Vincent D'Onofrio – Five Minutes, Mr. Welles

[Harvey Chartrand]

http://blogcritics.org/video/article/these-films-sleep-well-five-minutes/

Apparently unhappy with his performance as Orson Welles in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, Vincent D'Onofrio decided to try again in his 2005 short film Five Minutes, Mr. Welles.
Blogcritics author Joshua Wiebe writes: "Five Minutes, Mr. Welles is a tour-de-force of modern black and white filmmaking, and is the most three-dimensional representation of Welles' inimitable presence that I've ever seen." Click on the above link to access the article.

[Terry]

Welles the bored, reckless and unreliable weasel...

Funny how people who hate Welles like to write books and make up films about him. Who wants to partake of such things? Glenn Beck fans, presumably. Hate sells better than sex.

[RayKelly]

Funny how people who hate Welles like to write books and make up films about him. Who wants to partake of such things? Glenn Beck fans, presumably. Hate sells better than sex.

Terry,
Did you happen to catch Time magazine's recent piece on Glenn Beck. This bit will not thrill you:

Beck once lovingly re-created the 1938 Orson Welles classic War of the Worlds for XM Satellite Radio, and he named his production company Mercury Radio Arts in homage to Welles' Mercury Theatre on the Air.

[Terry]

Joseph Goebbels liked Fritz Lang.

[Terry]

That's true. The blog turned me off, but I'd like to see the short.

Wonder how it compares with that Marcus Wolland play...

[Roger Ryan]

"Five Minutes, Mr. Welles ... is the most three-dimensional representation of Welles' inimitable presence that I've ever seen."

The above quote, which comes near the end of the blog, seems to contradict the author's more offensive statements describing D'Onofrio's interpretation of Welles as "weaseling" and "inattentive". In fact, this quote is close to my sentiments as well. Any portrayal of Welles as a "character" is going to be stylized and show the flaws for dramatic effect, but D'Onofrio's performance contains none of the icy coldness of Schreiber in RKO 281 nor the ridiculous buffoonery of MacFayden in CRADLE WILL ROCK. His "Welles" is a well-rounded, warm interpretation that is a significant improvement over what he did in ED WOOD. It also feels a lot closer to the real Welles than Wolland's sometimes shrill, diffident portrayal.

You can judge for yourself right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-4PPr3r_r0

[nextren]

My problem is that Welles is portrayed there as a dolt. This Welles seems functionally retarded overall. The man we see here is much less intelligent than the man we know. For example, he can't learn a few simple lines. In real life, according to Bill Alland, Welles had trouble with lines in long, starring parts - and how many actor-managers do not? - and didn't need idiot cards until later. In 1951 a part with a handful of lines would have been easy for him to learn alone.

The film seems to take a simplistic feminist line: the famous man is an inflated zero, while the vastly superior and more intelligent woman - who in this case appears to be a posh prostitute - saves his worthless face by her wise coaching. Let's hear it for the grrl!

Did a typical morning for Orson Welles really consist of waking up drunk and hung over with a hooker? Why not show him face down in a puddle of urine somewhere, too? What can we not say about the man now that he's dead?

By all reports, he liked to brag (at least during his hot youth) about his alleged sexual hijinks. However, a number of people in a position to know (co-stars, servants) didn't put much faith in these stories. Welles the boy-man who wanted to impress people by telling white lies seems a little closer to the sad truth.

In my opinion the film should have shown the quick-witted Welles whom we all know coaching a somewhat sub-standard actress brilliantly and winningly, maybe rebuking her impatiently a few times.

To each his own. Again, the film does look terrific.

[Lance Morrison]

For what it's worth, to me Welles in this film did not seem so much as a dolt as he did a rather easily distracted fellow. I tend to think the portrayal was insinuating: if it had been important enough to Welles, he would have had the lines learned immediately. However, the learning of the lines is not quite interesting enough for him.....but, once he sets for himself the challenge of coming up with his own little added something to complete the scene, he gains his drive and learns. I don't find this in any way offensive, and find it consonant with all of the most intelligent people i have known---they often cannot be bothered with that which they find unchallenging.

[Terry]

Thanks for the link, Roger.

I turned it off after 4 minutes and 23 seconds. I couldn't even withstand five minutes of this "Mr. Welles." This now standard characterization offers none of the wit, charisma, humor or intelligence of the real man. For my other sentiments, I'll defer to nextren's excellent summary.

[Glenn Anders]

I want to thank Roger for providing the link to "Five Minutes, Mr. Welles," which Mr. French and I had seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2005, and which I had on file but could not find when I first wanted to comment.

Nextren, I can understand your objection to Orson Welles portrayed as "a dolt" before giving his most renowned performance as an actor in someone else's picture, but I think you have to view it in context of what we know about the history of THE THIRD MAN. Welles was deep in the struggle to complete his OTHELLO, and he took the part of Harry Lime in a kind of desperation compounded from his need for money to complete his heartfelt project, his personal and professional friendship with Joseph Cotten, his business relationship with David Selznick and Alexander Korda, and his interest in being in a production with peers like Carol Reed and Graham Greene. By most accounts, Welles was an elusive, but eventually brilliant contributor and winner in all of these categories.

As a sometime amateur [stage] actor and director, I opt for Lance Morrison's assessment: Welles, at this point, was a genius in question, a man who had always kept the balls in the air as he juggled them. Now in his exact prime [1948], he was losing a ball or two (as all men, far lesser than Orson Welles, begin to), and he was searching for a personal meaning in a part which as written, he found "unchallenging" and distracting from his obsession of the moment -- completing OTHELLO.

Terry: Being a lover of Welles' mystique, I can empathize with your anguish at Vincent D'Onofrio's interpretation of our hero's state of mind when he turned in his most memorable commercial performance. I would only beseech you to give the producer/writer/director/actor credit for showing Orson Welles' verve, brilliance, and believable human failings as the man creates an immortal character. That is no easy accomplishment. And the fact that a "Joseph Goebbels" or two agree with that assessment does not mean a whit, one way or another.

And finally, I would protest nextren's judgment of Welles' assistant, "Katherine," as a "prostitute" and "hooker." Welles from his earliest days as an impresario depended upon "girl fridays" and personal secretaries to keep his REALLY BIG genius balloon rising toward Mount Olympus. And there were dozens of them, some more talented and lasting than others, who as he acknowledged, provided links with people he considered tedious, fomidable or just plain difficult to approach. I think, nextren, you have to consider the status of women in the late 1940's, long before "the sexual revolution." In the arts no less than in business, a professional woman often felt the pride of "a chosen one" in making a talented man look good. She might take on idealistically, feel vicariously, certain of his accolades, in a much more innocent and admirable way than her efforts would be viewed -- "so what" -- today. Katharine has been given an immense task by the producers to insure Welles is ready for his crucial scene, but she also obviously has invested a lot of herself, her own determination, into that task. I find Janine Theriault's interpretation both tender and tough. Unlike the distorted depictions of CRADLE WILL ROCK or RKO 281, this five minutes may have been how it was. And D'Onofrio and Janine Teriault take us there.

Glenn Anders

[Roger Ryan]

I side with Glenn on this one. As drama, I think Mr. D'Onofrio's film is quite affecting. This is not intended to be a documentary reenactment; it is fiction and "Mr. Welles" is a character, stylized as any character in drama would be. At the same time, I feel that D'Onofrio gets closer to the real Welles in this performance than many who have come before (including his own earlier portrayal in ED WOOD). I don't have a problem with the historical Welles being used as a character (I would say that Welles did this himself in F FOR FAKE, in his I LOVE LUCY and LAUGH-IN performances and on radio), but too often that "character" doesn't ring true which weakens the drama (MacFayden in CRADLE WILL ROCK is simply unrecognizable as Welles which hurts that film). I allow that others may be turned off by FIVE MINUTES WITH MR. WELLES, but for me, the way the film shows the protagonist struggling with the idea that his "bad press" may have some truth to it only to summon up some extraordinary magic that makes it all worth while is quite charming.

[nextren]

Lance said "I tend to think the portrayal was insinuating: if it had been important enough to Welles, he would have had the lines learned immediately. However, the learning of the lines is not quite interesting enough for him.....but, once he sets for himself the challenge of coming up with his own little added something to complete the scene, he gains his drive and learns. I don't find this in any way offensive, and find it consonant with all of the most intelligent people i have known---they often cannot be bothered with that which they find unchallenging."

This makes a lot of sense, thanks.

It should go without saying that Glenn Anders is charactistically sensible in his comment as well.

Still, I think the film had some kind of axe to grind against Welles, and I don't like it. Instead of showing an equal partnership, the woman puts it all over the famous (hollow?) "genius" - that's still my take-away. The photography is excellent, though.

I've emailed the film to two friends so far. They went wild with enthusiasm about it and told me I'm a wet hen.

[Jarpie]

I liked Five Minutes Mr. Welles quite a lot, even though it probably doesn't show Welles in the light we would like to. Beside the stellar look and cinematography, I like D'Onofrio's acting, and I think he is one of the few actors who gets even close to the stature and the ability of Welles in acting; I've been watching Law & Order: Criminal Intent since it was first aired and he is the carrying force in the show. I do hope he would get a chance to write and direct his own full-lenght movie, since he showed lot of potential with this short.