Ferry to Hong Kong - Orson as Singapore Cecil

[Terry]

Once is enough ...

Back in college, when I was still a dope-riddled liberal, I took, as an elective, an arts class; this was at an engineering college, and, apparently, the arts classes were designed to make one profoundly hate the arts and all forms of undisciplined expression, and instead, grudgingly, turn one's attention to multivariate Calculus and Static Physics and the Industrial Malleability of That Great God-Send Steel, and other such horrors. Well, suffice to say, it didn't work on me, but there was one interesting thing I learned (what a cheap, insulting word) in that class, which was that ART, as a Platonic ideal, was inexhaustable, meaning that no matter how many times you went back to and interacted with it, it still rewarded new things, it utterly failed to bore you, and that it was true art and could never wither.

What a load of pretentious crap, both then, and now from me. Anyway, before the Scotch Ale too effectively cripples my poor beleaguered digits, I'd like to say, if anyone is still reading, and I must thank your extreme and endlessly suffering diligence if, at this most riculous point, you still are, that while movies like Ferry to Hong Kong may be shallow tripe and need only a single viewing, that something like F for Fake requires many, many interactions before one can grasp the depths, or even the the purpose, of it, and therefore I'm voting that Fake is not only my favourite Welles film (there was a single such vote in our seldomly visited poll) but, that in action, word, and deed - it is ART.

I exist, as occasionally, inebriatedly yours.

[Le Chiffre]

I think I remember Welles, in one of his interviews, saying that he regretted that he didn't get a chance to do more comedy, and resented being somewhat typecast as a director of thrillers. Almost all of his directed films have comedic elements, and Don Quixote was apparently intended to be essentially a comedy (which makes it especially sad that he never saw fit to finish it).

Welles was a big fan of W.C. Fields and you can see that influence in several amusing bits of shtick from Ferry To Hong Kong. From the new OW interviews book, I got the impression that Welles considered Film to be an inferior art form to Literature, Painting, Music, and Theatre, and this was probably because the world of Film was and is so dominated by commercialism. Welles knew Ferry To Hong Kong was nothing but a potboiler and perhaps saw it as a chance to get some of that bottled-up comedy out of his system. He's one of the few actors who could steal a show by TRYING to sabotage it.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Just saw The Fountain of Youth for the very first time. Welles' comic gifts are given free rein in this mini-masterpiece starring the stunningly voluptuous Joi Lansing, who played a stripper in Touch of Evil. Marilyn Monroe couldn't have played the part better. Lansing is ably assisted by the remarkable Dan Tobin (who this aging boomer remembers seeing many times during his early years in front of the TV set) and Rick Jason (of Combat fame). Not only did Welles host/narrate and direct this (sadly) failed pilot for an anthology series, he designed the costumes and handled all the musical arrangements. (Very catchy theme music, incidentally, oddly "European." Bit of Django Reinhardt influence in there.) The Fountain of Youth was based on a story by New Yorker writer John Collier, who wrote what would have been the second episode of the series — Green Thoughts, which Welles mentions in his epilogue. Sadly, 'twas not meant to be. (Thanks, Jaime, for taping Fountain of Youth and letting me see this marvelous production after decades of waiting for it to turn up on TV.)
Life just ain't fair. Welles' 1956 TV pilot was filmed at Desilu right after he shot Lucy Meets Orson Welles episode of I Love Lucy, then sat on the shelf for years before finally being aired as a summer replacement, promptly winning a Peabody Award. By this time, Welles was back in Europe lumbering around in bad epics. And Joi Lansing died of cancer in 1972, at age 46, her comic gifts having gone mostly untapped, except for a stint on The Bob Cummings Show.

[jaime marzol]

my local library was a biography wall that i scour for bios of folks that could have had brushes with welles. in one of the lucy books i think i saw that when one of the desilu people told welles in a restaurant that Fountain wasn't commercial, welles reacted loudly, "you speak to me about crass commercialism?" or something to that effect. and that when he left desilu he left behind a huge grocery bill, and a huge phone bill.

does any one know what lucy book this is in.

i think Fountain is great. it's like a language welles created for television. he had been in europe and had not been around for the arrival of television, and commercials. i read he locked himself in his hotel room and watched tv for 2 weeks then came up with fountain. on this level alone it's an incredibly interesting watch, anything else you get is just extra gravy.

i like your review harvy, but i dissagree about the actors. i think they were a pair of minimum wage hams that welles used like cardboard props, and it worked great.

[Le Chiffre]

Harvey,
Yes, it is a shame that Welles never got a chance to film that second show to go with Fountain of Youth. As much as I enjoy Fountain, I think Green Thoughts could have been even better. If you've ever read Collier's story about a man-eating plant that sprouts heads instead of buds, you weep at the lost opportunity.