Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

Craig Weinstein and Drew Reiber, two Wellesnet correspondents in Florida wrote to report that Peter Bogdanovich appeared at the Florida Film Festival in Orlando last night (March 30th) and announced that Showtime's long simmering deal to finance the completion of The Other Side of the Wind has finally been consummated.

Apparently the contract was as good as signed, and while on the surface, this is very good news, as with anything pertaining to The Other Side of the Wind, there are many obstacles that still may appear. However, there is little doubt that this is a giant step forward in getting the film completed.

As Bogdanovich told Weinstein and Reiber, "We now have a lot of work ahead of us."  That work will begin with taking inventory of all the footage that has been locked away in film vaults for over 30 years.

Bogdanovich's plan is to attempt to assemble the footage as closely to Welles original vision as is possible. He outlined his approach in the Searching For Orson documentary:

BOGDANOVICH: This is Orson Welles only unrealized film project that could possibly be completed without the great man himself. There are many arguments to support this hope. But my goal would be to work with everybody who worked on the picture, Oja Kodar, and anybody who was around a lot. Frank Marshall was there for quite a while, so I would ask them what they all remember, and we would all pool are memories of what Orson had in mind. The idea would be to try and get as close as we can to what Orson had in mind, following the script and following notes that he made, and things he said to Oja about writing the script, and things he might have said to me. There's a certain rhythm (in the film) that he obviously had in mind, and we'd try to get to that kind of rhythm, depending on the scene and also depending on the things we know about Orson.

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Searching for Orson�

Directed and written by Dominik Sedlar & Jakov Sedlar. Produced by Jakov Sedlar. Executive producers: Richard Weiner & Stephen Ollendorff. Co-producers: Harold Snyder, Boris Miksic, Ron Assouline, Natali Schlesinger; Photography (Digital Video): Gary Graver, Igor Sunara, Zelko Guberovic; Editor: Zdravko Borko; Supervising sound editor: Ivika Dmic. Narrated by Peter Bogdanovich.��� Running time: 80 minutes�

Featuring:
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Orson Welles
Oja Kodar
Peter Bogdanovich
Gary Graver
Frank Marshall
Paul Mazursky
Henry Jaglom
James Earl Jones
Merv Griffin
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Steven Spielberg
Christopher Welles Feder
Marc Welles

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By LAWRENCE FRENCH
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For three years running the Tiburon International Film Festival and its director, Saeed Shafa has spotlighted the work of Orson Welles with an outstanding tribute program. This is especially appropriate, given the fact that Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth spent time filming The Lady From Shanghai near Tiburon in the fall of 1946.
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(Location shots of Marin and San Francisco from Lady From Shanghai can be seen here: �

www.filminamerica.com/Movies/TheLadyFromShanghai/ )
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Although the waterfront scenes in The Lady From Shanghai were filmed at the now defunct Walhalla Caf� and bar in nearby Sausalito, legend has it that Errol Flynn docked his yacht, The Zaca used as Arthur Bannister's boat in the film, at the historic Corinthian Yacht Club, located north of the Golden Gate Bridge, at 43 Main Street in Tiburon. (The Corinthian Yacht Club is also where the film festival holds it�s opening night party, this year with director Mark Rydell in attendance with his compelling new film on gambling, Even Money.) Also interesting to note is how Welles� famous story in The Lady From Shanghai (about sharks devouring each other off the coast of Fortaleza), relates to the discovery of Tiburon, since in Spanish, Tiburon means shark. In 1775, the Spanish explorer who first discovered Tiburon named it �Shark Point� when, like Michael O' Hara, he observed �a sea that was made of sharks, and more sharks still.�
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This years Welles�s program has brought the marvelous new documentary Searching For Orson to Tiburon, and although it�s co-director�s, the father and son team of Jakov and Dominik Sedlar could not be present, the film�s executive producer, Richard Weiner was on hand to speak about the documentary along with noted Welles� scholar Joseph McBride.
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Producer Weiner revealed that the project began when Oja Kodar approached the Sedlar�s and provided rare Welles� material that has never been widely seen before, since much of it is of a highly personal nature. Quite wisely, instead of wasting time rehashing Welles already well known early triumphs, the film focuses on Welles work�after he met Oja Kodar when he was shooting The Trial in Zagreb.
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Of the unfinished Welles films, the most footage is devoted to four projects: The Other Side of The Wind, The Dreamers, Don Quixote, and The Merchant of Venice, with some new perspectives and fascinating footage on all of them. Peter Bogdanovich, for instance, basically lays out his plan for finishing The Other Side of The Wind, and last week, Bogdanovich said from the set of the concert film he is currently shooting with Tom Petty, that the deal with a cable network (Showtime) to finish Other Side of the Wind, is now �99 % certain.����
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In Searching For Orson, Welles oldest daughter, Christopher also appears for the first time in a documentary,�commenting on the little-known fact that her half-sister Rebecca had a son who she put up for adoption. Orson Welles grandson, Marc Welles is�interviewed on camera�here and he tells the very sad story of never having been able to know or even meet his real mother or his famous grandfather.
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Beginning the film with Oja�s first meeting with Orson Welles, it ends touchingly, as we hear one of the final audio recordings Welles ever made: a message he recorded and sent to Oja�in Croatia for her birthday in 1985, six weeks before �the silver cord would snap... the golden bowl would break� and Orson Welles would go �to his eternal home�� and his dust return to the earth as it was��� In this beautiful recording, Welles movingly reads a famous passage to Oja from the book of Ecclesiastes - almost as if he had a premonition he only had a few more weeks to live. �
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Richard Weiner says Searching for Orson may be�the first chapter in an ongoing series of documentaries and DVD�s covering The Lost Treasures of Orson Welles. Concomitant to that, are plans for a film school, which Orson and Oja had always wanted to begin, and Oja says Welles originally wanted to call it the �Jean Renoir school of Film.� �

Naturally, as with all Welles projects, finding the backers and money will be the key for such plans to actually reach fruition, but let�s hope that this pilot documentary creates enough interest to begin a whole series of future DVD�s that will enable the�world to explore the many Lost Treasures of Orson Welles.��

Peter Tonguette's book about Welles, Orson Welles Remembered, has just seen publication, and he sent along the following about the book and why he put it together.

Jeff W.

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My fascination with Orson Welles began when I saw the restored Touch of Evil in December 1998. I was 15 at the time. I soon found myself watching as many of his works as I could. I remember watching The Trial on video shortly after Touch of Evil; at the time, I heartily agreed with the comment by Welles quoted on the video box - that it was the best movie he'd ever made. (Of course, then I saw Chimes at� Midnight/Falstaff a few years later...)����

I also began reading a lot about Welles. It was in books like This Is Orson Welles and Joseph McBride's Orson Welles that I first learned about The Other Side of the Wind, The Dreamers, and The Magic Show - projects I would later devote much time to in my own research.��� A few years later, when I was writing film criticism regularly for several Internet publications, I began conducting interviews with Welles's colleagues. My book - Orson Welles Remembered: Interviews with His Actors, Editors, Cinematographers, and Magicians - collects 30 of my interviews. It has just been published by McFarland & Company.� Many of the interviews relate to the later Welles projects named above. For example, I spoke with some of the key participants from The Other Side of the Wind, such as Peter Bogdanovich, Gary Graver, R. Michael Stringer, Michael Ferris, and Rich Little (among others). But I also included interviews with people from other important periods of Welles's career. I was very fortunate to be among the last journalists to interview Robert Wise about Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. I also spoke with key craftsmen from The Fountain of Youth - editorial supervisor Dann Cahn and editor Bud Molin - who were invaluable in giving me a picture of what Welles was like to work with in the cutting room. I cover Chimes at Midnight in-depth, as well as the 1948 film of Macbeth, the 1955 stage production of King Lear, and F for Fake, among others.���

Theater�director Marc Silberschatz had the wonderful idea to stage a revival of Orson Welles MOBY DICK-REHEARSED, which was never staged by Welles in New York City,�despite it being his own favorite theatrical production.�

Welles original production was presented in London for about three weeks, opening on June 15,�1955.�By�all accounts the play was a sensation, and Welles subsequently began to film a movie version of the play that featured most of the the same actors who were in the stage production, but was never completed.�

The current�New York production will also have a run of about three weeks, and received some�excellent reviews in The New York Times and The Village Voice ( see below).

And as�director Silberschatz is a big fan of Orson Welles work, I'm sure if you have a chance to see it, the show is worth checking out before it closes on March 25th.�

Here is the opening scene from Welles play:

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The new Taschen picture book on Orson Welles is a major disappointment. While the book does contain many rare stills in high quality reproductions, how could Taschen reduce the importance of the greatest director in cinema history to what amounts to a footnote? ���

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The�size of this book is about half of what they have allotted for many other far less important directors than Welles.�For instance, how could anyone at Taschen justify a bigger volume on�Paul Verhoven, in� this same series? �������

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It's sheer stupidity by whoever was responsible at Taschen. Having published a�beautiful coffee table book on Stanley Kubrick that costs $200. and weights about ten pounds, it seems inconceivable that the same publisher wouldn't want to�do that same kind of coverage for�a book about Orson Welles. Especially given the kind of documentation and multitude of Welles scholars than are available to consult.� But even if they didn't want to make that kind of fabulous book about�Welles - and let's face it, who would be a better candidate - �this volume�has to be considered disgraceful, simply because of what Taschen has devoted to many other directors in their larger $20. picture volumes (which include Roman Polanski, John Ford, Luis�Bunuel, Stanley Kubrick, Fellini and Antonioni). �

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I presume the blame lies at the doorstep of the series editor, Paul Ducan. He apparently cut author F. X. Feeney's original text to the bare bones, leaving only a flimsy two page essay on Welles. But what is far worse, is the failure to identify many important Welles collaborators and co-stars in the picture captions throughout the book. It was obviously a rush job, without any�attempt to even try and identify�anyone in the pictures besides Welles himself. � Among the unidentified: Cameramen Gregg Toland and Russell Metty, actors and directors like Everett Sloane and Carol Reed, etc,�etc.

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Verdict: �A case of sheer editorial incompetence.

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But at $10.00 it's still worth having simply for the great pictures, even if they are improperly captioned.

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A few pages from the book can�be viewed here:��

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http://www.taschen.com/paes5.htm�

Wellesnet correspondent Leslie Weisman attended the screening of Chimes at Midnight at the AFI Wednesday night, which featured star Keith Baxter in attendance. Baxter spoke at length after the film about his experiences with Welles and on the film. Despite the occasional factual error on Mr Baxter's part, this is a warmly remembered series of reminiscences.

Jeff W.

Keith Baxter

on Welles and CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, Silver Spring, Maryland

Wednesday, 7 March 2007

Keith Baxter came onstage after the screening. �Weren�t we young!� he said softly. Baxter was asked what the differences between the stage and film productions of Chimes were. �Well, four years,� he began:

It was very moving watching that tonight, because I hadn�t seen it on the big screen for about... I should think, about 30 years. I was very conscious of the end, the farewell, that when we were playing it � I mean film is a very curious medium; you know what you�re doing in the theatre, but the camera picks up things that you�re not even aware that you are doing. I had been very out of work, as all young actors are, on the stage [returning to the time of Three Kings] and you know you have a dream, when you�re a young kid, of wanting to be an actor; and then the dream is very elusive.

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