Joseph McBride is interviewed at monsterandcritics.com. He makes a brief mention of his upcoming book on Orson Welles:
MCBRIDE: As for books, my new book on Welles, my third on the subject, will be published in October by the University Press of Kentucky. It’s titled What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career.: I write extensively about Welles’ relatively little-known later work (1970-85), relating it to the rest of his career to show how he gradually became a fully independent filmmaker before that term was widely used. In showing how he triumphantly managed to keep making films outside the system, I am trying to reverse the conventional wisdom that Welles was a self-destructive failure. I am pleased that Martin Scorsese, who has managed to pursue his own independent path while making the system work for him in ways Welles would have envied, has called What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: “an extremely important book.”
'What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?' by Joseph McBride
The Sunday, Aug. 20, LA TIMES has a review of Joseph McBride and Simon Callow's books:
LA Times Book review here
SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW
Delusions of genius
Orson Welles left behind a wildly uneven body of film work and a debatable legacy. What happened? Two new books offer portraits that suggest Welles had only himself to blame.
By Richard Schickel
'Orson Welles: Hello Americans' (Volume 2)
Simon Callow
Viking: 452 pp., $32.95
'Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career'
Joseph McBride
University of Kentucky Press: 384 pp., $29.95
If, as the saying goes, genius is defined by an infinite capacity for taking pains, then Orson Welles was no genius. If, as another saying goes, God is in the details, then there was nothing godlike about him, either — despite the worshipful posturings of his many acolytes.
That said, a raft of questions is left bobbing on a vast sea of biographical and critical speculation about the man and his work. How, people go on wondering, could the man who created "Citizen Kane," arguably the greatest of all American films, fritter away the rest of his life — nearly half a century — on movies spoiled by his own inattention or by the machinations of others or, worse, simply abandoned with many of their most significant elements lost? Movie history is rife with tales of genius thwarted, trashed, traduced (D.W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, plus dozens of lesser talents), but the story of Orson Welles has become central to a core myth, beloved by passionate cinephiles and the ever-contemptuous literati, that Hollywood wantonly, inevitably destroys its most gifted creators.
I think that notion is nonsensical. You cannot read the second volume of Simon Callow's projected three-part biography, "Orson Welles: Hello Americans," or Joseph McBride's more personal and passionate "Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?" (to be published in October) without coming to believe that Welles was the primary auteur of his own misery. Neither writer addresses that point directly, but each lays out the evidence plainly — Callow with cool objectivity, McBride with denials of Wellesian fecklessness that ring increasingly hollow as film after film stumbles toward its grim, might-have-been fate. The problem with both is that neither quite links the flaws in Welles' nature with the failure of his films.
The simple truth is that Welles, who was orphaned as a child, was raised by a foster father, Maurice ("Dadda") Bernstein, and nurtured by a schoolteacher, Roger Hill, to believe in his own genius — no questions asked, no limits set. McBride quotes Welles, late in life, commenting on a character in the screenplay "The Brass Ring" (published but, of course, unmade), thus: "He is a man who has within himself the devil of self-destruction that lives in every genius…. It is not self-doubt, it is cosmic doubt! What am I going to do — I am the best, I know that, now what do I do with it?"
In Welles' case, the answer comes back: After 1942, he did almost nothing of unambiguous value.
Callow tells the story of the years between the premiere of "Citizen Kane" in May 1941 and Welles' self-exile in Europe, beginning in 1947, in sometimes exhausting detail — a mere six years out of a 70-year life. But he obviously believes — and makes us believe — that they were crucial in determining the unholy mess that followed.
It is true that "Kane" was not a commercial success in its initial release. Neither was it an unalloyed critical success. Nor did it fully enchant Hollywood, ever suspicious of outsiders. But it raised a most gratifying hullabaloo, and even the skeptical could see that it was a picture to be reckoned with, as a summary of sound and filmmaking techniques to date, and, possibly, a harbinger. Nothing in the "controversy" surrounding the film (people did not yet see that it was less a fictional biography of William Randolph Hearst than a fictional autobiography of George Orson Welles) precluded a great career for its director, co-writer and star. And we know now — even from the severely truncated form in which it exists (about one-third of it was cut by the studio, RKO) — that Welles' next movie, "The Magnificent Ambersons," was quite likely a masterpiece too.
But he did not see it through. Welles was seduced away from postproduction on "Ambersons" by the U.S. government: He was asked to make a film in Brazil in support of our wartime good-neighbor policy. He thought it was his patriotic duty to do it (and perhaps also he wanted to avoid the draft), and he was confident that other hands could shepherd "Ambersons" through postproduction. Besides, he had a work print of the film with him, and phone and cable lines were up and running. He would supervise it by remote control, while improvising "It's All True," a scriptless, multi-part semi-documentary on certain aspects of South American life.
In the end, he neither successfully defended "Ambersons" nor finished "It's All True." The former's first preview (in Pomona) was disastrous; George Schaefer (the head of the studio and Welles' chief supporter) was engaged in a desperate battle to save his own job; and, frankly, Welles was largely drunk and disorderly in Rio, paying at most intermittent attention to his film's fate. He was repeatedly urged to drop everything and return home to "fight his corner," as Callow would have it, but he did not. So RKO subjected his film to the death of a thousand cuts — the most serious of which was to the final sequence, a long, mournful elegy for lost American innocence destroyed by rampant industrialism: It was not a message that people wanted to hear as our productive might was mobilized to prosecute World War II.
Eventually, the studio dumped the film: In Los Angeles, it played on a double bill with one of the "Mexican Spitfire" movies. Eventually, Welles would admit that this was the mistake from which his career never recovered. McBride reports him weeping as he watched "Ambersons" on television years later.
But, at the time, Welles sailed blithely on — starring in other people's films, making some of his own ("The Stranger," which was minor and profitable; "The Lady From Shanghai," starring his by-then-estranged wife, Rita Hayworth, and radically recut by the studio). All the while he pursued his own deluded definitions of genius. One element of that fantasy was the notion that great gifts in a particular field guaranteed his authority in totally unrelated realms. For a time, he wrote a daily newspaper column proclaiming his political and social opinions, while at the same time doing weekly radio broadcasts in which he lectured an ever-dwindling audience on similar topics. He was everywhere in public life, so much so that Franklin D. Roosevelt put it in the addled filmmaker's head that he might someday be president if he so desired.
But Welles' political opinions, situated at the more radical edge of the liberal spectrum, were not to everyone's tastes, and neither was his solipsism. Even people who admired his movies quite fairly wondered by what right he dared instruct them in public philosophy. These activities prevented the coherent pursuit of film projects, for Welles was not yet the anathema to the studios that he would become. It was "Macbeth," made for the low-end but initially supportive Republic Pictures, that sealed his fate. It is often visually striking, a daring attempt to strip away centuries of theatrical convention and locate the drama in primitive, almost prehistoric, times. But it needed a lot of work, and it was from the heavy postproduction chores that Welles sidled away, attempting to finish the film as he had "Ambersons" — by cable — while working in another country.
McBride holds that Welles' exile was a response to the threat of political blacklisting, but that's dubious. During the decade when the blacklist was enforced, Welles worked steadily as an actor in movies set for American release. If he was hiding, he was doing so in awfully plain sight. It was the same with the movies he managed to direct; they had to play in America if they were to be profitable. No, his problem was that he could not submit his wayward spirit to institutional discipline.
This brings us to a point his most ardent admirers have never grasped. The rebel pose makes for fine romantic copy, but the fact is that genius in the movies is the antithesis of genius as Welles flightily defined it. It is akin to an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Every great director I've ever known spends months in the editing room, more months on the dubbing and scoring stages, driving themselves and everyone around them crazy with their slavish devotion to detail. When they're not doing that, they're wheedling money out of their backer or fending off suggested improvements. It is how great movies are made.
And great careers. In his entry on Welles in "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film," David Thomson remarkably asserts that his was "the greatest career in film." I would argue that it was no career at all. Think about it: One indisputable masterpiece, one presumptive one, a handful of movies ("Touch of Evil," "Chimes at Midnight," "The Immortal Story") for which cases can be made by devotees like McBride, a lot of pasted- together work ("Othello" and several versions of "Mr. Arkadin," none of them any good) and a lot of unfinished work ("Don Quixote," "The Other Side of the Wind") that has its interest but is always accompanied by an asterisk, directing us to the bottom of the page and a footnote rationalizing the failure of fruition. Deny it though his supporters will, a defensive pattern emerges here: If a genius' work remains so often incomplete or is taken over by others, then we can never definitively judge that genius or, heaven forfend, declare it defective.
Comparing this "career" to those of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch and a dozen other American cinematic masters is ludicrous. All made at least one great and any number of really good movies — in part because they all knew how to game the system. Charlton Heston warned Welles not to bristle when the Universal suits came on the "Touch of Evil" set. Hear them out, charm them, twist them artfully to your will, Heston suggested. As anyone who heard Welles on talk shows in his later years will know, a display of rueful, self-deprecating and apparently good-natured irony was well within his range. But he would have none of it. He was too committed to the adversarial mode. Genius, forced to walk among mere mortals, must tread heavily and carry a big stick.
McBride argues that Welles remained, until his dying day, manically busy, and there is no disputing his energy. He relentlessly pursued backing from increasingly dubious sources and endlessly spun ideas, but the truth was that, "Kane" aside, Welles was much more an adapter than he was an originator of screen ideas. And he had no middle range: He was either making versions of Shakespeare or cheesy crime novels. At the end, he was not even doing that. He claimed to prefer the "roughness" of scriptless improvisation. Sometimes he just wanted to turn the camera on himself while he bloviated. Even McBride, whose dark suspicions about his idol — Welles often treated him abominably — are surfaced but never resolved, concedes the hopelessness of these "one man band" (Welles' phrase) projects. He was finally building rejection and failure right into his original concepts — a much more efficient method of self-destruction than running out of money and interest before completing a film.
The history of the 20th century offers no more grandiose conversion of high promise into sad failure. Or, if you prefer, no more chilling example of a man turning his life into some sort of presumptively tragic, but finally absurdist, art.
Richard Schickel is the editor of the anthology "The Essential Chaplin."
LA Times Book review here
SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW
Delusions of genius
Orson Welles left behind a wildly uneven body of film work and a debatable legacy. What happened? Two new books offer portraits that suggest Welles had only himself to blame.
By Richard Schickel
'Orson Welles: Hello Americans' (Volume 2)
Simon Callow
Viking: 452 pp., $32.95
'Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career'
Joseph McBride
University of Kentucky Press: 384 pp., $29.95
If, as the saying goes, genius is defined by an infinite capacity for taking pains, then Orson Welles was no genius. If, as another saying goes, God is in the details, then there was nothing godlike about him, either — despite the worshipful posturings of his many acolytes.
That said, a raft of questions is left bobbing on a vast sea of biographical and critical speculation about the man and his work. How, people go on wondering, could the man who created "Citizen Kane," arguably the greatest of all American films, fritter away the rest of his life — nearly half a century — on movies spoiled by his own inattention or by the machinations of others or, worse, simply abandoned with many of their most significant elements lost? Movie history is rife with tales of genius thwarted, trashed, traduced (D.W. Griffith, Erich von Stroheim, plus dozens of lesser talents), but the story of Orson Welles has become central to a core myth, beloved by passionate cinephiles and the ever-contemptuous literati, that Hollywood wantonly, inevitably destroys its most gifted creators.
I think that notion is nonsensical. You cannot read the second volume of Simon Callow's projected three-part biography, "Orson Welles: Hello Americans," or Joseph McBride's more personal and passionate "Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?" (to be published in October) without coming to believe that Welles was the primary auteur of his own misery. Neither writer addresses that point directly, but each lays out the evidence plainly — Callow with cool objectivity, McBride with denials of Wellesian fecklessness that ring increasingly hollow as film after film stumbles toward its grim, might-have-been fate. The problem with both is that neither quite links the flaws in Welles' nature with the failure of his films.
The simple truth is that Welles, who was orphaned as a child, was raised by a foster father, Maurice ("Dadda") Bernstein, and nurtured by a schoolteacher, Roger Hill, to believe in his own genius — no questions asked, no limits set. McBride quotes Welles, late in life, commenting on a character in the screenplay "The Brass Ring" (published but, of course, unmade), thus: "He is a man who has within himself the devil of self-destruction that lives in every genius…. It is not self-doubt, it is cosmic doubt! What am I going to do — I am the best, I know that, now what do I do with it?"
In Welles' case, the answer comes back: After 1942, he did almost nothing of unambiguous value.
Callow tells the story of the years between the premiere of "Citizen Kane" in May 1941 and Welles' self-exile in Europe, beginning in 1947, in sometimes exhausting detail — a mere six years out of a 70-year life. But he obviously believes — and makes us believe — that they were crucial in determining the unholy mess that followed.
It is true that "Kane" was not a commercial success in its initial release. Neither was it an unalloyed critical success. Nor did it fully enchant Hollywood, ever suspicious of outsiders. But it raised a most gratifying hullabaloo, and even the skeptical could see that it was a picture to be reckoned with, as a summary of sound and filmmaking techniques to date, and, possibly, a harbinger. Nothing in the "controversy" surrounding the film (people did not yet see that it was less a fictional biography of William Randolph Hearst than a fictional autobiography of George Orson Welles) precluded a great career for its director, co-writer and star. And we know now — even from the severely truncated form in which it exists (about one-third of it was cut by the studio, RKO) — that Welles' next movie, "The Magnificent Ambersons," was quite likely a masterpiece too.
But he did not see it through. Welles was seduced away from postproduction on "Ambersons" by the U.S. government: He was asked to make a film in Brazil in support of our wartime good-neighbor policy. He thought it was his patriotic duty to do it (and perhaps also he wanted to avoid the draft), and he was confident that other hands could shepherd "Ambersons" through postproduction. Besides, he had a work print of the film with him, and phone and cable lines were up and running. He would supervise it by remote control, while improvising "It's All True," a scriptless, multi-part semi-documentary on certain aspects of South American life.
In the end, he neither successfully defended "Ambersons" nor finished "It's All True." The former's first preview (in Pomona) was disastrous; George Schaefer (the head of the studio and Welles' chief supporter) was engaged in a desperate battle to save his own job; and, frankly, Welles was largely drunk and disorderly in Rio, paying at most intermittent attention to his film's fate. He was repeatedly urged to drop everything and return home to "fight his corner," as Callow would have it, but he did not. So RKO subjected his film to the death of a thousand cuts — the most serious of which was to the final sequence, a long, mournful elegy for lost American innocence destroyed by rampant industrialism: It was not a message that people wanted to hear as our productive might was mobilized to prosecute World War II.
Eventually, the studio dumped the film: In Los Angeles, it played on a double bill with one of the "Mexican Spitfire" movies. Eventually, Welles would admit that this was the mistake from which his career never recovered. McBride reports him weeping as he watched "Ambersons" on television years later.
But, at the time, Welles sailed blithely on — starring in other people's films, making some of his own ("The Stranger," which was minor and profitable; "The Lady From Shanghai," starring his by-then-estranged wife, Rita Hayworth, and radically recut by the studio). All the while he pursued his own deluded definitions of genius. One element of that fantasy was the notion that great gifts in a particular field guaranteed his authority in totally unrelated realms. For a time, he wrote a daily newspaper column proclaiming his political and social opinions, while at the same time doing weekly radio broadcasts in which he lectured an ever-dwindling audience on similar topics. He was everywhere in public life, so much so that Franklin D. Roosevelt put it in the addled filmmaker's head that he might someday be president if he so desired.
But Welles' political opinions, situated at the more radical edge of the liberal spectrum, were not to everyone's tastes, and neither was his solipsism. Even people who admired his movies quite fairly wondered by what right he dared instruct them in public philosophy. These activities prevented the coherent pursuit of film projects, for Welles was not yet the anathema to the studios that he would become. It was "Macbeth," made for the low-end but initially supportive Republic Pictures, that sealed his fate. It is often visually striking, a daring attempt to strip away centuries of theatrical convention and locate the drama in primitive, almost prehistoric, times. But it needed a lot of work, and it was from the heavy postproduction chores that Welles sidled away, attempting to finish the film as he had "Ambersons" — by cable — while working in another country.
McBride holds that Welles' exile was a response to the threat of political blacklisting, but that's dubious. During the decade when the blacklist was enforced, Welles worked steadily as an actor in movies set for American release. If he was hiding, he was doing so in awfully plain sight. It was the same with the movies he managed to direct; they had to play in America if they were to be profitable. No, his problem was that he could not submit his wayward spirit to institutional discipline.
This brings us to a point his most ardent admirers have never grasped. The rebel pose makes for fine romantic copy, but the fact is that genius in the movies is the antithesis of genius as Welles flightily defined it. It is akin to an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Every great director I've ever known spends months in the editing room, more months on the dubbing and scoring stages, driving themselves and everyone around them crazy with their slavish devotion to detail. When they're not doing that, they're wheedling money out of their backer or fending off suggested improvements. It is how great movies are made.
And great careers. In his entry on Welles in "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film," David Thomson remarkably asserts that his was "the greatest career in film." I would argue that it was no career at all. Think about it: One indisputable masterpiece, one presumptive one, a handful of movies ("Touch of Evil," "Chimes at Midnight," "The Immortal Story") for which cases can be made by devotees like McBride, a lot of pasted- together work ("Othello" and several versions of "Mr. Arkadin," none of them any good) and a lot of unfinished work ("Don Quixote," "The Other Side of the Wind") that has its interest but is always accompanied by an asterisk, directing us to the bottom of the page and a footnote rationalizing the failure of fruition. Deny it though his supporters will, a defensive pattern emerges here: If a genius' work remains so often incomplete or is taken over by others, then we can never definitively judge that genius or, heaven forfend, declare it defective.
Comparing this "career" to those of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch and a dozen other American cinematic masters is ludicrous. All made at least one great and any number of really good movies — in part because they all knew how to game the system. Charlton Heston warned Welles not to bristle when the Universal suits came on the "Touch of Evil" set. Hear them out, charm them, twist them artfully to your will, Heston suggested. As anyone who heard Welles on talk shows in his later years will know, a display of rueful, self-deprecating and apparently good-natured irony was well within his range. But he would have none of it. He was too committed to the adversarial mode. Genius, forced to walk among mere mortals, must tread heavily and carry a big stick.
McBride argues that Welles remained, until his dying day, manically busy, and there is no disputing his energy. He relentlessly pursued backing from increasingly dubious sources and endlessly spun ideas, but the truth was that, "Kane" aside, Welles was much more an adapter than he was an originator of screen ideas. And he had no middle range: He was either making versions of Shakespeare or cheesy crime novels. At the end, he was not even doing that. He claimed to prefer the "roughness" of scriptless improvisation. Sometimes he just wanted to turn the camera on himself while he bloviated. Even McBride, whose dark suspicions about his idol — Welles often treated him abominably — are surfaced but never resolved, concedes the hopelessness of these "one man band" (Welles' phrase) projects. He was finally building rejection and failure right into his original concepts — a much more efficient method of self-destruction than running out of money and interest before completing a film.
The history of the 20th century offers no more grandiose conversion of high promise into sad failure. Or, if you prefer, no more chilling example of a man turning his life into some sort of presumptively tragic, but finally absurdist, art.
Richard Schickel is the editor of the anthology "The Essential Chaplin."
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ToddBaesen
- Wellesnet Advanced
- Posts: 647
- Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2001 12:00 am
- Location: San Francisco
JOSEPH McBRIDE: I am trying to reverse the conventional wisdom that Welles was a self-destructive failure.
Well, he certainly didn't convince Richard Schickel, who says (after supposedly reading McBrides and Callow's books) that you cannot read them "without coming to believe that Welles was the primary auteur of his own misery."
And remarkably Schickel even strongly disagrees with David Thomson, for daring to say that Welles had "the greatest career in film."
Shickel: I would argue that it was no career at all.
Well, thanks for that stunning insight, Mr. Shickel. I guess everyone who is posting here should just pack up and leave, since we really have nothing to discuss, because (according to Shickel) Orson Welles had no career in the movies...
Of course, isn't it strange that for a man with no career in film, there are certainly more books written about that non-career than probably any other director!
Of course, given the kind of generalizations Shickel goes in for ("and, frankly, Welles was largely drunk and disorderly in Rio, paying at most intermittent attention to his film's fate") I'd have to say I doubt if he actually read either of the books he's supposed to be reviewing. Shickel most likely figured he could simply toss out a review based on the well-known Welles legend, and collect a nice fee from the L A TIMES in the process, without having to strain himself to any great degree by actually reading 800 pages on a subject he already figures he knows so well.
Or quite possibly Shickel still harbors sour grapes towards Welles since Orson no doubt brushed Shickel off when he was approached about appearing as a subject alongside Capra, Cukor and Minnelli for his PBS series on "The Men Who Made The Movies."
Well, he certainly didn't convince Richard Schickel, who says (after supposedly reading McBrides and Callow's books) that you cannot read them "without coming to believe that Welles was the primary auteur of his own misery."
And remarkably Schickel even strongly disagrees with David Thomson, for daring to say that Welles had "the greatest career in film."
Shickel: I would argue that it was no career at all.
Well, thanks for that stunning insight, Mr. Shickel. I guess everyone who is posting here should just pack up and leave, since we really have nothing to discuss, because (according to Shickel) Orson Welles had no career in the movies...
Of course, isn't it strange that for a man with no career in film, there are certainly more books written about that non-career than probably any other director!
Of course, given the kind of generalizations Shickel goes in for ("and, frankly, Welles was largely drunk and disorderly in Rio, paying at most intermittent attention to his film's fate") I'd have to say I doubt if he actually read either of the books he's supposed to be reviewing. Shickel most likely figured he could simply toss out a review based on the well-known Welles legend, and collect a nice fee from the L A TIMES in the process, without having to strain himself to any great degree by actually reading 800 pages on a subject he already figures he knows so well.
Or quite possibly Shickel still harbors sour grapes towards Welles since Orson no doubt brushed Shickel off when he was approached about appearing as a subject alongside Capra, Cukor and Minnelli for his PBS series on "The Men Who Made The Movies."
Todd
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Chuck Kane
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ToddBaesen
- Wellesnet Advanced
- Posts: 647
- Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2001 12:00 am
- Location: San Francisco
Looking at Philip French's HELLO AMERICANS review in THE GUARDIAN, I was struck by how he comes to a completely different conclusion that what Shickel says in his absurd statement "that Welles was the primary auteur of his own misery."
French says: "From the start, Callow dismisses as glib and UNTRUE two frequently advanced explanations.
The first is that Welles was self-destructive, the second that he was the victim of a conspiracy on the part of unimaginative, envious and vindictive studio heads and their contacts in the press."
I guess they were reading two different books, or as suggested, Shickel simply didn't bother to read the books.
Meanwhile, in the ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY review (on the main page), we get a repeat of the same old stories of Welles, the tragic genius "and the slow erosion of his once-limitless gifts." But a special award (for being so unoriginal) to the EW writer for this line:
"...in his later years he ballooned into a tragic punchline, hawking frozen peas and cheap wine on TV."
I've heard variations on that comment so many times, it really just shows the pathetic lack of inventiveness and lazy writing skills of everyone who has ever repeated it. It's such an easy, (but untrue) put-down of Welles supposed cheapening of his talent.
The truth is, why on earth should Welles be faulted for hawking cheap Paul Masson Wine and frozen foods in the sixties and seventies on television commercials, when he was doing exactly the same thing (only on radio commercials) at the height of his so-called fame and success in the thirties and forties (for Roma Wine and Lady Esther Cosmetics).
I don't recall seeing any complaints about Welles decline after the release of CITIZEN KANE because he was hawking cheap wine on his radio shows. I guess it's okay to do commercials when you are considered a success, but it's a sign of your decline if you do them when you don't have a current movie in release.
French says: "From the start, Callow dismisses as glib and UNTRUE two frequently advanced explanations.
The first is that Welles was self-destructive, the second that he was the victim of a conspiracy on the part of unimaginative, envious and vindictive studio heads and their contacts in the press."
I guess they were reading two different books, or as suggested, Shickel simply didn't bother to read the books.
Meanwhile, in the ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY review (on the main page), we get a repeat of the same old stories of Welles, the tragic genius "and the slow erosion of his once-limitless gifts." But a special award (for being so unoriginal) to the EW writer for this line:
"...in his later years he ballooned into a tragic punchline, hawking frozen peas and cheap wine on TV."
I've heard variations on that comment so many times, it really just shows the pathetic lack of inventiveness and lazy writing skills of everyone who has ever repeated it. It's such an easy, (but untrue) put-down of Welles supposed cheapening of his talent.
The truth is, why on earth should Welles be faulted for hawking cheap Paul Masson Wine and frozen foods in the sixties and seventies on television commercials, when he was doing exactly the same thing (only on radio commercials) at the height of his so-called fame and success in the thirties and forties (for Roma Wine and Lady Esther Cosmetics).
I don't recall seeing any complaints about Welles decline after the release of CITIZEN KANE because he was hawking cheap wine on his radio shows. I guess it's okay to do commercials when you are considered a success, but it's a sign of your decline if you do them when you don't have a current movie in release.
Todd
I can't help being somewhat annoyed by the comments about Welles' advertising revenue anymore. Was it a shoddy way to make money? Yes...but what is the difference between somebody like Welles appearing in ads to make a living/finance his art and, say, Gene Hackman doing voice-overs for Lowes? or Donald Sutherland doing voice-overs for car commercials? Dennis Hopper appearing in GAP commercials? Burt Bacharach selling auto insurance?
Well, "principle" (as opposed to "principal") is the primary difference. I doubt any of the aforementioned celebrities really need the money (kinda reminds me of a routine that Bill Hicks had about Jay Leno doing advertising for Doritos)...which makes me wonder why they bother anyway.
As you said, though, these are "okay" since the people doing the pathetic hawking are more "successful' than Welles. Of course, none of the people who criticize Welles' final years are interested in the compromises that an independent artist like Welles has to make (or, in Welles' case, made) in order to realize their art.
(and don't forget: it is obligatory for many writers to attempt a "clever" jab at Welles' weight...since, you know, physical girth determines human worth...)
Well, "principle" (as opposed to "principal") is the primary difference. I doubt any of the aforementioned celebrities really need the money (kinda reminds me of a routine that Bill Hicks had about Jay Leno doing advertising for Doritos)...which makes me wonder why they bother anyway.
As you said, though, these are "okay" since the people doing the pathetic hawking are more "successful' than Welles. Of course, none of the people who criticize Welles' final years are interested in the compromises that an independent artist like Welles has to make (or, in Welles' case, made) in order to realize their art.
(and don't forget: it is obligatory for many writers to attempt a "clever" jab at Welles' weight...since, you know, physical girth determines human worth...)
It seems clear which camp Richard Schickel is in:
"After 1942, [Welles] did almost nothing of unambiguous value."
On Kane: "...people did not yet see that it was less a fictional biography of William Randolph Hearst than a fictional autobiography of George Orson Welles"
"He was either making versions of Shakespeare or cheesy crime novels."
"How, people go on wondering, could the man who created "Citizen Kane," arguably the greatest of all American films, fritter away the rest of his life."
"All the while he pursued his own deluded definitions of genius."
"But Welles' political opinions, situated at the more radical edge of the liberal spectrum, were not to everyone's tastes, and neither was his solipsism."
"Sometimes he just wanted to turn the camera on himself while he bloviated."
Jonathan Rosenbaum has neatly divided most writers on Welles into 2 camps in his 1996 article "The Battle Over Orson Welles": one group who see Welles's career primarily as a failure and not living up to the promise of 'Citizen Kane', and the other group who view Welles's life more "sympathetically and inqisitively" and for whom "...the jagged path of his career can't be charted according to any simple pattern of ascent or descent; there are peaks and valleys throughout." In the above review Schickel clearly identifies himself as belonging to the set of assumptions of the first group, assumptions shared by Kael, Higham, Callow (though he seems to be moving to a middle postion), Carringer and Thomson, and also exemplified by the documentary 'The Battle Over Citizen Kane'. Writers in the second group include Bazin, Brady, Berthome & Thomas, Cobos, Cowie, Leaming, McBride, Naremore, Riambeau and Bogdanovich, and their point of view is embodied in the documentary 'It's All True' . Personally I would add Conrad to the first group, and Anderegg, Benamou, Heylin and Rosenbaum himself to the second group, along with the documentaries 'Rosabella' and 'Brunnen', among others. Rosenbaum notes that the first group describe Welles as "...a deeply flawed, morally reprehensible human being and the [second group] don't." He also (in a comment on Thomson) observes, I think, an assumption made by all members of the first group: "...since Welles clearly never delivered another Kane...there's no point in looking for anything else in his oeuvre, including unreleased work..." work that's never been seen, or has only been seen by a few.
In 2007 Rosenbaum's collection of all his writings on Welles from 1972 to the present entitled 'Discovering Orson Welles' will be published by the University of Calfornia Press; since I believe Rosenbaum to be the single best apologist for the second group, it will act as a necessary corrective to the Thomsons, Schickels, et. al.
Until then, I encourage interested individuals to search out 3 articles which defend Welles against this attack with great subtlety and precision and which also delineate with great clarity the underlying assumptions consciously or unconsciously held by writers in the first group.
1. Rosenbaum, Jonathan: 'Orson Welles's Essay Films and Documentary Fictions', in "Placing Movies", University of California Press, 1995
2. Rosenbaum, Jonathan: 'The Battle Over Orson Welles', in "Cineaste" No.7, 1996
3. Rosenbaum, Jonathan: 'Orson Welles as Ideological Challenge' in "Movie Wars", A Capella Books, 2000
PS: Schickel also makes the following observation in the above review:
"Every great director I've ever known spends months in the editing room, more months on the dubbing and scoring stages, driving themselves and everyone around them crazy with their slavish devotion to detail. When they're not doing that, they're wheedling money out of their backer or fending off suggested improvements. It is how great movies are made."
Funny: this sounds exactly like Orson Welles to me, when making films such as 'Othello', 'Don Quixote' and 'Chimes at Midnight'. :;):
"After 1942, [Welles] did almost nothing of unambiguous value."
On Kane: "...people did not yet see that it was less a fictional biography of William Randolph Hearst than a fictional autobiography of George Orson Welles"
"He was either making versions of Shakespeare or cheesy crime novels."
"How, people go on wondering, could the man who created "Citizen Kane," arguably the greatest of all American films, fritter away the rest of his life."
"All the while he pursued his own deluded definitions of genius."
"But Welles' political opinions, situated at the more radical edge of the liberal spectrum, were not to everyone's tastes, and neither was his solipsism."
"Sometimes he just wanted to turn the camera on himself while he bloviated."
Jonathan Rosenbaum has neatly divided most writers on Welles into 2 camps in his 1996 article "The Battle Over Orson Welles": one group who see Welles's career primarily as a failure and not living up to the promise of 'Citizen Kane', and the other group who view Welles's life more "sympathetically and inqisitively" and for whom "...the jagged path of his career can't be charted according to any simple pattern of ascent or descent; there are peaks and valleys throughout." In the above review Schickel clearly identifies himself as belonging to the set of assumptions of the first group, assumptions shared by Kael, Higham, Callow (though he seems to be moving to a middle postion), Carringer and Thomson, and also exemplified by the documentary 'The Battle Over Citizen Kane'. Writers in the second group include Bazin, Brady, Berthome & Thomas, Cobos, Cowie, Leaming, McBride, Naremore, Riambeau and Bogdanovich, and their point of view is embodied in the documentary 'It's All True' . Personally I would add Conrad to the first group, and Anderegg, Benamou, Heylin and Rosenbaum himself to the second group, along with the documentaries 'Rosabella' and 'Brunnen', among others. Rosenbaum notes that the first group describe Welles as "...a deeply flawed, morally reprehensible human being and the [second group] don't." He also (in a comment on Thomson) observes, I think, an assumption made by all members of the first group: "...since Welles clearly never delivered another Kane...there's no point in looking for anything else in his oeuvre, including unreleased work..." work that's never been seen, or has only been seen by a few.
In 2007 Rosenbaum's collection of all his writings on Welles from 1972 to the present entitled 'Discovering Orson Welles' will be published by the University of Calfornia Press; since I believe Rosenbaum to be the single best apologist for the second group, it will act as a necessary corrective to the Thomsons, Schickels, et. al.
Until then, I encourage interested individuals to search out 3 articles which defend Welles against this attack with great subtlety and precision and which also delineate with great clarity the underlying assumptions consciously or unconsciously held by writers in the first group.
1. Rosenbaum, Jonathan: 'Orson Welles's Essay Films and Documentary Fictions', in "Placing Movies", University of California Press, 1995
2. Rosenbaum, Jonathan: 'The Battle Over Orson Welles', in "Cineaste" No.7, 1996
3. Rosenbaum, Jonathan: 'Orson Welles as Ideological Challenge' in "Movie Wars", A Capella Books, 2000
PS: Schickel also makes the following observation in the above review:
"Every great director I've ever known spends months in the editing room, more months on the dubbing and scoring stages, driving themselves and everyone around them crazy with their slavish devotion to detail. When they're not doing that, they're wheedling money out of their backer or fending off suggested improvements. It is how great movies are made."
Funny: this sounds exactly like Orson Welles to me, when making films such as 'Othello', 'Don Quixote' and 'Chimes at Midnight'. :;):
:( Thank you "Tony" for the last posting directing readers to three important Rosenbaum articles while we wait for these two important books to appear over here. There are several problems with Schickel's review which these two books will rebut. It is obvious that he has not read them closely and has an ideological act to gring against Welles.
Schickel is an establishment criitic and an apologist for Hollywood. The "genius of the system" (coined by Bazin by used by Thomas Schatz in his book of the same name) has now become a mantra for classical Hollywood can do no wrong. Like many industrial critics, Schickel is dependent on that industry for his support so he can not do anything to offend it. So his reviews are new versions of Henry Hathaway's objection to Welles getting the AFI Director's Award in 1975. "He's only done one film." Schickel would, of course, be a great addition to those glum-faced people at the ceremony who refused to applaud Welles when he made his famous statements about independence from the system.
Schickel had control over the restoration of Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE. Although it was welcome, the new version could have gone much further had not illusions over the "proper" type of Hollywood editing intervened in some commentaries. Also, Schickel is the apologist for Elia Kazan as his recent appalling biograpy reveals. He acts an an apologist for somebody who named names, became complicit in destroying careers (and lives) in the blacklist era if only to ensure the continuation of his Hollywood career.
Thus, Welles represents a challenge to Schickel and the Hollywood system he supports. His reviews are little better than another version of Pauline Kael's infamous essay "Raising Kane." As one correspondent has already mentioned, we all know better on this site. The research, restorations, and new writing soon to appear about a personality who aimed at being different and did not want to conform to any conservative definitions of art, politics, and lifestyle will certainly contradict the reviews of those mediocre talents who want to tear down a genius since his very achievements (unrealized as many of them are) really contrast with both the past and present shallowness of most of mainstream Hollyowood.
Personal attacks will continue concerning a supposed "self-destructive" or "one-shot" genius. But evidence is now available (and more will appear soon) to overcome the self-motivated character assassinations of people like Schickel and Thomson who do not want to know HOW films can be creatively different well beyond their limited imagination.
Schickel is an establishment criitic and an apologist for Hollywood. The "genius of the system" (coined by Bazin by used by Thomas Schatz in his book of the same name) has now become a mantra for classical Hollywood can do no wrong. Like many industrial critics, Schickel is dependent on that industry for his support so he can not do anything to offend it. So his reviews are new versions of Henry Hathaway's objection to Welles getting the AFI Director's Award in 1975. "He's only done one film." Schickel would, of course, be a great addition to those glum-faced people at the ceremony who refused to applaud Welles when he made his famous statements about independence from the system.
Schickel had control over the restoration of Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE. Although it was welcome, the new version could have gone much further had not illusions over the "proper" type of Hollywood editing intervened in some commentaries. Also, Schickel is the apologist for Elia Kazan as his recent appalling biograpy reveals. He acts an an apologist for somebody who named names, became complicit in destroying careers (and lives) in the blacklist era if only to ensure the continuation of his Hollywood career.
Thus, Welles represents a challenge to Schickel and the Hollywood system he supports. His reviews are little better than another version of Pauline Kael's infamous essay "Raising Kane." As one correspondent has already mentioned, we all know better on this site. The research, restorations, and new writing soon to appear about a personality who aimed at being different and did not want to conform to any conservative definitions of art, politics, and lifestyle will certainly contradict the reviews of those mediocre talents who want to tear down a genius since his very achievements (unrealized as many of them are) really contrast with both the past and present shallowness of most of mainstream Hollyowood.
Personal attacks will continue concerning a supposed "self-destructive" or "one-shot" genius. But evidence is now available (and more will appear soon) to overcome the self-motivated character assassinations of people like Schickel and Thomson who do not want to know HOW films can be creatively different well beyond their limited imagination.
I just wanted to comment on this one quote that Tony included in his post...
The last time that I checked, "The Trial", "The Immortal Story", "Don Quixote", "The Magnificent Ambersons", etc. weren't "cheesy crime novels". But then again, I'm not getting paid for my "professional" opinions, am I... ???
Tony wrote: "He was either making versions of Shakespeare or cheesy crime novels."
The last time that I checked, "The Trial", "The Immortal Story", "Don Quixote", "The Magnificent Ambersons", etc. weren't "cheesy crime novels". But then again, I'm not getting paid for my "professional" opinions, am I... ???
Kevin:
Bang-on correct: I guess nobody edits Schickel.
Tony W:
Well written! And something I left out was Rosenbaum's opinion that those apologist's for conventional Hollywood only accept Kane as a conventional product of the sytem by ignoring the fact that Kane was a very unusual picture in 1942, and that it's only been domesticated as a "Hollywood studio masterpiece" since it was revived on TV in the 50s. A corollary of this is Douglas Gomery's idea in his article "Orson Welles and the Hollywood Industry" (which was included in the special 1989 Orson Welles issue of Persistence of Vision) which Rosenbaum has pointed to as the article which made him realize that the traditional idea of Welles as being used by Hollywood is incorrect: actually, it's the other way around: Welles was an independent filmaker who used Hollywood as much as he could. Kane then becomes not an example of Hollywood product, but rather the work of an independent filmaker who occasionally worked in Hollywood. This ties in with your point about his independence and "maverick" streak, which Welles himself spoke so eloquently of in his AFI speech in 1975.
Great post, Tonyw.
Bang-on correct: I guess nobody edits Schickel.
Tony W:
Well written! And something I left out was Rosenbaum's opinion that those apologist's for conventional Hollywood only accept Kane as a conventional product of the sytem by ignoring the fact that Kane was a very unusual picture in 1942, and that it's only been domesticated as a "Hollywood studio masterpiece" since it was revived on TV in the 50s. A corollary of this is Douglas Gomery's idea in his article "Orson Welles and the Hollywood Industry" (which was included in the special 1989 Orson Welles issue of Persistence of Vision) which Rosenbaum has pointed to as the article which made him realize that the traditional idea of Welles as being used by Hollywood is incorrect: actually, it's the other way around: Welles was an independent filmaker who used Hollywood as much as he could. Kane then becomes not an example of Hollywood product, but rather the work of an independent filmaker who occasionally worked in Hollywood. This ties in with your point about his independence and "maverick" streak, which Welles himself spoke so eloquently of in his AFI speech in 1975.
Great post, Tonyw.
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Glenn Anders
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I look forward to Joseph McBride's book because it looks to be something of a balance between the "red states vs. blue states" battle that Welles and his career seem to have become lately. I would urge us to think ahead, too, on the release of FADE TO BLACK, which will no doubt generate additional interest in our TOSOTW, DON QUIXOTE, IT'S ALL TRUE and other projects.
The works of Orson Welles is where his reputation will eventually be judged.
Glenn
The works of Orson Welles is where his reputation will eventually be judged.
Glenn
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The Night Man
- Wellesnet Veteran
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- Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2004 1:07 am
- Location: USA
Kevin Loy wrote:The last time that I checked, "The Trial", "The Immortal Story", "Don Quixote", "The Magnificent Ambersons", etc. weren't "cheesy crime novels".
Nor is "F FOR FAKE", for that matter. Schickel's obviously got an axe to grind, otherwise how could he possibly make such a categorical and outrageously fallacious statement as "...he had no middle range"?
But then again, I'm not getting paid for my "professional" opinions, am I... ???
Schickel barely even mentions the books he's allegedly reviewing, so I'm not sure he really earned whatever he was paid for this work. All those column-inches better used to attack the subject of the books, apparently. And so vicious! It really does come across as something personal.
Oh well, I guess he's showing us he knows which side his bread is buttered on, since he goes to such extreme lengths to "prove" that Orson didn't know his own.
Feh!
Tony wrote:Kevin:
Bang-on correct: I guess nobody edits Schickel.
Well, fact has never been important for many journalists. Just ask
William Randolph Hearst.
The Night Man wrote:[regarding the comment about all of Welles' post-Kane films either being about Shakespeare or "cheesy crime novels"] Nor is "F FOR FAKE", for that matter.
Well, I must admit that I was thinking of films that were derived from pre-existing books...and while F For Fake does concern two books, I wasn't thinking of it in terms of being an adaptation. I should have mentioned "The Deep", though.
Schickel's obviously got an axe to grind, otherwise how could he possibly make such a categorical and outrageously fallacious statement as "...he had no middle range"?
Please refer to my previous comment to Tony's post
Schickel barely even mentions the books he's allegedly reviewing, so I'm not sure he really earned whatever he was paid for this work. All those column-inches better used to attack the subject of the books, apparently. And so vicious! It really does come across as something personal.
Oh well, I guess he's showing us he knows which side his bread is buttered on, since he goes to such extreme lengths to "prove" that Orson didn't know his own.
Feh!
How many "critics" really earn whatever they're paid for their "reviews"?
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