Who's Out There? (Space documentary)

[jrs044]

Can anybody tell me anything about this documentary? Is it worth checking out? How prominently is Orson featured? Thanks.

[Store Hadji]

I haven't seen it in awhile, but it's a good addition to your Welles collection. Orson appears about as much as he did in Late Great Planet Earth and The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, as I recall. The Who's Out There cut was apparently altered years later by someone other than Welles, to bring the science up to date. I'm perfectly happy to have purchased it.

[mteal]

Thanks to Larry French for this link at Wellesnet Facebook:

http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/2/6/wa ... son-welles

As Michael Koenig writes at Facebook,

Normally when you say that Welles offered to narrate a 1970s documentary "for obvious reasons," I assume you mean "trying to raise end money for TSOTW." This one seems to be more of a labor of love.

I agree, It's a little 30-minute gem, much better then the VHS edition which stuck about 20 extra minutes of cheap, barely related video junk in the middle of it, as Store Hadji noted, to supposedly bring the science up to date, but probably also to pad it out to 50 minutes in order to justiify selling it as a standalone VHS release. I'm glad the original is now available online.

[admusicam]

Dear members,
Is this documentary a Orson Welles opus as director? It is not very clear in th credits at the end. It seems he had done much moore than a narration: there is Gary Graver credited for the images. Also in the general style there is something like F For Fake and Filming Othello.
Thanks for any informations.

[Roger Ryan]

WHO'S OUT THERE? does bear a similarity to some of Welles' own work, but I think that is primarily due to Welles' on-camera anecdotes and commentary. I suspect that Graver shot all of the footage with Welles on-camera, footage that one could say was "directed" by Welles since he obviously determined his own performance. It sounds like Welles wrote much of his own commentary as well or rewrote it at least. The editing, however, is unlike Welles' own work as he would have probably avoided holding on any one speaker for as long as this program does. Also missing is Welles' penchant for commenting specifically on remarks made by others in the film. In his own documentaries, Welles always "interacts" with the film clips as if he's carrying on a conversation with the prerecorded footage; here he feels detached from the rest of the documentary.

[admusicam]

You are right.
What is curious is the fact nobody is credited as director. The way the camera cut the eyes and faces at the begining -not only in the shouting, but also in the montage form- is like many passages in F For Fake. It's curious there is no much acurate informations about this, because it is a very great cinematographic piece and I never read anything about it. To bad G Graver is not with us, because he mut have known something about it. It look like a little as another film done by welles at the begining and finished by someone else.The producer is Rober Drew. And the film is produced by "Drew associates". The compagny seems to still exist, as there is a site on internet. I'll try to contact them about this and let you know!
For shure, this film is much interesting than all the films Welles is just playing, and I confess I return to it as often as other Welles own films!