OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND - John Huston on making the film

[Glenn Anders]

My apologies, Sir Bygber, if I've already told you this story, and to others, if I have in the past. It is my last REAL Orson Welles story, and may stand as a metaphor for the lost opportunities of ones life, in general.

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Sometime in the early 1970's, no earlier than 1972, no later than 1975, I was in the crowded downstairs bar of the Hilton Hotel, in San Francisco proper. I had come there to meet my wife who had a friend delivering a paper at the Convention of the American Sociology Association(?), up on the mezzanine level, and I was waiting for them.

The man next to me, a sociologist attending the Convention, struck up a conversation with me, as people will, visitors in particular, and just as he launched into a description of his specialty (sewerage in the City of Syracuse, New York), above the rim of my glass of gin and tonic, in my line of vision, passed a shadow from the sunlight outside, followed by a giant human. I adjusted my field of vision past the fellow talking about sewage flows, and confirmed what I already instinctively knew. The giant who had cast the shadow was unmistakably Orson Welles.

He did not seem overweight, in any conventional sense, but just a tall, immense man, tilted slightly forward, like leaning barn door.

Welles sat on a stray stool about 15 feet from me, and in a low conversational voice, with only an ironic hint of that famous timbre, ordered a short drink. I continued to watch him, losing track of what the New York Up-Stater was saying. Shortly, he turned his head and looked directly at me, and I gave him a tentative half-salute.

I reasoned that my erstwhile companion would be done with his story shortly, and I might go greet the genius I had heard and seen all my life, but the sociologist droned on with his statistical report, and I began to ask him leading questions to help him get to the sea with it -- or to the St. Lawrence, as it were. Finally, in desperation, I almost shouted: "You know, I'm almost sure that big man is Orson Welles, down there."

He flicked his head for a quick glance.

"Oh . . . yes," he said. "I think you may be right."

He resumed his story.

I stood up, and at that point, Welles happened to turn his head toward me, and he nodded, as if in recognition.

Edging away from the sociologist, I put my hand on his shoulder, saying something like, "And so, that was it. People flushed more often, during the commercials?"

"No, you don't understand," he said, his eyes blazing with truth; he took my arm in a firm grip. "That was only in the second cohort of the study. The other data in TS 1,3,4 and 5, amazingly . . . "

I looked up and away from him. Welles was on his feet, too, tilting back the last of his drink. He stalked toward the door like a man with an aching back, out into the sunlight, his giant shadow cast backward, and he was gone.

"Sorry," I said to the worthy academic, sinking back on my stool. "For some reason, I've lost the significance of your point."

Why Welles was in San Francisco I cannot say, but I learned long after that, supported by Welles, his brother had been living in the City for several years, and that he died here in 1975.

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Given your interest in marcoshark's interesting contribution, Sir Bygber, I thought you might like that story.

Glenn

[maxrael]

thank you for sharing that Glenn...

[R Kadin]

I agree, Max: most entertainingly told, Glenn. OW would have approved, I'm sure.

But, since it seems we're back to plowing the TOSOTW patch here on the "new-look" Wellesnet (compliments to Jeff W.), let me throw the following concern out to my fellows for comment:

Is there not a danger with TOSOTW that its commercial value might be seen to be higher when shopped around as a teaser than it would be as an actual, finished product?

In other words, as an elusive legend, the prospect of a glimpse of it has a unique appeal to prospective audiences of festivals, retrospectives and roadshows, whose attendance, therefore, requires no significant additional expenditure on the part of those squiring it around the circuit; thus, whatever "take" it generates is largely gravy, making its rate of return on investment ("ROI") pretty darned hard to top. And, as such, it manages to help keep some bread on the tables of its modest entourage, though perhaps less now than before, based on recent anecdotal attendance reports.

In contrast, the film's actual completion and distribution could wreak havoc on that little cottage industry. Once the final film is out there, its legend lives no more, taking its role in underscoring that all-too-popularly Wellesian theme of promise unfulfilled with it. Should significant additional capital be committed to it, what was once gravy could turn into a mere trickle in a yawning, seven-figure bucket. On top of that, what would happen if the end result turns out to be (horror of horrors!), uh...underwhelming? Today's miniature golden goose becomes tomorrow's very dead duck. Yikes!!

I'm not wanting to rain on any parades, here, but fundamentals like those, above, aren't doing much for this obedient servant's optimism re TOSOTW.

Please, somebody, argue me back to a brighter outlook...

[Wilson]

I don't really see that. The Welles insiders who want to finish the film want to finish it for one main reason: so it can be seen. Showing bits and pieces at festivals and what not is fine, but it doesn't give the world at large anything. I agree that the teasing nature of the film being out there, so near to completion is a potent force, but even more potent is the ability to make money off of it once it's done in some form. DVD and cable are huge sources of revenue these days, and I imagine between them and a limited art house release, they'd make some money off the film. It may never happen, but it won't be because showing segments of it at special events is preferable. If it doesn't happen, it'll be due to either the estate or other legal tangles getting in the way.

[Glenn Anders]

I agree, Jeff. While Oja Kodar may be true to the name of Orson Welles, who put her on a larger map, and Gary Graver may have had a less than distinguished career when not helping Welles, Peter Bogdanovich is a really solid figure, as far as his professional credentials are concerned. Though his directing career may have have been in decline until just recently, he has done rather well as an actor, most notably on The Sopranos, and as a writer in screen matters. When he says THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND can be completed, and that he would like to do it, I believe him.

The real question, it seems to me, is one of shelf life, both for the picture and the people involved. The innovations and interests that Welles was taken with at the time he was shooting TOSOTW have now been appropriated by other directors, such as Robert Altman, even Michael Moore, and what would have been sensational and ground breaking in the 1970's might, as R Kadin suggests, seem tentative today.

We all grow older. When I saw Gary Graver at a showing of the "restored" OTHELLO, he was youthful and energetic (in a slightly loopy way), and we all like to think of Oja Kodar in Russian furs leaning from a window of the Orient Express in F FOR FAKE, but both must be in their sixties, which gives them little purchase in youth-crazed Hollywood. Bogdanovich still can get backing for directorial projects, but at 65, he is about to cross that career line where he becomes hard to insure, which is why certifiably great directors like John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock had to throw in their hands.

Let's hope this brave band can complete their most important task before time carries the project into less sensitive hands.

Glenn

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Me like very much. That's a lovely story, Glenn.

Oh how i'd love to see OSOTW. Shame Orson isn't in it, i can't help loving watching the man.

Just saw Arkadin again - God I love Arkadin! Has to be one of my favourites, i think. Every shot is a visual treat. Incredible stuff. Much more elaborate visually than his Hollywood films, even Touch of Evil - not to say elaborate means good, but it makes it absolutely compulsive viewing for Welles fans.

And there was a miraculous piece of programming on Australian television the other day - a midnight showing of Journey into Fear. I wrote it on my hand and kept reminding myself all day, but, can you believe it, missed the first half hour. So only got to see Welles in those last few scenes, dashing across the side of the building, and strutting into the cafe chewing the scenery, and that was my fun for the night. God that's an average flick! Lucky i taped it, haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but MUST see those early Welles scenes.

And btw, no-one come on here and tell me "they're not that good" because i'll spit on you.

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, Sir Bygber.

Well . . . Orson Welles as Colonel Haki is . . . not all that good. He was directing THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by day, and helping Norman Foster direct JOURNEY INTO FEAR at night. He and Joseph Cotton had adapted the novel by Eric Ambler as what looks now to be a bit of a lark. Welles is said to have shot most of his scenes all at once so he could catch the Pan American Clipper for Rio to begin the Brazillian segment of IT'S ALL TRUE.

Welles' Colonel Haki of the Turkish Secret Police is very florid, very theatrical, and is meant to be so, I think. He speaks in a heavy Turko-Russian accent, which sometimes lapses into an Irish brogue. Perhaps, he had a back story for Haki that the man had been sent to Trinity, which is the kind of Wellsian idea, which might just be correct, but if so any reference to Haki's education was cut from the finisished film.

And here, we come to a "but" -- there always seem to be those but's in looking at Welles' pictures. Evidently, the intended picture was to have been much richer, with all the characters much more interrelated than what we have. All depth of character and complexity of meaning were taken out, leaving only the bizarre swiftness of the action and the sinister murk of the mood.

Yet, in 1975, when JOURNEY INTO FEAR was re-made by Daniel Mann (COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA, 1952; OUR MAN FLINT, 1966) with a top o' the line cast [Sam Waterston (in the Cotton part), Joseph Wiseman (as Colonel Haki), Yvette Mimieux, Zero Mostel, Shelly Winters, Stanley Holloway, Donald Pleasance, Vincent Price, Jackie Cooper, etc), most critics advised audiences to find a revival of Welles' version.

As for what the film might have been, it is another case of seeing things with the mind's eye, and hoping that someone is looking in a studio vault for a cannister of withering out-takes, which will probably never be found.

I treasure the performance of Welles' accountant Jack Moss as the Assassin (an inside Wellsian joke), and his lady friend of the time, Dolores del Rio dressed as a leopard. What casting there!

You might look at my review of another Ambler film featuring Colonel Haki, THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS:

http://www.epinions.com/content_77175557764

You will see there a film like the one Welles might have wanted to make, and also one which brings us happily back to MR. ARKADIN (if not quite THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND), and sadly to the present day of Saddam Hussein, Ahmaid Chalabi and the question of "who pays for the bullet."

Glenn

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Glenn, I unreservedly spit on you. (re my last post, if you didn't catch the last line and think i'm totally random!)

Did i mention how much i love Arkadin? I just want to state that again.

[Glenn Anders]

Okay, Sir Bygber. While I get out my handkerchief, let my point out again that what we don't know about Orson Welles' Colonel Haki is how he intended that performance to fit into the total film, as he and Jo Cotton wrote it. As it stands, JOURNEY INTO FEAR is a light bit of fun, an atmospheric thriller, and Welles' performance comes off as a bit of exotic parody. Not to belabor my analysis, but I am suggesting that what Welles was trying to suggest in the film was better realized in Jean Negulesco's THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS, two years later, in 1944, and that a line can be drawn from that to your (our) beloved MR. ARKADIN, in 1955.

I might also note that these films have a tentative connection with John Huston's "stock company" of the time.

Check it out.

Meanwhile, I've turned the other cheek.

Glenn

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I still spit on you. I enjoy it too much.

[Glenn Anders]

It RAINED in Northern California on Sunday.

Rain in mid-September?

Now I understand, Sir Bygber!

Glenn

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Do not underestimate the wrath of my spit, it befalls the heathen like a natural disaster.

[L French]

I talked briefly to Walter Murch recently after a lecture and suggested to him that he might like to tackle the job of editing OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, since he had done such a good job on TOUCH OF EVIL. Murch looked slightly taken aback and shook his head, saying he had seen some of the footage and said, "no, that's not a project that's right for me." Guess he thinks, (like Oliver Stone) that it's too experimental a project.

I also saw Peter Bogdanovich while he was promoting his new book on Actors (i.e. Dietrich, Karloff, Grant, etc.) and he still insists he's attempting to get OSOTW finished, and says Showtime is (once again?) very close to stepping up and providing the needed money to finish the film... presumably by paying off the Welles estate, as they had to do before they could show ONE MAN BAND. He also told some of the same stories about working with Welles on the film, as well as a couple of new ones, including a hilarious one where he imitated a drunken John Huston. Apparently, Welles usually didn't like to start shooting until late in the afternoon, which meant working well into the evening, and Huston would start his drinking around four or five...

[Wilson]

Bogdanovich's new book also mentions in passing that OSOTW may see completion in 2005, though I'll believe it when I actually sit in a theater and see it. The book is quite entertaining, by the way. In regards to PB, here's the transcript to an interview he did in the UK which is pretty interesting:

Bogdanovich Guardian interview

[L French]

I've often wondered how much Welles might have exaggerated his supposedly "unbankable" reputation with the studios, but as this recent article by Peter Bart in Variety points out, it was apparently not at all an exaggeration, but obviously quite an entrenched feeling among the studio heads - no wonder there was never any backing for "The Other Side of The Wind" or any of Welles later projects.

In the excerpt below, Bart, who in the early 70's was VP of production at Paramount, notes that he didn't want to touch a Welles film nor did directors Francis Coppola or William Friedkin, who at the time were partners with Peter Bogdanovich in The Director's Company:

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...As Paramount's production vice-president it was my assignment to oversee the Director's Company and keep things flowing. The first two films to get the green light, "The Conversation" and "Paper Moon, seemed ideally suited to the set-up. Both were innovative and inexpensive; Coppola and Bogdanovich thrived under the complete absence of corporate interference. Signs of trouble appeared early, however. For one thing, the corporate suits in New York were suspicious of the mandate of creative freedom. Further, Friedkin himself seemed worried about the projects his new colleagues were selecting - he favored more commercial fare.

And then there was the issue of the proteges. Bogdanovich called me soon after completing "Paper Moon" to tell me he was going to introduce me to a filmmaker whose work the company should next foster. He appeared a day later in the presence of Orson Welles, corpulent and glowering, who, at the time, was neither young nor promising. Indeed, Welles had fallen into the habit of starting films and then never completing them and as such, was utterly "unbankable." Bogdanovich felt Welles had one more "Citizen Kane" in him; the other directors (Coppola & Friedkin) disagreed, as did I.

Welles and Bogdanovich had formed a bond, however, and during their lenghty conversations, Welles had spoken glowingly of a novel by Henry James called "Daisy Miller," which he felt was a romantic classic. Bogdanovich, who was at the time making a habit of falling in love, heard Welles' comments in the context of a potential film. My instinct was that he was simply urging Bogdanovich to read the novel; an erudite man, Welles' literary recommendations were definitely worth listening to. To my surprise, however, Bogdanovich instantly started prepping a movie based on "Daisy Miller," to star his girlfriend, Cybill Shepherd - an idea that did not stir much enthusiam within the Director's Company. At the time, I recall telling myself, this company won't be around for long. The prediction proved to be correct...

...Given the circumstances, I regret that Orson Welles never got the chance to make his film under the Director' Company. He couldn't have made anything less successful than "Daisy Miller"; who knows, he may even have made a final masterpiece.