THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND Thread - 2015-2017

[RayKelly]

My read is that they've given up hopes of getting this done in 2015. Now the talk is of maybe getting it done within Welles' "centennial year," which I read as meaning before May 6, 2016. Even that seems overly ambitious to me.

At the start of the Indiegogo campaign in May, Frank Marshall told me he would not commit to a timetable for completion because there are always unknown factors and he did not want the project to be deadline driven, but added, "We still think we will make it this year."
Personally, I have no idea how long it would take to scan, edit and score this film. Obviously, if they fail to raise the money, they can't put out the movie this year.

[jbrooks]

Ray,

They will need months to edit it and score if they do it well. Given the nature of the project and the state Welles left it in, a proper process would involve a lot of trial and error. They will need to try out different ways of integrating the Hannaford-film scenes, for example. There are host of creative decisions that will have to be made and that can only be made when the takes and scenes can be played and replayed and re-edited and played again. As of now, it sounds like the negative hasn't even been received from France yet. So no one has even seen all the footage. It's not clear if the entire movie is even there. We know there's no cloud of smoke shot. Reports indicate that Welles might never have shot the scene of Dale wandering around the party scene in the morning. Also, Joe McBride says they never shot Huston's part of the Jaglom and Mazursky scene. (I'm not sure whether that's true of Dennis Hopper's bit as well). They'll have to decide whether to use trick editing or CGI to put Huston in that scene or to leave it out. Also, the sound design challenges will be immense with no one alive to do ADR.

Of course, Frank Marshall has all the resources in the world so he can probably get this all sorted out as quickly as anyone could. It also can't be true that money is a real concern. The budget for Marshall's other movie project this month (a little film called "Jurassic World") is $150 million. It will gross twice that worldwide in its first week or two. His wife also has more than a little to do with those new movies starring R2D2. Real investors would give them a million dollars to use on a project just for the privilege of taking Mr. Marshall and Ms. Kennedy to lunch. The crowd funding campaign has got to be mostly about getting free publicity. It's simply not believable that Showtime could come up with for full funding for this back in 1999 but Frank Marshall can't find anyone to do so today.

[Roger Ryan]

...We know there's no cloud of smoke shot. Reports indicate that Welles might never have shot the scene of Dale wandering around the party scene in the morning...

The producers have confirmed that the cloud of smoke rising over the drive-in screen (indicating Hannaford's car crash) can easily be achieved by simple computer compositing. Dale wandering around the party scene in the morning was from an earlier draft of the screenplay that Welles had written, but I believe this idea was abandoned during principal photography and the film concludes at the drive-in (personally, I like the concluding scene as written in the earlier script, but the film will reportedly end with a similar moment minus an appearance by Dale). Given the vast amount of material avaible, I believe the producers feel confident that the film can be completed. However, as you say, they won't know what works best until they start really putting everything together and that will take time.

[jbrooks]

Roger:

I think they will be able to cobble something together even if some things are (unintentionally) missing. I am worried that the pieces won't add up to a film that works as a whole. I'm hopeful that they will, but I'm concerned.

It would be interesting if Welles chose to forgo the shots of Dale wandering around the party for artistic (rather than logistical) reasons. A weakness of the version of the script that I have read is that the central tension of the story is the relationship between Hannaford and Dale but there's no payoff to that tension -- as you might get if there were a final confrontation between Hannaford and Dale. Hannaford learns the revelation about Dale but he never interacts with Dale after that. That could work if there's some other emotional payoff. The scene of Dale at the party in the morning seemed intended to provide that -- Dale did come to the party after all (but too late). Maybe the film within a film scenes can provide some other emotional payoff. Le Chiffre says the workprint contains some great shots of Dale wandering in the studio backlot against a strong wind. My guess is that those will be used at or near the end of the film. [Edit -- Upon re-reading his post, I see Le Chiffre says that the title card suggested that those shots would come near the end of the film. So, it's more his suggestion than my guess. But it's my hope that those shots can somehow provide the emotional payoff for the Dale storyline that would seem to be lacking if the Dale-at-the-party-in-the-morning scene was never shot.]

[jbrooks]

Great article by Joseph McBride on the news page about the Welles conference in Spain!

It's very interesting to hear Keith Baxter react so negatively to the "Wind" work print footage. I wonder if he's ever seen "F for Fake." I also wonder if some of the casual Welles fans who are eager to see "Orson Welles' last movie" will be shocked that some of it is like some "soft core porn film" and none of it is very much like "Citizen Kane." The truth is that, even if all necessary footage exists, Marshall and company are able to finish it, and it turns out to work great on its own terms, it will still disappoint casual viewers.

It's also fascinating to hear about the disagreements as to how to handle the fake-film footage. McBride is clearly correct that Welles intended that footage to be parody -- beautiful shots that have no dialogue, context or story. (Curiously, the sex in the car scene is presumably from the film-within-the-film but seems almost more in the style of the party footage etc.) I think McBride is right -- as he says in his book -- that there's a risk that the film-within-the-film scenes would bog down the picture if they were simply allowed to play out at full length. And I find it somewhat dismaying that Oja wasn't in on the joke. Did she not see the scene where Norman Foster shows the rushes to the studio executive? It's not very subtle in its suggestion that the film-within-a-film is a pretentious mess.

[Le Chiffre]

But it's my hope that those shots can somehow provide the emotional payoff for the Dale storyline that would seem to be lacking if the Dale-at-the-party-in-the-morning scene was never shot.

Yes, that would be my guess too. Here are a few screen caps from the scene in question. The one at top left reminds me a bit of THE IMMORTAL STORY:

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I also wonder if some of the casual Welles fans who are eager to see "Orson Welles' last movie" will be shocked that some of it is like some "soft core porn film" and none of it is very much like "Citizen Kane." The truth is that, even if all necessary footage exists, Marshall and company are able to finish it, and it turns out to work great on its own terms, it will still disappoint casual viewers.

Still curious to see it. Backed it. Didn't buy the T-shirt cuz son I ain't made of money. And this is from someone who's never particularly liked the released scenes, the press conference/party, the car scene, etc. I'm betting all the money I'm spending on it that I'll be disappointed, but I guess that's bound to happen with a film that takes 40 years to come out?

[Wellesnet]

In this recent interview with Frank Marshall, he talks about the new blockbuster “Jurassic World”, but also about “The Other Side of the Wind”.
http://collider.com/frank-marshall-on-j ... -and-more/

I definitely want to touch on Orson Welles’s last film. What’s the status? How is the Indiegogo going? What can you tell people about it?

MARSHALL: It’s not going as well as I had hoped to be honest. It’s pretty slow, although we’re inching up every day. We’ve raised about 25% of what we’d like to raise. I think it’s been great that so many people have joined in on the campaign, and I’ve just gotta get to a point where I can get the last bit of the rights and then I’m able to get the negative out of the lab and print, and put together maybe fifteen, twenty minutes of the beginning of the movie that makes sense, so then I can get a distributor on board to help us finish the rest of post-production. The hiccup here is, yes there’s forty minutes of cut footage by Orson, but it’s randomly throughout the movie, so there’s no real way to say to somebody there’s a movie that extends here, so that’s what I’m trying to get to.

Sure. If I’m not mistaken, you were on set of the movie. You helped bring it to life back then.

MARSHALL: Yes, I mean, talk about the thrill of a lifetime. To be there with Orson Welles every day, twenty-four hours a day and see his genius at work was something I’ll never forget and really keeps inspiring me to help get this last movie of his finished.

I’m obviously a huge cinephile and Orson’s work is staggering. It is amazing to me that there is something that he made that could be still seen all of these years later.

MARSHALL: Yes and I think unfortunately the stigma that he had back then seems to still be there that people don’t get it. They don’t trust the fact that he was this genius and the guy that made Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, and The Magnificent Ambersons, and there might be this fantastic movie in there. Whatever it is, we should preserve it for cinema history, no matter what it comes out like.

I am in full agreement, and I really hope this comes together. Whatever I can do to help.

MARSHALL: If you could just keep sending people to the Indiegogo campaign, that’s the best way for everybody to help. And I have to say that knowing Orson as I did, he would be tickled pink that the real people, fans of the movies are going to help get his last movie made.

[jbrooks]

They don't yet have all of the rights???????

I'm going to assume that Marshall misspoke or was misquoted. The indiegogo page says --

"After his passing, three decades of legal feuds ensued, until 2014, when the rights issues were finally resolved by Producers Filip Jan Rymsza, Frank Marshall and Jens Koethner Kaul. This brings us to now."

As they're raising funds based on the representation that they have already secured the rights, I'm going to assume that that's true. If it's not, Marshall et al have some serious explaining to do.

[RayKelly]

They don't yet have all of the rights???????
I'm going to assume that Marshall misspoke or was misquoted.

Personally, I think that is a safe guess. He may have been referring to remaining payments to be made to the rights holders.

[RayKelly]

Twelve days left. Only 26 percent of the Indiegogo goal met. Producers assure donors that, regardless of whether the goal is met, the money raised will be used to complete TOSOTW.
http://www.wellesnet.com/the-other-side-of-the-wind-producers-this-movie-will-be-made/

[jbrooks]

I just contributed to the campaign. I have mixed feelings about crowd-funding, but in the end, I decided the promised perks were too good to pass up.

[Wellesnet]

Indiegogo campaign closes with over $400K raised:
http://www.wellesnet.com/crowdfunding-r ... -the-wind/

[Wellesnet]

Producer: Editing on ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ to begin within 2 weeks
All of the footage shot by Orson Welles between 1970 and 1976 will be 4K scanned in Santa Monica and preserved.

http://www.wellesnet.com/producer-editing-on-the-other-side-of-the-wind-to-begin-within-2-weeks/

[Wellesnet]

Bogdanovich's latest statement on Wind:
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/24/pe ... -funny-way

You might be the world’s most qualified expert on Orson Welles. How involved are you in the effort to finish and release The Other Side of the Wind?

I’m going to be more involved once we start actually doing the work. I haven’t been involved at all in terms of getting money together. I’ve just been suffering through the time it takes to do it. But I will be involved in cutting it together, which is what has to be done. Mainly because Orson had asked me to. Sometime in the mid ’70s, we were having lunch and he suddenly turned to me out of the blue and said, “If anything ever happens to me, I want you to promise me you’ll finish the picture.” I said, “Jesus Christ, Orson. Why do you say such a thing?” “Nothing’s going to happen to me, but if it does, I want you to promise me you’ll finish the picture.” I said, “Well, of course I would.” He said, “Well, that’s fine, now we can change the subject.” And so he died in ‘85, and I’ve been trying to get the picture together ever since then, but it’s extraordinary difficult, mainly because it was very difficult to get a clear change of title. There had been actors who hadn’t been paid or never got a contract. There’s people who come out of the woodwork and say they own part of it. It’s just been a nightmare. But we’re sort of on the verge.