Don Quijote

[halfaorson]

Dear guys,
I've been out lately, trying to figure out what to do to help saving Don Quijote. I still want to do the petition page, but I am waiting some time to have more advice and to tell you more about what we will try to do. I hope all of you will be fighting with me. Thanks. Sigi.

[Christopher]

What seems to have been forgotten in this discussion is that in his Will, Orson Welles left all his unfinished films and projects to Oja Kodar. So the DQ footage that Bonannini has refused to relinquish, in spite of a court order that he do is, is the legal property of Oja Kodar, whether some of the people posting on this site like it or not. The only film property belonging to Beatrice Welles is OTHELLO. Ms. Welles has no legal right to any of the unfinished films.

[Gordon]

In his Will, Orson Welles left all his unfinished films and projects to Oja Kodar...The only film property belonging to Beatrice Welles is OTHELLO. Ms. Welles has no legal right to any of the unfinished films.

If this is true, then on what basis has Ms. Beatrice Welles apparently held up the completion and distribution of 'The Other Side of The Wind', among other projects?

If Beatrice Welles has been able to (apparently) impress CBS Corp. (the Corporate Parent of Showtime) enough to walk away from purchasing the film, how can one guy in Italy be expected to take her on?

I write this with great respect for those who have tried to preserve the works of Orson Welles. I'm merely trying to underscore the debilitating effect that Beatrice Welles has had on so many worthy projects.

[ToddBaesen]

Christopher:

You are absolutely right, but unfortunately in the legal world of the courtroom, especially in the US, there are no such things as absolutes.

How else can you explain than Beatrice could take Universal to court over TOUCH OF EVIL - a film she obviously has no rights or control over - and get Univ. to pay her (according to most reports) over $100,000. to drop her ridiculous complaint against the re-edit.

That is also why, even though according to Welles will, Beatrice has no claim to any of his films - finished or unfinished (other than OTHELLO) - she can still hold up the showing of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which was scheduled for Showtime, before she stepped in with her lawsuit to stop it.

This, despite that in Welles' will he specifically instructed that if anyone tried to to deny Oja Kodar her claims
to the unfinished films, that they would be automatically be disinheirited!

So this is apparently one big reason why all the Welles unfinshed film activity has to be done mostly in Europe. The minute that anything happens in the US, you can bet your sweet life that Beatrice and Thomas White will be ready and willing to file a lawsuit to stop it.

But isn't it nice to know that Beatrice is doing everything she can to protect her father's legacy and work from being exploited by the small group of Welles fans who'd actually like to view her father's unfinished films?

Of course, I'm no legal expert, but apparently this can happen is due to U. S. and California estate laws which allow the heirs to automatically challenge the use of any kind of likeness and filmed content of the deceased, whether they have the rights to do so according to the will or not.

Therein lies the rub...

[Christopher]

Todd,

I'm not familiar with the details of the many lawsuits brought by Beatrice Welles and her lawyers and to what degree they may or may not be legitimate. However, I can safely say from my personal knowledge of this very murky situation that whatever Beatrice Welles may say publicly about her wishes to preserve and protect her father's legacy, her primary interest is making all the money she can from the so-called Orson Welles Estate which is essentially a bogus invention of her laywers but one they have been getting away with for years. It would appear that studios would rather pay her off than get bogged down in the far greater expense of litigating in court.

I am also not familiar with all the inside negotiations concerning THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, but I understand others besides Beatrice Welles had objections that led to its cancellation on Showtime, and in any case, this is a very tricky situation which may never be resolved to anyone's satisfaction. There are too many different opinions about what should be done with it -- and too many people involved, each one with an ax to grind.

The only point of light in this morass is that the film editor in Italy has no right to hang on to the footage he has of DON QUIXOTE and that by ignoring the court order to return this footage to its rightful owner, Oja Kodar, he is breaking the law. Is there really no way he can be compelled to give up this footage?

[The Voice of Cornstarch]

Other than the virtue of complying with an Italian Court Order, what is the benefit of turning the footage over?

[Tony]

Christopher: Oja wants the Patty McCormick material suppressed because Welles said he wanted to reshoot it with Beatrice; this is the beginning, the theatre scene, and possibly the ending. Bonannini doesn't want this material to be lost; also, he wants to edit the picture, which seems a reasonable request as he edited it with Welles for a year, and is the only person who knows anything about the editing plan. In fact, we wouldn't have Bonanni's DQ material at all if he and his wife hadn't saved it from destruction in the early 70s.

Look what Oja already did to DQ: far worse than what Beatrice did to Othello. I hope Bonanini hangs tough and continues to fight the good fight. Beatrice has used the law
to bully and extort cash, and has closed down much scholarship and several releases of Welles material. Are you seriously advising Bonannini to merely "follow the law", or have I misunderstood you?

By the way,if you haven't already read it, I recommend Audrey Stainton's 1988 article on DQ: she describes in detail what happened.

[Gordon]

Bonanini needs adequate legal representation, as under California law, which is I assume the prevailing law in this case, he, Bonanni, could have a strong claim to assert ownership.

On a separate matter, (sorry didn't want to start a new thread)
It's good that Larry French is posting so much material.
Does anyone have the complete Maverick speech?
It would be great to post the entire content.

[ToddBaesen]

Gordon:

What do you mean by the the Maverick speech?

Is there one other than the AFI speech that was recently posted to Wellesnet?

[Gordon]

The speech that Larry posted on the cover page headline "Orson Welles AFI Speech - 1975"
is incomplete. It does not contain the famous passages -

"In this age of supermarkets I remain not only Your Obidient Servant but Your friendly corner Grocer."

etc.

The idea of posting the rest of 'The Speech' is no big deal. Most people here have their own copies of The Speech.
What was new in the post was the notion that Bonanni assert Adverse Posession rights and that he needs adequate Californian representation to do so.

[Roger Ryan]

Gordon - the line you refer to in Welles' AFI acceptance speech is, in fact, included. It was Welles' final line before he dovetailed the speech into an introduction to a second clip from "The Other Side Of The Wind".

Regarding Don Quixote: I think this idea that Kodar will suppress or destroy Bonanni's footage is misleading. Keep in mind that Kodar regretted the hack job that Jesus Franco did and I don't believe she views it as being the definitive "version" of this project. The McCormick footage, including a fully edited (albeit silent) version of the cinema scene, was screened in Locarno last year as part of the workshop on "Quixote". Is there any reason to believe now that this footage is not considered part of the "Don Quixote" project?

Legally, Bonanni needs to relinquish control of his footage to Kodar and the world film community should insist that Kodar turn the footage over to an appropriate archive (the Munich Filmmuseum is the logical choice). The footage needs to be preserved...period, regardless of whether it represented Welles' intentions in 1970 or 1980 or whenever. Should Bonanni be put in charge of further editing (the key word being "further") since he was an actual editor on the project? If it's determined that the existing footage would be best presented to the public through further editing, then Bonanni's input should be respected. Ultimately, "Quixote" remains an unfinished Welles film and one that could not have been completed by anyone but Welles himself in my opinion. I think the best we could hope for is to have access to all the footage, discarded or not, that Welles was working with to get a sense of the different stages this project went through for over 25 years.

And this is where it differs significantly from "Othello" which was actually completed by Welles (twice!); "Quixote" did not exist in anything resembling a completed form prior to Franco's generally disparaged reconstruction. So Tony, I respectfully ask you: is someone's clumsy attempt to edit together footage from an unfinished film actually worse than someone willfully changing a film finished by Welles to his own satisfaction?

[Clive Dale]

Roger,

have you considered writing a version of what a completed DQ would look like?

I so respect your scholarship, but i disagree with your legal conclusion.
Bonanni, has not had adequate legal representation in California.
With adequate representation, he could pursue a cause in California to have a court rule under Adverse Possession.

This would be a much better use of money than feeding the current Beverly Hills protection racket, which has a much weaker claim under law.

[Tony]

Roger: The question of legal ownership, which has been brought up by Clive and Gordon, is an interesting point, but I don't think Bonannini can afford an entertainment lawyer. All I can comment on is what has been reported so far: that Bonannini refused to turn over the material (which wouldn't exist unless he and his wife had saved it and stored it for 30 years) because Oja was definitely not going to use it, and was/is against it being used: the stated reason was that Welles had told her that he wanted to redo the Patty Mccormick scenes with Beatrice (when could he have told her that? 1966?). This is why in the Jess Franco abortion that Oja commissioned, he used some material from Welles's spanish documentary in place of the McCormick material. And McCormick is also in the cinema scene, so that would be out also. Now Audrey Stainton has written that Mauro edited DQ with Welles for about one year, from the summer of 69 to the summer of 70, until Welles left Italy due to the scandal rags exposing his affair with Kodar. He forgot the negative in a vault, and it was only due to Mauro's wife noticing the letter of destruction in the lab where she worked that the film that Mauro has was saved at all.

You say: "the world film community should insist that Kodar turn the footage over to an appropriate archive." Just who are the "World film community" that should do the insisting? Would their insisting be based on: a moral, legal, or aesthetic argument? And once Kodar gets it, it would be in her legal possession, and the WFC can insist all they want, but she could still do anything she wanted with it.

You ask: " is someone's clumsy attempt to edit together footage from an unfinished film actually worse than someone willfully changing a film finished by Welles to his own satisfaction? "

Sorry: I can't understand what you mean here. However, my view is this: we can never have the Welles version, and we already have the Franco version. Now let's have the Bonannini version, which by definition would only be another version, but would be ths closest to Welles's ideas as possible, since Mauro was the editor on this picture for one year. Another way would be to just present all the material on several discs, which I think would also be a good idea: it doesn't have to be an either/or solution: we can have Mauro's version, and all the raw footage for Welles freaks.

Can you think of someone better to edit the material than Bonannini? Look at what great projects have been done already: TOE by Murch, Arkadin by Stefan and his team, It's All True by Wilson, and I hope one day a reasonable edit of TOSOTW.

So why not Bonannini on DQ?
???

[Christopher]

Roger,

Thank you for your post on the DON QUIXOTE footage in Bonannini's possession. You have expressed my thoughts exactly.

To everyone:

It should be obvious that Bonannini has acted in a high-handed manner for his own aggrandisement and without any authority or legal grounds. No one would have heard of him if he had not worked with Orson Welles for a year, and the fact that he did does not make him the ultimate authority on the final edit for DON QUIXOTE. At most, he might be a useful consultant, but his behavior makes his opinions somewhat suspect in my view. As for his arguments, the fact that he found the DON QUIXOTE footage does not legally entitle him to keep it or to edit it for the simple reason that it does not belong to him and never did. It has also been stated in this thread that the footage he has is rapidly deteriorating. For this reason alone, he should relinquish it immediately to Oja Kodar.

Please remember that it was Ms. Kodar who arranged to have Welles's unfinished films and other works stored at the Munich Filmmuseum and it was also Ms. Kodar who stipulated that the museum must hold an Orson Welles retrospective every three years. Were it not for her efforts, we would not be seeing any of Welles's unfinished footage, nor would we have the privilege of attending Orson Welles retrospectives, such as the one held last summer in Locarno, Switzerland. And at that retrospective, as Roger Ryan already mentioned, we saw the Patty McCormick footage, so the charge that Oja Kodar was going to destroy it, or not use it, if she got hold of it is false as, incidentally, are a number of other statements about her that have been made in this thread. It is very easy to jump to conclusions when one doesn't have all the facts, but I think she deserves the benefit of the doubt. Finally, to take the position that the DON QUIXOTE footage is better off with Bonannini than it is with Kodar is simply not reasonable or even practical. I rest my case.

[Roger Ryan]

EDIT - Sorry if I'm repeating some of what Christopher said in her post above; I had not read it prior to posting my own response.


Clive - Please understand that I do not wish for Beatrice to gain control of this footage if that's what you mean by "Beverly Hills Protection Racket". As Christopher pointed out, Beatrice has no legal right to any of the Welles material apart from "Othello" and I agree that her questionable "Estate Of Orson Welles" has done nothing to make Welles' work available to fans or the general public.

Oja Kodar, however, does seem to have a legal claim on Bonanni's "Quixote" footage and I'm not certain it's fair to paint her as the villain in this. We're holding her accountable for comments and actions she took 15 years ago when she signed on to have Jess Franco put together his version. I imagine at the time she thought she was protecting Welles' wishes by keeping the McCormick footage out of the project (was this footage even available then to include?). Since that time, she has disavowed the Franco version and has turned over hours upon hours of Welles footage to the Munich Filmmuseum in the interest of perserving his work and making it available to the public. The McCormick footage itself formed the centerpiece of the "Quixote" workshop presented in Locarno last year, a workshop organized by the Munich Filmmuseum as part of a Welles retrospective that Kodar herself attended. Given her actions over the last ten years, I'm not certain why we should think that Kodar wishes to actively suppress the footage.

The real issue seems to be about whether there should be another attempt to "finish" or present a more complete version of "Don Quixote". Would the McCormick footage fit into another construction attempt according to Kodar? Maybe not. Maybe Bonnani feels it would. I want to know what Bonnani actually has in his leaky garage. Is it a more complete version of the film than anyone has seen before? One that represents where Welles' head was at in 1969? By all means, we need to see it and we should all be grateful to Bonanni and his wife for taking the initiative to retrieve the footage before its destruction. Since we already have the McCormick footage including the cinema scene, I imagine Bonanni must have something else noteworthy in his possession. If this footage represents previously unseen editing work done by Welles it needs to be perserved and viewed "as is". If not, then I think Bonanni's input should be respected in regards to how the material might be assembled, but I don't believe his version alone would necessarily be definitive.

This is a key point: without Welles, I don't think "Don Quixote" can be "finished" in a satisfactory manner. I couldn't begin to imagine what Welles might have ultimately done with this material. "The Other Side Of The Wind" project is daunting enough, but at least we have several scripts to go by which give us a pretty good idea what Welles hoped to get across storywise in regards to that film. I don't think "Quixote" ever had a solid script, did it? By the 70s, Welles even started to rethink the project as an "essay" film taking it further from our reach in a sense. "Four Men On A Raft" works because it's simple and there was a certain logical way to edit the footage that was shot. Still, without Welles' narration or commentary, it pales next to what was supposed to be. "Quixote" is a similar case, but its complexity magnifies the problem of "completing" it tenfold.

Tony - You're right that my "world film community" statement was ridiculous! Suffice to say that I'm no legal expert, but to what end do we want to encourage Bonanni to keep this footage in his possession even though it's supposedly deteriorating beyond repair as we speak? As I mentioned above, I don't see Kodar wanting to destroy this footage and I see no reason why she wouldn't turn it over to the Munich Filmmuseum as she has with the rest of Welles' unfinished work.

My "someone's clumsy attempt" reference was in direct response to your statement that "what Oja did to DQ was far worse than what Beatrice did to Othello". I was suggesting that it was worse for Beatrice to needlessly meddle with a completed Welles film ("Othello") than for a hack to poorly compile an incomplete film ("Don Quixote"), although it's really more of a theoretical statement since I'd prefer to watch Beatrice's "Othello" over Franco's "Quixote" any day! To be honest, I hadn't realized how unnecessary Beatrice's audio reworking was until I had the chance to view Welles' original European cut of "Othello" in Locarno last year. The audio mix/quality on the 1952 version was splendid and the synchronization seemed fine. Beatrice's version comes across as amateurish to my ears in comparison.