Q's for Michael Dawson

[Wellesnet]

THIS IS MY BEST
Sound quality ratings for Archive.org:

11/24/44 - "Around the World in 80 Days" - Fair 4

12/19/44 - "The Plot To Overthrow Christmas" - Good 7

03/13/45 - "Heart of Darkness" - Very good 8

03/20/45 - "Miss Dilly Says No" - Pretty Good 6

03/27/45 - "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" - Fair 4

04/03/45 - "The Diamond As Big as the Ritz" - Excellent 9

04/10/45 - "Master of Ballentrae" - Fair 4

04/17/45 - "I Will Not Go Back" - Pretty Good 6

04/24/45 - "Anything Can Happen" - Fair 4

MST

Around the World - Pretty Good 6
Count of Monte Cristo - Pretty Good 6
The Hitchhiker - Very Good 8
Jane Eyre - Fair 4
Passenger to Bali - Good 7
The Search For Henri Lefevre - Fair 5
Life With Adam - Fair 5
The Moat Farm Murder - Pretty Good 6
Golden Honeymoon/Romeo and Juliet - Good 7
Hell on Ice - Very Good 8
Abednego the Slave - Good 7
I'm a Fool/The Tell Tale Heart - Pretty Good 6
Moby Dick - Pretty Good 6
The Apple Tree/Cynara - Pretty Good 6
Scenes from King Lear - Pretty Good 6

[Wellesnet]

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[Black Irish]

tEST

[Wellesnet]

Dawson 4th interview:
OTHELLO-
MD: I’m glad we did it. It catylized an interest in Welles, and turned up the bunson burner on studios looking at the other art fare in their archives, polishing that stuff up and getting a restoration industry going. I look at it as hopefully having been the basis for promoting the concept of restoration in general, but it was also a factor in restoring Orson Welles’s reputation and correcting the misassumption that he went downhill after CITIZEN KANE.
Wellesnet: Right. One of the great things about it was that it got so much publicity because of all the work that was done on it. Some purists say that a lot of that work, such as re-recording the music score in stereo, was unneeded and that it would have been better to have just released a good 35mm print of the original, but it probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly the publicity or attention that way.
MD: Well, one of the issues that we were dealing with in that regard was that there was an Arena BBC documentary on Welles in which he specifically points out the fact that something abhorrent had happened to the music score and the sound, that it was not the soundtrack that he remembered. Something had gone amiss, so to speak, and that it was wonderful when it was originally recorded.
And so in these optical tracks, even in the optical masters, when we listened to it, it was clearly over-modulated, and the frequency response was clipped by at least 10% at each end of the sound spectrum. When we would take out the hiss and other sound artifacts, we began to hear certain nuances that you wouldn’t normally pick up. So we thought, “Let’s re-record this music score.” Now with the issue of stereo, you have modern movie theatres with modern sound systems, and we just felt that, to re-release this film, we wanted to at least accommodate the better technological environment that existed in theatres across the country, as well as to allow people to really listen to the music score in it’s full glory, so to speak.
THE MONK CHANT-
MD: One of the problems was that the distributor, Castle Hill Films, played musical chairs with the laboratories and lab elements. While some digital work was done in Chicago, the original restoration was being mastered in Pittsburgh, and some other work was done at their own labs. Somewhere along the line, unbeknownced to us, they got ahold of the wrong elements, an untimed workprint and a test track, and thought that they were the master elements. And so the first prints that were struck had problems with the visual timing and the dialogue track. Unfortunately it got far enough along that one of these prints was shown at the world premiere screening at the Lincoln Center in New York.
In later trying to rectify those problems, inherent in the fact that they had the wrong elements, they did some things that we disagreed with. In the opening funeral procession, there is this wonderful Latin chanting by monks, and they removed it for the film’s entire theatrical release. When we confronted them with this, their explanation was, “Well, modern audiences don’t understand Latin anyway, so we didn’t think it was necessary.”
Wellesnet: That was the only really glaring error in the film that I could see. Do you think they really thought that they were entitled to make such a boneheaded aesthetic decision, or was it just a case of them screwing it up at the labs again and trying to rationalize it later?
MD: There was a gentleman that was assigned to do some additional work on the film in New York, and I think that’s a hard call to make. It could have been a mistake that was made, but regardless, they only compounded the issue by later coming up with that excuse. They would have almost been better off just saying, “We fucked up.” But they wanted to cover it up with the “modern audiences” line. That’s when I went to Jonathon Rosenbaum and told him that, as a leading Welles scholar, he needed to call them and tell them, “You can’t do that.” And so, by the time the film was released on VHS by Academy Home Entertainment, the chanting was back in.
I literally had dreams where people were picketing the theatre saying, “Put back the chanting!” But we wanted to get away from the stigma of an Orson Welles film being problematic, so we kept our mouths shut about all these problems. And there was a tremendous amount of positive reaction when it was released, so why bring up issues at that point. And they were later rectified for video.
3-DVD set of OTHELLO-
Wellesnet: What do you think are the chances of that happening?
MD: It’s an effort of going back to Beatrice and seeing if she’d be interested in doing that. It’s certainly a worthy project to be pursued, but there hasn’t been any talk about it that I’m aware of. Right now my concentration is on CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.
*
Wellesnet: According to Stefan Drossler of the Munich Museum, Oja Kodar is planning some celebrations for the Welles centennial in London and Tokyo.
MD: That would be great. I know they’re going to want to invite her to Woodstock too; that’s something that is on the blackboard, so to speak. I think the whole year should be a Welles celebration, with individuals doing globetrotting to celebrate. There will also be an effort to get Christopher Welles Feder to come back because she actually attended the Todd School. You only have one building left from Todd, Roger Hall, but you do have Woodstock itself, certainly the Opera House and the town square, and all the affiliate restaurants and bars. It’s a beautiful setting.
Wellesnet: Yes, it’s a wonderful little oasis in the middle of the cornfields. Now how did you get on the board of directors?
*
OTHELLO LD-
Wellesnet: It was pretty bold of Criterion to just disregard the contract and release the original version. You’ve said that Beatrice went after them because they didn’t ask her permission, but would she have given that permission if they had asked?
MD: Probably not, because at the time, the thinking was, “This doesn’t make any sense. Why are we getting into a war of the restored version vs. the original version?” Criterion had a Laserdisc utilizing the promotion image for the restoration, and they even advertised it as being the restored version, complete with re-recorded music score by members of the Chicago Symphony and the Chicago Lyric Opera. Then they released it, and had the liner notes by Rosenbaum explaining that no, it was the original version instead.
If you look at the Criterion OTHELLO Laserdisc credits, you’ll see that they are probably the most voluminous production credits for that company ever, and that was because of all the technical reworking and applications that were utilized to improve the sound quality and the image quality, so that the gap between the original version and the restored version wasn’t so wide.
If you read Rosenbaum’s liner notes, he claims that in the scene where Rodrigo tries to kill Cassio there were forty mandolins. We tried to point out many times that, even at the time, when we were between the two worlds of analog and digital, we had the technical capability to tell how many mandolins were utilized, and there were not forty. I tried to point that out to Jonathon, and it gets to a point where there’s certain disdain on the part of technicians towards film critics, because sometimes they go out on a limb, not really understanding certain aspects of production. We were able to confront him and prove that there were not forty mandolins. But then there is a resistance to that proof, because then you can’t use that as the foundation for your argument.
Wellesnet: It seems like grasping at straws. I mean, you don’t see forty mandolin players onscreen; why would there be forty mandolins on the soundtrack?
MD: Well yeah…even as an incidental thematic situation. Remember, a Welles film was made as a “paycheck to paycheck” production, with Welles darting around Europe, appearing in other people’s films - certainly, sometimes not very good films, although he was the best thing in them – to get paid, and to pick up short ends for missing footage. With leftover footage from that particular project, he’d put somebody in a wig, throw a robe on ‘em, and get his reverse shot.
Under those circumstances, the idea that financially he would have been able to put forty mandolins in a studio for a recording…that’s one issue just from a purely historical point of view. To get down to the technical analysis of the soundtrack, forty mandolins were not used.
*
Wellesnet: You found the OTHELLO negative in a New Jersey warehouse. Was the Criterion LD made from the same source?
MD: No, what they used was a 35mm release print, given to them by Gary Graver, from what I understand. They did not utilize the original camera negative, or an interpositive or a dupe negative made from it. They were not in possession of those elements.
*
Wellesnet: How did you get involved in the OTHELLO project?
MD: I had been working on a documentary, called CITIZEN WELLES, for about two years, and the joke at the time was, is….
RERECORDED MUSICSCORE-
Wellesnet: Jonathon Rosenbaum raised awareness of the fact that the music score had been rerecorded in his article, OTHELLO GOES HOLLYWOOD. One of his accusations was that Michael Pendowski was hired to transcribe the music by ear even though Lavignino’s original score still existed in Italy.
MD: That was an error on Jonathon’s part, and I think that partly stems from an incident where Mike had been up all night celebrating something else, and was tired, and I had not debriefed him in terms of who Rosenbaum was, in terms of being a leading Welles scholar. And I think an argument ensued, and there were some negative feelings generated by that argument, and I think it was the first domino to get knocked over in terms of taking issue with the music score. But it had been researched, and there were these music societies that we looked to, to find those original score sheets. We did find what they call the “workscore sheets” that were used at the time the music was originally recorded. And they were a match, almost one to one, with what Michael had done in the reconstruction.
You also have to remember we were using a click track… two symphonies Beethoven’s 5th…So Rosenbaum’s argument is almost facetious.
Then there was the issue that he had attended an affair in Italy, and one of the children of Lavignino had told him, “That’s not my father’s score.” So that was also used by Jonathon as another weapon against Pendowski.
Wellesnet: Do you think Lavignino’s son was upset because he didn’t get a payout? I mean, why would anyone want to deal with another estate if they can avoid it?
MD: Well, that could certainly be an element, but sometimes it can be an ego thing too, “because the family wasn’t approached”, that sort of thing.
But you know, to me the whole issue reflects what I call the “dirty plate” syndrome, where people become used to a particular aesthetic, so there is an innate nostalgiac connection to a particular work of art. The Sistine Chapel is a great example, where you had hundreds of years of candlesoot, not to mention 20th century air pollution, brought about by downtown Roman traffic, that created somewhat of a varnish. And when it was restored, the colors became vibrant, almost day-glow colors. But that’s how they looked when Michaelangelo came down off the scaffold.
Similarly, we were trying eliminate what we thought were technical flaws, flaws which seemed to add to the paradigm that Welles continued to go downhill after CITIZEN KANE because he had separated himself from the studio system and became an independent filmmaker, way before it became vogue to be an independent.
We disagreed with purists in that we thought those technical flaws were due to a lack of funding for post-production, and everybody in the business knows that when you lack funds for the “Main Canvas”, one area in which it shows up is in post-production sound. So we wanted to eliminate those technical flaws because we saw them as distractions. They’ve been used as examples of flaws, so by eliminating them, you can better appreciate the aesthetics that were there to begin with, without being distracted. Purists grab on to the idea that these technical flaws are actually aesthetic virtues, and that’s where I’m willing to have a debate.

[Wellesnet]

3/1/16

Dawson on the new Chimes restoration:

Visually, he said it was very impressive, with only about 30 minor artifacts that could probably be cleared up in a day or so.

However, the sound had some problems, particularly the music score, which he said sounded over-compressed, over-processed, resulting in some unnecessary distortion. He said the treble levels sounded like they had been boosted for greater clarity, but the dialogue was at times too sybillant, resulting in a hissy sound when someone pronounced an "s" sound, especially Gielgud. This is related to the problem of "P" popping.

Also, he said he was aware at times that there were no 'presence' tracks, tracks that capture the ambience of a particular environment, and make dubbed dialogue sound more like a part of that environment. As a result, the post-dubbing sometimes seemed too obvious. Also, there was a stock wind sound that he said was inserted by the restoration team, and a few sound effects like flags flapping, were missing.

He was surprised that there were no credits for the restoration, and said that was probably because this is considered a rough draft restoration by Janus. He called it a high-end slap-together that was probably cobbled together from several release prints instead of being taken from the master negative. He speculated that the original master negative may not have been stored properly in Europe, and therefore was not in good enough condition to use for this project. The master dupe negative in America was better preserved, and would make for a better viewing experience.

He said Adrianna Saltzman has not dropped her plans for a lawsuit, which could happen in a matter of days.

He said Citizen Welles is going to have a four-minute trailer narrated by Michael Shannon. That Trailer should be ready by the Woodstock Art Fair, scheduled for this October. They are also attmepting to raise money for a documentary film on the Todd School.

[Wellesnet]

Sound quality ratings for Campbell Playhouse shows at Archive.org and the new IU Welles radio site
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[Black Irish]

test

[Black Irish]

Dawson second interview, Part 6

They (Saltzmann’s kids from his first marriage) didn’t fight the contract, and since they didn’t do anything, she couldn’t do anything, for four years. I don’t know how acrimonious his divorce from his first wife was, but this may have been a way for the kids to get back at Adrianna.
Meanwhile, the Piedra faction began to try and distribute the film and sign deals, giving it limited distribution, although not in the United States. The Piedras contended that the Saltzann estate had no documentation to support their assertion of ownership. After the French court case, the judge gave the Piedras the rights to the film, but concerning the U.S. copyright, they did give Adrianna 25% ownership, in contrast to what the original contract had said.
Where there’s a real perkhole here is that there was a down payment made toward the purchase of Saltzmann’s rights as they existed prior to that court ruling. And the due diligence necessary by a third party created a paper trail, not only under U.S. law, but under French law as well. So there may have to be an additional ruling in that regard, so to protect ourselves, we purchased the music synchronization performance rights, which means that if CHIMES is released in the United States, they have to get our permission.
ROSENBAUM ADDENDUM:
I don’t want to appear to be anti-Jonathon Rosenbaum, because I still consider him to be an associate and a friend, and I have great respect for his writing ability. It’s just that we have this gentleman’s disagreement about the OTHELLO music score. But there’s no real point of contention about the visual portion of the film.

HARVEY WEINSTEIN ADDENDUM:
Mirimax and Weinstein were interested in CHIMES, especially since they had wanted OTHELLO but lost it to Julian Schlossberg, Harvey’s longtime rival; which by the way, reportedly caused Weinstein to read the riot act to his staff at breakfast one morning. The problem with Mirimax obtaining the distribution rights to CHIMES was twofold. One, the company at that time was in the process of being bought by Disney, which meant that corporate protocols were more restrictive; and CHIMES was not a film that could be acquired hurriedly.
Secondly, one of the main underlings to Weinstein at the time did not like the film, calling it a “pastiche” in one of our conference calls. Because he knew that Harvey wanted CHIMES, this underling explained all the legal problems surrounding the film to him in such a way so as to make sure that Harvey would want to walk away from it. It’s too bad we couldn’t have just leapfrogged over this underling and gone right to Harvey.
MT: Some of us at Wellesnet thought that Weinstein was aligned with Beatrice, and thought if she was aligned with Mirimax’s legal and financial muscle, and your restoration was going full steam, then a re-release of the film was imminent. But then we began hearing about all these people in Europe, like the Saltzmann Estate.
MD: Was that an assumption made because of what the Welles Estate was saying about their rights to CHIMES? Or because of Mirimax’s interest in the film?
MT: Both, but we were mistaken in our assumptions about who owned what. It was a situation like THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, where you hear things that get your hopes up, and then those hopes get dashed.
MD: Oh absolutely. And you know, if we had been able to get to Harvey Weinstein by himself, and get him into a conference room, we probably could have pounded out a deal in four hours. And the film would have gotten finished and released. Period.
Now about the relationship between the Welles Estate and Mirimax, I think that was an association that was assumed because we had done OTHELLO with Beatrice, and were also discussing CHIMES with Mirimax. And at one point Beatrice thought she owned the rights to the film. But as it turned out, Welles had sold all legal claims to it before his death.
CRITERION LD ADDENDUM:
But here’s a second thing: there were also a lot of people who bought it thinking it was the restored version, and never bothered to read Rosenbaum’s liner notes explaining that it was not. So after watching the film, they concluded that the “restoration” was not very good. Unfortunately, Beatrice felt victimized by this too, since people would say, “Oh, she did a lousy restoration.” There are scratches there, it has a really high artifact level, the sound is not that good, they talked about fixing the lip-sync, but the LD is still out of sync, etc..
MT: Well, there was a lot of publicity surrounding the fact that the film was restored for it’s theatrical release, so it’s natural to assume that if people bought it on any video format, they would think it was the restored version.
MD: Absolutely, and so there was a negativity because people thought “Oh, we’ve been hearing about the restored version, and after taking a look at the laserdisc, it’s a decent version of it per se, but it doesn’t look restored. And they said they re-recorded the music score, but it doesn’t sound that good to me.”
MT: “There’s no CSO…”
MD: Exactly. And we got even more letters complaining about that, then from people who found out from the liner notes that it was the original and not the restored version. It was about two to one. And so what came out of all this was a kind of schizophrenia regarding the restoration, with some taking issue with Beatrice, and some taking issue with the restoration in general. But certainly when it was first released, about 90% of the critical community’s reaction was very positive. It got great reviews, and that’s why we all kept our mouths shut about all the various problems we’d been having
MT: Any chance we’ll ever see that 3-DVD set of OTHELLO, like the complete MR. ARKADIN?
MD: Maybe. The problem is that when you compare the Criterion LD version to the Chicago restoration, what you’re looking at is merely a variation of restoration. The differences may not be substantive enough to warrant having both in the same DVD set.
MT: But there’s also the European version, the original that won the Cannes Film Festival, which has different editing at the beginning.
MD: Yes, you could include that as a “European” version if you want, since it was also an edit by Welles himself. But then you get into an argument of saying “Wait a minute. You’re re-releasing an earlier edit that he had? Which rules, his earlier or his later?” Assuming he did one final edit on the film, there’s a strong argument that that’s the way he wanted the film to be seen.
MT: The original European version also has Suzanne Cloutier’s original voice as Desdamona, which is much more girlish then Gudrun Ure’s, who did the redubbing for the American version. And that, in a strange way, changes some of the dynamics in the relationship between Desdamona and Othello.
MD: Yes, I think you’re right, and that is an issue. So I would be up for that; a set including both the original Cannes and restored versions.
*
Woodstock addendum
MD: As you know, Chuck Workman has a Welles documentary coming out, and I was shooting an interview for it on the day of the Woodstock stage dedication to Welles, but I was doing it mainly for these little spots that we’re going to release for promoting the 100th anniversary festival, and the 80th anniversary fest next year (of the 1934 Theatre fest that Welles staged with his mentors Hilton Edwards and Michael Macliammior). Chuck Workman was wondering why there were cameras there at the stage dedication, because he knows I have my own project, which Jim Naremore is a part of. I told him that the joke was originally, since my project was started in 1990, “was CITIZEN WELLES going to be finished before the 20th Century was over?” Now the joke is, “Is the film going to be finished before the end of the 21st Century?”
I’ve since been approached by several people, including an affiliate of the BBC, which surprised me, since they had done the Arena documentary back in 1982, probably the best documentary on Welles ever. We put together this huge 30-minute work-in-progress trailer, which we did copyright, and one of the original investors who wanted us to at least get Volume One done in time for the 100th birthday, was concerned that I might be giving away things in my interview for Chuck that they wanted kept secret for my film. So there’s been a bit of pressure from my friends and investors in the project not to “show my cards”, so to speak.
MT: You mentioned footage of the Todd School and Roger Hill. Have you thought of putting some of that together for the celebration next year?
MD: I’m going to take a lot of stuff from Volume One and use it for these one-minute promos, for both next year and the 100th. It’ll be showing bits and pieces of it to promote both the fests and my documentary, hopefully a two-fold purpose and result.
So one thing I’ve thought about is releasing Volume One at the beginning of 2015, then a few months later release Volume Two, then at the end of the year release Volume Three. That way, we can get the whole thing off the shelf. Next year would be a perfect opportunity to show the Woodstock stuff, so it’s certainly possible we could show some of it as a “work-in-progress”.

*

DAWSON ADDENDUM 4/9/13:
There were people who thought they were buying the restored version, so there was that complaint.
The Image Entertainment DVD essentially is the “Chicago’ version of the film. The irony is that there was a VHS version released after that, in the waning days of VHS, by Cinar, a Canadian affiliate of Image. The difference between that and the Image DVD is that the Cinar literally has zero artefacts. The downside to it is that it’s VHS analog format, not even standard definition digital. But other then the Image Entertainment, the UK DVD, and the version shown on Turner Classic Movies, and the Cinar VHS; those are all basically the Chicago version, and those versions don’t have Julian Schlossberg’s name on them, it just says “Chicago Cinema Entertainment in conjunction with Beatrice Welles.”
It could very well have been a case of embarrassment, because we first determined from a test print after it’s first theatrical release that Schlossberg and his team had gotten ahold of the wrong elements and sent a wrong version to the labs. After an anniversary screening at the Cannes Film Festival, certain people saw that their names were not in the credits and complained. We offered to send the right elements to the distributor, but they said there wasn’t time. That’s when we realized that they had the wrong elements. Ed Stone talked with the distributors and they began asking for digi-beta masters for the purposes of DVD production and cable TV showings. Being altruistic, we kept quiet about it at the time because we didn’t want it to leak out that this Welles project was problematic, that there was so much skirmishing just in trying to get a film restored.
At the point that Schlossberg realized what he had done, he probably feared for his own attachment to the project. I mean, who wants to not only get there name removed from the credits, which have now been modified to remove his name, but to get his ass fired from the project outright for not having the right elements. The additional work that he had done in New York was totally unnecessary. So they went back to the original credit, and I’ve always been curious as to why.



The only version that didn’t include the monk chant was the initial theatrical release – because they had gotten ahold of the wrong elements. The distributor Julian Schlossberg, president of Castle Hill Films, had somehow gotten ahold of an untimed workprint and a way-overprocessed test track and thought that those were our master elements. And so they went to make corrective changes on that because they were on a strict timetable for the theatrical release. In making those corrective changes, did some things that raised some eyebrows. To this day I’m not sure Beatrice even knows about it. Even Schlossberg may not have been aware of it. But it was eventually rectified for Video.
The monks chant going back into the film was the one positive.
MT: When I saw the film at the Fine Arts Theatre in Chicago, the monks’ chanting was not there, and also they had put a widescreen scope on the film, so that most of the visual compositions were ruined, with half of people’s heads chopped off, the tops of people’s heads chopped off constantly. I actually walked out and asked for my money back, and they had fixed it when I went back again the next week, but I cringe when I think of how many people saw it that way in it’s first week, which is when the majority of people would have seen it.
MD: Sure, a lot of people probably walked out thinking “Well, that was odd. Why would Welles frame things like that?”…thinking that chopping off people’s heads was something HE was doing, this “great genius”…all the miscomposed shots just further evidence of his decline. It’s one of those nightmarish things, and of course, for the LA debut, there were the Rodney King riots, which obviously put a big damper on theatre going. It was an interesting time, to say the least.
Schlossberg was probably made aware of that additional work in New York, because it gave him license to put his name above Welles’s in the poster design.
If he could have gotten away with it…
There was some additional work that had been done in New York, and released on Academy Home Video, to replace the Monks’ chanting back into the film.
*
MT: Sounds like the Saltzmann estate is almost as contentious as the Welles Estate.
MD: To a certain degree, yes.
*
MT: You’ve mentioned elsewhere that Gary Graver told you that Welles had wanted to record both MACBETH and OTHELLO in stereo?
MD: Yes, and I also had a conversation with Chris Welles Feder some years ago when we showed OTELLO at Lincoln Center, and I’m pretty sure she said the same thing, although I’m not positive. But I can tell you that Gary Graver was adamant about it in our conversations. If you look at the reconstructed MACBETH by the Folger Archives, which is really a reassembled construct of the original edit, they play a 5-minute suite from the music score before the film even begins, and it’s wonderful.
MT: Oh yeah, MACBETH has a great score too. Jaques Ibert.
MD: Which only supports even more the idea of Welles having wanted to release both films in stereo.
MT: A few years ago on Wellesnet, we got word of a showing of MACBETH in Los Angeles without the music. Apparently there is a print that contains only dialogue and sound effects. The music is not there. So I thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a live orchestra accompany that print?” They do it with ALEXANDER NEVSKY, why not with MACBETH?
MD: They also did it with NAPOLEON, which I saw at the Chicago Auditorium with the State of Illinois Philharmonic, which was quite an event. Of course, the old silent classics were made with a live orchestra in mind. But you know, this all gets back to Welles complaining that the OTHELLO score as originally recorded was wonderful, but that something happened to it in the labs. So that was part of our own impetus to rerecord it in stereo.
Another thing that’s interesting about that is, that if you have two different orchestras record Beethoven’s 5th, you’re going to get a variation in the interpretation and approach to rhythm and dynamics, etc. The thing with OTHELLO is that we were required to adhere to what’s known as a “click track”, which is based on 24 frames per second. So any variation that’s happening from the original score to the re-recorded score has to happen within 1/24th of a second. So that puts a template, or almost a cookie cutter on what you’re doing.
MT: Sure. You’re following a machine, and a machine can’t change.
MD: Right. You’re locked in pretty tightly.

Othello was problematic in terms of the way the original elements were stored and the upkeep of those elements. The original negative of OTHELLO was not even stored in cans. It had been stored in boxes with hinges since the 1950’s. We also found about 250 feet of that negative with masking tape on it right down the center, and there were also rust particles from the cans.
*
Anytime you find something that distracts you from enjoying the film, that’s the whole purpose of what we did. When you eliminate those distractions, whatever aesthetic virtues were there to begin with are delivered in such a way that your perception of the film is much more pleasurable without something to suddenly distract you from watching the film. Anything that begins to distract you from enjoying the film,
People can argue all they want, but I’ve had people come up to me and say that they were with the other argument, but after the watching the restored version again, they’ve begun to realize how much more pleased they are with that.
*
With Chimes you’ve got three basic problems that are easily rectified. The original 2-track ¼ inch music score is beautiful, and if you equalize the effects track, that’s all you’ve got to do, and it’ll sound great. I think everyone will be quite amazed by it.
*
MD: Chuck Workman says there are 41 documentaries on Welles.
MT: We took a tally on Wellesnet and there are quite a few. I think we counted 30-35.
MD: I guess he wasn’t too far off the mark, then.

[Black Irish]

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DAWSON INTERVIEW WITH LARRY FRENCH

CITIZEN WELLES AND WOODSTOCK

LF: I was just looking at the American Cinematographer article you did on OTHELLO. You say in this article that you were going to do a documentary on Orson Welles.

MD: Interesting that you should mention that. I was recently at a cocktail party in Chicago, and I was surrounded by friends who were saying "Allright Mike, it's time to get on with the show, so to speak." Originally (CITIZEN WELLES) was thought of as a 90-minute feature. With Orson Welles, the material...let me give you an example: a professor who teaches at the University of Tallahassee, was writing a history of radio, but he kept finding more and more material, and this just went on and on and on, and that's kind of the way the situation has been with the documentary. Of course, when you take on Orson Welles, it can become an astronomical Black Hole. We now have probably about 35 hours of raw footage in the can, shot in all different formats, including 35mm. We realized we've got a three volume - at ninety minutes per volume - series of films here. So essentially, Volume 1 is about 80 percent done, but in anything, when you get involved in other projects outside the film industry, you can get waylaid. So that's where that lies. I'm pursuing the idea of at least releasing Volume 1. We've got some real rare stuff that I can't divulge, but what's interesting now is something I had asserted thirty years ago, watching the news footage on CNN of his body being taken out of his home, and thinking about the mythology of his decline after CITIZEN KANE and how it should be rectified somehow. He continued to make masterpieces, but just did so under increasingly difficult circumstances. That's been essentially my attitude about it.

LF: So does this footage consist of interviews with people and so forth?

MD: Interview footage, some rare footage from the Todd School For Boys, things of that nature. We in the midwest have been glad to discover that he sprang from us, and had his formal schooling at the Todd School in Woodstock, which is about two hours from Chicago. It's like a wonderful little oasis in the middle of the cornfields, but of course, everything is always expanding.

LF: I've talked with Kathleen Spaltro, who wants to put on a show there for the centennial in 2015. She was the one who spearheaded the effort to save Grace Hall, the last remaining building at Todd. The council eventually voted against it, and tore it down to build apartments instead.

MD: That's too bad. When we had Beatrice there as a guest years ago, we actually stayed with the woman and her husband who came up with the money to restore the Opera House. At that time there were two buildings left from Todd, the other being, I believe, their stage building, which then became a Masonic Lodge before being converted into a condominium complex called Todd Place.

OTHELLO RESTORATION

MD: In regards to the Othello restoration, I had wanted Harvey Weinstein and Mirimax to be the distributors. I think they would have done a better job; we wouldn't have had a situation where there were too many cooks in the kitchen, and I think it would have made more money. Instead we went with the distributor that we did go with, and in getting a project like a Welles film done, one keeps one's silence. One of the stigmas attached to Orson Welles, even post-mortem, is the fact that his projects have a problematic subject matter. We were trying to be altruistic about it, to just get on with the show, but we had a distributor who played musical chairs with the laboratories, they had some problems with the timing on the dialogue track, and it became over processed. I had a DAT tape that I would listen to, and all these test prints that were being made in New York and sent back to Chicago, it became clear that something was not right. Unfortunately, it got far enough down the road so that even at the (World premiere) screening at the Lincoln Center, it was just not our soundtrack.

The other producer, Arnie Saks, and I, tried to send them some original elements to make changes, but as it turns out, the distributor had gotten ahold of a test track, thinking it was a master track, and the interpositive they used had some timing problems. So they did some additional work for the theatrical release, but they did a couple of things that we disagreed with. One was that they eliminated the chanting of the monks, in Latin, at the beginning of the film. We said "What the hell are you guys doing?" and they said, "Well, modern audiences don't understand Latin anyway, so we're going to yank that out." It was one of those moments where you can put yourself in a straight jacket if you're not careful. Even Jonathon Rosenbaum called them up and said "Put it back in." So the chanting was back in time for the film's Academy VHS release.

The image quality was improved for the UK and Image discs. Synar released a VHS based on the rights of the now-defunct Academy release. They released it on VHS with a documentary on the restoration, and this disc uses the same artwork and cover front that was used by Criterion, which we provided. So there’s a VHS, made when VHS was still a viable format, that has a very clear picture, virtually artifact free.

This was in the early 90’s, a crossroads between the analog and digital ages, and there are still purists who do consider what you’re doing in terms of manual restoration versus digital restoration, how the two compare, etc. We had a kind of hybrid approach, and of course, the technology has evolved to such an extent, but we’re real proud that we were a part of that with the Othello project, and that it turned a bunson burner on studios looking at other art fare that they have in their archives, which created a restoration industry. However, the term “restoration” took on a more expansive definition, and it got to the point where you made a print from a cleaned up negative, and that was considered a restoration.

CRITERION’S OTHELLO LD

MD: In regards to the Criterion release, part of the problem with the restored version, and people’s contention with it, is the fact that Criterion had advertised the laserdisc as the “restored version”. It had marketed it as such, and in fact used the same artwork that was used for the restored version, although it was the same artwork that Academy had originally used. It’s the famous shot that lasts for about a second, in the scene just before he kills Desdemona. It’s such a stunning shot, that I said “That should be the cover”. And it also became a poster that was utilized, not everwhere, but in several countries as well as the Sarabande CD of the music, and the Synar VHS release.

Unfortunately, a lot of people bought the Laserdisc thinking they were getting the restored version. People who bought it would open it up, read the liner notes which were written by Jonathon Rosenbaum, and realize that no, they were looking at the original version. And so we received approximately 100 letters complaining about it not being the restored version. Of course, there was a legal issue as well; those rights were purchased prior to the DVD era, and Image Entertainment, which had obtained those rights, passed them on to Criterion, and got very upset when they didn’t use the restored version. Criterion got caught in the crosshairs legally, and I think there was an out of court settlement, which involved yanking the Laserdisc off the shelves, accordingly.

I’m not against people seeing the original version; the paradox in that case is that Othello is probably the one Criterion Laserdisc that has the greatest number of production credits. I talked to Gary Graver not long before he passed away, and he said they made the LD from a 35mm print, and there was consternation on the part of Criterion in that there was a restored version out there, and the original version needed to be cleaned up as much as possible, so there wouldn’t be such a difference between the restored version and the original. Hence, there was a huge effort on the part of Criterion to create an extremely cleaned up original version - in terms of filtering the soundtrack, doing all kinds of timing to improve the image quality, and doing what, at that point, was some very primitive digital cleaning – in order to close the gap between the two.

So people had the original version when they thought they had the restored version. But here’s a second thing: there were also a lot of people who bought it thinking it was the restored version, and never bothered to read Rosenbaum’s liner notes explaining that it was not. So after watching the film, they concluded that the “restoration” was not very good. Unfortunately, Beatrice felt victimized by this too, since people would say, “Oh, she did a lousy restoration.” There are scratches there, it has a really high artifact level, the sound is not that good, they talked about fixing the lip-sync, but the LD is still out of sync, etc.. So there was a negativity because people thought “Oh, we’ve been hearing about the restored version, and after taking a look at the laserdisc, it’s a decent version of it per se, but it doesn’t look restored. And they said they re-recorded the music score, but it doesn’t sound that good to me.”

We got even more letters complaining about that, then from people who found out from the liner notes that it was the original and not the restored version. It was about two to one. And so what came out of all this was a kind of schizophrenia regarding the restoration, with some taking issue with Beatrice, and some taking issue with the restoration in general. But certainly when it was first released, about 90% of the critical community’s reaction was very positive. It got great reviews, and that’s why we all kept our mouths shut about all the various problems we’d been having.

The antagonism towards the restored version began with Jonathon Rosenbaum, who wrote an article in the Chicago Reader called “Othello Goes Hollywood”. Not everyone agrees with him, and even those who agree with him in print have told me something else privately. A lot of the technicians that worked on it have a disdain for film critics and scholars, because when they don’t understand some of the fundamentals of production they go out on a limb, and sometimes go too far out and fall off. I personally don’t have the fervor of a Rosenbaum or McBride. The whole purpose of the restoration was to eliminate those technical flaws that are always pinpointed as further examples of Welles going downhill after Citizen Kane, particularly his later soundtracks.

LF: Any chance we’ll ever see that 3-DVD set of OTHELLO, like the complete MR. ARKADIN?

MD: Maybe. The problem is that when you compare the Criterion LD version to the Chicago restoration, what you’re looking at is merely a variation of restoration. The differences may not be substantive enough to warrant having both in the same DVD set.

LF: But there’s also the European version, the original that won the Cannes Film Festival, which has different editing at the beginning.

MD: Yes, you could include that as a “European” version if you want, since it was also an edit by Welles himself. But then you get into an argument of saying “Wait a minute. You’re re-releasing an earlier edit that he had? Which rules, his earlier or his later?” Assuming he did one final edit on the film, there’s a strong argument that that’s the way he wanted the film to be seen. But I would be up for that; a set including both the original Cannes and restored versions.



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OTHELLO MUSIC SCORE RECONSTRUCTION

MD: One of the main complaints about the restored version was that we took Othello stereo, but I remember Graver, as well as - if I remember correctly - Chris Welles Feder, telling me that Welles had wanted to re-release both Macbeth and Othello in stereo. The real reason we re-recorded the music score was because the original score had been recorded optically, and was over-modulated, so there’s about 10-15 percent of the frequency response that was clipped at both ends. When we began analyzing those optical tracks we realized that there was a lot of nuance that people would not be hearing, so when we re-recorded the music with members of the Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera, it was more similar to what Lavignino had recorded originally.

There's a phenomenon that we call the "dirty-plate syndrome", where people become used to a particular aesthetic, so that when something gets cleaned up and you're hearing things for the first time, one can garner from a purist point of view that "Well, this is different, therefore it's not part of the artist's original intention." The best example I can give of that is when they cleaned up the Sistine Chapel. When they eliminated modern 20th Century automobile solution along with centuries and centuries of candle soot, the images became day-glow; but that's how they looked when Michaelangelo came off the scaffold. So that's kind of our counter argument to that. I think the issue gets down to eliminating technical flaws, so that we think that we're allowing people to appreciate the aesthetics that were always there to begin with. The purists came back with the idea that those technical flaws are in fact aesthetic virtues, and that's where I'm willing to have a debate.

LF: Well actually, Rosenbaum was complaining because Michael Pendowski (who reconstructed the music score) didn't use Lavignino's score, which existed in Rome. He had problems with Pendowski's orchestration because they didn't use all the mandolins. Jonathon said the original used forty mandolins, which I think is an exaggeration.

MD: Well first of all, the mandolin is not an orchestral instrument, and in the original soundtrack there were not forty mandolins. One of the things that Jonathon doesn't realize is that, by 1991 technical standards of equipment capability, we were able to analyze how many mandolins there were. I know Welles said that there were forty; maybe that's what he had wanted, maybe that's something he thought he could get away with saying, but the bottom line is that there not forty mandolins in that original soundtrack. So one gets into this area where one says "C'mon in, and we'll show you that there were not forty", and there's a resistance to that because, if you have an academic argument and someone's going to technically prove it wrong, then one wants to avoid facing the reality of that situation. There was a lot of research done as far as those scores were concerned, and we eventually found, not the original score, but a copy of the worksheet score that was used, and it was a perfect match with what Michael had done.

What I think happened - and I think this gets into a situation where one domino knocks over a whole series of dominos - is that Michael had been up celebrating something else all night long, and was tired, and I think he and Rosenbaum got into a major argument. Michael didn't know who Jonathon was, and Jonathon considers himself to be one of the foremost Welles scholars. For a gentleman doing a reconstruction of the music score to a great Orson Welles masterpiece, how dare he not know who Jonathon Rosenbaum was. It was an unfortunate situation; I had not debriefed Michael in that regard, and there was a bit of an argument that occurred there, and unfortunately it got into a situation where Jonathon took issue. Also, at one point, one of Lavignino's offspring said "I don't think that's my Dad's score", but I'm telling you, that if you listen to what Welles says about that score on the Arena BBC documentary, he says, "the music score was originally beautiful. I don't know what happened to it." He told Gary Graver that it was one of his best scores, that's why he used Lavignino for Chimes at Midnight.

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT RESTORATION

MD: Now With Chimes, it's a whole different ball of wax. We've got the original quarter-inch master, and the score actually was recorded in stereo; basic 2-channel stereo, but stereo. It's just that the mix for the optical was mono. But it's a wonderful soundtrack, and unlike Othello, it's not over-modulated.

LF: The CAM (CAM's Soundtrack Encyclopedia) came out with the score in stereo, and I listened to it. It's obviously the same recording. On the soundtrack it's all out of order, so I did a close listening and thought it was the same recording.

MD: I tried to tell Jonathon that you can have say, Andres Segovia playing guitar, and record him using different devices, and it's going to sound different on the playback on that original recording. So he was hearing things on Othello that he didn't hear before and then thinking that it's not part of the score, but it in fact is. So it's an ongoing argument that we've had.

But then you have something like It's All True, where a whole new score is put together, which was not part of Welles's intentions; it's not a score that Welles hired someone to do, and yet that's OK. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; I'm not saying I have a contention with it.

LF: Well I do, because I hated that score. And then some guy from South America put together a lot tracks from the time Welles was there. We know what Welles wanted and was thinking of, and although no one knows how he would have put it into the movie, I was listening to that track list and thinking it would have been way better.

MD: Jonathon was very involved with that project, and I'm probably suffering from being overly neutral in this case, because the bottom line is, if you're going to have his argument and apply it to Othello and the re-recording of the music score, fine. But then, to come up with something original for another Welles project? To me, that's kind of the antithesis of his argument.

Now, I don’t want to appear to be anti-Jonathon Rosenbaum, because I still consider him to be an associate and a friend, and I have great respect for his writing ability. It’s just that we have this gentleman’s disagreement about the OTHELLO music score. But there’s no real point of contention about the visual portion of the film.

LF: Well, his argument is that Welles finished Othello; it was his cut, even though there were three different cuts, but It's All True was never finished, so we don't really know…

MD: You can come up with that argument, that we can supply our own creativity. I tend to think…

LF: Well, especially in the score, you'd have to be, except for It's All True we know what he was planning to use, and they didn't use any of that. So that's where I would disagree with them. Even if they had come up with a new score that fit better…but this one was so bad…

MD: It's kind of like the restoration credits for Touch of Evil. What I would have done is gone back to the original Hollywood release score as a way of paying homage to that over the restoration credits as opposed to coming up with what they did come up with; utilizing how he meant that score to be used as an incidental track, as opposed to what's known as an "overlay" track. But then for the restoration credits, go back to the overlay track.

I think in each and every case the situation is, is one's appreciation of the film less because of the music being re-recorded versus an over modulated music score where you're not able to hear the nuances. One of the issues of sound recording is that, when the frequency response is replaced, it sounds louder. And it's not actually louder as far as the mix ratio is concerned. That's an issue with frequency response; that's how the brain registers. That being the case, it is Lavignino's score.

The other issue was to take all the static and noise out of the soundtrack and fix the lip synchronization. We don't think that's "Hollywood". Welles was not a formalist, but he was into proper film grammer. The toleration for non-synchronization was pretty intense, specifically with releasing it. He was an ex-patriot at the time, and one of the things that we noticed with the Chimes at Midnight soundtrack in that regard, especially with the dialogue, when we analyzed the sound mix we found that the stems were not equalized, so you have a set recording time for each incidental track, and they would just roll it and set a general bass line for volume, and then let all the stem tracks roll at that level without equalizing them, and when you have that, you’re going to have situations where the sound of horses is diminished to such a degree that they’re buried when it goes optically, and you’re not even hearing them, especially if the hiss in the compression track is too high and disproportionate, so that a lot of incidental sound can get lost.

That’s one thing we noticed about that, and in any situation where all the funds are going towards the “canvas”, so to speak. Anybody that has any experience in film production, specifically independent film production, - Welles was an independent long before it was in vogue – can tell you that the negative effect occurs in regards to post-production sound. That’s the area where you’re going to have to sacrifice, if sacrifice becomes necessary. Everybody in the industry knows that.

Well, we thought, “Let’s apply a proper budget to the soundtrack” and release it where any flaws that people are inherently picking on are eliminated, so that one can enjoy the film for what it is. So it can be an ongoing argument, but I have no qualms about (doing it this way). Getting back to Chimes, about forty percent of that film is only four frames off, just because it was miscued. You shift it by four frames on a 35mm master mag track, and it’s in perfect sync. It was a mistake done at the lab, so to say it was Welles’s intention is nonsensical.

THE LEGAL WRANGLING SURROUNDING CHIMES

LF: At one point you were talking with Mirimax about doing Falstaff. Did you actually have the rights to it when you started to work on it?

MD: We wanted Mirimax to release Othello, not Chimes.

LF: There were rumors that Mirimax was going to do it when you started to work with it.

MD: What happened there, was that Mirimax and Weinstein were interested in CHIMES, especially since they had wanted OTHELLO but had lost it to Julian Schlossberg, Harvey’s longtime rival; which by the way, reportedly caused Weinstein to read the riot act to his staff at breakfast one morning. The problem with Mirimax obtaining the distribution rights to CHIMES was twofold. One, the company at that time was in the process of being bought by Disney, which meant that corporate protocols were more restrictive; and CHIMES was not a film that could be acquired hurriedly.

Secondly, one of the main underlings to Weinstein at the time frankly did not like the film, calling it a “pastiche” in one of our conference calls. Because he knew that Harvey wanted CHIMES, this underling explained all the legal problems surrounding the film to him in such a way so as to make sure that Harvey would want to walk away from it. It’s too bad we couldn’t have just leapfrogged over this underling and gone right to Harvey.

The bottom line is, you’ve got an underling who doesn’t want to release the film, and how do you go to Harvey Weinstein and overrule Harvey Weinstein? What you do is, you create a scenario where you have basic legal issues and you scuttlebutt that, and irritate and agrivate that to the point where the parties walk away, and then you can go back to Harvey Weinstein and say “Gee, we would have loved to have acquired the film in it’s totality, but we just couldn’t clear the rights.” So that’s kind of what happened there. That was a misnomer that, to this day, I regret because it could have easily have been rectified. If we had been able to get to Harvey Weinstein by himself, and get him into a conference room, we probably could have pounded out a deal in four hours.And the film would have gotten finished and released. Period.

Now about the relationship between the Welles Estate and Mirimax, I think that was an association that was assumed because we had done OTHELLO with Beatrice, and were also discussing CHIMES with Mirimax. And at one point Beatrice thought she owned the rights to the film. But as it turned out, Welles had sold all legal claims to it before his death.

I noticed your post on Adriana Saltzman, widow of Harry Saltzmann. I’ve been dealing with Adriana since 1994, and she has not taken my legal advice, unfortunately. Not that I’m a lawyer,

LF: Well, what does she want? I mean, she must know she can’t just…

MD: Well, where all that became problematic is when we were dealing with Bertrand Bage, representing the Spanish and Eliano Piedro’s family, and we basically said that we had pulled from the French Registry the original contract. It was a horrible situation; you don’t do films this way, but that’s how Welles did it.

They (Saltzmann’s kids from his first marriage) didn’t fight the contract, and since they didn’t do anything, she couldn’t do anything, for four years. I don’t know how acrimonious his divorce from his first wife was, but this may have been a way for the kids to get back at Adrianna.

Meanwhile, the Piedra faction began to try and distribute the film and sign deals, giving it limited distribution, although not in the United States. The Piedras contended that the Saltzann estate had no documentation to support their assertion of ownership. After the French court case, the judge gave the Piedras the rights to the film, but concerning the U.S. copyright, they did give Adrianna 25% ownership, in contrast to what the original contract had said.

Where there’s a real perkhole here is that there was a down payment made toward the purchase of Saltzmann’s rights as they existed prior to that court ruling. And the due diligence necessary by a third party created a paper trail, not only under U.S. law, but under French law as well. So there may have to be an additional ruling in that regard, so to protect ourselves, we purchased the music synchronization performance rights, which means that if CHIMES is released in the United States, they have to get our permission.

Apparently, there was a situation regarding the Bond film that took place, and she felt burned on that, and so I think she saw Chimes as a way of jumping on something, and your post was right: Chimes at Midnight is not Goldfinger. Unfortunately though, when we went to Bertrand Bage, their claim was that Harry Saltzmann had no rights to the film. To say they had no rights…and I think if they had just said “OK, let’s sit down and work out something with her”, something could have happened.

The problem is, that everybody takes a stand initially that it’s their way or the highway, and unfortunately it’s kept the film from being released. You can’t change to a new lawyer, because then it becomes a whole new learning curve with the new lawyer. So I think that she’s gotten some awfully bad legal advice. There was a court case that was decided, giving her 25 percent ownership of the film, and we own the music synchronization performance rights in terms of North America. So we’re still working on undoing this Rubik’s Cube of getting it re-released, and by restoration, with Chimes we would simply shift that soundtrack four frames and basically equalize all the stem tracks, and that’s it. And the music score would use the original music score. We would insert that back into the film, and of course, make it spotless.

I noticed on your site you mentioned the idea of taking it BluRay. I have a little bit of a problem with BluRay, in that it tends to take the film texture look out of some of the visuals. With some new movies, you’ll be watching film quality, and all of a sudden it looks like video. The problem with Othello, but specifically with Chimes at Midnight, is that if you’re going to go high definition with it - and it depends on whether you’re going to do a 2k transfer or a 4K transfer – the bottom line is that he’s wearing this false nose, and even in standard definition, every now and then if you look hard you can tell it’s a false nose. If you go BluRay with Chimes at Midnight, and I’m telling you, there are going to be certain sections of the film where you’re going to be staring at that fake nose, and that’s the problem. Rear Window was restored in High Definition, and there are certain defects that the original filmmakers, based on the time they made the film, weren’t envisioning the idea of improving the image quality to such an extent, that certain things that they wanted hidden, because of the context of the technology at that time, are unveiled, and you can see some things that you’re not meant to see. And that’s my concern with both Othello and Chimes at Midnight on Bluray.
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LF: The same thing happened with Citizen Kane; if you lighten up some of the scenes, you can all of a sudden, for instance, see all the extras in the projection room scene that you’re not supposed to see.

MD: It gets to the point where there are going to be some little things that you’re gonna see that I guarantee you, were not meant to be seen. This idea of saying that everything has to high definition…you have to be careful.

THE ESTATE OF ORSON WELLES

MD: Let me ask you about your communication with Thomas White. I’m glad that he’s been somewhat magnanimous in allowing you to have a website. In the past the Estate has been pretty strong in not allowing certain people to do Welles-related things.

LF: What’s he going to say? He can’t tell us to take it down because Welles is a public figure. You can’t do that. It would cost him a lot of money if he wanted to sue me, and it wouldn’t get anywhere, but I guess Beatrice probably reads it herself…(Garbled Sound)…

MD: Well she was married to Christopher Smith and then they got divorced and she got remarried to an Englishman, and had Julian Schlossberg - who was the Othello distributor, and who caused some problems in the Othello restoration – give her away. We were amazed by that. Of all people…I mean, she’s an Italian countess.

You know, the whole problem with distributors and potential interference, especially with someone like Orson Welles, is that they want an attachment – vicarious or otherwise – and it’s so strong that people will create problems just in order to improve their position as a participant. Sometimes they’ll create problems where none exist and then they can say that they’re solving it, therefore their attachment to the project is enhanced and increased. It’s certainly a phenomenon with Orson Welles.

LF: What’s funny is that, Mr. Dax told me that Julian Schlossberg advanced Beatrice money against the eventual rights to Othello, so she owed him about $20,000, maybe more. And then Dax paid off – he’s a very wealthy man who lives in Malibu, plus he was her boyfriend, and I guess that’s a pseudonym because I guess he’s kind of weird and…(garbled sound)…but he told me he was romantically involved with her, and I don’t know if that’s true or not, but apparently he paid off the promissory note she owed to Schlossberg and…(garbled sound)…..That’s why I didn’t understand why she was upset by the Criterion LD issue.

MD: Well, the reason for that is that they didn’t get permission.

LF: Oh, I thought Image bought the rights.

MD: No, what happened was that Image bought the rights to the restored version.

LF: Oh, I see.

MD: And then, because they had this relationship with Jonathon Rosenbaum, he told them to put the other version out, and they didn’t even tell Image Entertainment they were doing it. This is why Image went back and released the DVD version, so they could at least be in compliance with the original contract. And they went out of their way in that regard because Criterion just did it without obtaining permission to do it. I mean, I understand the universality of Welles and that he belongs to the world, but there are certain rights issues that have to be dealt with, just in terms of propriety. So Beatrice was upset because they were releasing it without permission.

LF: You see, we don’t know the full story, and a lot of people, like Jonathon, thought the Criterion was a better release then the restored version. And that gets people upset because then suddenly it looks like Beatrice is pulling it just because…well, for no reason whatsoever.

MD: No, it was because they didn’t ask her permission. Now whether she would have granted permission, that’s a separate issue.

LF: That’s good to know, because then there’s no reason why she would want to hold up a new version, if they put it out.

MD: Well, Beatrice is Beatrice.

LF: Who knows what she might decide.

MD: In fact, Intermission Productions’ original contract with Julian for distribution…why else would he have loaned her that money? That promissory note was for that money, using Othello as a lien. Without knowing what she may have signed in regards to the promissory note…if this was purely a promissory note against royalties on Othello, I’m not sure that would have necessarily given him the rights to Othello, but he could have had a lien against the film.

LF: Yes, that’s what Dax told me, that he had a lien against the film, but the point is that it was probably more then $20,000. It was probably up to $50,000.

MD: If memory serves me, the executive producers of Othello brought Julian Schlossberg into the picture, and Thomas White was introduced via Julian. So that’s how that whole thing started. And they’ve apparently since had a falling out.

LF: Really? They always seem to have falling outs.

MD: Oh yeah. At one point I heard through the grapevine that Julian was so happy that he stole Beatrice from me. My response is “Well, be careful what you wish for.” The bottom line is that I have no ill feelings towards her, it’s just that there were some instances – like stopping the Touch of Evil restoration screening at the Cannes Film Festival, going after Simon Callow’s book, things of that nature - where in my opinion she has been her own worst enemy. There was actually a cartoon that I was going to try and find – I literally have filing cabinets filled with Welles stuff – that was in Rosebud, Texas. And the cartoon caption said “The good news is that we can still be called 'Rosebud, Texas, founded 1862'. The bad news is that fifty percent of our tax base has to be paid to the Welles Estate.” The problem is, the population was ten.

Then there is the whole issue of defining the Welles Estate. As you know, Greg Garrison was the executor of the estate in the will. And Welles gave certain things to Oja Kodar, and certain things to the wife. And Greg Garrison at one point said “You know what? I quit. I don’t want to be the executor.”

LF: Oh, did he?

MD: Yeah. And under the normal law statute, both in Nevada and California, what happens is that the court then intervenes and then appoints an executor. Now, Beatrice may have gone through that in such a way as to say, “OK, I am the daughter. He was married to my mother when he passed away, therefore I should become the executrix of my father’s estate. But she’s keeping the Estate as a separate entity. I know she was certainly the executrix of her mother’s estate, and certainly owns what her mother had, being the only child. But in terms of the Welles Estate - Rebecca Welles has been dead a few years, but Chris Welles Feder is still out there – the argument is: what in fact IS the Welles Estate?

LF: One thing I don’t understand is that, according to one of the codicils of the will, Welles said that if anyone contests Oja Kodar’s rights to the unfinished films, that they would be disinherited. I guess Kodar doesn’t want to fight that in the courts.

MD: I think they did come to some understanding, and it may have been while Paola Mori was still alive.

LF: It was reported in Variety, and I brought that up to Thomas White and he said that no, they were never meeting, and there was never an agreement. I guess that’s why they’re so combative with her now. But of course, Thomas White is not even a lawyer, that’s what’s so weird. He even told me that he wasn’t an attorney; he’s just representing Beatrice.

MD: She was in fact utilizing someone out of San Francisco, a gentleman by the name of Steve Brown, if I’m not mistaken. At one point she was going after the rights to War of the Worlds, she said she owned Citizen Kane, she owned Magnificent Ambersons, etc. And she lost those court cases. There was a temperament there, I think. At one point, I told her she could beat the baseball bat into the ground, and she took me literally. The problem is, she took it too far, I think.

LF: How could she own Citizen Kane?

MD: Well, that’s just it. It was an issue of her thinking “I’m the Welles Estate, therefore I own it.” Sometimes when people get certain paradigms in their mind, it doesn’t matter what you or I think, it’s what a judge is going to think, based on what the law is. Clearly, they lost in both of those cases. They were dismissed, I don’t know if it was a statuary summary dismissal, but I don’t think it went to trial. But still there was money she had to pay, and maybe that’s why they’re not going after you.

LF: It's funny because we had this fundraising drive right after I talked with Thomas White. You can find a lot of Welles screenplays on the web. I said anyone who donates I'll send you a copy of the screenplay, like Citizen Kane or whatever. All you have to do is go to a screenplay site and download it. So Thomas White called me up and said that they were owned by the Estate and to please take that down. So I did, but the Chris Welles Feder called me and said "The Estate doesn't own those. You don't have to take them down", but I'm not gonna get in the middle of that. I'm trying to keep Thomas White on my good side, because I think it would be a great idea if they actually got somebody…because I don't think Beatrice knows too much about…

MD: Well, that was one thing that startled me was, and we were quite close at one point, and I went out and got her the Maclimmior book Put Money in Thy Purse because I felt that she needed to bone up on her Dad's work. It was clear to me that, One of the interesting things that occurred to me at the DGA screening. Beatrice was up talking at the podium and there was a big commotion on the other side of the room. I asked about it later and apparently Welles's longtime chauffeur was there and saying "Well, why didn't you call?", because she was going on and on about how close she was to her father. "Why didn't you call?" I've found out since then that unfortunately they were quite estranged at the time, and all that had to do with Oja Kodar of course. But Beatrice clearly was not aware of her father's work. I'm not saying one needs to be an expert or cineaste regarding one's parents' work, but I almost got the impression when I showed her Othello that it was the first time she had seen the work.

LF: It probably was

MD: I would mention other titles and I was, not alarmed, but mildly surprised that she didn't seem to be much of a champion of her father's work, unlike say, Picasso's daughter, whose a real champion and has studied her father's work, helped people with various projects to promote her father's legacy and so forth. I just restored Stanley Kubrick's first three documentaries, and just dealing with the Kubrick Estate is very interesting. Both Kubrick and Welles died at the age of 70, they both had three daughters, their camera strokes and shot compositions are very similar, but you have this complete antithesis in terms of reclusive persona vs public persona, an Estate that's frayed vs. an Estate that's extremely organized, so it's very interesting.

History is public domain, and that's what Welles is, he's history. So again, I commend you for what I feel is an excellent website.

*
AN OTHELLO RERELEASE?

MD: The last thing I wanted to mention, regarding the rights to Othello, I don't know what elements Schlossberg owns, and I don't know if anything is going to happen in terms of a rerelease. We did turn over the original elements in terms of the negative, and there is a whole list of things that should have been returned to her. It was a loan issue, and when those distribution rights ended in terms of that original contract, those elements should have been returned, because you're going to need them if your going to anything further that's definitive, in terms of a dupe negative, one generation away from the camera negative, which is what I have with Chimes at Midnight, the Master Dupe Neg. The print that you talk about in regards to Aurthur Cantor when they showed it at the Joseph Papp Theatre, I'm in possession of that.

As far as Othello is concerned, there is this issue of the studio recutting the Amercian version, but the version that was released in terms of what we restored, was from literally the original splice negative, the conformed splice negative, which is the original camera negative, which you want to be very careful of. That original splice negative at one point, when we were taking it out of the original can in the documentary that was done on the restoration, there was masking tape up about 200 feet of it. So there was a manual restoration in addition to what we did digitally.

[Black Irish]

MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL DAWSON

Michael Dawson phone number:
217/650-7629

ORIGINALLY PROPOSED QUESTIONS

OTHELLO RESTORATION

1. Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the 1992 restoration of OTHELLO that you produced in collaboration with Beatrice and Castle Hill Films. I myself have fond memories of watching it several times at the old Fine Arts Theatre on Michigan Ave, and I still have clippings from some of the rapturous critical notices it received. What are your feelings when you look back on that project? Was it successful artistically and/or financially? What is it’s contribution to the Wellesian legacy? Any regrets?

2. In recent years, there’s been a bit of a backlash from some Welles fans against the restoration, particularly the decision to redo the music in stereo. That never really bothered me, being a lifelong fan of the CSO, but from a purist standpoint, I suppose they have something of a point. I’ve always considered the restoration a flawed, but very impressive technical achievement, that got much more attention and publicity then a simple re-release of the film would have ever gotten. So in that sense alone it was a very good idea. BTW, did you know that both it, and the Criterion LD of the film, with it’s original soundtrack, are now available to be seen on Youtube?

3. But now, to complicate things even further, the original Cannes version of the film (with Welles’s spoken credits at the beginning, and Suzanne Cloutier’s original voice as Desdemona) is starting to surface in trade circles, and frankly, I think the editing at the beginning of that version of the film is superior to the later version for American release. What are your thoughts on the original Cannes version? What are the chances for a DVD set of the three Othellos, like the “Complete Mr. Arkadin” set that Criterion put out a few years ago?


CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT RESTORATION

1. A few years ago I saw an advertisement for a work-in-progress showing of the restored version of Chimes at Midnight that you’ve been working on. I believe it was at the same Northside theatre where Orson’s Shadow had a brief run around the same time, although I can’t think of the name of the theatre offhand. I bought a ticket for the showing, but something came up and I wasn’t able to go. What is the current status of this project? I know there’s been a lot of legal wrangling that surrounds the rights to the film.

2. Do you remember the showing of Chimes at Midnight at the Woodstock Opera House back in January of 1990? Beatrice Welles was the guest star? I have some footage of that event if you’d like to see it. It’s not in that good of condition, but it’s watchable.

CITIZEN WELLES

1. At that same event, I noticed that as part of your introduction of the film, you touted a new documentary that you were just finishing up called CITIZEN WELLES. I managed to see some of this documentary a few years later when you showed it at the now-defunct Hinsdale Theatre, along with the restored OTHELLO. I enjoyed the excerpts, especially one where Beatrice relates how Welles would tuck her into bed by reading Charlotte’s Web to her. What happened to that project? Does the film still exist?

2. Did any of that project wind up in the 1992 Welles documentary ORSON WELLES: WHAT WENT WRONG?, which seemed timed to coincide with the release of OTHELLO? Did you have any connection with that project?

BEATRICE

1. How did you come to be associated with Beatrice? Are you still associated with her? Has she made any plans for 2015?

2. There has been a lot of criticism of Beatrice for supposedly obstructing the completion of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. She seems to want the TOSOTW footage seen only as part of a documentary. What are your thoughts about this matter? Based on what you know or have heard, are you optimistic that the film will ever be released in some form?

3.One of the most surprising things about Orson Welles’s will was that he left all his unfinished films to Oja Kodar, including DON QUIXOTE, which is actually more of a film from his “Paola Mori” period then his “Oja” period. I can see giving Oja the work which was during their period together, but Quixote is a project Oja seemed to know little about, which ultimately resulted in her turning the completion over to Jess Franco, who made a mess out of it. Do you know what Beatrice’s reaction to the Franco completion was? Also, if Beatrice controls Welles’s image in America, why did she allow the DVD of the Franco version to be released in the US?

4. Some years ago Beatrice expressed interest in founding an Orson Welles institute in Spain. Do you know what the current status of that project is? It was quite awhile ago that I heard this, so I assume it didn’t pan out.

5. At the Lilly Library I noticed that there were a series of never broadcast radio shows from the 1940’s called Eversharp. They only exist on reel-to-reel tape and the Lilly doesn’t have a player. I bought one recently from Goodwill for cheap. Do you think it would be possible to get permission from The Estate to transfer these shows to a more modern medium?

WOODSTOCK CELEBRATES

1. What would you like to see happen for the 2014 and 2015 Welles celebrations at Woodstock elsewhere? Are there any surprises that you’re optimistic about seeing?

2. How did the interview with the crew of THE MAGICIAN go? What did the makers ask you?

**********

MY TYPED UP NOTES

WOODSTOCK CELEBRATES

Michael Dawson said that they would like to make the 2014 and 2015 celebrations as big as the Locarno fest in 2005. In order to do that they would need a budget of about $100,000. He mentioned some big names they are trying to get, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, and David Copperfield. He says they have already touched base with Charlie Rose and the CBS “Sunday Morning” program about possibly doing segments on those shows to publicize the festival. One problem he said – and I’m not sure I understood this clearly – was a law saying that if you are non-profit entity doing a fundraiser, you must state how much you want to raise, or in other words, make up a budget. If you meet your goal, you get to keep the money; if you don’t meet your goal you must give the money back to all investors.

He said Wellesnet could be very helpful in publicizing the event, and I told him we’d be glad to do whatever we can to help, although I told him frankly that Wellesnet ain’t what it used to be, and then mentioned the fundraising fiascos we’ve had which pissed so many people off. He said he would send some advertising materials already made up for the fest to me.

He has a perfect-image copy of HEARTS OF AGE. You can also see a lot of homages to Woodstock in Welles’s THE STRANGER, he said. The paper trail left in the forest by the students in that film is something Welles and his friends frequently did at the Todd School. In honor of the 80th anniversary of the Woodstock Fest, which featured Michael MacCliammior in addition to Welles, they are trying to get Simon Callow, who as it turns out, was Michael MacLiammior’s Dresser!

OTHELLO RESTORATION

He said the music for the original film had to be re-recorded because only the dialogue tracks still existed independently, so in order to better sync the dialogue, a new music track was necessary (Again, I’m not sure I understood this correctly – wish the recording had worked). He went into quite a lot of depth with Larry French about Othello and Larry was supposed to get back to him but never did. I said I would contact Larry and try and get the cassette to transcribe.

He said the British “Second Sight” OTHELLO DVD is the best one available, and that the Criterion LD, which utilized the original unrestored soundtrack, received a lot of complaints regarding the sound. He said the VHS of Othello is actually better quality then the DVD put out by the “Image” company in America. Criterion basically took a print of the film and hired an army of technicians – the most to ever work on a Criterion release - to do intense zapping of the print’s visual flaws. He claims the Othello restoration began the wave of restoring other films throughout the 90’s.

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT RESTORATION

The Chimes music already exists in stereo form, so there would be no need to re-record it. Much less work would be involved then Othello in getting it ready, and if he had necessary funds and rights issues cleared up, he could complete the project in about three months’ time. The sound and image are only about 4 frames out of sync, and by moving it only 4 frames he could get 30 percent of the film synced right off the bat. He has a disagreement with Rosenbaum about whether to add a sound effect of a horse neighing or not.

Harry Saltzmann’s widow owns the rights to the film. Beatrice thought that she was the owner of the film, but as it turns out, Welles signed away all ownership before his death. Dawson says Chuck Workman, director of the new MAGICIAN documentary, is currently trying to smooth out the remaining rights issues with Saltzmann’s widow.

A few years ago, there was a fundraiser for the Chimes restoration project in Chicago. They showed the work-in-progress to an audience on four different nights. I myself bought a ticket but was unable to attend. Dawson says all four showings were completely sold out and many people told him afterwards that it was the best they had ever seen Chimes look (They were using 1st generation elements copied straight from film’s master negative).

CITIZEN WELLES

Dawson’s unfinished documentary CITIZEN WELLES, begun in 1990, sounds similar to Welles’s Don Quixote in the sense that it kept expanding because once he would finish a draft of it, it would somehow seem incomplete, given the immensity of Welles’s career. He originally planned to release it in 1991, but then expanded it so he then hoped to finish it by the end of the 20th century. Now, he says jokingly, he hopes to finish it by the end of the 21st century. He says he has a lot of good footage of Roger Hill, who he became friendly with.

At the dedication ceremony he did an interview for another Welles documentary, THE MAGICIAN, by Chuck Workman.

BEATRICE

Much of this is off-the-record, so we won’t be able to publish it on the Main Page. Dawson says that when he first began working with Beatrice, one of the things that struck him most about her was how little she knew or cared about her father’s work. In fact, Dawson says that, if it hadn’t been for Beatrice’s husband at the time, Christopher Smith, the Othello restoration probably would never have taken place.

He says that Welles, having been a neglectful father with his first two daughters, overcompensated the other way with Beatrice, and as a result she became spoiled. By the time she was a teenager, he began spending less and less time with her and Paola in Nevada, and more time with Oja. Beatrice apparently did not know that Welles and Kodar were living together in Los Angeles, although Paola Mori may have known. One day, about a year before Welles died, Beatrice found in their Nevada home, a love letter from her father to Oja. Shattered, she confronted Paola with it, and Paola in turn, confronted Welles, who claimed the letter was part of a film project for HBO. Paola told him to stop lying, eventually kicking him out for good. Welles and Beatrice had no further contact for the rest of his life. A few years after his death, at a Welles event attended by Beatrice, Welles’s longtime chauffeur was heard berating her over and over again “Why didn’t you call him?! Why didn’t you call him?!”

Shortly after Welles’ death, Greg Garrison, the appointed executor of his will, quit for unknown reasons. Most wills designate a backup executor, but Welles’ will did not, so the whole situation became chaos. After Paola Mori’s death, Beatrice became the owner of Othello and also set up, with the help of lawyer Thomas White, THE ESTATE OF ORSON WELLES, an essentially bogus institution designed primarily to capitalize on Welles’s name by any way possible.

Dawson says that, after the success of the Othello restoration there was a lot of good will in the film community towards Beatrice, and Welles’s first daughter Chris Welles even became friendly with her for awhile. But all this ended at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, when Beatrice put the halt on a red-carpet premiere of Schmidlin’s Touch of Evil restoration, attended by both Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh. It was a big humiliation for both of them, and it caused the film world to do a 180 in their attitude toward Beatrice. The hammer came down on Beatrice so bad that she wound up writing a letter of apology to Janet Leigh, who reportedly wrote a return letter saying, “Apology NOT accepted.”

But as it turns out, Beatrice and her lawyer were just getting warmed up, threatening litigation over both TOSOTW and petitioning to get Welles’ Citizen Kane Oscar replaced, just so she could auction it off (it eventually sold for $750,000). By this time Dawson says he had become disillusioned with her too, saying she’d become her own worst enemy, even though he knew he had to keep working with her if he were to be involved in any further Welles projects. He says he thinks she still has a lot of psychological baggage over Oja, and over Welles’s will, and that anyone involved in a Welles project needs to have some kind of legal insurance to combat her threats.

Nowadays, he says, there is such a feeling of revulsion to Beatrice in the Welles community that a common refrain heard from virtually everyone they have approached about speaking at the 2014-15 Woodstock conventions has been that they will consider coming to it ONLY if Beatrice is not there. Of course, if they want a Welles daughter, it makes sense to invite Chris anyway, since she is an alumnus of the Todd School.

Now here may be the biggest kicker of all: Orson Welles recorded a series of conversations with Roger Hill in the early 80’s, probably to refresh/jar his memory for a possible autobiography. The recordings are now owned by Roger Hill’s grandson, the son of Hascy Tarbox. The grandson told Dawson that these recordings cannot be made public, because Orson Welles trashed Beatrice on them to such a degree that “if she heard them, she would be emotionally destroyed.”

Dawson says that Beatrice has already had one bout of skin cancer, which went into remission for a few years, but he has heard rumors recently that her illness has returned. In fact, he asked me if either one of us has heard anything new about this. I haven’t, have you?