Welles's nephew editing TOSOTW

[mido505]

"Scorsese's long-time friend, Francis Ford Coppola had some remarkable criticism for Scorsese recently in an interview with Empire Magazine. The Godfather director opined that Scorsese was only making movies nowadays for the big paychecks.

"He's making movies because he needs to make a certain amount of money because he has a big family and many previous wives."

Recently, the filmmaker and winemaker had also criticised such former raging bulls as Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino for being spoiled by success and not taking risks anymore in acting roles.

"They were young and insecure. Now Pacino is very rich, maybe because he never spends any money; he just puts it in his mattress," Coppola said. "De Niro was deeply inspired by Zoe-trope [Coppola's studio] and created an empire and is wealthy and powerful."

"Nicholson was - when I met him and worked with him - he was always kind of a joker. He's got a little bit of a mean streak. He's intelligent, always wired in with the big guys and the big bosses of the studios.

"I don't know what any of them want any more ... Pacino always wanted to do theatre ... [He] will say, 'Oh, I was raised next to a furnace in New York, and I'm never going to go to LA,' but they all live off the fat of the land.""

This was posted at scorsesefilms.com, of all places.

I suppose I am being a bit rough of Coppola; he has put his own money where his mouth is, and has taken extreme risks (BTW, I love Rumble Fish, but Bob Evans needs to take a pill. Rumble Fish is an homage to Old Hollywood Expressionism, not a departure from it. It's so old it's new). But he has been solvent since the early nineties and has given us nothing of interest since. He was a director for hire on the Godfather, his greatest success, commercial and artistic, which was adapted from a proven bestseller. Apocaplypse Now was an endless incomprehensible mess in search of a point of view until Brando improvised his way out of the morass, Michael Herr wrote the narration, and Dennis Jakob forced Coppola to read The Golden Bough. Most of what's best in it comes straight from John Milius's gung ho right wing script. If the recent Redux debacle is any indication of what Coppola was originally after, we should thank God he had to rush Apocalypse to completion. He has been a tremendous technical innovator, but really contributed nothing new to the movies in terms of vision.

[mido505]

Lamont Cranston wrote:

mido505, does Scorsese have that kind of money? I've heard he's had his battles with the studios. The studio demanded a commerical film be made next in his contract for The Last Temptation of Christ, this of course resulted in the remake of Cape Fear. And his last three films, all commerical, seem like he's trying to build up clout and money for something big later.

Lamont, they are ALWAYS "trying to build up clout and money for something big later". But why does it have to be "something big"? Answer: it doesn't, this is just an excuse. Big budget razzle dazzle to cover a lack of true vision. As for the Scorsese's battles over Last Temptation, he managed to take a fascinating if unorthodox novel and completely degrade it. Take away the Peter Gabriel soundtrack and Last Temptation is nothing. I probably shouldn't do this but I am going to quote in its entirety the best single review I have ever read of Last Temptation. It's off IMDB, the author is Majikstl, and I highly recommend his insightful, extremely opinionated reviews:

"THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST features a character who is warm, gentle, soft-spoken and wise. Unfortunately, that character, played by rock icon David Bowie, is Pontius Pilate, the man who condemns Jesus to death on the cross. Jesus, on the other hand, is played -- rather badly -- by Willem Dafoe as a whiny, self-absorbed, neurotic, bumbling, somewhat stupid, amazingly uninspired, and occasionally hysterical twit.

Martin Scorsese's fictionalized -- as if that is a good thing -- retelling of Christ's story is offensive on so many levels that you don't have to be a Christian or even a believer in any faith to be dumbfounded by the sheer ineptitude of the entire project. When Scorsese begins the story with Christ the carpenter busy in his shop using his skills to build a cross which will be used to crucify a fellow Jew, the story has nowhere to go but up. Amazingly, it doesn't: the next scene finds Jesus tagging along to lend a helping hand as the Romans carry out the execution. Here is the story of the Prince of Peace, a man worshiped and adored for his belief in nonviolence, forgiveness and human kindness, and the film begins with him helping to commit a state sanctioned killing. One would assume that the filmmaker has a pronounced hatred of Jesus and of Christianity.

This presumably is not the case. Benefit of the doubt dictates that Scorsese is genuinely trying to create a sympathetic vision of Jesus. Thus, Scorsese wants us to see Jesus as human, but it is his concept of humanity that the director presents. Being human in Scorsese's eyes is being Travis Bickle, Jake LaMotta, one of the savage beasts in GOODFELLAS or any number of psychotic losers that populate his films. The notion that God sent forth his only son to be an example of the best that mankind should strive for fits nowhere into Scorsese bleak and sorrowful mindset. The fact that Scorsese sees the world through such a cloud of contempt is pitiable. The fact that feels the need to vandalize the story of Christ with such a blatant hatefulness is less worthy of forgiveness.

Using Paul Schrader's woefully insipid screenplay, Scorsese's film, more or less, follows the standard Gospels, up until a fantasy ending that supposedly justifies the entire film. So it's not the story, it's the telling. Jesus tells a parable about hope and faith and he handles it so badly that his listeners want to riot and kill the rich. He disowns his mother and leaves her crying in the street. Simple questions about faith leave him stammering and dumbfounded. There is not a moment in the film that gives Jesus a chance to show kindness, wisdom, love, charisma or even a shred of dignity. The only element of the film that does work is the climatic dream sequence wherein Jesus imagines what life would be like if he renounced his divinity and lived as an average man. Ironically, once the presence of God is removed form Jesus, the film allows him to actually have genuine positive human qualities.

Brushing aside -- as if were possible -- the utter ignorance THE LAST TEMPTATION shows of the Gospels, the film still fails. Aside from Bowie's credible cameo appearance, the actors flounder, either resorting to horribly stilted line readings or else sounding like blue collar workers arguing at the local tavern. Dafoe, however, stands alone: playing Jesus like an escaped mental patient, the otherwise competent actor seems to have had not a clue as to who Jesus was and apparently he got precious little guidance from Scorsese. Even Scorsese's admitted technical prowess fails him here; the film is cheap, clumsy and unpleasant to look at.

Is the film sacrilege? That is a judgment for others to make. What it is is insensitive. It callously shows contempt for a figure who is revered, not only in Christian faiths, but in Jewish and Muslim faiths as well. To present such a degraded image of Christ, even within a "fictionalized" or "what-if" scenario, doesn't excuse the filmmakers from their responsibility to show respect, if not honesty, to the historical, if not religious, importance of the Christ. To hide behind the concept of "fictionalization" is a cowardly cop-out.

This is a cold, hateful and mean-spirited film. The irony is that the Scorsese and his team probably thought they were making a film with great inspirational insight. Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

[Glenn Anders]

Some excellent analysis has been contributed here.

Martin Scorsese strikes me in recent years as primarily a fussy academician, more interested in tinkering with the technicalities of overblown projects than making pictures with real heart. Like Coppola, he speaks of his desire to make small, personal films, but unlike the Godfather of the Inglenook Winery Estate, he fails to turn them out.

Francis Ford Coppola, on the other hand, is a wonderful, warm personality, troubled though he may be in his artistic struggles. His philanthropy is notable in recent times, and every year, he personally supervises a charity benefit Italian dinner, open to the public, in North Beach of San Francisco. He has a wonderful intelligent wife, a talented family, a wine empire, and considerable influence as a producer of independent film. One has only to climb the "million dollar stairway" at the Inglenook main house in Napa to know he has achieved a dream. He remains a playful, creative storyteller, now making those small personal films we've been talking about, even when his projects turn out as bizarre as YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH.

Why Coppola did not help Welles, way back when, I can't say, but he has lived a life that Welles might have envied in his dreams.

BTW, in reference to the subject of this thread, Viktor Kleinhaagen of Quarto Negro reports that it is Alexander Welles, Oja's nephew, who was seen working on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND in LA.

Happy Hogmanay!

Glenn Anders.

[Tony]

Well, somehow we're now attacking The Last temptation of Christ; how we got there I'm not sure.

I do recall Coppola saying that he had a discussion with Welles in the 70s and was thinking of offering him some assisstance, but he got caught up with work, time passed, and he never made the call. Perhaps Welles's brave stance fooled people into not understanding how grave his situation was. Perhaps Spielberg didn't have the foggiest that Welles was angling for funding; perhaps he thought Welles had it. What do we really know? (as usual).

But I do have a technical question: how can Alexander Welles be a nephew of Oja Kodar's? Am I missing some family connection?

[Terry]

He changed his name.

Is Alexander the same person as Sasha?

[Alan Brody]

Wasn't Sasha the little boy at the beginning of F For Fake? He must have been adopted by Welles or something.

[The Night Man]

Coppola has some nerve bad-mouthing Scorsese, Pacino, Nicholson and De Niro the way he has. He's made plenty of bad films of his own just for the dough and, as far as I'm concerned, created nothing even remotely interesting since Tucker. Perhaps Youth Without Youth will change my opinion.

But the most unforgivable thing about Coppola to me is how he has fought relentlessly to prevent the release of the more fully-restored version of Abel Gance's Napoleon, one of the greatest formal achievements in all of film history. Kevin Brownlow has spent years working on a more complete version of the film since the 1981 restoration (which Coppola had a financial stake in), and it has become increasingly clear over time that Coppola's version is substantially flawed and out-of-date with the new discoveries. But Coppola's fought tooth and nail to sink the project, even going so far as to threaten legal action against the BFI to try to prevent screenings in the UK. Ye Gads, shades of Beatrice!

[mido505]

Tony:

I posted that long review of Last Temptation because describes better than I can the world view and approach to filmmaking that destroyed Hollywood, turning it from a place where an Orson Welles could barely function into a place where he could not function at all. The "Young Turks" were given unprecendented artistic and financial freedom and completely misused it. After an initial period of success they produced bomb after self indulgent bomb, until Lucas and Spielberg showed the way to fun and profit. Talk about a one-two punch. In his masterpiece, Chimes at Midnight, Welles accurately predicted what was about to happen, to Hollywood, to himself, and to the greater world at large. We are living in Henry V's world. There is a direct line from the Battle of Shrewsbury to Scorsese's "human beasts". Hollywood is Goodfellas now. They have banish'd fat Jack.

[Glenn Anders]

Hadji, Alan Brody: Yes, the reference appears to be to "Sasa Devcic, aka Alexander Welles." This figure would seem worthy of a Gregory Arkadin "confidential report." He is also listed as an original editor on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which may only mean he worked on the film at some time subsequent to 1972, or it may be a Wellsian joke, for he appears to be the little boy who is enthralled by the coin trick at the beginning of F FOR FAKE, as you suggest, Alan. If the latter is the case, he is attributed to Oja Kodar's sister, making him Oja's nephew. What the actual bloodline is there is deeply bohemian.

In fact, thinking of Welles' relationship to Miss Kodar at the time, and his marriage to Paola Mori, another possibility arises, which might require the services of Sam Spade, or at least, a Todd Baesen to track down.

Alexander (or Sasha) Welles, perhaps another person (or persons) entirely, also worked in sound departments, providing music, or doing stunt work in minor films over the last thirty years. Interestingly, there seems to be absolutely no biographical material on Devcic/Welles. He is listed on a number of promotional sites, but either information was never entered, or it has been stripped out, creating an Arkadin figure.

But if true, at least the janitor isn't editing THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, as Tony feared at the beginning of this thread.

Glenn

[Tony]

Well, I've found in the Las Vegas yellow pages a listing for 'Welles Janitorial Services', so...

[ToddBaesen]

Glenn Anders and I saw Francis Coppola do a Q & A about his new film YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH in San Francisco on December 22nd, and Coppola gave what I thought was quite a brilliant talk. It also reminded me of why most people think that Welles was a man who always went way over budget.

And why is that? Because most people seem to believe that anything they read, even the most fantastic story, is the truth. For example, I was quite astounded that anyone with even an inkling about Orson Welles career could possibly give credence to the obviously phony story that Welles planned a movie version of BATMAN. Yet I heard some idiot that I won't name, actually repeat that story as if it were fact, before a screening at a Welles retrospective in Hollywood!

Likewise, getting back to the recent reports that had Francis Coppola bad mouthing the big actors he has worked with... Whether you believe them or not, I can tell you that Coppola himself says they were total fabrications. Coppola talked quite candidly about his desire to make movies which were in the tradition of Orson Welles, since his new movie projects are all being made with his own money, with no studio executives to answer to. What he said he told to a reporter was that actors like DeNiro, Pacino and Nicholson, who are all great friends of his, and now make millions of dollars per picture, is that they would never agree to star in a movie like YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (which cost less than $20 million to make).

I find that interesting to note, since we know that around 1982, Jack Nicholson turned down Welles offer to star in THE BIG BRASS RING, since he (or his agent) wanted to get $5 million for the film, which was the entire budget Welles had planned for making the movie!

Coppola in his talk, also said that what he was trying to get across was that stars like Nicholson, who make well over $5 million for movies these days, is that they simply would not be willing to go for three months on a gruelling location shoot in Romania for a salary of only $100,000 (which is presumably what Tim Roth made for starring in Coppola's picture).

Now, given Mr. Nicholson's great weath, I wonder if anyone really thinks he was better better off doing a movie like THE BUCKET LIST, along with the huge paycheck he got for such a sappy piece of crap, rather than playing in THE BIG BRASS RING, or even in Coppola's YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH.

[Alan Brody]

Well, I've found in the Las Vegas yellow pages a listing for 'Welles Janitorial Services', so...

That must be Beatrice.

[Tony]

Todd:

I've always been under the impression that Welles always DID go over budget; am I wrong? Perhaps the only picture he brought in under budget was The Stranger. But I've always understood that Kane was slightly over, Ambersons was way over, It's All True was looking to be way over when what Welles wanted to do was calculated which was why it was shut down, that Shangahai was quite over budget, that Macbeth was over after all was said and done, that Othello was...well probably didn't have a budget, that Arkadin was way over which was why Olivet took it away from Welles, that Evil was slighlty over, that Fountain (according to Lucy) was way over, that The Trial was slightly over, that Chimes was slightly over (actually had to be re-financed in the middle of production, just like Othello), I don't know about Fake but it did take years to finish, that Wind went way over and wasn't finished on schedule so the Iranian producers took it away from him. Even the trailor for Fake went over-time and over-budget. I've just always assumed that Welles always went over-budget; personally, I don't care, but I think he established a rreputation for this sort of thing. Does anyone (say Roger Ryan) actually have the numbers for Welles-directed features and how much, if at all, Welles went over-budget?

[LamontCranston]

In the BBC Panorama documentary on Welles, Heston says Touch of Evil was "well under a million"

[tonyw]

Surely you mean BBC 2 Arena?