WSJ on Welles's "Importantitis"

[Alan Brody]

From the Wall Street Journal last week-

Importantitis, Enemy of Art
How to Wreck a Career in One Easy Lesson
By TERRY TEACHOUT
February 16, 2008; Page W18

Leonard Bernstein set Broadway on fire in 1957 with "West Side Story," a jazzed-up version of "Romeo and Juliet" in which the Capulets and Montagues were turned into Puerto Rican Sharks and American Jets. It was the most significant musical of the postwar era -- and the last successful work that Bernstein wrote for the stage. His next show, 1976's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," closed after seven performances. For the rest of his life he floundered, unable to compose anything worth hearing.

What happened? Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein's collaborator on "West Side Story," told Meryle Secrest, who wrote biographies of both men, that he developed "a bad case of importantitis." That sums up Bernstein's later years with devastating finality. Time and again he dove head first into grandiose-sounding projects, then emerged from the depths clutching such pretentious pieces of musical costume jewelry as the "Kaddish" Symphony and "A Quiet Place." In the end he dried up almost completely, longing to make Great Big Musical Statements -- he actually wanted to write a Holocaust opera -- but incapable of producing so much as a single memorable song.


Alan Greenspan recently proposed a constitutional amendment: "Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office." In a similar spirit -- with tongue partway in cheek -- I'd like to put forward Teachout's First Law of Artistic Dynamics: "The best way to make a bad work of art is to try to make a great one." That law was inspired at least as much by Orson Welles as by Bernstein. I've had the boy wonder of Hollywood on my mind lately, having recently reviewed productions of "Moby-Dick -- Rehearsed," his 1955 stage version of Herman Melville's novel, and "Orson's Shadow," the 2000 play in which Austin Pendleton shows us Welles a few years after "Moby-Dick -- Rehearsed" -- demoralized by repeated failure and unable to get his career back on track.

Welles's story is one of the saddest tales in the long history of a hard profession. He became famous far too soon and was acclaimed as a genius long before his personality had matured. At 23 he made the cover of Time magazine. Two years later RKO gave him a near-blank check, which he used to make "Citizen Kane." By then he was convinced that he could do no wrong, and when the money dried up and he had to struggle for the first time in his life, he lost his creative way. Convinced that it was his destiny to make great movies, he turned his back on the theater, where he had previously done more modest but equally impressive work. In "Moby-Dick -- Rehearsed" Welles showed one last time that he still knew how to make magic happen on a stage, but otherwise he kept banging his head vainly against the wall of an indifferent film industry. The result was a half-dozen deeply flawed movies that wanted desperately to be masterpieces, though none of them, not even "Chimes at Midnight," Welles's fascinating study of Shakespeare's Falstaff, came close to making the grade.

Voltaire said it: The best is the enemy of the good. Ralph Ellison, like Bernstein and Welles, learned that lesson all too well. In 1952 he published "Invisible Man" and was acclaimed as a major novelist. The well-deserved praise that was heaped on him gave Ellison a fatal case of importantitis, and though he spent the rest of his life trying to finish a second novel, he piled up thousands of manuscript pages without ever bringing it to fruition. Why did he dry up? Because, as Arnold Rampersad's 2007 biography of Ellison made agonizingly clear, he was trying to write a great book. That was his mistake. Strangled by self-consciousness, he never even managed to finish a good one.

Contrast Ellison's creative paralysis with the lifelong fecundity of the great choreographer George Balanchine, who went about his business efficiently and unpretentiously, turning out a ballet or two every season. Most were brilliant, a few were duds, but no matter what the one he'd just finished was like, and no matter what the critics thought of it, he moved on to the next one with the utmost dispatch, never looking back. "In making ballets, you cannot sit and wait for the Muse," he said. "Union time hardly allows it, anyhow. You must be able to be inventive at any time." That was the way Balanchine saw himself: as an artistic craftsman whose job was to make ballets. Yet the 20th century never saw a more important artist, or one less prone to importantitis.

Yes, it's important to shoot high, but there's a big difference between striving to do your best day after day and deliberately setting out to make a masterpiece. What if Welles had gone back to Broadway after "Citizen Kane" and directed "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on a bare stage, with no expensive bells and whistles? Or if Bernstein had followed "West Side Story" with a fizzy musical comedy that sought only to please? Or if Ellison had gritted his teeth, published his second novel, taken his critical lumps, ignored the reviews, and gone back to work the very next day? Then all of those gifted, frustrated men might have spared themselves great grief -- and perhaps even gone on to make more great art.

[Glenn Anders]

Mr. Teachout's judgment is a harsh one but not entirely unfair. The trouble, in the broader sense, with his advice is that if all artists followed it, we would have fewer masterpieces, and a lot more mediocrities, which we are already awash in.

There may be "a big difference between striving to do your best day after day and deliberately setting out to make a masterpiece," but the problem is that Orson Welles, Leonard Bernstein, Ralph Ellison, even Mr. Teachout, on a day-to-day basis, does not know really what is going to work and what will not. Writing kitsch may be as hard as producing quality for many, and hack work obviously becomes a habit.

Actually, after producing CITIZEN KANE in the summer and early fall of 1940, Welles did go back to Broadway in the next year, as Mr. Teachout would have had him do. He opened his production of Richard Wright's Native Son on this very day (coincidentlally), March 24, 1941. It was another breakthrough in the American Theater, a step toward the realization of Civil Rights, and though not talked about so much now as it was at the time, the verve with which Welles staged this tragedy of misagenation showed that his artistic powers were continuing to thrive.

We know that those powers were fully in evidence throughout his supervision of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, and in his influence on JOURNEY INTO FEAR. Somewhere in the jungles of Washington and South America, his career faltered, never to recover, though he continued to labor incredibly for the rest of his days.

Mr. Teachout's analysis may well be valid, but so far as Welles is concerned, the process took longer than he suggests.

Glenn

[Alan Brody]

I wish it was March 24th. I'm getting sick of this winter.

Teachout is probably tougher on Bernstein then Welles, but I disagree with his assessment that Chimes is not close to being a masterpiece. Despite it's flaws it's one of the greatest Shakespeare movies ever made, and proof that Welles still had the goods as a filmmaker. Furthermore, Chimes actually began as a stageplay, which was used to hone the performances into shape for the film, something that Welles did with Macbeth as well. This contradicts the idea that he turned his back on the theatre. But your point is well taken about the glut of mediocrity that the film world finds itself in. We do desperately need more filmmakers like Welles that are not satisfied with anything less then the moon.

[Glenn Anders]

Glad you agree, Alan.

Sorry about my own longing for Spring!

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

There's big difference between someone like Ellison who could never finish his second novel and Welles who merrily continued working in film, theatre, radio, TV and print after the release of KANE. I believe Welles even followed Mr. Teachout's advice by lowering his standards to direct THE STRANGER. Certainly Welles was aware which of his works might be considered "important", but that didn't stop him from turning his attention to thrillers or experimenting in short form television constructs.

In other words, it's not Welles' fault that cultural observers like Teachout see everything after KANE as a failure.

[Skylark]

I think with those kinds of articles, there's a lack of distinction between commercial success and artistic success - art history is filled with cases of artists having little commercial success in their lifetime but who have since gained widespread recognition for the importance of their work.

In Welles' case, I think it's safe to say that the biggest obstacle in posterity recognition is of a legal/copyright nature. Although I do think that in ten years or so, we will have another half dozen quality North American DVD releases of major works that will further enhance mainstream perception of Welles.

[nextren]

I apologize in advance for my frankness and rudeness, but Teachout is an old hack who hasn't any of the talent of the men whom he has made a career of criticizing.

I remember him chiefly for authoring a book on H.L. Mencken, in which he - in an ostentatiously "fair and balanced" way (and after leading the reader on with the chief attraction of the book, which was Mencken) - came to the magisterial judgment that Mencken was a failure. This piece of laughable smugness is sadly characteristic of critics of Teachout's type. Of course Teachout hasn't one ten thousandth of Mencken's ability, or place in history...BUT Mencken's writings were not particularly sensitive to minorities, were they? (He published African-American writers whom no one else would in the late 19-teens and twenties, lambasted the Klan for four decades and ignorant white trash even longer, and campaigned against lynching. But what is all that to the correct and sensitive Teachout, the self-satisfied product of a modern liberal arts college, who has probably never so much as touched a noose?) Mencken's trademark salutary excoriation and even genuine dislike of all groups, majorities and minorities alike, stings. Wounding people's feelings is a no-no; therefore Teachout can consider Mencken his inferior.

Like David Thomson, Teachout seems to specialize in cozying up to a given personality, claiming to love him - even "passionately," and since boyhood - and then sweetly slipping the knife in.

The world, on sad February days like this, appears full of Iagos.

Apologies again. I dislike Teachout and saw red that he was judging Bernstein and Welles as failures. (Still seeing crimson, will try to chill...Where did I put the Diazepam and antacids?)

[Tony]

Roger: I must differ with your choice of words:

"Welles who merrily continued working..."

This reminded me of what Welles said in the Leslie McHafie interview, when he said (and I'm paraphrasing):

"My life has been 1% movie-making and 99% hustling for money; that's no way to spend a life. I would have been better off if I'd gone into politics, or stayed in theatre. "

I don't know if "merrily " is the right word....I might have said :"doggedly".

[mido505]

Nextren:

No apologies necessary, at least for me, as your frankness is appropriate and your rudeness nonexistent. You can leave that to me. That Teachout piece made me want to vomit. I would say that having an irate and vindictive press baron like William Randolph Hearst out to destroy him was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that having the heads of the major Hollywood studios ready to purchase the negative of Citizen Kane and destroy it was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that RKO executives mutilating Ambersons because it didn't play well in Peoria was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that RKO executives pulling the plug on the unpretentious Carnival documentary It's All True because it upset common racial prejudice was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that Sam Spiegel and Ernest Nims cutting scenes from an unpretentious thriller like The Stranger because they didn't advance the story was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that Harry Cohn and Viola Lawrence cutting and reshooting scenes for the unpretentious film noir The Lady from Shanghai because Columbia's top star was shown in a less-than-conventionally-flattering light was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that being forced to redub the low budget Shakespeare adaptation Macbeth because yokel producers were taken aback by authentic Scottish accents was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that getting chased out of the country by the FBI and the red baiters was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that trying to complete Othello out of money earned from demeaning acting jobs because of collapsed funding was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that having friend and mentor Louis Dolivet toss him off Mr. Arkadin because he took his time in the editing room was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that being banned by the studio from editing an unpretentious thriller like Touch of Evil for no apparent reason was a problem for Orson Welles. I would say that having to improvise most of the production of The Trial in the Gare d'Orsay because the Salkinds ran out of money before production began was a problem for Orson Welles. How about having no cash for Chimes at Midnight, so that he had to shoot major cast members' scenes in economical batches, leaving him no one to act with but stand-ins? How about the small problem of The Other Side Of The Wind and the Iranian Revolution? And the Iranian producer who stole funds? And the French government who held up the negative to score a few grotesquely inappropriate anti-American political points? I would say that "importantitis" was the least of Orson Welles' problems. In fact, I would say that "importantitis" is a disease that Teachout, and many of Welles' other critics, including the egregious Austin Pendleton, are riddled with - pretentious hacks erecting pretentious theories to explain the supposed creative failings of their betters. Ralph Ellison may have failed to write a worthy follow up to Invisible Man, but he wrote Invisible Man. Leonard Bernstein may not have come up with a follow up success to West Side Story, but he came up with West Side Story. My God, Bernstein had a truly remarkable career, one to make to gods weep with envy, right up until his death in 1990. Teachout would have us believe Bernstein was finished in 1957. Well, forgive ME for being rude, but eff him...