The Answer, My Friends . . . , - Theories on TOSOTW

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I think it would be quite a disconcerting film (much more so than F for Fake, because this time Welles has made the original material quite disconcerting), which is not to say that it would be great or lesser Welles. I think it would be quite an overwhelming experience (especially if there are many scenes like the press-conference scene).

I don't really think its any of the categories listed. I think Welles had a right to be quite angry after all those years of things not turning out for such a damn talented man, and i think the cutting in this movie would have reflected that. I don't think Orson Welles was ever over the hill. The day he died (i hear) he was writing stage directions for some television versions of some early stage productions (or something - he was writing out blocking or arranging for a production scheduled for that afternoon or the next day). I don't think Welles ever burned out. He burned bright for so long, he just burned longer than his body would allow him. His mind, though, and his creativity never ran out, never gave up.

My opinion: just is that, like with Othello, he was doing his best to finish it, and desparately wanted to finish it, but because of that middle-man who was stealing all his backers' money, he kept running out. And like his Don Quixote, he was going to finish it "like a novelist," as he says in Filming Othello, whenever he wanted to.

[Oscar Christie]

My opinion: just is that, like with Othello, he was doing his best to finish it, and desparately wanted to finish it, but because of that middle-man who was stealing all his backers' money, he kept running out.

Do we know for a fact that the "Theiving Middleman" story is True?

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I read that in Leaming, who did immense research as well as consulted Welles on all subjects. And why would he lie about a thing like that? If he'd had the money from the backers, he would easily have been able to finish the movie. Maybe Jeff can better answer this question, i don't know what other sources you could possibly use to corroborate this story.

I am of the opinion that Welles cared very deeply for his films, and while he perhaps enjoyed making them so much he would have regretted their ending, he certainly would have done everything in his power to finish Wind. Problem was IMO, money matters and damned legal troubles wrested things from his power.

[blunted by community]

i read, i think in the brady bio, that the spaniard was stealing. he would get money from investors, then stall welles, telling him, any day now. welles had resorted to using his on cash and getting people to work for free. when welles found out about the theiving spaniard, he broke down crying. he said it was a curse. he was the little man that every time he left his house was struck by lightning.

i also don't think he ever burned out. touch of evil, which he made, i think at 42 years old, is more technically advanced than kane. the footage we have from OSOTW is nothing short of breath taking. fear of completion? BS. lack of funds, and lack of confidence from money people due in part to old stories, and to contemptuos writers like higham, and kael.

i account for big brass ring and craddle being awfull not to any corruption of talent. had he written them 30 years earlier, they still would have been awfull. he just was not a good writer.

he never wrote a novel. wrote some very difficult to read articles. was given an advance to write his life story and ended up having to give the money back. i think it was oja, or bogdanovich that had to pay back the publsher advance because welles had spent it. bad writer, bad people skills, no respect for money. all the ingridients needed to be a great artist.

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Perhaps you are right, Blunted. I always felt that it was not the dialogue in Welles that made it great. The dialogue in the screenplays he reworked and partly wrote may be great (Kane, Touch of Evil for example), but if Manciewicz's original script, or the original script for Touch of Evil had been filmed by other men, what horrible B-movies they would have made! If a Welles script has not been shot by Welles and structured by Welles, it will not make a great movie, i think.

[blunted by community]

yes, brown, you are right on the money. that is why i find all these attempts at making a welles script these days ridiculous. what we most admire in welles, his vision, his handling of a camera, his intuition on where to place the camera, his character choreography, all that, died with welles. the least important thing in any welles production was the scrreenplay. the well written screenplays in his ouvre were adapted from books, or from some one elses screenplay.

[Oscar Christie]

what we most admire in welles, his vision, his handling of a camera, his intuition on where to place the camera, his character choreography

Blunto,
Speaking for myself, the thing I most admire about Welles is his persona, his life story, his genius.

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Dear Bygaber: Don't let Blunted lead you too far astray.

Dear Blunted: I sometimes think you are twins:

A kind of Dr. Community and Mr. Blunted. We can see you morphing on the page!

You are quite right that Welles was as good the night he died (or better) than the day he stepped on the set of CITIZEN KANE.

But I find no thieving Spaniard in the OTHELLO production. There were, according to Brady, an Italian producer, Montatori Scalera, who advanced money thinking he was financing an adaptation of Verdi's Otello, and a Russian, Michel Olian, whose friends invested $200,000 in return for half the picture -- and then everybody from Korda to Zanuck with little flyers -- and most of the picture's costs of $500,000 eventually provided by Welles. [Brady, pp 432-34]

Welles, like most good writers, was an improver. If you are correct that Welles never lost his skill, and I believe you are, Blunted, I think there is an excellent chance that he would have made fine films from his scripts of THE CRADLE WILL ROCK and THE BIG BRASS RING, and that those films would have substantially improved upon the scripts he wrote -- as CITIZEN KANE and his cut of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS were improved as he re-wrote them on the set, improvised, shot and edited them.

And to say that all his techniques and innovations died with him is absurd. Directors have been learning from Welles ever since . . . KANE, as at one point, I thought we had agreed.

A highly talented director like Oliver Stone, one with a similar temperment, could make a dazzling film from one of Welles' scripts. We just haven't had a director of that quality attempt it.

I am reminded, just today, of a film I saw some years ago, a Russian film, entitled KHROSTALYOV, MASHINU! (Khrostalyov, My Car!, Aleksei German, 1998), which is THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS on speed, and set in the (literally) last gasp mania of Stalin, 1953. It is, for all intents and purposes, a picture Orson Welles might have made. And one he would have been proud of.

So either way, Welles lives.

And I might add, for such a terrible writer, he was good enough to write (and improve, I'm sure) radio scripts, a couple of weekly newspaper columns, and major speeches for, and on behalf of, FDR in his 1940 and 1944 campaigns. [There are some reports that he was consulted on FDR's famous "Fireside Chats," which are thought to have insured his Third Term.] Welles never lost an affecting colloquial warmth, which is a main strength of entertaining (if not great) writing.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

glenn:
i can find no theiving spaniard in Othello

me:
the theiving spaniard was on OSOTW.

glenn:
Blunted, I think there is an excellent chance that he would have made fine films from his scripts of THE CRADLE WILL ROCK and THE BIG BRASS RING,

ME:
yes, that is what i have been saying in one way or another for the last 5 posts. the screenplay in a welles film means nothing.

glenn:
And to say that all his techniques and innovations died with him is absurd. Directors have been learning from Welles ever since . . . KANE, as at one point, I thought we had agreed.

me:
glenn, get with the program. welles' intuition, his genius, his talent, his brain, his arms, his legs, his head all died when he died. geeeeeez, how dense are you

glenn:
And I might add, for such a terrible writer, he was good enough to write (and improve, I'm sure) radio scripts, a couple of weekly newspaper columns, and major speeches for, and on behalf

me:
i have orson welles almanac and other writing, from july 1928 to nov 1945. 352 pages. and there is no remarkable writing any where. there is clear writing in it, but i'd be willing to bet that was a proof reader for the paper because orson was a name and having him write a column gives a paper clout.

if you read houseman's book you would read how welles adapted. 2 copies of the book, scissors, empty pages, and a glue pot. welles was a great paste up artist

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Hmm...

tricky question. Allow me to refine my position.

I think Orson found isolated writing, in and of itself, to be empty, a sort of vacuum. Orson was all about performance. So when he wrote (or rewrote or reworked) something to be performed, it was marvellous. His speeches, if a little too measured, are never the less magnificent pieces of oration. And his movie scripts, after much reworking while on the set (while performance is in mind), i also like. His script for The Trial, for example, is fantastic. He improved immensely on Kafka's novel, adding humorous sexual puns in the opening scene, for example.

But the kind of Orson Welles writing which was created without performance in mind (newspaper articles, for e.g, which were often thrown-together collections of research done by his advisors, according to a newspaper publisher quoted in Leaming), or perhaps an early movie-draft, i don't think would be good.

Also, i think, though this is a separate point, a Welles speech when isolated from its performance, will not seem very impressive. Perhaps this is why Blunted has not been impressed by reading Welles scripts. The magic is given by the performance of it, if not by mise-en-scene and camera angles. But bear in mind that I said that the thing to least admire in Welles is the script. I didn't say it wasn't admirable. Just by comparison to his visual splendour and his character, the writing is not admirable.

[blunted by community]

where did you read the trial screenplay? or are you judging from what is on the screen. if that is the case, the trial screenplay could be as simple, or dull as craddle. it's what the man brought to the screen from this simple, or odd writing that we are nuts about.

i can write the skeleton for a screenplay on index cards, and the rule of thumb (always loved that saying) is no more than nine words per card, per scene. for me, those 9 words bring a 1000 words and pictures to mind. welles didn't need excellent writing, he knew what he was going to do from the simple stuff he put down. so he never perfected his writing. in later years when his stock was down and all he had to recomend him was a screenplay, he suffered.

had speilberg given welles a few million to make craddle, who was going to tell welles his screenplay was no good, and who was going to stop welles from going into a tirade, whining like a wounded elephant that his work we being basterdised again?
i'm sure welles' picture would have outclassed the screenplay, but all that cheap-stevie saw was the screenplay.

in actuallity, cheap stevie could have thrown welles a couple of million just for the hell of it. he would have helped welles immensly, and stevei would not have felt the missing 2 million in the slightest. most of the films in the top 10 money makers of all time are his!

[Oscar Christie]

i have orson welles almanac and other writing, from july 1928 to nov 1945. 352 pages.

Blunto,
What kinds of things are in it? Highland Park News columns, etc.?

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I'm going by the difference between the book and the movie. IMDB cites Pierre Cholot as working on dialogue, so perhaps some credit can be given him for some of the humorous dialogue, but on the whole, The Trial is a wonderful adaptation of the book, which greatly improves on it, in my opinion, and renders some of its more wordy passages into wonderful images (the three colleagues following K all bowing together - little touches like this are what make it such a wonderful adaptation). In general, the dialogue is much better in the movie than in the book.

I'm not sure why the emphasis on "reading the screenplay," and considering a screenplay as writing, not preparation for an audio-visual production. The screenplay is supposed to be an evocation of the movie, not a novel. Why do I have to read the screenplay to know whether I like the dialogue? When you read the screenplay, just as when it was written, you have to imagine what it describes as a movie. The screenplay is not supposed to exist isolated from the movie, its merely a guideline for how to go about making it.

[blunted by community]

brown, take a pill, relax. i asked because i've been looking for the screenplay. and the blue prints welles drew for sets that were never built.

[Sir Bygber Brown]

lol! I thought we were having a discussion - aren't i allowed to raise a point or two? I'm not shouting there, in that last paragraph. i'm perfectly calm, raising a reasonable point. And i didn't write that paragraph in reaction to your asking whether i'd read the Trial screenplay (which, in answer to your question, i am not sure whether it has been published) i mean the flavour of this entire discussion. Read it again bearing those things in mind. I think its a valid point.

Meanwhile, continuing the thread (which i think originated in doubts over the quality of TOSOTW's screenplay), here is an example of some great dialogue from Kane. An example of economic expression, and brilliant use of dialogue (in the context of what has just happened between the two men, which there is no need to re-explain here):

Jed: I thought we weren't speaking.
Kane: Of course we're speaking, Jedediah. You're fired.

(exact wording could be slightly out)