Hopper / Welles

[admusicam]

Sad to discover the streeming service is only aviable in US.
I still have to wait to watch it and hope about another streaming méthode to have it in France. I hope about a cinéma projection in Lyon -as it was for The other side of the wind. If Netflix is not interrested with this new Welles opus, Mubi could be the right place...not to speak about the Dvd or blue Ray we are all dreaming about...

[Le Chiffre]

Sorry to hear that, admusicam. Hope you get a chance to see it soon. It's well worth watching.

I can't really add much to what Ray and Joe McBride eloquently said in their respective reviews, but one impression I get from watching the film is that Welles may have been using this interview to determine whether Hopper might be a good choice for Brooks Otterlake. I think he would have been, probably better than Rich Little. In fact, one might say a similar thing about the Jaglom/Mazursky footage.

Another thing that comes across is how uncomfortable Hopper felt as a spokesman for the counterculture, which is what Welles (as Hannaford) was probably hoping for him to pretend to be. You can feel Welles's frustration, as he realizes that Hopper is really not much of a political analyst, and that his leftism seems to revolve mainly around sex drugs and rock and roll. At one point, Hopper admits, "I'm not much of a reader", to which Welles deadpans, "Yeah", as if that was pretty obvious.

Hopper does provide an interesting description of his original, more linear version of THE LAST MOVIE, which he was editing at the time of this interview. Having seen the incomprehensible mess that his film eventually became, his original conception sounds like it would have been much better, and much clearer. A couple of his editors later said as much, one of them describing the original edit as "a damn good little movie."

Hopper does seem polite and relatively sober during this interview, and watching this footage, it's hard to believe it's the same guy from AMERICAN DREAMER, made a couple of months later, as well as the same guy who, just one week before, had driven his pickup truck on to an airline runway in an attempt to stop Michelle Phillips from leaving him after eight days of marriage (she says because of his drug-crazed sexual preferences).

Anyway, much thanks again to Murawski and Rymsza for putting this together, and thanks to the NYFF for making this movie available to watch online. A very interesting conversation that I hope winds up somewhere on either disc or a major streaming service. There's a lot more to analyze in it.

[RayKelly]

AFI Fest, the annual American Film Institute movie festival, will include HOPPER/WELLES this month.
https://www.wellesnet.com/afi-fest-hopper-welles/

[RayKelly]

Don't miss the NYFF video of Filip Jan Rymsza and Bob Murawski discussing the creation of HOPPER/WELLES.
https://www.wellesnet.com/nyff-video-rymsza-murawski/

[Wellesnet]

Todd McCarthy's review at Deadline:
https://deadline.com/2020/10/film-revie ... n50B2Ii1e4

Certainly this bonus document, which runs a rather generous 130 minutes and officially is credited as having been “directed by Orson Welles,” painfully reveals that Hopper — in the role of boy genius, cinematic wunderkind and voice of a generation — was a pretender; stoned or not, he hardly was a coherent spokesman for anything. Unlike the ultra-articulate older man, Hopper held very uninformed opinions, his sentences often just trailing off into a void, substance-addled or not. It now seems a wonder that there was something people found alluring in Dennis Hopper’s incoherence.

Film Stage interview with Filip Jan Rysza and Bob Murawski:
https://thefilmstage.com/hopper-welles- ... cal-media/

The Film Stage: Welles recorded the interview with Hopper in 1970 but the first known script for The Other Side of the Wind is from 1972, so this character Jake Hannaford that Orson is playing to interview Dennis was with him for a while. What is the origin of Jake?

Filip Jan Rymsza: It materialized in the late 1950s when he met Ernest Hemingway, that much we know. He went on record to say that, and at that point, he was thinking the relationship would be between an older bullfighter and his protégé. Much later, it changed to an older filmmaker on his way down and a young filmmaker on his way up. I think he already had a thesis of sort, more like a very succinct character breakdown on Hannaford. I don’t remember if that’s dated, but I think that predated this conversation with Hopper. Obviously, Hopper must have had something or was given something as a basis because given in this conversation, Welles often says, “Oh, no, remember? I’m on Franco’s side.” So he must have fed Hopper something, at least a little bit of background about who he was meeting with.

Film Threat review:
https://filmthreat.com/reviews/hopper-welles/

As you can imagine, since we have two directors sitting there, many films are mentioned, including Last Year at Marienbad, La Notte, I, Vitelloni, Paths of Glory, and A Place in the Sun. There is also a lot of talk about what it means to Hopper to be a director and the things he likes and hates about it. Because Orson Welles is Orson Welles, we end up getting his opinion on things too. Welles says that “directors have got to get closer to poetry and further from creation” and “The director ought to be a poet and a magician rather than a god.” This conversation goes into heady, deep places.

[RayKelly]

Alberto Anile ("Orson Welles in Italy") has graciously shared with us an English translation of his upcoming article for "Cabiria" on "Hopper/Welles."
https://www.wellesnet.com/at-orsons-fireplace/

[Wellesnet]

Scene with subs:
https://vimeo.com/490045271

[tonyw]

THE AMERICAN DREAMER (1971) has just resurfaced on youtube in a faded print. 20 mins into this documentary Hooper believes THE LAST MOVIE that he is seen editing will be better than EASY RIDER and draws some comparisons with AMBERSONS. He also mentions welles approaching Universal for $500,000 but turned down. Hopper feels that even if the Welles film circulated through college film societies at the time it would be worthwhile. He expresses contempt towards the studios for not supporting Welles at the time he was working on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

[maxrael]

I see the YouTube footage has been taken and replaced with the message:

Video unavailable
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Alexander Welles."

Which I guess might suggest a blockage to this getting a wider release on streaming services or Blu-ray.

See also: "Alexander Welles - who is this?"
http://www.wellesnet.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=797

[RayKelly]

I see the YouTube footage has been taken and replaced with the message:
Video unavailable
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Alexander Welles.

Alexander "Sasha" Welles is Oja Kodar's nephew and represented her interests during the completion of The Other Side of the Wind.
Sasha recently told me he is now a rights holder to The Other Side of the Wind, which means he co-owns the negative with producer Filip Jan Rymsza.
Obviously, Hopper/Welles is culled from that same negative.
As a co-owner, Sasha has the legal right to object to his copyrighted material being displayed on YouTube without his consent.
BTW, this should not surprise anyone. In 2006, and again in 2012, outtakes from The Other Side of the Wind were posted on YouTube. In both cases, they were pulled after a copyright claim was filed by Olpal Inc. (Kodar).