Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

Orson Welles, Henry Jaglom

Filmmaker Henry Jaglom, whose recorded conversations with Orson Welles form the basis of an upcoming book, graciously agreed to field a few questions about his late, great friend.

Jaglom's relationship with Welles dates back to his freshman 1971 film "A Safe Place." In the interview, he discussed those legendary lunches with Welles and the ill-fated "The Big Brass Ring," as well as footage from the unfinished "The Other Side of the Wind," which has made the rounds on the web.

The tape recordings have been edited by Peter Biskind into "My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles," due out July 9 from Macmillan/ Metropolitan Books.

"It is altogether Mr. Biskind's book and has turned out to be quite terrific, I feel (in) actually capturing the real Orson, my most wonderful friend and mentor, who so few knew and who so many misunderstood and thought they knew..." (more...)

Peter Bogdanovich

Orson Welles author-confidant-filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich returns to the big-screen at the helm of a new Jennifer Aniston film.

Bogdanovich will direct Aniston, Cybill Shepherd, Brie Larson and Owen Wilson in "She's Funny That Way," from a screenplay he wrote with his ex-wife, Louise Stratten.

The comedy, earlier titled "Squirrel to the Nuts," centers on a married Broadway director (Wilson) who falls for a prostitute-turned-actress (Larson) and works to further her career. Aniston will play a therapist whose mother is in rehab for alcoholism. Earlier in pre-production, Olivia Wilde had been rumored to play the part of the therapist.

Filming begins in June in New York, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"She's Funny That Way" reunites Bogdanovich with his one-time love Shepherd, who he directed in "The Last Picture Show," "Daisy Miller" and "At Long Last Love." (more...)

Peter Bogdanovich in a scene from The Other Side of the Wind.

By LAWRENCE FRENCH

Orson Welles had completed most of the principal photography on The Other Side of the Wind by 1976, and shortly afterwards the film became embroiled in legal entanglements with it's Iranian backers. As a result, Welles found himself once again forced to abandon a cherished project, in this case the movie that he hoped would be his testament, as well as his triumphant comeback film, especially after the renewed interest in Welles work that was generated by the AFI Lifetime achievement award, held in March, 1975.

In this 1977 letter to the film’s primary backer, Medhi Bouscheri of Les Films de l’Astrophore, Welles explains why he had finally decided to abandon work on the film: (more...)

By LAWRENCE FRENCH

Having seen a nearly complete rough cut of The Other Side of the Wind, I can easily see why it has baffled so many people. But having studied the script in some depth, and having seen many of the clips in isolation many times, (including the material recently posted by Henry Jaglom on YouTube), I find the film becomes more exciting and fascinating  every time I view footage from it. I was especially taken with John Huston's performance in the Jaglom clips, and this footage clearly shows him to his best advantage, since it features him more prominently than any of the other scenes that have been shown publicly (and after all JAKE is the main character in the movie).

I think part of the problem for a great many people is that the material is in a very "rough cut" state, with wildly varying picture and sound quality. This, of course can be easily corrected, if access to the original negative is ever granted. The other problem is Welles' own very fragmented cutting style, where single lines are often played out over multiple very quick cuts, making it sometimes difficult to know who is speaking, or indeed what is even happening, as many scenes are played in semi-darkness after the lights have failed. (more...)

Oja Kodar

Interviews with Orson Welles' longtime love and collaborator Oja Kodar are rare to come by, but the Hungarian website mozinet.hu recently spoke with the Croatian actress-writer.

Sadly, none of the six questions asked of Kodar delved into the status of "The Other Side of the Wind" or any of Welles' unfinished film projects.

Even with the best (more...)

A scene from the 1966 film Orson Welles in Spain.

There is one town that would be better than Aranjuez to see your first bullfight in if you are only going to see one and that is Ronda. That is where you should go if you ever go to Spain on a honeymoon or if you ever bolt with anyone. The entire town and as far as you can see in any direction is romantic background... If a honeymoon or an elopement is not a success in Ronda, it would be as well to start for Paris and commence making your own friends.
— Ernest Hemingway, "Death in the Afternoon" (1932)

A man is not from where he is born, but where he chooses to die.
— Orson Welles
_____

By LAWRENCE FRENCH

Listening to Orson Welles talking about Spain and bullfighting in the Maysles brothers short film, Orson Welles in Madrid, 1966, and in the 1974 Michael Parkinson interview, (both on (more...)

John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich

It was a little more than a year ago we learned of Josh Karp’s planned book about The Other Side of the Wind.

Due in late 2013 for St. Martin’s Press, An Adventure Shared By Desperate Men (That Finally Came to Nothing) will chronicle the making and status of Orson Welles’ unfinished film, which stars John Huston as aging movie director Jake Hannaford and Peter Bogdanovich as Brooks Otterlake, a young successful director. (more...)

UPDATED ON JAN. 12, 2013: The OSOTW footage has been deleted from vimeo.
(more...)

By RAY KELLY

While the future of The Other Side of the Wind is always cloudy, one thing appears clear: A book chronicling the making of this unfinished Orson Welles film is in the works.

Josh Karp, who teaches journalism at Northwestern, is writing about The Other Side of the Wind for St. Martin's Press. Due in 2013, An Adventure Shared By Desperate Men (That Finally Came to Nothing) looks at the filming of the 1970's Welles movie starring John Huston as an aging director attempting to revive his career with a hip, artsy film.

Karp has written for Salon, TV Guide, Premiere, The Atlantic Monthly Online, The LA Times Sunday Magazine and other publications.  He is the author of  A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever and Straight Down the Middle: Shivas Irons, Bagger Vance and How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Golf Swing.

Karp, who is conducting some of his final interviews for the book, agreed to field a few questions from Wellesnet.

RAY KELLY: Your previous two books have dealt with golf and National Lampoon. What attracted you to an unfinished Orson Welles film?

JOSH KARP: The simple answer is that it’s a great story and something I could gladly work on for a year or two.

What first got me interested were the stories from the set. I’d read about Rich Little and the midgets; John Huston driving the wrong way on the highway; a movie funded by the Shah’s brother-in-law; Welles seeing the amazing sunset outside the open studio door and saying, “It looks fake.”  I just loved all of that.

Then you had Welles and Huston who are almost literally characters out of novels (Huston was once described as “A Hemingway character lost in a Dostoevsky novel”). Complicated, charismatic, larger than life men and remarkable artists.
(more...)

ORSON WELLES'S VOICE

Jake Hannaford was a vagabond.
He worked for Hollywood but he
took his cameras around the world...
When he didn't find himself in
the tropical jungles, the icy
tundra's, or a country where
it was hunting season, the place
where he felt most “at home”
was in Spain...  He died
last summer on his birthday,
July second -- It's much too early
to guess what history will decide
about him...

Most of Hannaford's admirers are
certain he did not intend to drive
his car off that bridge.

"A corny ending" they say, "J.J.
Hannaford would never be guilty
of that.

There are other opinions...

---From the opening narration of  THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

________________________________________________________

July 2, 1961 was the day Ernest Hemingway put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger.  Orson Welles modeled much of  the director Jake Hannaford on Hemingway, to the point of having him die on the tenth anniversary of Hemingway's suicide,  which is also Jake's Birthday.  John Huston who played Jake Hannaford, talks about both Welles and Hemingway in these fascinating excerpts from a 1981 interview in Rolling Stone by Peter S. Greenberg:

PETER S. GREENBERG: There are those in the movie business who look on Orson Welles as one of the great wasted talents. Why is that?

JOHN HUSTON: Well, it’s a combination of things. In the first place, he offended the establishment in two ways. He started off with Citizen Kane—which was conceived to be an insult to William Randolph Hearst. The industry was indebted to Hearst, and out of some extremely false sense of loyalty, mixed in with their own gains to be had materially, they went about detracting Orson, even while he was making it and immediately after it. And then Orson had the arrogance and downright insolence to have made the movie a great success. It was enormously popular. Right off the bat, in other words, he violated two cardinal rules. First, you’re not supposed to go against the establishment. And if you do go against the establishment, you're supposed to suffer.

I remember the trade papers, after the opening of Citizen Kane. Orson simply ran a recapitulation of the things that had been said against him, against the picture and so on. So he really made them eat dirt, as they damn well should have.  Then he made a very serious error as a poker player, which he is not. He was down in South America to do a picture and he got caught up in the gala festival in Rio, the carnival. And I forget how much film he shot, but it was a lot. And in the middle of it, they told him to come home. He didn't. He stayed down there and shot and shot until they wouldn't send him any more negative. This gave him a reputation for irresponsibility. When he did finally come back, he was again in deep disgrace. What happened is quite understandable to me, because Orson is an artist. He was acting in the service of history. But the studio couldn't have been less interested in history…

Q: Or Art.

JOHN HUSTON: Or art. Either one. They wouldn't have sent a second unit out to see Washington cross the Delaware. Orson is not a man who can bow down to idiots. And Hollywood is full of them. Orson has a big ego. But I've always found him to be completely logical. And I think he's a joy. I also look on Orson as an amateur. I mean that in the very best sense of the word. He loves pictures and plays and all things theatrical, but there is something else that needs accounting for. So many of his things go unfinished. I don't know why. That is one question I can't answer. Even the one that we did together, The Other Side of the Wind. I haven't seen a foot of it myself, and I don't know why it hasn't been released. Now there's always a reason. But it's happened too often with Orson for it to be entirely accidental.

Q: Do you think he might have been afraid of failure after Citizen Kane?

JOHN HUSTON: No.

Q: Or perhaps he was afraid of success again?

JOHN HUSTON: I don’t know. I’m sure Orson doesn't. He'd be the last to know. If he knew he'd try and do something about it.

Q: Welles based Jake Hannaford, the character you play on Ernest Hemingway and you were friends with Hemingway and spent time with him in Cuba. Were you surprised when he put a gun to his head and shot himself?

JOHN HUSTON: No, I wasn’t. It was exactly what I would have expected him to do under the circumstances. And I say that with profound admiration for both him and the act.

Q: Really?

JOHN HUSTON: Oh, yes. He was on his way out mentally, and he had tried once before. He was very canny about it. He had these flashes of sanity. Once they were taking him to the Mayo Clinic on a chartered plane and he tried to jump out of the plane. They subdued him. Then he talked his way out of Mayo and got home. And if you saw the pictures of him near the end, you could see it in his face. The smiling one—the flesh was gone—that was somebody else.

Q: You say "with profound admiration for the act under those circumstances."  Do you think you would consider doing something like that?

JOHN HUSTON: I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else. If I didn't, it would be out of cowardice and nothing else. I mean Hemingway wouldn’t have done it had it been cancer. But he was on his way to imbecility. That is a hell of a thing to have around. I’m intrigued by the way suicide is approached by different cultures. In some places it’s the thing to do. But the bourgeois of the United States legislates against it. In this society, death is a kind of a shameful thing and is to be concealed even after the spirit has left.

Q: Have you ever been at a point in your life when you’ve contemplated suicide?

JOHN HUSTON: Only theoretically.

Q: Then you talked yourself out of it?

JOHN HUSTON: I don’t mean that I came that close to it. No, I wonder if I would if…

Q: If what?

JOHN HUSTON: Well, if I had a flash like Hemingway, for instance. Because I like to live. But in a situation like Hemingway’s, I hope I would pull the trigger. I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t.

Q: Hemingway’s writing was difficult to translate into film, wasn’t it?

JOHN HUSTON: Yes. Stories didn't come easily with him. Incidents did. And he had a wonderful way of being able to bring an incident to life. He was more of a short-story writer. He didn't conceive novels in the grand sense, but in significant detail—not just factual, but details that reflect an attitude. I think some of his best writing was in Death in the Afternoon. Sometimes he’s marvelously funny in it. The old lady, if you remember, and some of those little short stories were departures and vignettes. Do you remember the Italian surgeon who came with the wounded and wanted to give more food to the soldiers? Well, Hemingway had to have witnessed some of that.

Q: You were influenced by Hemingway’s work?

JOHN HUSTON: Well, like all young men of that time, I was certainly influenced by his writing. It hit me right when I was trying to write. And I had one or two other rather huge literary experiences, the biggest being James Joyce. And then along came Hemingway, who was circuitously a product of Joyce's, too. I don't think Hemingway would have been exactly what he was if Joyce had never written, which doesn't take anything away from Hemingway, God knows. I was very influenced by his writing and by his thinking. I think he was perhaps a more important influence, just in his thinking. His values, his reassessment of the things that make life go, were probably more important than his writing. Although at times he wrote very well, magnificently.

________________________________________________________

In this brilliant script excerpt from The Other Side of the Wind, Brooks Otterlake who is writing a book on Jake Hannaford's career, recalls the suicide of both Jake's father and his grandfather, the great Irish Shakespearian  actor, Junius Hannaford:

JAKE
(to Juliette Riche)
Tonight is for the freaks and snoops,
lady – If you’ll excuse us, please...

OTTERLAKE
Why don’t you go in and see the movie,
lady – like every body else?

They wait for her to go. She does.

JAKE
“Thin air...”

OTTERLAKE
“And like the baseless fabric of this
vision, shall dissolve...”
Did you know they had dissolves
in Shakespeare? (playing it up
a little for the benefit of the camera)
Sure he does: he knows everything in
Shakespeare: “The Hannaford family curse -”

JAKE
And he knows everything about the
Hannafords... that’s MY curse...

OTTERLAKE
We all know about old Grandad, Junius
the first – “The great Irish tragedian
in the tinseled toga -”

JAKE
The Shakespeare comes from him, all right.

OTTERLAKE
Handed down, with a few other things –
“Booze and the Bard” – Right? As for
the booze part of it – Well, if he hasn’t
quite made it as a rummy – nobody can say
he hasn’t tried!

JAKE
I’m seeing little pink directors at this
very minute.

OTTERLAKE
But Junius – Ah, “there was a most
distinguished souse”...Another line of yours.

JAKE
That’s what’s so nice about Brooksie –
I don’t have to repeat myself, he
does it for me...

OTTERLAKE
(continuing to quote)
“...A noble Roma shanty Irishman;
Sure, even when he cut his wrists and
killed himself...”  (looking around)
We’ve lost our camera haven’t we?

JAKE
You’re losing me.

OTTERLAKE
“Like Seneca, old Junius bled to death
in a bathtub – one of the few times he ever
sat in one. But Junius JUNIOR -” (that’s
YOUR daddy) “he even made it into High
Society – a pioneer among the micks,
blazing the trail for the Kellys and the
Kennedys... Piss elegant. He chose the
Chandelier...”

JAKE
A human tape-recorder

OTTERLAKE
That’s me, Skipper.
(pause).

JAKE
I didn’t know you had the chandelier.

OTTERLAKE
I’ve got everything. In the old Hollywood
Hotel it was... They found him, one Sunday
morning, hanging from it. After which you had
to go to work for a living... As a prop man
etcetera...

JAKE
Yeah... you got it all.

OTTERLAKE
I’m the authority.

Is there – behind the complacency of that statement – an overtone of old affection still remaining? If so, it rings a little false in JAKES’S ears... Somehow his young friend has staked out a claim of OWNERSHIP...

OTTERLAKE
So... what do we do next?

JAKE
We never know now, do we?

JAKE is in a sort of reverie... This has commenced earlier and comes from thoughts far removed from family anecdotes...

________________________________________________________

CHARLES HIGGAM: Mr.  Hannaford, in the body of your film work, how significantly would you relate to the trauma of your father's suicide?

As much as I hope to see The Other Side of the Wind finished, I was shocked to read the report in The London Observer about an imminent deal to finish the film, as I knew is was totally false. The article was so full of errors and false statements, as to be nothing less than a complete HOAX!

Dalya Alberge's report was a complete  disgrace, as there was  clearly no understanding of the true facts behind the situation. Apparently, The Observer and The Guardian no longer have any "fact checkers" on their staff, as this story is really quite preposterous.

Sadly,  I recently had to point out to an inept  Guardian reporter that his story about Patti Smith winning a National Book Award for her "first Book," Just Kids was totally absurd, as Patti Smith had her first book of poems published in 1972, and has had more than 20 books published since then, so it would seem rather strange for The Guardian to call Just Kids her first book.  Likewise, it seems even stranger for The Observer to report that a deal is near for The Other Side of the Wind to be completed, when they should know that is clearly not the case.

The Observer also couldn't even find a picture of Orson Welles from the  filming of OSOTW to run with their report, which included this fictitious caption: "The Other Side of the Wind portrays the last hours of film director Orson Welles."  Well, that is certainly news to me, as well as to Oja Kodar, who I called after reading the article that tells of  her “selling her interest in the film” to confirm if it was actually true or not.  This is something that Dalya Alberge obviously didn’t bother to do.  While I didn't hear back from Ms. Kodar,  she has now already spoken out about the story, saying, “It is true that Jacqueline Boushehri, the wife of the Iranian producer and I are interested in the film being finally completed.  But from Showtime we still have not received the details of a budget. Without it I won't give the rights to anyone."  This echoes what Ms. Kodar told me, earlier,  saying she would never sell the rights to OSOTW without the proper controls, saying it would be like pulling out her teeth.

Wellesnet will certainly be among the first to know and report if and when The Other Side of the Wind is ever going to be finished and shown. Not the idiotic reporters at The Guardian and The Observer, who like Pauline Kael don't bother to check their facts.  Come to think of it, I believe that great Welles hack or scholar, depending on your view, Mr. David Thomson also writes for The Guardian. His latest piece of nonsense on Welles (in Sight and Sound), argues that Citizen Kane should not be considered the best movie in Sight and Sound’s upcoming 2012 poll of the greatest movies ever made.

Like Mr. Thomson's book, Rosebud, the story on OSOTW in The Observer has so many errors, I can only suggest that Dalya Alberge should be immediately fired, or at least reassigned to the fiction desk.  Sadly, this ridiculous story was picked up by many entertainment websites, one who actually used the headline "The Other Side of the Wind to be finished in two weeks."  Now, while you can expect fake stories from a website, how do you justify reporters getting their facts so wrong from a major newspaper like The Observer?

Rich Little recently sent Wellesnet a scan of a charcoal portrait he drew of Orson Welles that can be purchased at his website Here. Rich Little worked with Welles on the still unfinished The Other Side of the Wind, before he left the production and was replaced by Peter Bogdanovich.  Here are some of Rich Little's memories of working with Orson Welles:

*****

In the early seventies, I first worked with Orson Welles on the ABC-TV show called The Kopycats, filmed in England. He was one of the guests and we really hit it off. We spent a lot of time talking and getting to know each other. Orson was a really fascinating guy, and he’d already started shooting on The Other Side Of The Wind in Spain (then titled, The Sacred Beasts). This was three years before I came aboard. Orson didn’t have any studio backing, so he was paying for The Other Side of the Wind out of his own pocket. When he ran out of money, he'd go and put on a fake nose and play in some Italian epic to make the money to come back and try to finish his movie. When I met him, Orson had already abandoned the project and had decided to pick it up again.  He had to recast some of the parts, and he asked me if  I wanted to be in the movie. I said, “Of course!” So I went to Phoenix, where they were shooting the picture and worked for about five weeks.

Orson had rented a big estate in Cave Creek, outside of Phoenix and had told the landlord he was going to write his memoirs there. Then he brought in a film crew in and tore down walls and ripped up the swimming pool. When the owner came back from Europe, he got quite a shock. I played Brooks Otterlake, a young film director and John Huston played Jake Hannaford, an older film director. There were so many great actors in the picture—Edmond O’Brien, Mercedes McCambridge, Susan Strasberg, and many more. It was a movie about Jake Hannaford, a movie director. People were following him around, shooting his life, and that was what we were going to see on the screen.

I don’t know how Orson could keep everything in his head like that, because there were incredibly complicated sequences. But he was a genius. He knew everything that he wanted to do. He was obsessed with the project while he was doing it. And my God, he worked hard! I don’t think he ever slept. I mean, how could he? Orson probably couldn’t lie down without suffocating. More likely, he’d prop himself up with two pillows and then rewrite the next days scenes!

Unfortunately, I never finished my part, and Orson never finished the movie. I had other commitments so I had to leave. Orson was so upset. I remember he was shooting me going to the airport from in back of the car. I said: “Orson, what are you shooting?” He said: “I’ll find a way to put this in the picture!” The shooting was very open-ended, and after I left Peter Bogdanovich took over my part.

I never worked with Orson on a movie again, but did a couple of Dean Martin celebrity roasts with him. A couple of years after I left The Other Side of the Wind I got a lovely letter from Orson. Whenever I was on a talk show, I’d tell some of the funny things that happened with Orson on the set. So Orson wrote me a long letter explaining why some of the things that happened were so bizarre. He wrote, “everyone enjoys a good joke, but don’t make me look like a buffoon.” I still have that incredible letter Orson wrote to me.

When we were shooting, it was hard to figure out what The Other Side of the Wind was about, and sometimes I don’t think even Orson knew. He was rewriting scenes all the time, even on the set. He’d stay up all night and rewrite scenes, giving us the new pages in the morning. We had to learn all our new lines on the spot, while the crew was waiting. I’d see the new lines and say: “What the hell is this?” Orson would say: “Just do it!” He did offer to let us read the new dialogue from cue cards, but I said, “No, that will look bad. I’ll learn it.”

As an actor, Orson was extremely easy to work with. He had a wonderful sense of humor and took suggestions from anybody. He was not difficult at all. It was just that he was so heavy, that sometimes he couldn’t get out of a chair without assistance. Whenever he wanted to get up to show us how to do something, we’d yell: “No, don’t get up!” We were afraid he’d have a heart attack! Orson couldn’t even bend over to tie his shoelaces.

Later on, Orson was coming up to Las Vegas to talk to me about another project. He phoned me from Los Angeles and I said, “Orson, aren’t you here? I thought we were going to get together.” He said, “I couldn’t fit into the God damned airplane seat! Western Airlines does not accommodate me. I don’t think they could have got the damn plane off the runway if I was on board!” And I said, “Well, you’ll have to drive up.” So he did.

I truly miss this great man.

I will always remember Orson as a tremendous talent and terrific friend.

Warm Regards,

Rich Little

www.RichLittle.com

*****

Here is an excerpt of  Rich Little's scene as BROOKS OTTERLAKE from the script for The Other Side of the Wind.

As a reading of the script excerpt shows, Welles clearly wrote the script with Rich Little in mind, as  Brooks Otterlake is a vocal mimic, who is able to imitate many famous people, rapidly changing his voice from such political leaders as President Richard Nixon and California Gov. Ronald Reagan, along with many other celebrities, including General Patton.

This excerpt takes place outside of JAKE HANNAFORD'S ranch house on the night of his birthday party, after a fireworks display has been set off and all hell has broken loose.

The major characters in the scene are BROOKS OTTERLAKE, film journalists MR. PISTER (Joseph McBride) and JULIETTE RICHE (based on Pauline Kael), along with AL, one of director JAKE HANNAFORD’s many personal assistants.  The scene calls for Rich Little to rapidly go from several different celebrity voices and  provides delightful Wellsian comment on many of the (then) current film trends, with references to Marlon Brando, Bertolucci, Antonioni, The New Wave, Neo-Realism, Otto Preminger, John Wayne and Jane Fonda!