything. Brain to belly; every mood and minute of a man's season. His language is starlight and fireflies and the sun and moon. He wrote it with tears and blood and beer, and his words march like heartbeats. He speaks to everyone and we all claim him but it's wise to remember, if we would really appreciate him, that he doesn't properly belong to us but to another world; a florid and entirely remarkable world that smelled assertively of columbine and gun powder and printer's ink, and was vigorously dominated by Elizabeth.

Shakespeare speaks everybody's language, but with an Elizabethan accent. When he came squawking and red faced into it, England could carry a tune and was learning to talk. It was a kid of a country, waking up noisily and too suddenly into adolescence and bounding blithely into the sunny, early morning of modern times.

(more...)

Christian McKay and Richard Linklater spent one-and-a-half days in San Francisco to talk about their new film Me and Orson Welles and dazzled the preview audience at the Embarcadero Center Cinemas.

Having arrived in SF from the Austin premiere the night before, the San Francisco event was a much more low-key affair, since teen heart-throb Zac Efron had dropped off the promo tour for their stop in San Francisco. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since it made for a much more casual and intimate screening, where people in the audience could actually talk with both Richard and Christian after their long Q & A session. In fact, many Wellesnet members who attended the screening where able to chat one on one with Richard Linklater and Christian McKay when they adjourned to The Holding Company, next to the theatre for drinks after the show. Just imagine if Zac Efron tried to do that!

Earlier in the day, Mr. Linklater and Mr. McKay had done a Q & A after a matinee screening of the movie at George Lucas's Premiere Theatre in the Presidio, before they faced the press for a long afternoon of interviews at the Prescott Hotel near Union Square. I spoke to them for my allotted 30 minutes, but to my delight, Christian McKay happily agreed to a much longer tête-à-tête during the showing of the movie. The resulting interview, which I will be posting shortly, should prove to be a real delight to Wellesnet readers across the globe, as Mr. McKay has throughly immersed himself in researching Orson Welles, to the point of watching many of the terrible movies Welles appeared in, such as The Witching, Butterfly and Ferry To Hong Kong.

I'd also like to give a special thanks to Karen Larsen and her associates, Leo Wong and Kelda McKinney for doing such a splendid job in handling the movie's publicity in San Francisco.

It was also nice that Christian McKay told me he had just received word that he had been nominated for "Best Supporting Actor" in the independent "Spirit Award" nominations. I told him I thought he would also probably garner an Oscar nomination, but noted he will be facing some stiff competition from actors like Christoph Waltz, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Plummer and Alfred Molina.

Here is a short preview of our talk, which centers on an idea which would make a great extra for the DVD that Warner Bros Home Video will eventually release next year.

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CHRISTIAN McKAY: When I had lunch with Norman Lloyd in Los Angeles just before I spoke with you, we had talked about maybe going on the stage together and doing a talk show about the Mercury Theatre, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Charlie Chaplin and all the other people Norman has worked with. You would get some of the greatest stories that you would ever hear! Norman said to me, “Well, I haven’t been on the stage in a while, it’s been at least four years,” and I thought, “that would have made him 91!”

RICHARD LINKLATER: An evening with Christian and Norman Lloyd on the stage in LA would be amazing!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, wouldn’t that be great -- and if we could get it recorded so people could watch it, that would be fabulous, because there is nobody left alive who has met all these personalities and worked with them.

RICHARD LINKLATER: And you guys are two of the few people who could ask him all of the right questions.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Well, I’d love to go to Los Angeles to talk to Norman Lloyd. In fact, perhaps Warner Bros. might want to do something like that as a supplement for the DVD release of the film. I think it would be fabulous if you directed Christian and Norman Lloyd in an evening of movie and stage memories at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood! Tim Burton did something similar when he did a interview with Vincent Price on film, but it was never finished.

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Richard Linklater and Christian McKay talked about their new film Me and Orson Welles for nearly an hour after a preview screening in San Francisco on December 2.

In the excerpt below they recall some details of Welles's production of Julius Caesar, related to them by the only two cast members of the play who are still alive, Norman Lloyd and Arthur Anderson. Mr. Anderson was the inspiration for the character played by Zac Efron in the movie and his memories of working with Orson Welles, taken from his introduction to The Best of the Old Time Radio Starring Orson Welles, follows.

In addition, Matt Enlow has posted a recent interview with Arthur Anderson at his Atom Blog where Mr. Anderson praises Me and Orson Welles, noting it "portrays Orson very well. He was charming, he was a damn good actor, but he wanted things his own way. Usually he knew what was right… what was creative."

Mr. Anderson also reveals he has an autobiography coming out early in 2010 titled An Actor’s Odyssey: From Orson Welles to Lucky the Leprechaun.

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RICHARD LINKLATER: Zac Efron’s character, Richard Samuels is loosely based on Arthur Anderson. He’s about 86 now and still lives in New York City. He’s one of two people still alive who appeared in the original production. Norman Lloyd who played Cinna the poet is also still with us. Christian has talked with Norman and now they are best friends. I talked with Arthur a couple of times on the phone. We don’t know if they have seen the movie or not, but it must be bizarre for them. I think they may have a weird relationship to it, because just imagine somebody doing a movie about your life from 72 years before! I hope we have captured the spirit of the show. That’s all you can do, is try your best.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Norman Lloyd said to me, “Did you have a red wall (for the back of the stage), and I said, “yes… did you remember the smell of the paint?” – and I could see Norman going back 72 years, remembering and he said, “The Smell? The theatre Stank!!”

RICHARD LINKLATER: We were trying to be faithful to people's memories, even though Norman remembered the Mercury theatre with a curtain, but it famously didn’t have a curtain. He remembers his scene (Cinna being killed) as the pivotal scene in the play, and Welles cut it out of the play and then he put it back in, so we honored his memory of the event and we tried to do that with everyone who wrote about it.

Arthur told me he really did set off the sprinklers in the theatre. That really did happen. He was like a little Gremlin kid, who was only 15 at the time. He was also the only one who had his name changed. In the novel Robert Kaplow changed Arthur's name to Richard and he fictionalized him, so he was loosely based on himself and his father. Arthur also didn’t get fired on opening night. That was part of the fiction. He actually finished the run of the play and was in a lot of additional Mercury Theatre radio shows. Whenever they needed a kid, they would call him up. He ended up having a really long career in radio and voice work. He also had a long gig doing the little Leprechaun in the Lucky Charms cereal commercials.

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RECALLING ORSON WELLES

By ARTHUR ANDERSON
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"Go home, dear boy."

It was November 1937, close to two o'clock in the morning. The Mercury Theatre actors had been wearily rehearsing over and over some fine points in the new modern-dress production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, ignoring Actors' Equity overtime rules in order to satisfy Orson Welles, their 22-year-old director. I was the youngest member of the Mercury, and when Orson by chance noticed me, yawning in one of the theatre's orchestra seats, he at once dismissed me until the following day. Whatever truth there may be in descriptions of George Orson Welles as self-absorbed, autocratic, skittish, undependable and unreasonable, it is also true that he showed only kindness to me.

My first encounter with Orson (I called him "Mr. Welles" in those days, as children were taught to address adults) had been in 1936 on Peter Absolute, aired Sunday afternoons on NBC's Red Network. I had the title role of a little orphan boy in the days of the Erie Canal. Orson played Rex Dakolar, an English actor with a waspish temper who despised the hardships of touring in the American provinces. He was excellent, and very amusing. I was thirteen years old.

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Wellesnet is pleased to be able to share this exclusive report from Chris Welles Feder, who attended the New York premiere and after party of Richard Linklater's new movie, Me and Orson Welles, due to the efforts of your obedient servant.

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ME AND ORSON WELLES premiere

By Chris Welles Feder
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The premiere was held at the Clearview Theater at 260 West 23rd Street in Manhattan on Monday evening, November 23rd. I arrived a few minutes before Zac Efron who was greeted by the media like a megastar. Photographers lined up five deep to take his picture, and the flashbulbs going off in his face and all around him must have been blinding. Zac looked like a dazed deer caught in a car’s headlights, and it took a team of body guards to hold back the ravenous press and usher him safely inside the theater.

Before the movie began, Christian McKay had heard that I was in the audience. He came bounding down the aisle, practically leapfrogging over people to get to my seat. Then, pumping my hand, he told me how much it meant to him that I was there. “This makes my evening!” he declared. We made plans to meet later at the party.

I enjoyed the movie and found it well-paced and entertaining. Zac Efron is most appealing and gives a sensitive and convincing performance. I felt the movie worked best as a coming-of-age story involving Zac’s character and Clare Danes’ (both entirely fictional as I am sure you know). I was also fascinated by the reconstruction of the Mercury’s Julius Caesar in modern dess, which I found well done. (Zac told me later that there had originally been a lot more footage of Julius Caesar, but it was cut, unfortunately, in the final version.)

As I am sure you will understand, it is difficult for me to be objective about a portrayal of my father in a fictional movie, especially when the Orson Welles character is presented as a sacré monstre (holy monster). Director Richard Linklater was equal to the task of telling a coming-of-age story but not, I feel, of delving into the Orson Welles character and helping us better understand what makes him tick. As a result, we end up with a caricature. Instead of taking the novel on which the movie is based at face value, as well as buying into the prevailing myths surrounding Orson Welles, Linklater might have gone deeper into his subject and given us a more complex and substantive portrait of a theatrical genius.

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Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles had its New York City premiere on November 23, and the next day, on November 24, there was a dedication by Chris Welles Feder and Christian McKay of a plaque in memory of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre which once stood at the site of the current building which now occupies the lot at 110 West 41st street.

That is why Wellesnet will be recalling some of the memories of the original cast members of Julius Caesar this week, beginning with these filmed recollections of one of the founding members of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre company, Mr. William Alland.

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Part One: Meeting Welles, Theater and Radio

Part Two: Hollywood and Citizen Kane to Touch of Evil

Photos of William Alland and Orson Welles can be seen at Wellesnet's Facebook page HERE.

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William Alland most famously played the reporter Thompson in Citizen Kane, and was one of the original Mercury Theatre actors, having first met Welles early in his career in 1936. He then went on to play the part of Marullus in Julius Caesar, and joined the other Mercury Actors when they went to Hollywood. Alland debuted as a film actor in Citizen Kane and worked with Welles on several of his subsequent films, including playing one of the murderers in Macbeth.

Mr. Alland also had roles in many of Welles's radio shows, most notably playing several parts in the notorious War of the Worlds broadcast.

John McCarty, a colleague from Cinefantastique magazine, recently wrote to tell me he had filmed an long interview segment with Mr. Alland for a documentary project and had just recently placed it on YouTube for everyone to enjoy.

I asked John to write a short introduction for his documentary, The Man Who Pursued Rosebud, and he readily complied. In looking at Mr. Alland's comments, what I found especially interesting, is how his account of his first meeting with Orson Welles differed so greatly from what John Houseman recorded in his own autobiography, Run Though. Like the reporter he played in Citizen Kane, it seems William Alland and Mr. Houseman have two very different memories of how they first came to meet the great man!

So after you watch John McCarty's documentary, I have included the relevant comments from John Houseman's book, where he recalls his own take on how William Alland became a member of the Mercury Theatre.

It should also be noted that William Alland is portrayed in a featured part in Me and Orson Welles, by the actor Iain McKee. In the movie he is known only as "Vakhtangov" which is explained by Mr. Houseman in the excerpt from his autobiography.

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THE MAN WHO PURSUED ROSEBUD

By John McCarty

In 1994, I published a book titled The Fearmakers (St. Martin’s Press), a compendium of essay-profiles of twenty filmmakers who, in my opinion, had the greatest influence on the evolution of the terror-horror-suspense film genre from the silent era to the present (circa 1993). One of these filmmakers was Jack Arnold, the director of such enduring sci-fi/horror classics of the 1950s as It Came From Outer Space, Tarantula, The Creature of From the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and others.

Two years later, a Texas-based video production company contacted me about developing the book into a documentary series for the fast-growing home video market. Each half-hour segment would focus on one of these master fearmakers and include clips from their films as well as interviews with co-workers, cast members, film historians, and even the filmmakers themselves if they were still around. I signed on as narrator, script supervisor, co-director, interviewer, and chief cook and bottle washer.

After selecting a baker’s dozen from the twenty in my book for the thirteen segments that would be produced, I gave the producers a list of potential interviewees. For the segment on Jack Arnold, the interviewee I most hoped to get was William Alland, Universal’s “house producer” of science-fiction and horror films in the ‘50s – and, not unimportantly to me, the man who had played Jerry Thompson, the reporter in pursuit of the identity of “rosebud” in the Orson Welles masterpiece Citizen Kane.

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