By RAY KELLY
Four decades after it was filmed, it looks like Orson Welles’ never-finished The Other Side of the Wind will finally be completed and shown in theaters.
Filip Jan Rymsza of Royal Road Entertainment and German producer Jens Koethner Kaul have teamed with producer Frank Marshall (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future), who was a line producer on The Other Side of the Wind in the early 1970s, to complete the film. Rymsza and Kaul secured the partial ownership rights held by the Paris film company Les Films de l’Astrophore and the late Mehdi Boushehri, brother-in-law of the Shah of Iran. An agreement was also reached with Welles’ longtime companion Oja Kodar, who inherited the late director’s ownership.
In recent months, the filmmakers have met with Welles’ youngest daughter, Beatrice, who heads the Estate of Orson Welles, and detailed their plans.
The producers will seek a distributor at the American Film Market in Santa Monica, Calif., next month.
The definitive look at the decades-long delay in bringing The Other Side of the Wind to the screen and the recent negotiations to complete it are laid out in Josh Karp’s upcoming book Orson Welles’s Last Movie.
Welles, who revolutionized movie-making in 1941 with Citizen Kane, struggled to finish The Other Side of the Wind before his death in May 1985, but was stymied by problems ranging from financing to the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Repeated announcements that the film’s completion was at hand have tantalized and frustrated Welles’ fans for nearly 30 years.
News of the impending completion of the film drew cheers from Welles aficionados, notably film historian and author Joseph McBride, who acted in the movie and authored three books on the late director including “What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career.”
“Kudos to all involved who have brought The Other Side of the Wind to this step of nearing fruition,” McBride said. “Maybe now I won’t have to buy a walker to get to the premiere, as I used to think I would have to do, but instead can march in to enjoy the film with the rest of you (knock wood).”
The Other Side of the Wind takes place at the 70th birthday party of legendary movie director Jake Hannaford (John Huston), who is struggling to make a commercial comeback at a time when the studio system has been replaced by the New Hollywood. The party is attended by young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), hangers-on, critics and movies freaks – many of whom are not so subtly patterned after people in Welles’ life. Hannaford dies at the conclusion of the party and his final hours are told in a collage of still photos, and 8mm, 16mm and 35mm color and black-and-white film shot at the party, along with scenes from his unfinished comeback movie.
Welles had edited about 40 minutes of the film and a work print exists. The film negative has been stored in Paris.
“Welles has always astonished us and broken new ground. The ground he started to break in 1970 when he began filming ‘Other Wind’ is finally bearing fruit. The world will no doubt be challenged and astonished anew when it sees this ambitious, bold, hilarious, and melancholy late film of his, too long locked away in a vault and subjected to legal and financial wrangling. The Other Side of the Wind is Welles’ Tempest, and though his revels now are ended, his career is not. He will continue to influence new generations with this “new” work – and his work is always new,” McBride said.
The film was shot by the late Gary Graver between 1970 and 1976.
In addition to Huston, Bogdanovich, McBride and Kodar, the film co-stars Susan Strasberg, Norman Foster, Cameron Mitchell, Paul Stewart, Mercedes McCambridge, Edmond O’Brien, Robert Random and Lilli Palmer.
The screenplay was published in English and French by Cahiers du Cinema in 2005.
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