WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

Eh.

I can remember reading at the time Cradle was announced that Welles had come out publicly in favor of the defendants. Of course, Welles himself was no stranger to on-set tragedy, specifically the drowning of Jacare during the filming of IT'S ALL TRUE. Interesting also that Welles described Jake Han...

At least a vestige of the bullfighting idea remained right up to the start of shooting. I was told that we were going to Tijuana on Sunday, August 23, 1970, to begin shooting in a bullring. But when I arrived at Welles's house in Los Angeles that morning, I was told that due to some edict about tak...

I have to confess that I made a grave error at the beginning of this essay. I had it in my head that the original version, set in Spain, was about a bullfight enthusiast, not a film director. But as Welles clearly, explicitly says in the 1963 Maysles film, Sacred Beasts is and always was about a fil...

Not looking forward to this- being centered on Mankiewicz, it'll inevitably be sympathetic to his POV, and the family wouldn't allow this unless HM was portrayed as the sole author of Kane. A few months back when TCM played Kane, Ben Mankiewicz actually said "the film that my uncle wrote."...

I’m pretty sure that having Otterlake dress up as Dale was designed to show that Otterlake was a cold, soul-sucking leech intent on owning Hannaford’s legacy. His knack for imitation and general air of phoniness betray someone trying to steal others’ identities, someone whose toxicity would have mad...

My understanding of Little’s Otterlake is not just based on speculation. It’s based on how his character comes off in the available footage and how Otterlake came across in the script.

I respect your not agreeing with my point; but alas, you aren't getting my point. And it's a simple one, that I was taught eons ago in our first semester at Stella's: The performance of an annoying character , is a totally different thing from the presence of an annoying performance . I think film ...

I would just agree with the points that Ray and Jim have developed. You mean Ray and Joseph? A not-good actor in a lead role has never served a film well. Because no matter the tricky effect intended by his/her casting, he/she will ultimately just annoy the audience. And? Most of the stuff in Other...

What you sketch out sounds so much less interesting than the finished film. I'm not disagreeing with you. A more complex character is more interesting than a simple one. I too am glad Welles went with Peter Bogdanovich as Otterlake instead of Little. Little's departure was, as Ray Kelly put it, one...

Being built by external exaggeration with the goal of one-note comic effect, a surface Sketch character can never really establish any dimensional personal trait in an actual Drama. At the risk of putting us two in another argumentative gridlock, please hear me out. Little's Otterlake intentionally...

But again, the tiredness of Little’s impression shtick might have helped cement Otterlake as an unsympathetic, shallow character. Little’s Otterlake would be all imitation and no soul.

I think the conceit of Little playing the Otterlake part as a series of impressions of lines from various movie stars would not have worked well but would have become labored very quickly, and though he is a fine impressionist, he is not much of an actor, unlike Bogdanovich, who is excellent and th...

Nic: I'm curious as to why you think the change regarding Mavis helps the film. We see how much peer pressure influences Hannaford’s behavior. By removing Mavis from Otterlake and making her a target of every male at the party, we can see how much Hannaford’s disturbing behavior towards women is a ...

Here’s another one...

Another superficial, passive-aggressive review of the movie by a pretentious young reviewer who doesn’t get it and doesn’t want to: https://muchadoaboutcinema.com/2018/11/ ... ates-life/