Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

I think it's fair to say that over the past five years Wellesnet has developed into one of the top sources of information about Orson Welles on the internet, based simply on the number of international Welles scholars who look at and frequent this�site.�

As most of you know, the site was started and maintained by Jeff Wilson, who has generously financed all of the costs of the site and it's upkeep out of his own pocket.� Unfortunately, Jeff is not independently wealthy, and unlike Orson Welles, he cannot get acting jobs to pay for the upkeep of Wellesnet.�

That is why we - that is everyone who visits and enjoys the site -�all�need to develop a way to keep Wellesnet alive and active on the internet after the end of this year.�

Wellesnet�currently has over 500 members, many of course who are not currently active. �But, there are undoubtedly�at least 500 or more�viewers who�enjoy the site, but are not members.� Hopefully, anyone who enjoys reading and posting about Orson Welles will consider pressing that little Paypal button, which is right next to the current posts, and�contribute whatever they can. If you happen to be a billionare�(Steven Spielberg and Dave Packard, among others have�been known to visit�here), please be generous.

However, if you are among the great majority of readers who are not millionares, please still consider giving between $1.00 and $5.00. to help�defray the costs of maintaining the site. We'd be in fine shape if only 200 people contributed $1.00 yearly. �But as that is probably unlikely, it would be nice if we could get�50 to 100 people (the dedicated Welles afficiandos) to contribute more than $1.00.

Thank you in advance for whatever help you can give to keeping Wellesnet alive and well on the internet.�

Lawrence French

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While checking the site statistics, I noticed that bandwidth usage is getting very close to the limit for the month, the first time this has ever happened. If the site is unavailable for a day or two prior to June 1, that's the reason. I need to check the site logs, to make sure this is actually from people visiting and not from ne'erdowells stealing it.

Hi!

I'm also going to be helping Jeff out during his sabbatical, and hope to help keep the site lively. I'm hoping to soon have a translation of Sigi Sciortino's interview with Mauro Bonannini, along with an on-line petition re: Don Quixote. I've also scanned several book covers, and they'll be up soon as well, so we intend to keep up the resources section as much as possible; if any of you have material you think relevant, please send it in.

This has been a banner year so far for things Welles, and there's going to be lots more to talk and think about. Callow's Vol. 2 will soon hit North America, as well as new books by Joseph McBride, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Randy Rasmussen's ("Orson Welles:Six Films Analyzed, Scene by Scene"), and hopefully Catherine Benamou's long-awaited work on Welles in Brazil. And let's not forget the new BBC radio play featuring Simon Callow which is based on "Put Money in thy Purse" and which will be available for free download for one week (from yesterday) on the BBC.

Many thanks to Jeff for his steady stewardship of the site for it's first 5 years, and I know we all hope he gets involved again as soon as he wants to.

Tony

email: tonyrowat@hotmail.com

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Greetings to all you happy Wellesnet people:

As I long ago hooked up with Jeff and have contributed several articles to Wellesnet before it was even launched, I asked Jeff if he would like me to take over some of his posting burdens since he felt the need to go on sabbatical for a time. The timing seemed to be perfect, since by coincidence or design, I recently started my own blog on Orson Welles, since I have amassed a great deal of material that I wanted to post on the web.

Of course, since covering the exciting world of all things Orson is a job too big for any one person, Tony will also be joining me to add his expertise to Wellesnet. And to start things off with a bang, I've decided to post Mr. Welles talking about the ideas and themes in MR. ARKADIN...

I'm sure anyone who has recently brought and viewed the superb 3-disc Criterion DVD will find that Welles comments make for very enlightening reading.

So welcome and please feel free to e-mail me directly with any thoughts, suggestions, comments or contributions regarding the great man and his work.

Obediently yours,

Lawrence French

E-mail: lrfrench@yahoo.com

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I posted something similar on the message board, but long story short, I've decided to take a break from the site. I had thought digging into re-furbishing the site at long last would ignite my interest again, but it hasn't. It's simply a chore, and one I don't want to do. The site isn't going anywhere, but regular updating isn't going to happen. It may in fact seem like nothing is out of the ordinary, considering how long the site went between updates previously. The message board will still be functional, so all the latest news will likely be there as usual, before I get around to posting it. I'll probably be back regularly at some point, but when that will be, I can't say. Feel free to contact me via email for whatever reason. Thanks.

Ignore the dust, we'll have it all cleaned up shortly.

For the old blog with the links to the rest of the site, click here.

As you'll have seen if you peruse the message board, a post linking to Tim Lucas' Video Watchblog column about the new Criterion Collection Mr. Arkadin DVD set resulted in some less than adulatory (but hardly vicious) words being written about Lucas, which in turn resulted in him ripping those of us who dared to question his ways (without dignifying us with a link, of course). Frankly, it all seems to me to be much ado about nothing; not being able to take some fairly tame criticism on an out of the way message board simply makes him look like a nut. Whatever. In any event, as Lucas clearly stated in his follow-up blog entry (you'll find the link in this thread), it's none of our business commenting on his personal (yet published) writings, even if they are read by thousands, as he is keen to remind us. You can comment on my writings though, I'm not that much of a maniac. Yet. [You can't hear it, but I'm laughing insanely right now] Let�s change the subject, lest I receive another stern keyboard-lashing.

So what else is happening? Err...not much. A couple DVD announcements; one is the UK Ambersons release, which we mentioned here some time ago, is finally up for pre-order, at least at Play.com. Note the pretty lame cover. How it will look is anyone's guess, given Warner's never-ending search for usable elements. Street date is May 29. Also, the Mercury radio version of Ambersons is also available, though I would bet that whenever Warner gets around to releasing the film here, that will be included. So I personally wouldn't spend $15 on a CD of it, but that's just me.

The other DVD announcement is also from the UK, where the fine people at the Masters of Cinema collection have announced F for Fake as an upcoming part of their collection. An early list of features only includes an HD progressive transfer, the trailer, an interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum, and "Hearts of Age." "More" is also promised, but we'll have to see what that might entail. No date or cover art yet.

I originally intended, when I replaced the old News page with this blog format, that I would update more frequently, if not with actual news (of which there isn't a whole lot, frankly), with new features on the site, and what have you. Needless to say, judging by the number of posts I've made, that hasn't exactly worked out. I have often had plans for this site that either fizzled out or simply didn't come to fruition, and that's just how it goes, given time and inclination and so on. I have wanted to begin updating the various sections of the site, because many pages could use a good overhaul, but it has come to seem like a rather onerous task that I haven't wanted to deal with.

It occurred to me a week or two ago that this month marks the fifth anniversary of the site, believe it or not. That is a long time to be doing something like this, I thought, and I have to admit there was a niggling thought of "do I really want to keep doing this?" Given the amount of work put into the site over the years, as well as the message board, I would find it hard to simply give it up, or even turn it over to someone else. I am sticking around, no worries there (I'm sure plenty of brows are being wiped in relief as this is read), and I will even try to get some work done on the site. I've had some projects I've wanted to work on for a while, and just maybe I can make some of them happen in The Glorious Sixth Year of the site. Or, next March, there will be another post from me saying "It's been six years, and I haven't done squat since last year!" We shall see. As always, send me your news and notes, love letters and hate mail, and I'll be back soon with some initial impressions of the Criterion Arkadin set, once I get it.

Addendum: I have finally figured out why the Archive links were not working. All of them should be working and available, if you want to see anything you may have missed.

Thanks to my own rampant laziness, I had not affixed the Amazon affiliate link to the news blog page here, but that has been remedied, thanks to a timely reminder. So click away and order things, as it supports Wellesnet. You have to order on that specific visit for it to count. I will make links for the items mentioned in posts below sometime before the sun burns out.

Also, I have noticed that if you click on one of the Archives buttons in the right hand column, you get an error message. I have no idea why it is doing this, but I will figure it out. So on the off chance someone else has actually clicked those buttons, the problem has been noted and one of our fine technicians (i.e. me) will get on it ASAP. Really.

Welcome to the first installment of the Wellesnet NewsBlog. I like this format for its ease of updating, which also means I can do it from anywhere. It will hopefully mean more frequent updates. Everything else about Wellesnet remains the same, and the old News page is exactly where it always has been, if you're looking for older news and links. I will be changing all the other links on the site to reflect this link as the main news page, however. All the same links can be found on this page, including the Amazon affiliate links. I will also finally be adding some outside links to other sites of interest, not just Welles-related, but film-related, something I've been meaning to do for some time. Without further ado then, on to some bits and bobs of news:

The French DVD edition of Macbeth is due on December 5, and looks to be excellent, which hopefully portends a similar release from Paramount in 2006. The package is comprised of three discs: the theatrical cut, which was shortened to 88 minutes and removed the Scottish accents, the original Welles cut, length and accents intact, and a third disc of extra materials. Those are slated to include analysis by Welles scholars Francois Thomas and Jean-Pierre Barthome(13 min), a comparison of the two versions (26 min), the Voodoo Macbeth footage from the WPA short (4 min), the Mercury Records version of the play (already available on CD; 78 min), and analysis of the various elements of the film (image, sound, design, etc). All that and an 80 page book are included.

Also in France, Youssef Ishaghpour, three-volume set on Welles has been re-issued, and a new title, by Fabien Gaffez and titled simply Orson Welles, is also available. The Gaffez, given its less than three-Euro price, is presumably an introductory work of some kind. In US book news, Amazon lists Simon Callow's second bio volume as coming out in June 2006. A May 2006 release is scheduled for the UK. Joseph McBride's forthcoming book on Welles is similarly scheduled for a 2006 release, but no new date has been posted as yet.

As added to the bibliographies section of the Resources section, here are this year's scholarly articles on Welles:

Damisch, Hubert. "Montage du desastre." Cahiers du Cinema, 599 (2005 Mar), pp. 72-78.

Melnikoff, Kirk (ed. and introd.). "Orson Welles and Shakespeare on Film." Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship, 23:1 (2005 Spring), pp. 5-136. Special issue.

Jones, Nicholas. "A Bogus Hero: Welles's Othello and the Construction of Race." Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship, 23:1 (2005 Spring), pp. 9-28.

Newstok, Scott L. "Touch of Shakespeare: Welles Unmoors Othello." Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship, 23:1 (2005 Spring), pp. 29-86.

Hoffman, Dean A. "'Bypaths and Indirect Crooked Ways': Mise-en-Scene in Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight." Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship, 23:1 (2005 Spring), pp. 87-112.

Diaz Fernandez, Jose Ramon. "Orson Welles's Shakespeare Films: An Annotated Checklist." Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship, 23:1 (2005 Spring), pp. 113-36.