The Dreamers - e-mail

[blunted by community]

email:
> Jeez, now that his career isn't going that well as a
> director, BOGDANOVICH is all over the place as a film expert
> I DO know he's got some
> designs on THE DREAMERS, perhaps filming it. At first I thought it was a
> completely insane idea (and maybe it is NOT) using any of Welles's footage, but now I
> heard WELLES supposedly when he died told OJA KODAR that a version could be
> done incorperating WELLES'S footage (WELLES himself as an actor in the
> scenes where he is shown telling the story). Don't know much else.

WOW WOW WOW. THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE IDEA!!!! COULD WELLES HAVE BEEN LIKE NOSTREDAMOS, KNEW HIS WORK WOULD HAVE A LOT OF VALUE IN THE FUTURE, and left behind little pieces of puzzle where new footage decades later could be inseted to assemble a final picture? my god! remember, all his life he had to film in this puzzle style to assemble a final picture.

any one hear about this

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Blunted: I think Peter Bogdanovich's career has been going rather well. I would call THE CAT'S MEOW at least a small success.

As for your fanciful idea that Welles could be coming back over Time and Space, may I suggest that you take a look at THE MAN WHO SAW TOMORROW. It is, incidently, another Category 4 film, and according to the director, perhaps a Category 3.

Here is a review of it:

http://www.epinions.com/content_41525546628

Hope it fuels your imaginative speculations.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

he meant bogdanovich's career as a director

[maxrael]

Oja Kodar said something similar, and that OW never intended to direct all of the picture as it called for potentially harsh location shooting... after the death of OW Oja tried to get various other people to make the film incorporating the OW footage as appropriate... (if my memory serves me correctly attempts to raise funds to direct herself...)

The plan was always to use stand-ins for OW for the the location stuff.

i think the main trouble with this idea now is that alas time stands still for no man and it might be a bit tricky to get footage of Oja filmed now some twenty years later to merge with the original... and replacing Oja's scenes would leave very little Welles?

Though i guess in a few years time we'll be able to get new OW films done entirely with animatronics!!

More seriously perhaps this is the place to point any newcomers in the direction of fellow Wellesnetter Peter Tonguettes' excellent article:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/27/welles_dreamers.html

[Glenn Anders]

Dear maxrael: Excellent article.

Welles must have identified Oja Kodar with Isak Dinnesen, and vice verse.

Animatronics may not be so wild a dream for some of these matters. I remember reading an article in Esquire, 30 years ago, in which a technician/inventor suggested that any major star of the previous 50 years might be extracted from his/her ouvre and recast in entirely new films. It's a cyber-ghoulish idea, but it no doubt could, at least, take care of some of the more nearly complete Welles projects we pine for here.

Glenn

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Great article. Interesting subject. Paul Verhoeven fooled me with a robotic version of Murphy in the scene where the bad guys are blowing the shit out of him (before he is resurrected as ROBOCOP!). There's this little grab where Murphy is leaning back and arching his back in pain and the camera pans around him - its a robot. Ironic that one of the main scenes where the actor who played Murphy got to show his face and play a human - they used a robotic stunt double - and Robocop itself was never actually a robot - just a stuntman with a heavy suit on!

There's some robotics trivia you probably already know.

[Jeff Wilson]

I'd have no problem seeing Bogdanovich make THE DREAMERS, but not by incorporating Welles' old footage. The practical problems are, as maxrael mentions, probably too great to overcome. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of Oja's performance in the clips I've seen, anyway.

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Now that Jeff's said that - i'll admit that the clips from The Dreamers weren't my favourite part of One Man Band. I was actually bothered by the way Welles refused to show himself on screen - i love listening to him (in his usual accent especially), but i like seeing him.

[jbrooks]

As I recall, it wasn't that Welles was refusing to show himself in the scene you are referring to in The Dreamers. Rather, it was simply that he shot the scene from one angle and never got around to shooting the reverse shot, from over Oja's shoulder.

[Peter Tonguette]

Thanks very much for the props on my article, all. It is appreciated. You all may be interested in my upcoming interview with Keith Baxter; it should be online within the week.

jbrooks: There are two 'farewell' scenes from "The Dreamers" and both are excerpted in "One Man Band." The first takes place indoors and is literally incomplete; Welles never got around to making reverse shots of himself sitting by the piano. The second takes place in the garden and it's my understanding that this scene IS in fact complete (fully edited, dubbed, and with sound effects of the crickets) and that Welles left out shots of himself on purpose. Welles envisioned the character of Marcus as a shadow following Pellegrina; this was an artistic decision first, a practical one second, in my opinion.

I am obviously partial to this material, especially the scene in the garden, and I must say that I love Oja's performance. To think of a whole Welles picture filmed in this style is simply staggering.

Peter

[blunted by community]

welles would come up with any artistic reason not to put himself on camera. making his character a shadow is a great artistic stroke, and a practicality where time and money are concerned, but also, it was painful for him to see himself, and painful to read what reviewers wrote about his size. i've always felt it was such a terrible, catch-22 for him. he hurt going in front of the camera, and going in front of the camera was the quickest way he had to raise money.

GLENN:
i tried to watch THE CAT'S MEOW several times. i think it stinks. RKO-281 puts it away. too bad. would have made another interesting addition to my welles shelf

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Blunted: Glad to see you making an appearance here again.

You no doubt have a point about Welles' obesity, in later years. On the other hand, he didn't seem so hurt going in front of a camera in F FOR FAKE. In fact, he seemed to downright enjoy it, perhaps more so than in any film he ever made. And he seemed quite happy making his last appearance in Henry Jaglom's SOMEONE TO LOVE, which can't have paid much.

As for THE CAT'S MEOW and RKO-281, sorry you think the former "stinks." We evidently completely disagree. I find that RKO-281 gives off an odor of snide meritriciousness. Peter Bogdanovich's distillation of 1920's dark fable in THE CAT'S MEOW, to me, is closer to the artistic essence of the actual Hearst than Benjamin Ross's sterile wellspring of polluted Kane juice.

I guess, Blunted, as a wiseman once said: "One man's myth is another man's cat pith."

Let's settle for that useful guide, here.

Regards.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

i drop by here quite often, glenn, it's just that if i have nothing interesting to contribute to the thread, i don't post, i just read.

also, didn't you notice that you only saw all of welles twice in F-For-Fake? one of those times he was wearing a cape, and the other time it was on screen for a second. all the other times he was hiding himself in weeds, or behind a hedge, seated at a table, in shadows, etc. in jaglom's film you only saw his arms, shoulders, and head.

if you watch the BBC's orson welles story, moreau speaks about this fear.

it's a crummy topic to discuss, but it goes a step towards painting that mental portrait of the man, complete with all his passions, fears and neurosis. and says something about the way he was treated in america. i never heard any one complain about gleason's bulk. but people like joan rivers, pauline kael, and charles higham were vicious with welles.

[Le Chiffre]

This discussion of Welles' reluctance to appear on camera reminds me of Stacy Keach's anecdote in WORKING WITH ORSON WELLES about Welles using a false nose for his role in Butterfly, which turned out to be the exact same shape as his real nose. Obviously, Welles preferred to hide his real self under heavy make-up, false noses, etc. Either that or to simply make a living with his voice, which was always his bread and butter anyway. If they ever do complete THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, the one element missing will be Welles himself. I believe it's the only film of his in which he does not appear either in voice or in body.

If Welles was serious about having others complete THE DREAMERS, he could easily have recorded all his dialogue and then have his character seen only in shadow or at a distance, so his voiceovers could be used, Darth Vadar-style. Obviously Oja would have to be replaced, but then she may have been one of the main impediments to getting funding for the film in the first place. There's no evidence that she had any acting talent other then what Welles could have coaxed out of her, and potential investers could have been turned off by the idea of Welles trying to turn his mistress into a star, ironically like Hearst with Marion Davies.

Glenn, I liked your article on THE MAN WHO SAW TOMMORROW. If Welles rewrote most of the commentary, as the director said, and thus reinterpreted Nostradamus's prophecies, I would think that would make it more of a category 2. BTW, have you ever seen the video for the later documentary NOSTRADAMUS, HIS LIFE AND PROPHECIES? The picture of Nostradamus looks exactly like Welles.

http://www.vhs-online.com/g=1578750547.html

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Welles spoke to Bogdanovich in This is Orson Welles about the "sheer ache" of seeing himself on screen. And i think he was talking about when he was still able to thin down for roles. This probably goes towards explaining why he did not stay to finish cutting many of his pictures after Ambersons. Looking at himself on the footage seems to have upset him so, and may well ruin his memory of the movie. I know this is a controversial subject, and i don't mean offense - i understand there were other reasons Welles was forced to leave after Ambersons, Macbeth, Shanghai and Touch of Evil. I'm just not sure that subconsciously having to look at himself on the footage wasn't a motivating factor to not stay.

I think someone brought up the false noses. I thought it was interesting the Welles quote in One Man Band about the function of makeup and false noses being to take away from yourself that which is not part of the character. By doing this, Orson was also perhaps removing a major identifying feature of himself in his mind (his button nose).

The only movie he's in that he would watch whenever it was on TV was, ironically, The Third Man (where he appears without makeup at all!) But i spose its not so ironic - Welles has only three scenes, and the personal investment of his in it was so much less. There had to be so many fewer other factors and memories he would be thinking about while watching it (since he didn't direct it), that he could much easier just sit back and enjoy the movie.