Peter Bogdanovich
Director Peter Bogdanovich took and answered fan questions on Reddit on Thursday.
Questions ranged from his past work to his feelings toward Hugh Hefner to his appearances on The Soparanos.
He received many questions about Orson Welles The Other Side of the Wind . Here is a sampling:
How good of shape is the negative for TOSOTW in? Has it been properly stored over the years? Orson’s workprint was about 40 minutes. How long do you expect the final running time of the film to be? Lastly, Orson always seemed to deny the picture was auto-biographical, but did you sense John Huston understood he was playing Orson to a degree?
Our producers, Filip, and Frank Marshall, have both checked the quality of the negatives in Europe – and it’s in mint condition, very good shape. It’s all there. So that was a relief to find that out. There’s no problem at all with the negative.
Well, it wasn’t really a work print. Orson edited a number of different sequences from the picture, but they weren’t sequential, they were all over the place, just whatever he felt like doing. The Other Side Of the Wind is complicated by the fact that during the movie, you also are exposed to seeing sequences from a movie that John Huston’s character was supposedly making. And those sequences are rather sexual, and surprisingly sensual. Orson didn’t make sequences like that usually, but in this case he did, because he was creating sequences that were supposedly made by John Huston’s character. And most of what Orson cut together were those sequences, probably because they’re the most difficult – it’s very hard to figure out exactly how to cut that material. So luckily, most of those sequences were edited by Orson.
Eh – well, I don’t know that they ever discussed it. I mean, John once said “What is this movie about?” and Orson said “It’s about a bastard director John, it’s about us.”
So in a sense, it was about a number of directors. I remember Orson trying to figure out who to cast in the picture. For a long time, he thought he would play it, but I remember very vividly standing on a street corner in Paris, just after we’d had a meal at a restaurant that Orson knew about that I could never find again, and Orson was saying “It’s such a great part. WHY should I give it to John! Why don’t I play it myself? But goddamnit, he’s RIGHT for it!”
And so, as Orson said, it was about a macho, hairy-chested, John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Bill Wellman kind of director. And Orson really wasn’t like that.
So it isn’t really autobiographical in that sense at all.
What is a fact about Orson Welles we would find interesting?
Orson… well, people don’t know this, but he was very funny. He had a great sense of humor, and had an extraordinarily loud and enduring laugh.
When he laughed, it felt like it was reverberating off the heavens.
Does the new trend of crowdfunding entertainment, as well as the lowered cost of movie production (owing largely to new digital video technology) bode well for the medium?
Well, the crowdfunding question is interesting, because we’re in the midst of a campaign on Indiegogo to help fund Orson’s last film, The Other Side of the Wind. And anybody who’s interested in the history of movies, or in fact, the art of the cinema (to use a pretentious phrase) should be interested in The Other Side of the Wind and helping us get it out there.
I’ve been trying to get this film completed since Orson died 30 years ago.
And it’s been quite an ordeal. We’re very close now, to being able to complete it – what happened was Orson shot everything he needed, but he wasn’t able to complete the editing, for a variety of reasons.
What we’re trying to do with this crowdfunding campaign is to get the final amount of money we need to complete the editing of the film, and to get it out there.
Did Orson Welles have any idea that Citizen Kane would be seen as a masterpiece that it is seen as today?
Well, I think he knew it was a good picture.
Over the years, it became a kind of albatross around his neck, because people just didn’t realize he’d made any other films.
For years, all his life really, people would say “What do you do after CITIZEN KANE?”
And the fact that he made a number of brilliant films after CITIZEN KANE – like OTHELLO, or TOUCH OF EVIL – those pictures just weren’t released properly in the States, and just went by-the-by, but they’re brilliant films.
And I think The Other Side of the Wind, which we are trying to have an IndieGogo campaign for currently – I think weneed to finish this film because it’s his last film. It’s a movie about moviemaking, so it’s particularly relevant.
We need to get that film out there for the public to see.
Were any of the original editors who assisted Orson on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (or Marie-Sophie Dubus who cut F FOR FAKE) consulted or considered for the completion of the film? I would think that the time spent by his side as he worked on his cut would give them valuable insight into his thought processes and intentions.
Well, I think we’ve consulted with her, and Orson left quite a lot of notes and instructions for the editing of the film. And we’ve had access to all of that. We’re using that to do a good a job, getting as close to what he had in mind as we can.
Now, both Frank Marshall and I worked on the film – Frank even more extensively than I did, in terms of time spent – and that’s helped us, too, because Orson would say what he had in mind, and then do it – so we definitely are talking to everybody who had any contact with the film during the making of it, or after, including his collaborator and companion, the woman who co-wrote the film with him, Oja Kodar.
How would you describe the relationship between Orson and John Huston?
Well, Orson and John Huston both made their first films in the same year – THE MALTESE FALCON and CITIZEN KANE both came out in 1941. And so they were very close contemporaries. And when I watched them working together, they really got along very well.
John – who always made studio movies, and never made independent pictures the way Orson did – was fascinatedwith Orson’s way of making pictures, which was with a small crew, and the kind of improvisational quality that the whole production had.
Because Orson would re-write the scenes every day.
John really enjoyed the making of it very much. He said “I’d like to make movies like this – I wish I could’ve.”
I think they had respect for each other. Very much so.
I don’t know if this is something you’re asked often or even earlier in this thread, but how did you befriend Orson?
It started with a program note that i wrote for a theater in New York, about Orson’s OTHELLO in 1960, actually, in which I said that his OTHELLO was the best Shakespeare movie ever made.
Which, at that time, was absolutely not the general consensus.
In fact, that was considered an outrageous statement.
But now it’s considered accurate.
But at that time, it was very avant garde.
As a result of that, I was asked to curate the first Orson Welles retrospective in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and to write the accompanying monograph, which was called The Cinema of Orson Welles.
And i sent a couple of copies of that to Orson somewhere in Europe, where he was shooting THE TRIAL.
I didn’t hear anything for seven years.
Seven years later, at the end of 1968, after I’d already made a movie and written a couple of other books, I get a call out of the blue from Orson Welles, who was in Los Angeles (which is where I was at the time) and he said to me “I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to meet you!” and I said “That’s MY line! Why did you want to meet me?” and he said “Because you’ve written the truest words ever published about me” – pause – “in English.”
Then he said “What are doing tomorrow? Can you meet me at 3 o’clock at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel?”
And of course, I did, and we met, and we got along very well, and I had just published about a year before an interview book with John Ford. And brought Orson a copy of it.
Because I knew Ford was Orson’s favorite American director. And we had a very, very intense 2 or 3 hour conversation. At the end of which, Orson said “It’s too bad you’re such an important director that you probably wouldn’t want to write a book like this about me!” and I said “I’d love to do an interview book with you.”
And he said “Fine, let’s do it!”
And that was the beginning of our relationship.
What’s your favorite Orson Welles movie?
Well, gee, that’s tough.
I like CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT – which is his Falstaff movie, based on five plays by Shakespeare. I like TOUCH OF EVIL very much. And of course I like CITIZEN KANE.
One more question about Welles – I love Touch of Evil. But there are some pretty campy moments. Do you think that was intentional? Sometimes its jarring (such as Dennis Weaver’s performance).
Well, Dennis’ performance & character was what Orson referred to as “A Shakespearean looney.”
There are characters like that in Shakespeare’s plays – off the wall characters.
And that’s what Orson had in mind with Dennis.
I think he’s quite funny in the picture.
But the picture itself is quite unusual. And a bit off the wall. And I think it’s part of its glory.
________
[br]
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.