‘The Other Side of the Wind’ being finished in Los Angeles for Netflix

[leamanc]

Astrologer Robert Aiken's account of working on TOSOTW, written in 1999.

https://www.nsnews.com/entertainment/fi ... 1.23480499

That was an incredible read!

[RayKelly]

From metro.us; Frank Marshall on Netflix's unflinching support:

“Ted Sarandos, who is the chief content officer for Netflix, is a huge Orson fan. He knows how much of a visionary filmmaker he was,” Marshall recently explained to me over the phone.

“Netflix is a great site for films and storytelling in all different kinds of ways. I think he understood the importance of this for cinema history and for Orson’s career.”

There was just one problem, though. “I couldn’t tell him what we needed to finish it because we needed to see that negative. But we couldn’t get the negative before we had somebody who would pay for it. It was a Catch-22.”

That didn’t stop Netflix putting their hands deep into their pockets for "The Other Side Of The Wind," though.

“Then finally Ted said, ‘Go for it.’ So Filip and I pulled things together. They were supportive of anything we needed. There was never a question from them.”

“I’ll admit, we went over budget. They never questioned what we were doing or why we were doing it. That’s why we are here today.”


https://www.metro.us/entertainment/movies/why-netflix-took-such-a-huge-risk-with-the-other-side-of-the-wind

[Wellesnet]

Film historian Joseph McBride weighs in on the authorship of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND:

"I was on the set for a total of forty-five days from the first day of filming in 1970 to the last in early 1976. I watched Welles and Kodar interacting, and she was clearly supportive of him and deferential (as well as friendly to me). She freely made comments and suggestions but never seemed to be obtrusive or try to dominate a creative relationship that, at least on the set, seemed to center around Welles. Naturally, since they were personally involved — unlike Welles and Mankiewicz — it is impossible for an outsider to know how much influence she had on Welles behind the scenes. I am willing to believe it was considerable. She deserves a great deal of credit for helping him sustain his career against considerable odds in his later years and helping prod him in some fresh directions. But was she an equal creative partner? That would be a large claim and a hard one to support."

http://www.wellesnet.com/authorship-other-side-wind/

[leamanc]

I always enjoy McBride’s writing, and that was a very illuminating piece. It’s also very even-handed, as it praises Murawski’s work but also gives reasons why the famous car scene should be longer in the final cut.

It’s also nice to have a debate on authorship with some actual facts, rather than heated supposition.

[jbrooks]

Fascinating piece by McBride. In my view, if Oja "directed" certain scenes like the bathroom scene without Welles then that is essentially second unit footage. It's not unusual for a second unit director to "direct" shots or scenes that aren't central to the film. But those shots or scenes get approved or disapproved by the director, and no one considers the second unit director to be a "co-director" of the film.

[jtarvainen]

I, too, was happy to see McBride address the issue of Kodar directing the car scene (or any scene in Wind, for that matter). So far I haven't seen any actual evidence to support that claim, though I have come across plenty of recollections from people who were there that by implication dispute it.

[Jeff Wilson]

The Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will be screening the film Nov 2-8, for anyone near enough. Now I can skip seeing it first on Netflix, thankfully.

[Terry]

What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight? I could do that as it's very close, though HD and headphones at home will probably be enough for me.

Regarding Kodar, directing and authorship, I've never heard anyone suggest that Fake should be attributed as a Reichenbach film since it was he who captured so much of the footage. Of course the answer is that Welles was the one who did the quantum-level cutting which transformed the material into something else. I'll stand by my absurd notions that any footage edited by Welles for Wind shouldn't have been altered by anyone for any reason (whether it "plays" or not,) and further that Jane Eyre is a Welles film and part of his oeuvre since Welles (according to Selznick) "took charge of the editing" (including the ADR: Welles did as much redubbing on Rochester as he did for his 1955 version of Othello; listen to Eyre through headphones some time.)

[jrosenbaum2002]

Just a brief word in response to Joe McBride's lengthy reactions to my remarks about my conversations with Oja Kodar. Oja's sense of what direction is not the same as his or mine or those of Andrew Sarris. I once asked her if she minded being credited as codirector on The One-Man Band and she told me no, because in the sequences in which she appeared, she was the main one in control over what we see and hear.

I assume this is what she means when she says she directed the lengthy car sequence. I don't in any way think she is claiming "authorship" over this sequence, because it's perfectly clear that the editing and all sorts of other elements over which she had and claims no control are the work of Welles. Nor would she be at all pleased if my comments were taken as a way of undermining any portion of Welles' creative control and authorship.

All that matters here is that Welles regarded her as his key collaborator on the film; in a letter that can be found in the Michigan Welles papers, dated May 12, 1985 and sent to Jacques Kam, a prominent French lawyer, he clearly and unambiguously stated that he considered her to be the only person whom he believed could finish the film if he should die before the film was completed. Even so, I don't believe Oja has ever considered herself to be someone equipped to do this without the help of others.

The bottom line is that Welles wanted to enlist her own creative talents in the film. Simply to suggest that he wanted her to create a "sincere" pretentious art movie that he would then expose or ridicule as such grossly oversimplifies his attitudes towards the film-within-the-film, which I believe changed from day to day. Similarly, reducing this film to a parody of Antonioni (which is what I take it Joe means by "satire") is woefully inadequate. If that was truly Welles' intention, he clearly failed, because the style of Hannaford's film
doesn't match Antonioni's style at all--only certain aspects of its subject matter and its apparent desire to deal with contemporary "youth" culture. And Oja has and had little interest in Antonioni herself, so it's misguided to think that he might have asked her to inject Antonioniesque elements in whatever she contributed.

But it was she who decided to play a Native American in both portions of Welles' film--a decision based on an incident she described to me at length during my public interview with her in Woodstock (available on YouTube), an incident occurring during her first visit to Hollywood when she recoiled at the racist behavior of her driver towards a jaywalking Native American. But neither this decision nor any other that she made in the writing or directing of any sequence qualified as anything other than a desire to help Welles make HIS film, following his invitations to her. I'm sure he also used her as a sounding board for many of his ideas.

Oja has deliberately removed herself from the film world and stayed away from the Internet. She's currently recovering in Zagreb from her third successive surgery on one of her eyes, as she wrote me today, and she still hasn't yet been able to see the final version of Wind. (The health of her older sister prevented her from attending the Venice premiere, and she would like to see the film first with an audience.)
I don't think it does anyone a helpful service by comparing her or me to Pauline Kael and her poor scholarship, which was an unambiguous gesture intended to undermine both Welles and auteur criticism. If my own comments have clouded any issues rather than clarified matters, I apologize, but Oja can't be blamed for any of this.

[jrosenbaum2002]

P.S. To all appearances, Welles spent far more time editing portions of the film-within-the-film than he spent editing the party sequences. I point this out not to cinch any argument about Oja's contributions but to suggest that Welles' attitudes towards this portion of the film were far more complex and ambiguous than most accounts of the film have implied. Welles was always his own best devil's advocate.

[leamanc]

P.S. To all appearances, Welles spent far more time editing portions of the film-within-the-film than he spent editing the party sequences. I point this out not to cinch any argument about Oja's contributions but to suggest that Welles' attitudes towards this portion of the film were far more complex and ambiguous than most accounts of the film have implied. Welles was always his own best devil's advocate.

Thanks for your follow-up to McBride’s piece. I’m loving all the dialogue back and forth as we lead up to the official release.

Over the past 30 years or so of finding out what I could about this film, I never got the feeling that the film-within-the-film was meant to be a “parody.” Yes, we know Orson found those films to be all style and no substance, but I don’t think that meant he didn’t admire them on some level. A lot of those films, Antononioi’s included, owe a lot to Orson’s visual style, and I have to think he appreciated that aspect, even if he found the films to be meandering overall.

I mean, Orson did act in his friend Henry Jaglom’s A Safe Place, which could have only been put out by a major studio in this timeframe.

I’m a bit troubled by the reviews that say the film-within-a-film is a vicious pastiche. It always seemed to me it’s more of Orson saying “hey look, I could do this too...if I wanted to.”

[JMcBride]

I am pleased to see Jonathan Rosenbaum and (apparently) Oja Kodar backing down from their extravagant claim that she is, as he put it recently, the “co-author” with Orson Welles of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. As I wrote in my Wellesnet article on the film’s authorship, she deserves abundant credit for her creative contributions, along with Gary Graver and others, but as Jonathan concedes in the face of much evidence to the contrary, she did not direct the sex sequence in the car. Jonathan’s response does not directly address the other two sequences he claimed earlier as her directorial work but by offering what he says is Kodar’s overly expansive definition of “directing” seems to back down from that statement as well. I don’t know what their motivations were for making these claims, and their motivations may be more ambiguous than Pauline Kael’s, but throwing around loose and reckless claims of this sort has the effect of undermining Welles’s achievements. As I’ve written, the film-within-the-film is influenced (satirically) not only by Antonioni but also by Russ Meyer, Graver, John Huston, and other filmmakers of that era, as well as (with more solemn intent) by Kodar’s own dubious artistic inclinations. And I note that Jonathan (and Oja) do not respond to the questions I raise about the authorship of the script of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, so perhaps a quote is in order from Thomas More in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: “Silence betokens consent.”

[RayKelly]

As I wrote in my Wellesnet article on the film’s authorship, she deserves abundant credit for her creative contributions, along with Gary Graver and others, but as Jonathan concedes in the face of much evidence to the contrary, she did not direct the sex sequence in the car.

Some gasoline for the fire, misinformed movie critic Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune told his readers today (https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertai ... story.html) that Oja Kodar, not Orson Welles, directed that sequence.

"The young woman, constantly, constantly nude, is played by Oja Kodar, who was Welles’ lover and the credited co-screenwriter. Kodar herself directed the movie’s (and the movie-within-a-movie’s) arresting sexual centerpiece, an encounter inside a car during a rainstorm without a speck of tenderness."

UPDATED: Michael Phillips has amended his review to read: Kodar herself, by some accounts, directed the movie’s (and the movie-within-a-movie’s) arresting sexual centerpiece, an encounter inside a car during a rainstorm without a speck of tenderness.

[jbrooks]

To all appearances, Welles spent far more time editing portions of the film-within-the-film than he spent editing the party sequences. I point this out not to cinch any argument about Oja's contributions but to suggest that Welles' attitudes towards this portion of the film were far more complex and ambiguous than most accounts of the film have implied.

I am not sure that there's definitive evidence of how much time Welles spent editing which sequences. But even if there were, I don't think any conclusions can be drawn from that about the importance of those sequences relative to others. He may have spent more time tinkering with them because they were easier to work with (being shot in 35mm) or because more of that material was in the workprint footage he was able to retrieve from France. Or he may have enjoyed tinkering with them because they were the least important sequences and, for that reason, his ideas for them were less fixed in his mind. We don't know.

[Le Chiffre]

I too find it hard to believe that Kodar directed any of the masterful car sex scene, since she had no directorial experience. However, per this excerpt from Joseph McBride's article:

The comically stolid driver, who throws Kodar out into the rain at the end of the sequence, is played by Robert Aiken, who was Graver’s co-writer on his 1970 softcore film Sandra: The Making of a Woman

Gary Graver was already directing soft core porn, so it's somewhat more plausible that Oja and Graver may have done a few of the racier shots in that scene - and the bathroom orgy scene - without Welles's involvement (Bob Murawski said as much at the NYFF). The symbolic castration towards the end may still more plausibly have been directed by Oja, but like the other two scenes she is said to have directed, there's no real proof to support it.