On Tuesday morning we will find out the five nominees for best supporting actor. Might Christian McKay’s portrayal of Orson Welles be among them? We will shall know shortly…
In the meantime, after talking extensively with Christian McKay when he visited San Francisco, I still found I had many unanswered questions left, so Mr. McKay graciously agreed to e-mail me his replies for the readers of Wellesnet. Part II is below and will be followed by Part III on February 2 — whether Mr. McKay is nominated for an Academy Award, or not.
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LAWRENCE FRENCH: Me and Orson Welles began with the novel by Robert Kaplow, who also was responsible for introducing you to Richard Linklater. When did you first meet Robert Kaplow?
CHRISTIAN McKAY: Robert’s friend, Marc Lanzoff, patiently waited outside the theatre for me (in New York, where McKay was playing Orson Welles in his one-man play, Rosebud). I often think that he could have left at any time and that would have been that, but Marc waited and set the whole roller coaster going. He insisted that Robert should see the show and make the journey in from New Jersey to Manhattan. I remember meeting Robert after a Saturday matinee and he was a little shaken. We became friends immediately and would send each other confidential reports during the whole financing process.
Robert informed Richard Linklater about my performance. Richard had a sports injury and the doctors insisted that he do no flying. So the story goes, he was intrigued but was following the doctors orders. However, when he got off the phone with Robert The New York Times review was on his desk, and Richard caught the next flight.
I remember assigning the role of Rita Hayworth in the play to the New York Times critic, who I’d been informed was sitting in the middle of the second row and was quite a looker. Also recounted in the play is the wonderful story of the critic Percy Hammond of the Herald Tribune, who gave the Voodoo Macbeth a bad review. The real Voodoo witch doctors in the cast sought permission from a disbelieving Orson to put beri-beri on the hapless critic, who was in the hospital within twenty-four hours and dead within forty-eight. I then asked the audience: “Do we have any critics in tonight?” and the wonderful tag “check out your life insurance”. Never did a critic raise their hand. The New York Times critic hated the play, but saved herself by being very generous about my performance!
I looked at Orson’s entrance in the script Richard had sent to me, just before walking on stage one night. I threw it against the wall because it was so excellent and I wanted to do it! I read Robert’s book in one sitting in my apartment on West 70th street.
LAWRENCE FRENCH: If you’ve seen RKO 281 or several of the other movies that have featured Orson Welles as a character, sometimes the actors who have played Welles have sometimes been viciously attacked. Were you at all concerned about that if you didn’t pull off the performance?
CHRISTIAN McKAY: I have watched them all, although I didn’t know they were viciously attacked! It seems a little over the top in reaction to an actors performance! I’m afraid in my cocoon of ignorance I never contemplated not pulling it off. I am very optimistic in my work, more so than in my life.
I have been asked several times, unfairly, what I thought of the other actors portrayals. Actors are naturally proprietary about their roles; if I were playing Richard III or Hamlet, I would view Olivier with suspicion. The question reminded me, mischievously, of a wonderful anecdote between two great Bach interpreters. I think Landowska won the day by saying “You play Bach your way and I’ll play it his.” Of course, I dug myself into a hole telling this story in relation to Welles, as I was immediately required to explain myself!
LAWRENCE FRENCH: Richard Linklater flew you to Austin to film a screen test. What was that like for you, having had such little movie experience?
CHRISTIAN McKAY: Richard used his own money, like Orson, to fly me to Austin, and put me up at The Driskill (which reminded me irresistibly of the Amberson Mansion – as did Orson’s last home, but more about that later), and we shot the screen-test. I remember doing the Amberson’s radio scene in the back of a cab. Rick had hired a 1930s car and actors to play Richard Samuels and Jack Houseman, very fine actors, too. We also did one of the confrontations with Houseman and a George Coulouris moment. Screenwriter Vince Palmo worked on the crew and I also met Holly Palmo, too and we became friends immediately. However, when I saw the screen-test, several months later, I was shocked at how theatrical my acting was. It was a harsh first lesson in screen acting, but Rick told me not to worry and that he would get me there. He’s a truly wonderful teacher. There’s a good story about a Hollywood mogul asking Rick who he had in mind to play Welles. Richard handed him my screen test and said, “I’ve got Orson.”
LAWRENCE FRENCH: Did you meet anyone who knew Orson Welles while you were doing Rosebud in London or New York?
CHRISTIAN McKAY: No, I avoided that like the plague. Very early on, I went to the BFI theatre after we finally decided I was going to try and play Orson. Oja Kodar was there to introduce some of the unfinished films from the Munich Film Archive. Everything was being presented as Orson Welles and Oja Kodar, which I didn’t quite understand, but anyway she came out and said, “You don’t know what it’s like for me to see Orson on the screen…” and she got very emotional. So I started a round of applause for her; thinking “how wonderful, here she is, his muse, his erotic element!” Then the next night she came out and did exactly the same thing. So when I heard her the second night, I thought, “No I can’t meet her.” At first, I wanted to meet her because I naively thought that I should seek approbation from the holders and keepers of the flame. Strangely enough, while I was coming out of the toilet at the BFI on the second night, she was just walking by with her entourage, looking incredibly beautiful. She must be in her late sixties, but she looked much younger than that. I could see what Orson saw in her, but as she was walking past me she looked over and did a double take of me. I had been watching a lot of Harry Lime at the time, so I just gave her a little smirk, a twinkle. So she just looked over at me while walking past and I thought, “That’s all I need.” Of course, you’ve seen that remarkable footage of Oja Kodar in The Dreamers that they shot at their house at 1717 North Stanley Avenue. I was just outside that house a couple of months ago. I can’t remember the exact line she has in The Dreamers, but she says something like, “She knows what it is like” and then you hear Orson repeat the line, giving her a line reading on every word in the sentence, and she repeats it, until finally Orson says, “That’s perfect!” I thought to myself, “that’s being loyal!”
LAWRENCE FRENCH: Christopher Lee told me Welles did the same thing when he was playing Mr. Flask in Moby Dick–Rehearsed. Suddenly Welles would be talking to the actors over their lines and they wondered what in God’s name was going on.
CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes and what a genius he was at editing. It’s funny because I adapted Moby Dick–Rehearsed. It’s a marvelous play. I called it Moby Dick–Re-Rehearsed, because I thought it was rather archaic and needed updating. It’s an adaptation of Welles’s adaptation of Melville. I was going to do it in London, in a rather Berkoffian way, because I’m very good friends with the director Steven Berkoff, who is a theatrical influence. We got some pals together and we thought we might do it the Kings Head Theatre in London, where I had done Rosebud,but then the movie came knocking on my door. But it’s still in the bottom drawer. I might get it out and do it in the future.
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 he wrote about the incredible events surrounding his staging of The Cradle Will Rock.
CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, but I won’t play him again. 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, “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. Like when people say he was a failure. I say, “How do you define failure? What have you achieved in your life?” If you look at the back of This is Orson Welles at the chronology of work Welles did put together by Jonathan Rosenbaum, it’s staggering. Then the night before he died of a heart attack he was typing out his next day’s shooting schedule.
LAWRENCE FRENCH: Gary Graver told me that the night Welles died he was working on his script for a one-man show of Julius Caesar in which Welles was going to play every part himself.
CHRISTIAN McKAY: He was just extraordinary. That is not a failure! Then, when I arrived in LA, my driver said, “Oh Orson Welles – wasn’t that sad about those terrible wine commercials.” I said, “Sad? He earned more than you and I combined from those sad little wine commercials for five years!”
LAWRENCE FRENCH: By the time you had done Rosebud you had already done a lot of research on Orson Welles. What sources or books did you find especially helpful?
CHRISTIAN McKAY: I found the Wellesnet site very helpful. I read everything I could get, and amassed quite a library of material, as I would do with any role. It’s only the beginning of a characterization though, a flavour of the background from which you can start creating the character. I had to make my own decisions from all the contradictions about Orson.
I think Simon Callow’s biographies are beautifully researched and exceptionally well written. However, I prefer his book on Charles Laughton, as he seems to be able to empathize and identify more readily with him than with Welles. The Old Man always seems a field or two away from him, like quicksilver in a nest of cracks.
LAWRENCE FRENCH: Your expertise on Welles career is quite extensive, so when you started to work with Richard Linklater on Me and Orson Welles were you able to change or correct anything that you felt was wrong in the script or in the details of how Welles was being portrayed?
CHRISTIAN McKAY: It was a very happy collaboration with Richard. We spent hours pouring over the script and mapping the arc of Orson’s journey. Occasionally I would want him portrayed in a worse light and I cited my references for it. My friend Norman Lloyd verified these when I met him later and added a few that would make your toes curl!
LAWRENCE FRENCH: You started out as a concert pianist, so it would be great fun if you did a re-make of Hangover Square. You could perform Bernard Herrmann’s magnificent piano concerto as the stage goes up in flames!
CHRISTIAN McKAY: I love the music of Bernard Herrmann. I was talking with Norman Lloyd about him and Norman stuck up for Herrmann when Hitchcock rejected his score for Torn Curtain and ended their association. I might play a concert pianist this year in a film, and I am doing a documentary, Goyescas, on the Spanish composer Enrique Granados, so it looks like the return of my piano.
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Hear Christian McKay play the piano in these two short excerpts from Enrique Granados Goyescas:
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