Frank Marshall: Coming through for TOSOTW!We have

[Glenn Anders]

Our new resident genius, Larry French -- the living image of Orson Welles, no doubt -- has just put up, for all of us here, and for the serious movie world in general, what looks like amazingly good news (courtesy of Colin Hand). In an interview conducted by Box Office Mojo about his new Antactica adventure film, EIGHT BELOW, Producer Frank Marshall lets drop that he is working at the moment with Peter Bogdanovich to finish Welles' THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

"We have a script. We shot it all—I worked on it for over five years—but we never put it together," says Marshall, who was the production manager on the film in his early twenties. "Showtime has been incredibly supportive. I’m producing what will be the final movie that Orson directed."

It is also interesting to see all the enthusiasm which Marshall displayed in clips when Welles was shooting the film, and in later interviews, still there. Some people have put down Marshall here, but he has always seemed to me, within the constrictions of the Hollywood system, to be what a producer should be. In the interview, he expresses certain complaints that the best of them have always made: Too many bad remakes, exploitations of cheap trends, living by release dates, and the idea that sometimes, a good movie should be longer (in order to tell a coherent story) rather than shorter. And Marshall has always had that loyalty and affection for Welles which was born on the crazy project, thirty-five years ago, that became known as THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

A little of that loyalty and affection still glimmers in his brief remark.

I urge you to go to the Wellesnet News Page and read the full interview.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Glenn:

Your post somehow got repeated three times, so perhaps you should delete the two duplicates... anyway it's great news that OSOTW may be reaching it's long awaited completion at last... knock on wood!!

[Glenn Anders]

Todd: It's THE RETURN OF THE FLY!

I was trying to knock off that "We Have" at the end of my topic title.

I don't see the other two duplicates on my board.

If they are still there, I wish someone could edit all that for me.

Anyway, the important thing is that THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, like MR. ARKADIN, and maybe DON QUIXOTE, is on its way, at last.

Agreed.

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

"Frank Marshall: I do see that there are a lot of dark movies. I see that on these TV shows, too. They're mean. It's about people humiliating each other. I'm tired of movies exploring only the dark side. We need to make good movies that people want to see. A movie should be life-fulfilling."


The above quote is from that excellent in-depth Frank Marshall interview and comes after the reference to the possible completion of "The Other Side Of The Wind". The irony for me is that TOSOTW is primarily about "people humiliating each other"! I hope Mr. Marshall won't tone down Welles' bite too much.

[Glenn Anders]

Good point, Roger. We also might note that neither Marshall, Peter Bogdanovich, Oja Kodar, or Gary Graver have THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND listed as a project on the IMDb, in any new capacity, through 2007. [They are, of course, down for their participation in the uncompleted film.] Maybe, after the first blush of joy, we should be cautious.

We just don't know how much time these busy people are devoting to this task.

Glenn

[tonyw]

Bruce Campbell once said in a presentation that the ImDB is not 100% accurate. This may be the case with this good news. It could be that these do not want to disappoint us all in case something happens - the dark figure of Beatrice or the Iranian producer who will attempt to claim it as his own. Let us hope that it does get to Showtime and that VCRs are efficiently maintained for that special evening.