The Confidence-Man - another abandoned project

[Harvey Chartrand]

In the mid-seventies, Welles was set to star in a film version of Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man. I am not sure if Welles had a hand in writing the screenplay.

Written in 1857, The Confidence-Man, Melville's last novel, was a harsh satire of American life set on a Mississippi River steamboat.

The film would have been directed by Jonathan Demme.

Anybody know anything about this project that, sadly, was not meant to be?

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

k2k magazine, i think, interviewing Beverly Gray.

"Beverly Gray: I had actually participated in some of that fake publicity and thought it was really amusing. I was told, early on, to go out and find... invent some project that sounded good and they'd put it in the trades. So, with my literary background, I came up with - Orson Welles was going to star for Roger Corman in Melville's "The Confidence Man." This was duly published in the trades. I have a copy of it. It was pretty neat, especially because I knew that this was an absolutely unfilmable book. There was no possible way they could make it into a movie. You couldn't make any kind of movie out of that book."

well, harvey, don't know what to tell ya. the people just don't say too much about anything anymore

bye now!

[Harvey Chartrand]

I was conned by a fake news item about a Confidence Man!
I wonder if Orson was in on the joke.