Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

The recent BBC Four showing of the first episode from Orson Welles Sketchbook dovetails nicely into something Christian McKay and I recently discussed during dinner when Mr. McKay was in San Francisco to promote Me and Orson Welles.

Namely, how Welles work in television, which has probably remained the least celebrated aspect of his work, is also in many regards, quite as sensational as his work in film, theatre and radio.

What is amazing to me, is that it took my talk with Mr. McKay, along with a article by Ben Walters on Welles television work at Columbia University's website, to make me realize just how much Welles did for the artistry of television.

Ah, but therein lies the rub...

Because for me, at least just the mention of the words "artistry" and "television" makes me blanch. Yet there is no doubt Welles brought his artistic gifts to television, as can be attested by his TV shows such as Fountain of Youth, In The Land of Don Quixote, Orson's Bag, The Immortal Story, and even his many guest appearances on television shows like Dean Martin, Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett.

Christian McKay and I discussed Orson Welles and his work for television in this excerpt from our long talk, below, which is followed by a complete transcript of the first episode of Orson Welles Sketchbook.

I found this missing episode from the Sketchbook series especially entertaining, as it sets the tone and ideas that will be presented in the following five shows, and even if the events Welles talks about are not totally believable, they are certainly quite entertaining. I for one would love to hear Welles expound about the night "The police had to be called out to protect him from the wrath of an Irish audience. But that’s another story. Maybe I’ll tell that some other time..."

What I also found to be especially interesting, is that both Mr. Welles and Mr. McKay talk about the innocence they experienced when working as actors for the first time (albeit in different mediums.)

In Welles case, on the stage in Dublin in 1931, and Mr. McKay, his first major role in a movie shot at the Gaiety Theater, on the Isle of Man, just off the east coast of Ireland, over 75 years later.

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LAWRENCE FRENCH: If you should get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Me and Orson Welles, I’m sure you’d want to promote a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Orson Welles work in the theatre.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: But I’ve already seen two of them for Welles.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Yes, but you can get three. Welles doesn’t have a star for theatre yet, and you can get one for television as well. Bob Hope actually has four stars, but I don’t think Welles will ever get a star for his work in American television.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: You don’t think so?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: No, not in this country, anyway.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: What about The Fountain of Youth?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Oh, that’s right!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: That was astonishing!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: You’re absolutely right, and if you consider all the TV shows he did in Europe, he should have four stars. Wouldn’t that be terrific! Bob Hope and Orson Welles would each have four stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! It's just that I don’t know if they would actually consider Welles for his television work in America.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: What about Around the World with Orson Welles, and Orson Welles Sketchbook?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: They are great, but I’m not sure if they would consider that work, because they were made in England. Here they remember Welles for his appearances on the Dean Martin Roasts and Johnny Carson.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: But what about all the skits he did? Putting on his make-up for Falstaff on The Dean Martin Show. That is absolutely brilliant.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: You're right! He also did a staggering version of Shylock on The Dean Martin Show. It was the best scene of Shylock I’ve ever seen. Stefan Drossler used it in his compilation of scenes from the various versions Welles made for The Merchant of Venice, and the version Welles did on Dean Martin is far and away the best reading of “Hath not a Jew eyes” he ever did.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Orson was absolutely brilliant on those shows! And that was all television work.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: And one of the greatest speeches ever given on an awards show was Welles acceptance speech after he received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1975. That was a television show broadcast on his old station, CBS.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Where he talks about “My own particular contrariety.” That’s the title of my book, you know.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Yes, it's where Welles quotes Samuel Johnson.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: I love that speech and I wrote a book called My Own Particular Contrariety, which is about me playing Orson. I had a publisher in London who wanted to do it, but I suddenly got cold feet. I thought, “No, this is ridiculous this is one the first good roles I’ve ever had, so it’s silly." I wanted to share the experience, but it was brutally honest about other people, as well as myself. My own failings, and it talks at great length about preparing for the role and playing Welles, but I thought it was too early.

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Orson Welles' Sketchbook

Episode One - April 24, 1955

On: Stage props, an earthquake in Hollywood and debuting at the Gate Theatre in Dublin

ORSON WELLES: I hope you haven’t gathered from the title of this that you are in for a televised art exhibit. The sketchbook part of it is frankly, just a prop. A prop is a stage term, it’s an abbreviation of the expression, stage property. Anything that you may see up on stage besides an actor and the scenery is likely to be a prop. For example Yorick’s skull is a prop, Romeo’s vial of poison and the telephone in Dial M For Murder, they’re all props. There are also props in real life -- when we are self-conscious we put our hands to our neckties and light a cigarette -- all that sort of thing. In other words a prop is just what it means in the dictionary. It is something to prop us with. It’s a crutch, something to lean on. So the sketchbook is exactly that, it’s a prop, something for me to turn to when I lose the thread of what I’m talking about and it’s something for you to look at besides my face which ought to come as a nice break in the horrid monotony.

I remember the first night I was ever in Hollywood, I would have been very grateful indeed for a prop like the sketchbook, because I did lose the thread. I was speaking after dinner. I had been introduced as a great after dinner speaker, I don’t know quite why, because I’m not, but I had been and this was a great Hollywood dinner with every star I’d ever seen in my life. I was tremendously impressed and there they all were with a lot of other grand people besides: Maharajahs and all kinds of titled folk. I had been called upon and of course, being very frightened and very eager to please I started a funny story which I heard that day. I had gone on for a while when it dawned on me that I had forgotten how it ended. I continued with the story and I hoped that somehow I would find an ending. Somehow find a way to invent one. The people were all looking at me very eagerly, waiting for the finish, because they knew that although the story was very boring, it must be boring for a purpose. Obviously it was boring because the end was going to be so tremendously amusing that they all looked up at me eagerly and I continued and continued and I thought “how in heavens name can I get of this thing? I could pretend to faint or drop dead, or rush out and yell “fire,” or continue to invent comical finishes that elicited no titters whatsoever -- quietly and secretly praying to myself to heaven -- and then my prayer was granted. Ever since then I’ve been a great believer in the efficacy of prayer because just as I’d given up hope, just as I was wondering how I could get out of the situation, the walls started to shake, the chandelier fell down from the ceiling onto the table, people jumped under the table – this was California, remember – it was an earthquake! So I was saved and my Hollywood career was saved by an earthquake. I can’t pretend my drawings are any sort of an earthquake, but they’ll have to stand in for that sort of distraction.

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Robin Wood died on December 18, 2009 and although I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Wood, his passing hit me especially hard because I regard his writings as among the most influential ever to be published about the cinema. His groundbreaking book Hitchcock Films still remains to my mind, the best book ever written about that celebrated director.

In the early seventies when I first became enamored with movies, it was Mr. Wood's writings that opened my eyes to the then radical notion that popular movies from directors like Hitchcock and Howard Hawks could actually be considered works of art. That Wood would call Vertigo and Rio Bravo "masterpieces" in the sixties was certainly not an idea that was widely accepted at the time, but today both films are seen as great works of cinematic art (and both were ignored by the Academy at the time of their initial release.)

From Wood's books on Hitchcock and Hawks it was a simple step to graduate to more difficult to comprehend films by directors like Bergman, Antonioni and Orson Welles (Rather unfortunately Wood never wrote a book about Welles). However Wood's long piece on Welles Touch of Evil is a brilliant and incisive analysis of the movie that remains one of my favorite pieces about the picture.

Besides Mr. Wood's many books, he wrote a series of astute articles for Film Comment throughout the seventies. Even on the rare occasion when I didn't agree with him, his ideas were always insightful and very hard to refute. He explained why a supposedly badly received film like Marnie was actually a great masterpiece (not that I needed convincing on that one.) But I do recall seeing Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life for the first time around 1975 and thinking it was nothing special. After reading Wood's article about the movie in Film Comment I saw the picture again and it suddenly became a cinematic treasure that I had simply misunderstood.

Wood's book on Arthur Penn was another eye-opener for me. He brought up the idea that a film artist should have the right to experiment and make a movie that may be seen as both a commercial and critical failure, such as Mickey One.

That idea holds a special meaning for a director like Orson Welles, whose Mr. Arkadin Robin Wood recently placed as number three on his list of favorite Criterion titles. Wood explained, "The critics of Cahiers du cinéma once chose Mr. Arkadin over Citizen Kane for their “Ten Best Ever” list. I am inclined to agree. The three versions suggest an endless, fascinating 'work in progress'.”

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England's BBC Four has launched it's celebration of Orson Welles this holiday season by showing episodes from the 1955 BBC program Orson Welles Sketchbook.

Although only viewers in the UK will be able to see the 15-minute episodes, here is a link to Wellesnet's written transcripts of the shows, as recorded by Jeff Wilson, as well as audio versions of the shows hosted by The Museum of Orson Welles. Antony in Dublin tells me that the first Sketchbook shown on December 18 was indeed the rare episode that is missing from our transcription and audio files. Terry's report from the message board states, "Welles talks about props, a fortuitous and apocryphal Californian earthquake, his audition at the Gate Theatre and subsequent premiere (with sketches of the characters he played,) the malevolent pranks of Opening Night gremlins, and the revelation that he began his professional career by falling on his head."

Another highlight of the BBC Four series will no doubt be the debut of a new documentary Orson Welles Over Europe hosted and written by Welles biographer Simon Callow. The hour long show will concentrate on Welles career in Europe after he left Hollywood in 1948 and went to Italy to make Black Magic for producer Edward Small. This was famously followed by the frenetic off-and-on again shooting of Othello which went on across many countries in Europe and Africa for several years, before the film was finally completed and shown at the the 1952 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Grand Prize.

Orson Welles Over Europe is directed by Hans Petch and produced by Alan Campbell, assisted by Lesley Smith-Glasgow. It will debut on the BBC Four in the UK on December 27 at 9:30 pm.

Leslie Megahey's wonderful Arena documentary The Orson Welles Story will also be shown in two installments on BBC Four, but it appears this will be the 165 minute version, rather than the more complete 210 minute version.

John Hodson quotes Leslie Magahey talking about interviewing Welles in Las Vegas at The Film Journal, and has a complete rundown the the BBC schedule of Welles films.

Ambrose Heron at Film Detail also provides a round up of the five Welles films that will be shown, including video and trailers from Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Journey Into Fear and The Third Man.

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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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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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.

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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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