MD conversation 1/6/16

[Black Irish]

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Dawson: The restoration that Richard France saw in Madrid this past year (the Filmoteca Espanola) was done by Luciano Berriatua.

I just heard from a friend in England who says the Mr. Bongo version which Janus used is no better, and maybe not even as good as a DVD standard definition version (made from a Digi Beta) that was put out by Suevia Films at least 15 years ago in Spain (see attached cover he sent me). This would tie into your comments about the Studio Canal DVD release in France. I am still trying to wrap my head around Peter Becker's comments to Ray that they were going to do a much more comprehensive restoration which would involve looking for elements worldwide and taking years to do (?!).

In the meantime, I have attached front and back covers for the Othello Cinar VHS for Ray or yourself to compare to the Academy VHS.


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Wellesnet: Thanks for the info, Mike. Do I have permission to quote your friend on this? Anonymously, if you prefer. I'm thinking of putting together a story on Chimes' DVD history that might help connect you with Criterion. Contrary to what some Welles purists say, I'd love to see a stereo remix of Chimes if it's possible.

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Dawson: Let me email him. I don't think he would mind using his name. However he is sending me a copy. I have a global or multi-zone DVD player. Do you? I might want to take a look first. I always feel better or more confident upon personal examination.

Another comment Ray made conveying Becker's remarks were that they had spent a couple or a few weeks removing "dirt" or noise from the sound track in addition to the fixing the timing (brightness issue). So the issue of restoration is a carry from Mr. Bongo, which is a carryover from the Espanola Filmoteca. So I would then have to assume (if Becker's comments are accurate) that what is being provided are DCP dubs. So in regard To Espanola, the question would be what elements were used and what restoration "activity" took place in regard to those elements.

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Wellesnet: If you haven't seen it, here is Ray's story on Peter Becker:
http://www.wellesnet.com/criterion-pres ... -midnight/

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Dawson: The following is off the record due to the "present circumstances" legal and otherwise etc.

"The goal of this restoration was to create the best possible theatrical experience audiences could enjoy today. Using the scan from the Filmoteca, made from the original negative, we were able to make marked improvements in both picture and sound over anything that has been shown before. Careful color correction improved contrast, grey scale, and black levels. Weeks of digital restoration at Criterion addressed dirt, tears, splices, stains, scratches, and flicker. Restoring and evening out the many opticals throughout the film was one of the greatest challenges. The soundtrack has been gently cleaned to remove surface dirt and distracting thumps that appeared at many of the scene changes,

I was speaking with Greg Gantner last night and I raised doubts about my conversation with Ray thinking well, perhaps either I am miss quoting Ray or perhaps Ray was misinterpreting comments by Peter Becker if it was a spare of the moment conversation etc. But based on what I just read that you forwarded (thank you), confirms a suspicion.

Now Mike I could be wrong and I will even repeat I could be wrong... however, the quote from Ray's post below informs me of two things. First, Ray was dead accurate. So I am assuming he recorded the conversation for posting purposes. Second, it screams that the source was not "the original negative", but either a composite answer or release print. AND one that could have been projected a number of times.

Now it might be that Peter Becker is more administrative than technical and in the dynamic of picking up a lexicon of phrases or terms of description may have just provided terms loosely to soften expectations as an explanation for the motivation to do additional work. But when you combine it with what he states they want to do.. then it strongly points to what I have suggested. Any post production technician in Hollywood worth his or her salt reading the post will recognize or immediately question the situation.

I showed a 35 mm test print as a fund raiser for the Prop Theater in Chicago 13-15 years ago and the audience was impressed. Michael Wilmington who was then lead film critic of the Chicago Tribune wrote a great article on it. I think what happened here is that Janus is doing the same thing that Milestone did some years ago with the Trial. Except that was pre digital and they struck new prints and said it was "restored". Now this is not to say that Janus did not do clean up. But it was because of what they got to begin with that was promoted as being "restored". The good thing is that audiences are seeing something that looks much better than what they have seen in the past. My worry is for people seeing it for the first time not being aware of Peter Becker's explanation and or the circumstances in general. A proper restoration would eliminate any observance of the film being "post dubbed" etc etc.. But who knows maybe the general audience will be impressed. It all depends.

I would just hate to hear or read "the film looks great ....But... " Which may not happen. The good news is Welles continues to be very relevant!!

Again I am sure, Janus defintley improved it as a question of contrast and comparison. And on that basis people will and should be impressed.

*****

Thank you, Marguerite, for your observations about the print. Now that Criterion is preparing to try and do a definitive restoration and Bluray edition of Chimes, we want to do what we can to help them get ahold of the very best elements available for the project. I saw the Filmoteca Espanola DCP last year, and like many others, including Beatrice Welles, was somewhat disappointed in it. Since the new Janus release is supposedly a cleaned up version of that, there was some concern that it might be another disappointment. Many of the reviews so far speak glowingly of the film itself, but have mentioned the quality of the restoration only in passing. However, Beatrice said on a New York radio program this morning that she was thrilled with it, so that would seem to go a considerable way towards closing the case.

All the same, we would love to have you send us your comparison of the 35mm print shown in Memphis to the Janus 4K, when you get a chance to see it next month. We would also be more than happy to alert our members to any other writing project you have going, whether it be from the audience member at the original premiere, the Voodoo Macbeth article, or anything else Welles-related. We hope to hear from you soon. All the best,
Mike

[Black Irish]

I know you are a peripheral part of the Oja camp, although you’re essentially neutral in the Wind debate. It’s frustrating that so little info has come from her side. We need to hear more.

You have to keep in mind that she is not an Internet person, and the village where she lives does not even have internet infrastructure. You wonder how someone who worked with Orson Welles could not be internet savvy, but you’d be surprised at how many high-ranking film people are not. You either contact them by fax or phone, or you don’t contact them at all. I hear that Oja may be trying to set up a website though, with Jonathan Rosenbaum’s help. He would be her best spokesperson, as he has been in the past.

For me, one of the flaws of Josh Karp’s book is that he doesn’t talk with Oja, the reason for that being that she supposedly made some demands that he could not go forward with. I don’t know how that communication took place, but I do not think it’s true that she demanded to approve the book in it’s entirety, as he alleges. She simply wanted to approve the book in terms of what she herself was espousing, so that if she was quoted she would be quoted accurately. It all depends on how that request was worded, and as good as Oja’s English is, there’s always the question of someone thinking in another language and then speaking in English. When you’re speaking in a second language you have to be careful about the context in which things are being said, so they don’t get misconstrued in translation.

Joe McBride stated recently that she is deliberately obstructing the project for no good reason.

Joe, as you know, was fired by Oja from the Wind project back in 1999, so he told me he didn’t want to be at the centennial Woodstock festival the same weekend she was there, etc. Anyway, Joe was very helpful to Josh when Josh was writing his book, and as a result Joe was able to influence the book to put forth his own purview regarding Oja Kodar. Josh is not a film scholar, so at times his book goes from saying Oja was “allegedly” a co-writer on Wind to saying she was a co-writer. Oja told me she won’t read Josh’s book because she’s been told it’s filled with inventions about personality, people involved, what went on during production, things like that based on inaccurate hearsay, third person anecdotes, whatever. Everybody’s got their own personal slant on how they perceive things, and if someone is emotionally upset, like Joe, he’ll take it personally when Oja stops the project again, and think it’s because of his own involvement.

The problem with Joe is that, although he’s a very nice guy in person, if you point out that he may be mistaken about something, he takes great umbrage to it. He overreacts. I had a rather nasty exchange through email with him some years ago when he was updating his book about Othello. In his book he said that we had distorted the dialogue track for Othello as a way of forcing lip sync, and our obsession with lip sync had ruined the dialogue in several scenes. That was completely untrue. I found out later from Rick Schmidlin, the producer of the Touch of Evil restoration, that Joe was referring specifically to the scene where Iago is talking with Rodrigo on the terrace. Welles dubbed Rodriguo’s voice in that scene, and when I tried to discuss this with Joe by email, he threatened me with a lawsuit. I actually got all kinds of weird shit from attorneys. But fortunately we've smoothed things out since then.

We've been hearing things about Oja refusing to sign the final papers for a few months now. I’m surprised this didn’t go to court awhile ago.

You usually don’t file a lawsuit if you think you’re going to lose, and if money was actually exchanged, it would of course be a no-brainer to file a lawsuit. So obviously there was no money exchanged, and that’s a key element. Transfer of funds is the fundamental basis for doing any kind of deal, which is why, for example, you have the situation of houses being sold for $1, so the transaction will stand up in court. We don’t know all the communication intricacies or details of the contracts that were signed, but what we do know is that a lawsuit is not being instigated, even though yes, on the surface it should have been awhile ago.

Here, you have to ask what is known and how people have behaved in the past.There may have been good intentions from Royal Road, we don’t know, but in actuality there was some pretty amateurish shit that occurred, and that was compounded by the Indiegogo campaign. There’s nothing worse then not doing what you say you’re going to do, in this case resulting in a non-exchange of funds, and then to try and do something beyond that, like Indigogo, that you don’t have a right to do, because you didn’t get permission to do it. This then, gets piled on top of what is already perceived as a breach of contract, whether that’s true or not. That’s the overall circumstance here: screw up upon screw up. It’s kind of mind-boggling, really.

Why did Oja not allow inspection of the negative? That seems to be the real question at the center of all this.

That’s what’s being asserted, and one side is being much more talkative then the other side. I don’t know whether an inspection did take place or not, but of course, if the escrow agreement was not complied with, there would be no reason for her to allow an inspection. It's really a question of “good faith”, and breaching the original agreement and then blaming the other party is just part of an entire pattern of bad behavior on the part of Royal Road. None of us have seen the original contracts, so we don’t know exactly what arrangements were made at that time, or what kind of inspections she was obligated to allow. But the very idea of an escrow account implies the need for good faith, of which making the first escrow payment is the logical first step, since the film is her asset, and they are trying to buy it from her.

Then you have to define what you mean by “inspection”. Does that involve a physical withdrawal of the negative from the lab premises? Would that even be necessary? That’s the thing that gets me. If they have a million dollars to pay her off through escrow, then surely they had enough money to just do a standard definition digitization of the entire negative, so people can look at it and see that all the negative is there. That’s something that should have been done years ago. A standard definition transfer is fast; almost a real-time transfer. One of the things that a lab can do is provide documentation of that.

A total inspection and inventory of all materials is something should have been done even before the first contracts were signed, and for all we know, they may have. If not, they could have made a good faith down payment in order to have a complete inspection and inventory done, the lab technicians could have done that. But by now Oja's become very paranoid about losing the negative or having it taken.

Netflix is offering Oja a lot of money, much more then she was going to get originally. Isn't that tempting to her?

I heard that Oja recently was able to sell the Villa Welles, so she’s got plenty of money already, and the Netflix offer of more money may not mean as much anymore. The real problem is, and it may be an insolvable problem, is that so much bad will has already been created between the two camps. By not making the first escrow payment in good faith, and not keeping people informed of what was happening, Filip created a whole atmosphere of distrust that has had a reverberation effect.

Yes, a lot of people are angry about Royal Road's Indiegogo silence, and are still skeptical about the project's fate, even with Netflix’s possible involvement, but many still point the finger at Oja. One guy on Facebook posted a picture of Lucy from Peanuts, holding the football in field goal position for Charlie Brown, as if to say, “same old shit, just a different Charlie.”

The Netflix involvement is not a done deal, so you have to be careful what’s communicated to the people, just for the sake of satisfying everybody’s desire to know what’s going on. I think that what this whole mess really boils down to is communication skills, communicating in such a way that the latitude for misunderstanding is minimized. I understand people’s frustration and impatience at the lack of communication, which Oja experienced from Royal Road herself, but you don’t want to do anything to harm negotiations that are not yet completed.

But as I mentioned, this issue of communication skills goes back to Indiegogo and the initial contract with Oja. If you have an agreement or transaction with people involving collecting or paying money, it’s your responsibility to make sure those people are informed about what’s going on. If you can’t make that kind basic communication, you shouldn’t be in that business in the first place. If you don’t communicate, then people’s imaginations start to go wild and they’ll assume the worst.

You can’t create a circus-like environment for the Welles Centennial, as Royal Road did, and then assume that that circus atmosphere is going to create enough pressure for something to happen. All it does is create all of those frustrations that you wanted to avoid.

Extra notes:
Also, sometimes it’s a question of personality dynamics that determines how you go forward with somebody. Obviously, it’s a question of people skills, and Oja and Beatrice can both be very mercurial in that regard.

They paid off Beatrice before paying off Oja, so Beatrice is saying, “yeah, I’ve got my money, let’s do it!”

[Black Irish]

MT: Have you bought the new Criterion Chimes disc?

MD: I have not, but I may do so in the near future just to make it part of the inventory. I did see Janus's restoration (that the Criterion disc was made from) when it played theatrically last year.

MT: What did you think of it?

MD: Visually, I thought they did a very impressive job cleaning up the artifacts and lack of contrast that marred that previous edition when it played theatrically during the centennial year. But I was disappointed that they didn't do more to fix the sound synchronization.

MT: I was struck by what Margueritte Rippy, author of Orson Welles and the RKO projects said when she rented a print of your Chimes restoration to show at the Memphis Film Festival last year. She said your version had more depth than the Janus version, which she also saw.

MD: Absolutely. The stereo restoration of Chimes that we did for Adriana Saltzman in 2004 was taken straight from the master Dupe Negative, which we have owned since the mid-1990's. I don't know the source for the recent Janus restoration, but I've had several friends in Europe tell me that it was not taken from the master negative (supposedly still in Europe), but rather was created from several good 35mm prints, with the best parts from each print stitched together to create one print with a minimum of flaws, and then cleaned up digitally from there.

MT: Why wouldn't they use the original master negative? After all, Peter Becker from Criterion has said publicly that they were looking the world over for the best elements available for use.

MD: I don't know, but I've heard more than one person posit the theory that the Master negative of Chimes was not stored properly and so is now unusable for making new prints. The Master Dupe negative that we have was stored with absolute care and remains in perfect condition.

MT: Did you tell Criterion?

MD: I wrote letters to several people at Criterion, including Peter Becker, but never received a response from anyone. Again, let me stress that the Janus version I saw last year is very good, but it could be better. It's really a question of the point of departure: why depart from a 35mm print when you could depart from the camera negative?

**************

MD:Callow was Maclimmior’s dresser. It’s all connected in a Buddhist way.

MT: Would you consider Jew Suss to be anti-semitic? The 1937 version made by Harlen’s uncle was made for the Nazis.

MD: There are a couple of interpretations of it, so it’s not clear whether the play is inherently anti-semitic. It’s like Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice that way. Personally, I don’t see Merchant as anti-semitic.

MT: Shakespeare does give Shylock a lot of very eloquent lines.

MD: Right, and for the purpose of showing that all people are basically the same. That we’re all human.

MT: There is the infamous speech where Shylock says he wants to kill his daughter because she’s run off with a gentile and converted. Some, including Welles, have pointed to that as proof of the play’s anti-semitism because it makes Shylock look like some kind of savage.

MD: Right, but that’s not necessarily anti-semitic. It’s more a statement of ethnic prejudice in general, which cuts across all racial lines. An overbearing and overly distraught father railing against his rebellious daughter because she’s not marrying within her ethnicity. I think that’s more an expression of dysfunctionality within the family, which can of course be exacerbated by the oppression and isolation put on that ethnic group by society in general. “Ghetto” is a Yiddish term, and they’re isolated because of that prejudice. Under the pressure of such containment, all kinds of dysfunctionality will be caused.

MT: Have you seen the Munich Museum’s restoration of Welles’s short film of Merchant? Stefan Dreossler showed it in Los Angeles a few weeks ago.

MD: I haven’t and I’d like to. We’ll have to get him to Chicago one of these days.

MT: A few people on Wellesnet have wondered why the Munich Museum doesn’t put all of their Welles restorations on DVD. But Dreosler countered by saying that there’s nothing wrong with people having to go to a theatre to see a Welles film.

MD: Well, many people do have magnificent setups in their own houses these days, but yes, the bottom line is that it’s always best to see an Orson Welles film in a theater on the big screen, if possible. For example, I saw Macbeth on the big screen at our last Orson Welles Creative Arts Festival and it’s just a wonderful visual experience to see that way.

MT: Yes, even though it was one of Welles’s cheapest films, it’s one of the ones that gains the most from being seen in a theatre.

MD: That film has a wonderful hallucinatory quality to it, and one could have a good time doing some psychedelic mushrooms to it. The way Welles makes such resourceful and ingenious use of his limited set design reminded me of the old classic Star Trek series, coming up with wild landscapes with no referencing. The aesthetic genius that comes from not having enough financial resources and so, having to improvise, which then becomes a creative dynamic in and of itself.

MT: Is there going to be another Orson Welles Creative Arts Fest this year?

MD: We’re discussing it now, and about having part of it at the University of Chicago as well as Woodstock. We’re also looking to change the dates a bit, maybe an earlier part of October. Last October our Wednesday film screenings got killed by the Cubs being in the World Series, and I even cancelled a Skype call with Beatrice scheduled for after a showing of Chimes because there was no sense in doing it unless there was a sizeable audience there. So we’re looking for another arrangement in that regard. Maybe we can try the Skype with Beatrice again this year.

We're also looking at bringing the great Stanley Kubrick exhibit that's been going around to the U of C too. Hopefully, that can be arranged.

[Black Irish]

MD: Documents, statues, physical objects and images that display, pay homage and celebrate, in an innovative way, a great artist's legacy. A company out of Germany did the Kubrick exhibit. I've been collecting Welles memorabilia for forty years now, and between me and three other people I know, we've got enough to fill six rooms. A welles exhibit would be more expansive than Kubrick, and one could have separate exhibits for film, theater and radio each, since Welles was a legend in all three.

MT: I've heard Beatrice was considering an exhibit just on Welles's artwork, like paintings, drawings, etc. The similarities between Welles and Kubrick are interesting since they were both independent thinking artists.

MD: Welles had complete artistic control at first but then lost it, and then had to seek control out by becoming an independent filmmaker, whereas Kubrick retained artistic control even though he remained associated with a major Hollywood studio. He was more willing to compromise than Welles.

MT: Yes, after Barry Lyndon did disappointing box office, Kubrick chose a Steven King book as his next film.

MD: If I had to pick one Kubrick film to take to a desert island, it would be a tough choice to make, but I would pick Barry Lyndon. That was, of course, a labor of love more so than the Shining, but even that film was a compensation for the collapse of the film that he really dreamed of making, which was Napoleon. But yes, choosing The Shining, as well as casting Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman for Eyes Wide Shut, shows that he was willing to concede to box office considerations when it became necessary.

MT: It's ironic that Welles, in a way, helped screw up Kubrick's chances of making Napoleon, because Bonderchuk's Waterloo, which Welles had a role in, bombed so badly at the box office that it scared away all the potential investors Kubrick had lined up for Napoleon.

MD: I can think of an even more interesting connection between Welles and Kubrick. Viet Harlen, the uncle of Jan Harlen, who along with Leon Vitali, was Kubrick's right-hand-man for many years, directed the 1937 film of Jew Suss, which was one of the most famous, or infamous films made in Germany during the Nazi era. Welles, of course, made his professional debut at the Gate Theater in Ireland in a production of Jew Suss in 1926, and first made his "big splash" or "irish splash" as an actor. It's also where he began his lifelong association with Hilton Edwards and Michael macCliammior. Some years ago I received a commision to restore the Jew Suss film, along with some early Kubrick shorts, at the same time and at the same building where James Naremore and Jonathon Rosenbaum were doing their commentary track for the Criterion edition of Mr. Arkadin.

[Black Irish]

Mike, here is another version, slightly modified (I added some of your latest comments). If this is unreadable, I will send it as a separate document:

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

MT: Have you bought the new Criterion Chimes Bluray disc?

MD: I have not, but I may do so in the near future just to make it part of the inventory. I did see Janus's restoration (that the Criterion disc was made from) when it played theatrically last year.

MT: What did you think of it?

MD: Visually, I thought they did a very impressive job cleaning up the artifacts and lack of contrast that marred that previous, Filmoteca Espanola edition when it played theatrically during the 2015 centennial year. But I was disappointed that they didn't do more to fix the sound synchronization.

MT: I saw the Filmoteca Espanola DCP in 2015, and like many others, including Beatrice Welles, was somewhat disappointed in it. Since the 2016 Janus release was supposedly a cleaned up version of that, I was concerned that it might be another disappointment, but I was much more impressed by the Janus, and Beatrice said on a New York radio program when it was shown there that she was thrilled with it, so that would seem to go a considerable way towards closing the case. However, I was struck by what Margueritte Rippy, author of “Orson Welles and the RKO Projects” said when she rented a print of your Chimes restoration to show at the Memphis Film Festival last year. She said your version had more depth than the Janus version, which she also saw.

MD: The stereo restoration of Chimes that we did for Adriana Saltzman in 2004 was taken straight from the master Dupe Negative, which we have owned since the mid-1990's. I don't know for sure the source for the recent Janus restoration, but I was struck by this excerpt from Ray Kelly’s interview with Peter Becker, president of Criterion, that was posted on Wellesnet not long ago:

"The goal of this restoration was to create the best possible theatrical experience audiences could enjoy today. Using the scan from the Filmoteca, made from the original negative, we were able to make marked improvements in both picture and sound over anything that has been shown before. Careful color correction improved contrast, grey scale, and black levels. Weeks of digital restoration at Criterion addressed dirt, tears, splices, stains, scratches, and flicker. Restoring and evening out the many opticals throughout the film was one of the greatest challenges. The soundtrack has been gently cleaned to remove surface dirt and distracting thumps that appeared at many of the scene changes,"

I could be wrong, but the above excerpt to me screams that the source for the Filmoteca - which was subsequently used for the 2015 Mr. Bongo DVD release in the UK, and was also cleaned up by Janus for their 2016 release and Criterion’s Bluray - was not "the original negative", but either a composite answer or release print, and one that could have been projected a number of times.

I've even had several friends in Europe tell me that, in their opinion, it was not taken from the master negative (supposedly still in Europe), but rather was likely created from several good 35mm prints, with the best parts from each print combined to create one print with a minimum of flaws, and then cleaned up digitally from there; a high-quality stitch-together, in other words.

I think what happened here is that Janus is doing the same thing that Milestone did some years ago with "The Trial". Except that was pre-digital and they struck new prints and said it was "restored". Now this is not to say that Janus did not do clean up. But a proper restoration would be taken from the negative and would also eliminate any observance of the film being "post dubbed". My worry is for people seeing it for the first time and not being aware of Peter Becker's explanation or the circumstances in general. I would just hate to hear or read "the film looks great, but…

The good news is Welles continues to be very relevant, and to stress again, Janus definitely improved it as a question of contrast and comparison. And on that basis people surely have been and should be impressed.

MT: Why wouldn't they use the original master negative? After all, Peter Becker has said that they were looking the world over for the best elements available for use. They claim on the liner notes for the Chimes Bluray set that the Filmoteca Espanola was indeed taken directly from the original camera negative, but your stitch-together theory is one I’ve heard before, and even on Wellesnet too, with someone posing the possibility that the Master negative of Chimes in Europe was not stored properly and so is now unusable for making new prints.

MD: Yes, I’ve heard that too, and it’s possible. On the other hand, the Master Dupe negative that we have here was stored with absolute care and remains in perfect condition.

I believe the British release from Mr. Bongo also showed reel change marks. So, if it was a 4K transfer from the "original camera negative", then why was there such a quality issue? You might remember the quote by Beatrice that Peter had done miracles with what she had previously seen? The only explanation is that the negative used - if it even was used - was not in good condition. I am still scratching my head regarding "reel change" marks. I think that at minimum Criterion worked pretty hard to improve image quality. So its the "old" point of departure dynamic. The main point being that I am in possession of a superior negative.

Now it might be that Peter Becker is more administrative than technical, and in the dynamic of picking up a lexicon of phrases or terms of description like “restoration”, may have just provided terms loosely to soften expectations as an explanation for the motivation to do additional work. But when you combine it with what he states they want to do, then it strongly points to what I have suggested. Any post production technician in Hollywood worth his or her salt reading the post will recognize or immediately question the situation.

MT: Did you tell Criterion about all this?

MD: I wrote letters to several people at Criterion, including Peter Becker, but never received a response from anyone. Again, let me stress that the Janus version I saw last year is very good, but it could be better. It's really a question of the point of departure: why depart from a 35mm print when you could depart from the original camera negative?

MT: You just said a proper restoration would eliminate any observance of the film being "post dubbed", but Peter Becker said that they decided not to fix the film’s faulty dialogue sync because they wanted it to be seen exactly as it was when it was first released. Many leading Welles schoIars concurred with this, but I say, why not try and make it better than it originally was if the technical means are available?

MD: Absolutely. In addition to fixing the sync, our restoration utilizes the original stereo tracks that the Chimes music score by Lavignino was originally recorded in. It’s true, Welles eventually did a mono mix for the film’s release, but was this because he wanted to do so aesthetically, or was it because he ran out of money? A stereo sound mix would have been much more difficult and expensive at that time.

MT: So one could argue that the stereo or two-track soundtrack for Chimes is the real soundtrack.

MD: Well, the argument is that he mixed it monaurally for the optical soundtrack; therefore, that’s what he wanted. Well maybe, maybe not. The technology, particularly the optical printer, available to him in 1965 must be considered. It would have cost him more in post-production to go with stereo because that is a much more complicated mix and Welles was struggling just get the film done at all. But the master mag track for the music was definitely recorded in stereo.

Furthermore, when we acquired all of the original elements for Chimes back in the 1990’s, including the master dupe negative, we also received from the previous owner ten mysterious extra boxes of mag track that no one bothered to open for a long time. When we finally did open them we discovered that they had sound elements that were not in the film, like fire crackling, wind, horses, etc., as well as long passages of what seemed like silence. We eventually determined that these were what are known as “presence tracks”, frequently used to create a greater sense of depth in the sound track, because every environment makes some kind of atmospheric sound, even if there is no other sound. We also restored these to the film, and the difference in sound quality depth is subtle, but it’s definitely there.

So not just the stereo, but many sound effects were sacrificed due to the lack of post-production funds, and that was my beef with Criterion: we had all kinds of original elements that they were not interested in using. Their attitude was they wanted to do it all themselves with no outside technical assistance. But we’ve got our own version.

MT: What are the chances that Adriana Saltzmann will authorize a release of your restored version?

MD: We’ve already entered into an agreement with her, and she has nowhere else to go with it if she wants to exercise her rights. She has taken on Len Rueben, a former Todd School student who met Welles in the late 40’s, as a partner. A very capable lawyer, he’s semi-retired now, but he’s doing this as a labor of love.

[Black Irish]

MT: Is there going to be another Orson Welles Creative Arts Fest this year?

MD: We’re discussing it now, and about having part of it at the University of Chicago as well as Woodstock. We’re also looking to change the dates a bit, maybe an earlier part of October. Last October our Wednesday film screenings got killed by the Cubs being in the World Series, and I even cancelled a Skype call with Beatrice scheduled for after a showing of Chimes because there was no sense in doing it unless there was a sizeable audience there. So we’re looking for another arrangement in that regard. Maybe we can try the Skype with Beatrice again this year.

We're also looking at bringing the great Stanley Kubrick exhibit that's been going around to the U of C too. Hopefully, that can be arranged. Documents, statues, physical objects and images that display, pay homage and celebrate, in an innovative way, the great artist's legacy. A company out of Germany did the Kubrick exhibit. I've been collecting Welles memorabilia for forty years now, and between me and three other people I know, we've got enough to fill six rooms. A Welles exhibit would be more expansive than Kubrick, and one could have separate exhibits for film, theater and radio each, since Welles was a legend in all three.

MT: I've heard Beatrice was considering an exhibit just on Welles's artwork, like paintings, drawings, etc. The similarities between Welles and Kubrick are interesting since they were both independent thinking artists.

MD: Welles had complete artistic control at first but then lost it, and then had to seek control out by becoming an independent filmmaker, whereas Kubrick retained artistic control even though he remained associated with a major Hollywood studio. He was more willing to compromise than Welles.

MT: Yes, after Barry Lyndon did disappointing box office, Kubrick chose a Steven King book as his next film.

MD: If I had to pick one Kubrick film to take to a desert island, it would be a tough choice to make, but I would pick Barry Lyndon. That was, of course, a labor of love more so than the Shining, but even that film was a compensation for the collapse of the film that he really dreamed of making, which was Napoleon. But yes, choosing The Shining, as well as casting Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman for Eyes Wide Shut, shows that he was willing to concede to box office considerations when it became necessary.

MT: It's ironic that Welles, in a way, helped screw up Kubrick's chances of making Napoleon, because Bonderchuk's Waterloo, which Welles had a role in, bombed so badly at the box office that it scared away all the potential investors Kubrick had lined up for Napoleon.

MD: I can think of an even more interesting connection between Welles and Kubrick. Viet Harlen, the uncle of Jan Harlen, who along with Leon Vitali, was Kubrick's right-hand-man for many years, directed the 1937 film of Jew Suss, which was one of the most famous, or infamous films made in Germany during the Nazi era. Welles, of course, made his professional debut at the Gate Theater in Ireland in a production of Jew Suss in 1926, and first made his "big splash" or "irish splash" as an actor. It's also where he began his lifelong association with Hilton Edwards and Michael MacCliammior. Some years ago I received a commision to restore the Jew Suss film, along with some early Kubrick shorts, at the same time and at the same building where James Naremore and Jonathon Rosenbaum were doing their commentary track for the Criterion edition of Mr. Arkadin.

MT: Would you consider Jew Suss to be anti-semitic? You just mentioned how the 1937 version made by Harlen’s uncle was made for the Nazis.

MD: There are a couple of interpretations of it, so it’s not clear whether the play is inherently anti-semitic. It’s like Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice that way. Personally, I don’t see Merchant as anti-semitic.

MT: Shakespeare does give Shylock a lot of very eloquent lines.

MD: Right, and for the purpose of showing that all people are basically the same. That we’re all human.

MT: There is the infamous speech where Shylock says he wants to kill his daughter because she’s run off with a gentile and converted. Some, including Welles, have pointed to that as proof of the play’s anti-semitism because it makes Shylock look like some kind of savage.

MD: Right, but that’s not necessarily anti-semitic. It’s more a statement of ethnic prejudice in general, which cuts across all racial lines. An overbearing and overly distraught father railing against his rebellious daughter because she’s not marrying within her ethnicity. I think that’s more an expression of dysfunctionality within the family, which can of course be exacerbated by the oppression and isolation put on that ethnic group by society in general. “Ghetto” is a Yiddish term, and they’re isolated because of that prejudice. Under the pressure of such containment, all kinds of dysfunctionality will be caused.

MT: Have you seen the Munich Museum’s restoration of Welles’s short film of Merchant? Stefan Dreossler showed it in Los Angeles a few weeks ago.

MD: I haven’t and I’d like to. We’ll have to get him to Chicago one of these days.

MT: A few people on Wellesnet have wondered why the Munich Museum doesn’t put all of their Welles restorations on DVD. But Dreosler countered by saying that there’s nothing wrong with people having to go to a theatre to see a Welles film.

MD: Well, many people do have magnificent setups in their own houses these days, but yes, the bottom line is that it’s always best to see an Orson Welles film in a theater on the big screen, if possible. For example, I saw Macbeth on the big screen at our last Orson Welles Creative Arts Festival and it’s just a wonderful visual experience to see that way.

MT: Yes, even though it was one of Welles’s cheapest films, it’s one of the ones that gains the most from being seen in a theatre.

MD: That film has a wonderful hallucinatory quality to it, and one could have a good time doing some psychedelic mushrooms to it. The way Welles makes such resourceful and ingenious use of his limited set design reminded me of the old classic Star Trek series, coming up with wild landscapes with no referencing. The aesthetic genius that comes from not having enough financial resources and so, having to improvise, which then becomes a creative dynamic in and of itself.