Interesting. Welles reportedly said he wanted Hannaford's film to be about 50% of the entire movie. At 23 minutes, this would be less then 20%. That's one example of how this is not the film Welles would have made, probably even if he had had the chance to complete it in 1976.
Furthermore, if Bogdanovich directed the editing, as Murawski says, this would also be an example of PB's influence on the final shape of the film. PB had nothing to do with Hannaford's film. Oja had a lot to do with it.
I don't know whether Welles's version would have been better or worse then this one. But I have little doubt that it would have been quite different. That's why I'm interested to hear Oja Kodar's reaction to the film when she gets a chance to see it.
One leading Welles scholar told me that, although he likes the Netfix version, he said he thinks that it is more conventional, and less creepy then Welles would have had it. Welles himself said it was the sickest story he had ever thought up.
1. I’m thinking that the choppy, whiplash editing might prove a bit taxing if the whole film is like this. I shouldn’t say anything more — it’s just a trailer. I’m told that I should watch Morgan Neville‘s Orson Welles doc, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, before watching the main feature.
2. I'm getting a real 8 1/2 vibe from the trailer. Excited to see this.
3. It does look dated - Welles for the Easy Rider era - but still promising. Hopefully they mix some of the sound better for the completed film. The black & white scenes look luscious. I'm excited.
4. I will be watching but I am not sure what to expect.
5. Terrible trailer. Made me dizzy.
6. Something like a David Lynch-ish plot?
7. “The Other Side of the Wind” has had a long, torturous path to completion. In a way, it’s one of the final chapters in the longer saga of Orson Welles. While the trailer is a bit cryptic, it gives us a good look at Jack Hannaford, the reactionary director at the center of the film.
8. Mesmerizing trailer.
9. More than three decades after his death, Orson Welles is releasing a new movie.
10. That actually looks pretty damn cool.
11. This will be interesting to see as an oddity, but the clips I’ve seen over the years have not been promising- to call the acting “amateurish” would be a compliment. It looked like people fooling around in a home movie.
12. It’s been a strange ride for The Other Side of the Wind. Can the drama onscreen match that of the backstory?
13. Hopes are high. In spite of the over- heated trailer, that is...
14. WOW SOMETHING TO WATCH ON NETFLIX
15. "We will show no movie before it is time".....or something like that.
16. The Other Side of the Wind is potentially a good film, because Orson, compared to his earlier work, had dedicated professional collaborators -- posthumously -- as co-filmmakers. Orson made a few special films (e.g., Touch of Evil) and a few underwhelming and/or incomplete projects. Most successful film auteurs have very involved creative partners (Screenwriters, Directors of Photography, Soundguys) who were essential in assisting the auteur to create their film art. Examples: Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Wong Kar Wai, Jackie Chan (fight choreographers), Roger Corman. Welles was brilliant in his vision, but rarely had a commensurate creative partner or partners in his art (girlfriends generally don’t meet this criteria). His natural tendency was to do it all himself. Some of his films are notorious for poor sound. The Trial (based on Kafka) could have been a very good art film (Tony Perkins was surely the right actor), but flops around plot-wise and ended up being a flop commercially. Hopefully, the new film, due to professional committed collaborators will be a good one. If it isn’t, par for the course for Orson.
17. Looks riveting.
18. I thought his last film was for earnest and juilo gallow
19. This might actually teach people something about filmmaking. I suspect that a lot of dilletantes and celebrity teenyboppers and other assorted cockroaches will be crawling out of the woodwork soon, anxious to tell the nearest reporter that they've been huge Orson Welles fans for years.
20. Finally some fresh interesting entertainment that comes out of the past. Looks like a great film from the trailer.
21. I can't wait to not watch it.
22. This has been in the works for quite some time, and I am happy to see it finally finished. Orson Welles was one of America's most respected and beloved filmmakers internationally, or rather affectionately known as "our Shakespeare" of cinema. However, he was too ambitious, too creative, too eccentric, and too obstinate to be a successful run-of-the-mill Hollywood studio director of the time. In the latter part of his career, Welles had to work in Italy, Spain, West Germany, and various other European nations in order to secure financial backing and full creative freedom of his work. Thankfully, Europe, especially the French, hailed him as a titan and hero of cinema long before it was "trendy" to do so, and, sadly, we never appreciated our Renoir, our Bergman, or our Eisenstein as we should have during his lifetime.
23. I bet this film starts trend of 1970's throwback look for current films. Tarantino did it. Everything else in Hollywood is regurgitated, why not this?
24. To Show how great an actor and comedian he was there is a clip from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when Wells was asked by Carson to read a grocery shopping list in Welles' known Shakespeareon fashion unrehearsed and had the audience, McMahon and Carson rolling.
25. Citizen Kane is an overrated piece of psychological warfare (with William Randolph Hearst being it's target). It was financed by Hearst's enemies who wanted to get their claws on the lucrative and powerful media outlets he owned. Orson Welles was just a tool - a talented tool - but a tool nonetheless. Look how Hollywood treated their Golden Boy in his later years.
26. I'll give it a chance since I'm a fan of old cinema and Welles but I am not holding out much hope that it'll be a great film.
27. I have been staying alive for the purpose of seeing this movie.
28. Looks self-indulgent. Orson Welles is overrated. His directing is mediocre. Perhaps his best days were in radio, because in film, I am not impressed.
29. Anybody have a couple hits of acid before I watch this?!
30. if its on netflix then it is leftist propaganda rubbish
31. Is it too much to ask them to indicate what the story is?
*
Jonathon Rosenbaum's Facebook page:
Hans Peter Litscher:
What I saw at this years Venice Filmfestival can only being described as "highly problematic editing". Far from convincing...
JR: Jonathan Rosenbaum I think It’s Welles’ style that you’re finding problematical.
Wind observations
-
Le Chiffre
- Site Admin
- Posts: 2078
- Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2001 11:31 pm
Re: Wind observations
It’s been apparent for years that everyone making movies and television would eventually end up working for Netflix, but until recently, it seemed like the streaming network would refrain from hiring directors who died more than three decades ago. Welles is probably one of the only people on the planet to have released movies through both Netflix and RKO.
****
Jeff Wilson launches Wellesnet, July 2001:
Jeff Wilson: The new Welles Board is up and running. For those who are not halfwits and are seriously interested in discussing Welles, there is a new message board at this link: http://wellesnet.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi
You must register to use the board, and flaming, spamming and the like won't be tolerated and will be removed. Do you really want to keep complaining about this board, or use a board that does work and is moderated? It's your choice.
Raymong: The new Welles board is not terrific, it's ok. They want you to be polite over there, so I like it here better.
Hill Skipper: This Welles board is now nice because obscene postings get deleted, allowing legitimate discussion to go on.
Raymong: and I'm sure we all thank you from the bottom of our hearts for taking time out of you busy life to put this post in.
dirty boy: i'm with raymong on this. he just said the other board is polite and boy is it ever. i'm not aware that a young man is called upon to sacrifice his career in order to provide his aunt with a favourable opportunity to play bridge. i.e. it's a bit solemn and maiden-aunty.
****
What was Welles's fascination with the Moon?
http://web.archive.org/web/200105291346 ... s/594.html
C. Meridith: Could someone please explain to me Welles' facinattion with the moon, or suggest any books etc that would help clarify this facination? Would also be appreciative if somone would tell me why Welles was so facinated with make-up (primarily false-noses) or was this simply a throw-back from his theatre days?
GT: No one knows exactly why Orson was drawn to the moon. It has something to do with Robert Graves book The White Goddess. We don't know if it was some sort of a religion with him or not. It's possiable that he found some sort of solitude with the moon. After all he did have trouble sleeping and was always up late thinking up his next plan of attack. He sometimes saw the full moon as a sign of good luck. The waxing moon etc...I've tried to find out more about this myself but came up short. Best of luck.
CM: The play that I am referring to is an original play written by the talented actor/comedian/playwright Greg Travis (I hope he wont mind my mentionning this?) It's entitled 'Orson Welles' and is amazing. Have read it four times, I wish I could say that it improves with subsequent reading, but the fact is that it was brilliant to begin with. The play is insightful, passionate, truthful and beautifully written. It is also wounderously funny and very creative. At the end of the play, unlike most OW biographical pieces, you really understand Orson Welles and what it was that he tried to achieve, however much the movie industry strived to prevent him.
****
Jeff Wilson launches Wellesnet, July 2001:
Jeff Wilson: The new Welles Board is up and running. For those who are not halfwits and are seriously interested in discussing Welles, there is a new message board at this link: http://wellesnet.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi
You must register to use the board, and flaming, spamming and the like won't be tolerated and will be removed. Do you really want to keep complaining about this board, or use a board that does work and is moderated? It's your choice.
Raymong: The new Welles board is not terrific, it's ok. They want you to be polite over there, so I like it here better.
Hill Skipper: This Welles board is now nice because obscene postings get deleted, allowing legitimate discussion to go on.
Raymong: and I'm sure we all thank you from the bottom of our hearts for taking time out of you busy life to put this post in.
dirty boy: i'm with raymong on this. he just said the other board is polite and boy is it ever. i'm not aware that a young man is called upon to sacrifice his career in order to provide his aunt with a favourable opportunity to play bridge. i.e. it's a bit solemn and maiden-aunty.
****
What was Welles's fascination with the Moon?
http://web.archive.org/web/200105291346 ... s/594.html
C. Meridith: Could someone please explain to me Welles' facinattion with the moon, or suggest any books etc that would help clarify this facination? Would also be appreciative if somone would tell me why Welles was so facinated with make-up (primarily false-noses) or was this simply a throw-back from his theatre days?
GT: No one knows exactly why Orson was drawn to the moon. It has something to do with Robert Graves book The White Goddess. We don't know if it was some sort of a religion with him or not. It's possiable that he found some sort of solitude with the moon. After all he did have trouble sleeping and was always up late thinking up his next plan of attack. He sometimes saw the full moon as a sign of good luck. The waxing moon etc...I've tried to find out more about this myself but came up short. Best of luck.
CM: The play that I am referring to is an original play written by the talented actor/comedian/playwright Greg Travis (I hope he wont mind my mentionning this?) It's entitled 'Orson Welles' and is amazing. Have read it four times, I wish I could say that it improves with subsequent reading, but the fact is that it was brilliant to begin with. The play is insightful, passionate, truthful and beautifully written. It is also wounderously funny and very creative. At the end of the play, unlike most OW biographical pieces, you really understand Orson Welles and what it was that he tried to achieve, however much the movie industry strived to prevent him.
-
Le Chiffre
- Site Admin
- Posts: 2078
- Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2001 11:31 pm
Re: Wind observations
Ray's review
It would be comforting to think that in the great beyond, Orson Welles is sipping a Negroni between puffs on a Macanudo and overjoyed that The Other Side of the Wind has been skillfully completed by an immensely talented team of friends and admirers.
In actuality, he is probably wincing about a particular line reading or lamenting over a shot he wishes he had done differently.
Welles, who died in 1985 at the age of 70, was denied the chance to fully edit the film he directed, cast, co-wrote and partially bankrolled out of his acting jobs for a number of complex reasons. Thankfully, Welles left behind scripts, notes, audio tapes and 40 minutes of edited footage, which helped yield one of his most fascinating, innovative and complex works.
The Other Side of the Wind, envisioned by Welles as his comeback film, is a slap down of both machismo and the New Hollywood of the 1970s.
The film takes place at the 70th birthday party of director J.J. "Jake" Hannaford, played by the great John Huston in a performance that rivals his work in Chinatown. Fueled by booze and running on fumes, Hannaford is struggling to complete his own comeback film ― a wholly pretentious effort loaded with gratuitous sex and symbolism. That footage, gorgeously shot by the late Gary Graver, features Robert Random and Oja Kodar, in non-speaking roles. Hannaford's unfinished movie lampoons the work of Zabriskie Point director Michelangelo Antonioni, and it isn't difficult to imagine a smirking Welles wanting to show the young Turks he could ape their style with ease.
The Antonioni-esque footage is mainly seen at the birthday bash thrown for Hannaford by pal Zarah Valeska (modeled after Marlene Dietrich and wonderfully played by Lilli Palmer). It is attended by successful young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), and the Hannaford mafia (Cameron Mitchell, Norman Foster, Mercedes McCambridge and Paul Stewart). Also in attendances are film critics (Susan Strasberg and Joseph McBride); real-life filmmakers, including Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky; and dozens of nameless photojournalists and fans capturing what will turn out to be the final hours of Hannaford's life. (Welles tapped several Wind crew members, including Graver, Larry Jackson, Mike Ferris and Peter Jason to double as partygoers or documentarians.)
The conceit of Welles' faux documentary is that is comprised of "found footage" ― revealing audiotapes, still photos, and hand-held 16mm film taken by partygoers, along with 35mm scenes taken from Hannaford's never completed movie. It's interesting to note the always ahead-of-his-time Welles was dabbling in the "found footage" genre several years before Cannibal Holocaust and decades ahead of the commercial success of The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield.
Welles intended to narrate the film's introduction, though he never recorded his scripted remarks. The producers chose to slightly alter the passage and have it narrated by Hannaford's now aged acolyte Otterlake. Having Bogdanovich, the real-life Welles disciple tasked with completing this movie in the event of his friend's death, deliver the opening narration is especially poignant. It is also far more desirable than the alternatives producers may have weighed (i.e. a celebrity voice actor or, God forbid, Welles impersonator.)
The Other Side of the Wind is a blend of two movies, each with a unique style that bears little resemblance to earlier entries in the Welles canon. With its quick cuts and cinéma vérité footage The Other Side of the Wind is stylistically closer to Welles' 1973 film essay F For Fake than his landmark 1941 movie Citizen Kane. However, thematically The Other Side of the Wind harkens back to some of his finest work.
Welles has always been intrigued by the abuse of power and Hannaford is a flawed, powerful man like newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane and Touch of Evil's corrupt cop Hank Quinlan. While Hannaford may be a Hollywood legend, he is also a bully, racist and misogynist. (It is ironic The Other Side of the Wind arrives in the midst of the #MeToo era.) It's surprising that PC-minded folks in some quarters have been perplexed, and a little offended, that the progressive Welles centered his film on Hannaford, as if they have never encountered a movie with a deliberately unappealing lead character before.
The young man-older man dynamics that fascinated Welles in The Magnificent Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight resurface in the complex relationship between Hannaford and Otterlake. The old filmmaker covets the success surrounding Otterlake, who in turn revels in counting the legendary Hannaford as a friend. (Since it's a Welles film, the audience knows betrayal is in the offing.) The one-on-one scenes between Huston and Bogdanovich are the emotional core of The Other Side of the Wind.
Memorable performances are also given by Foster as Hannaford's candy-munching alcoholic stooge Billy Boyle, Strasberg as a critic modeled after Pauline Kael, and Mitchell as Zimmer, a Hannaford clan member who senses death is near.
For cineastes, there is much to enjoy: The wink at 1970s studio exec Robert Evans, Jaglom and Mazursky's all-too-brief argument over the state of cinema and the rich sendup of Antonioni's work.
Make no mistake, The Other Side of the Wind with its patchwork style and bitter commentary on a bygone Hollywood era is unlikely to appeal to casual filmgoers. In addition, the second half of the script wastes time with superfluous characters ("The Baron") or moments ("The Glow Worm" sing-along) while the Hannaford-Otterlake relationship begs to be further developed. Perhaps, Welles the skilled editor would have recognized and fine-tuned some of the shortcomings of Welles the screenwriter. We will never know.
Some will argue The Other Side of the Wind should have remained unfinished because of Welles' absence, although the great man made it clear he wanted it completed and chose Bogdanovich to oversee it. To allow its negative to rot away in a Paris film lab would have been a high crime against cinema and an insult to those who gave so much to make this film decades ago.
There is a desire by some fans to declare this movie a bookend to Citizen Kane, which was released when Welles was just 26 years old.
So be it.
If Citizen Kane showed the genius of the "boy wonder," The Other Side of the Wind is a monument to the heart of a 50-something maverick; unbowed by years of having doors slammed in his face and unafraid to take bold, artistic chances.
This finished film would not exist if not for the Herculean efforts of a dedicated and accomplished post-production team.
Not enough praise can be heaped on Academy Award winning editor Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker). Getting into the master's head, Murawski skillfully assembled the pieces of Welles' cinematic jigsaw puzzle ― shot over a nearly six-year span ― into a cohesive narrative and seamlessly matched Welles' editing style.
Due to budget constraints, some of Welles' later projects regrettably have less-than-impressive sound. Thankfully, that is not the case here with four-time Oscar winning re-recording mixer Scott Millan (Apollo 13, Gladiator) and sound editor Daniel Saxlid at the controls. Even with some of the first-generation elements missing, Millan has done a remarkable job.
Grammy and Oscar winning composer Michel Legrand (F For Fake, Thomas Crown Affair) has provided a fitting score for the two halves of The Other Side of the Wind: An avant-garde elegy for Hannaford's never completed comeback movie and jaunty jazz for the birthday party sequences. At age 86, Legrand retains his refined musical taste and talent.
The Other Side of the Wind concludes with several minutes of credits before we hear Hannaford's voice utter "Cut." However, the lengthy scroll doesn't tell the story of why it took more than 40 years for this movie be completed and shown in theaters.
Following Welles' death, Graver, McBride and others labored unsuccessfully to bring the project to fruition.
No studio, save Showtime, was willing to invest in the project. Even then, the rights holders ― most notably Kodar, Welles' longtime companion; and the director's youngest daughter, Beatrice ― proved to be difficult, if not downright combative when it came to closing the deal.
Against overwhelming odds, Polish-born filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza united the rights held by the Iranian financial backers, Kodar, and Beatrice Welles. It took Rymsza nearly a decade to pull this off. Thankfully, he never gave up. (Should Rymsza tire of filmmaking, he clearly has the patience and chops for international diplomacy.)
Fellow producer Frank Marshall, known for turning out blockbusters like Jurassic World with seeming ease, was a line producer during Welles' 1970s shoot. There is little doubt that the considerable clout Marshall wields in the industry was instrumental in assembling an all-star post-production team and making sure the film was done right.
He and Bogdanovich, who served as executive producer on the completion, were best suited to decide how to shape the 96 hours of available footage (yes, 96 hours) into something as close as possible to what Welles envisioned in 1976. They worked alongside Welles on the original shoot, knew his intentions, and have proven track records in making successful movies.
Finally, it is impossible to properly thank Netflix, accused by some as anti-cinema, for making The Other Side of the Wind a reality after 42 years.
Hollywood studios were not breaking down the door to finance the completion of The Other Side of the Wind ― and they all had plenty of time and opportunities to do so.
Netflix, particularly content execs Ian Bricke and Ted Sarandos, took a leap of faith and in doing so have rightfully earned their place ― alongside Bogdanovich, Marshall, Rymsza and company ― for making cinematic history.
It would be comforting to think that in the great beyond, Orson Welles is sipping a Negroni between puffs on a Macanudo and overjoyed that The Other Side of the Wind has been skillfully completed by an immensely talented team of friends and admirers.
In actuality, he is probably wincing about a particular line reading or lamenting over a shot he wishes he had done differently.
Welles, who died in 1985 at the age of 70, was denied the chance to fully edit the film he directed, cast, co-wrote and partially bankrolled out of his acting jobs for a number of complex reasons. Thankfully, Welles left behind scripts, notes, audio tapes and 40 minutes of edited footage, which helped yield one of his most fascinating, innovative and complex works.
The Other Side of the Wind, envisioned by Welles as his comeback film, is a slap down of both machismo and the New Hollywood of the 1970s.
The film takes place at the 70th birthday party of director J.J. "Jake" Hannaford, played by the great John Huston in a performance that rivals his work in Chinatown. Fueled by booze and running on fumes, Hannaford is struggling to complete his own comeback film ― a wholly pretentious effort loaded with gratuitous sex and symbolism. That footage, gorgeously shot by the late Gary Graver, features Robert Random and Oja Kodar, in non-speaking roles. Hannaford's unfinished movie lampoons the work of Zabriskie Point director Michelangelo Antonioni, and it isn't difficult to imagine a smirking Welles wanting to show the young Turks he could ape their style with ease.
The Antonioni-esque footage is mainly seen at the birthday bash thrown for Hannaford by pal Zarah Valeska (modeled after Marlene Dietrich and wonderfully played by Lilli Palmer). It is attended by successful young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), and the Hannaford mafia (Cameron Mitchell, Norman Foster, Mercedes McCambridge and Paul Stewart). Also in attendances are film critics (Susan Strasberg and Joseph McBride); real-life filmmakers, including Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky; and dozens of nameless photojournalists and fans capturing what will turn out to be the final hours of Hannaford's life. (Welles tapped several Wind crew members, including Graver, Larry Jackson, Mike Ferris and Peter Jason to double as partygoers or documentarians.)
The conceit of Welles' faux documentary is that is comprised of "found footage" ― revealing audiotapes, still photos, and hand-held 16mm film taken by partygoers, along with 35mm scenes taken from Hannaford's never completed movie. It's interesting to note the always ahead-of-his-time Welles was dabbling in the "found footage" genre several years before Cannibal Holocaust and decades ahead of the commercial success of The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield.
Welles intended to narrate the film's introduction, though he never recorded his scripted remarks. The producers chose to slightly alter the passage and have it narrated by Hannaford's now aged acolyte Otterlake. Having Bogdanovich, the real-life Welles disciple tasked with completing this movie in the event of his friend's death, deliver the opening narration is especially poignant. It is also far more desirable than the alternatives producers may have weighed (i.e. a celebrity voice actor or, God forbid, Welles impersonator.)
The Other Side of the Wind is a blend of two movies, each with a unique style that bears little resemblance to earlier entries in the Welles canon. With its quick cuts and cinéma vérité footage The Other Side of the Wind is stylistically closer to Welles' 1973 film essay F For Fake than his landmark 1941 movie Citizen Kane. However, thematically The Other Side of the Wind harkens back to some of his finest work.
Welles has always been intrigued by the abuse of power and Hannaford is a flawed, powerful man like newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane and Touch of Evil's corrupt cop Hank Quinlan. While Hannaford may be a Hollywood legend, he is also a bully, racist and misogynist. (It is ironic The Other Side of the Wind arrives in the midst of the #MeToo era.) It's surprising that PC-minded folks in some quarters have been perplexed, and a little offended, that the progressive Welles centered his film on Hannaford, as if they have never encountered a movie with a deliberately unappealing lead character before.
The young man-older man dynamics that fascinated Welles in The Magnificent Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight resurface in the complex relationship between Hannaford and Otterlake. The old filmmaker covets the success surrounding Otterlake, who in turn revels in counting the legendary Hannaford as a friend. (Since it's a Welles film, the audience knows betrayal is in the offing.) The one-on-one scenes between Huston and Bogdanovich are the emotional core of The Other Side of the Wind.
Memorable performances are also given by Foster as Hannaford's candy-munching alcoholic stooge Billy Boyle, Strasberg as a critic modeled after Pauline Kael, and Mitchell as Zimmer, a Hannaford clan member who senses death is near.
For cineastes, there is much to enjoy: The wink at 1970s studio exec Robert Evans, Jaglom and Mazursky's all-too-brief argument over the state of cinema and the rich sendup of Antonioni's work.
Make no mistake, The Other Side of the Wind with its patchwork style and bitter commentary on a bygone Hollywood era is unlikely to appeal to casual filmgoers. In addition, the second half of the script wastes time with superfluous characters ("The Baron") or moments ("The Glow Worm" sing-along) while the Hannaford-Otterlake relationship begs to be further developed. Perhaps, Welles the skilled editor would have recognized and fine-tuned some of the shortcomings of Welles the screenwriter. We will never know.
Some will argue The Other Side of the Wind should have remained unfinished because of Welles' absence, although the great man made it clear he wanted it completed and chose Bogdanovich to oversee it. To allow its negative to rot away in a Paris film lab would have been a high crime against cinema and an insult to those who gave so much to make this film decades ago.
There is a desire by some fans to declare this movie a bookend to Citizen Kane, which was released when Welles was just 26 years old.
So be it.
If Citizen Kane showed the genius of the "boy wonder," The Other Side of the Wind is a monument to the heart of a 50-something maverick; unbowed by years of having doors slammed in his face and unafraid to take bold, artistic chances.
This finished film would not exist if not for the Herculean efforts of a dedicated and accomplished post-production team.
Not enough praise can be heaped on Academy Award winning editor Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker). Getting into the master's head, Murawski skillfully assembled the pieces of Welles' cinematic jigsaw puzzle ― shot over a nearly six-year span ― into a cohesive narrative and seamlessly matched Welles' editing style.
Due to budget constraints, some of Welles' later projects regrettably have less-than-impressive sound. Thankfully, that is not the case here with four-time Oscar winning re-recording mixer Scott Millan (Apollo 13, Gladiator) and sound editor Daniel Saxlid at the controls. Even with some of the first-generation elements missing, Millan has done a remarkable job.
Grammy and Oscar winning composer Michel Legrand (F For Fake, Thomas Crown Affair) has provided a fitting score for the two halves of The Other Side of the Wind: An avant-garde elegy for Hannaford's never completed comeback movie and jaunty jazz for the birthday party sequences. At age 86, Legrand retains his refined musical taste and talent.
The Other Side of the Wind concludes with several minutes of credits before we hear Hannaford's voice utter "Cut." However, the lengthy scroll doesn't tell the story of why it took more than 40 years for this movie be completed and shown in theaters.
Following Welles' death, Graver, McBride and others labored unsuccessfully to bring the project to fruition.
No studio, save Showtime, was willing to invest in the project. Even then, the rights holders ― most notably Kodar, Welles' longtime companion; and the director's youngest daughter, Beatrice ― proved to be difficult, if not downright combative when it came to closing the deal.
Against overwhelming odds, Polish-born filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza united the rights held by the Iranian financial backers, Kodar, and Beatrice Welles. It took Rymsza nearly a decade to pull this off. Thankfully, he never gave up. (Should Rymsza tire of filmmaking, he clearly has the patience and chops for international diplomacy.)
Fellow producer Frank Marshall, known for turning out blockbusters like Jurassic World with seeming ease, was a line producer during Welles' 1970s shoot. There is little doubt that the considerable clout Marshall wields in the industry was instrumental in assembling an all-star post-production team and making sure the film was done right.
He and Bogdanovich, who served as executive producer on the completion, were best suited to decide how to shape the 96 hours of available footage (yes, 96 hours) into something as close as possible to what Welles envisioned in 1976. They worked alongside Welles on the original shoot, knew his intentions, and have proven track records in making successful movies.
Finally, it is impossible to properly thank Netflix, accused by some as anti-cinema, for making The Other Side of the Wind a reality after 42 years.
Hollywood studios were not breaking down the door to finance the completion of The Other Side of the Wind ― and they all had plenty of time and opportunities to do so.
Netflix, particularly content execs Ian Bricke and Ted Sarandos, took a leap of faith and in doing so have rightfully earned their place ― alongside Bogdanovich, Marshall, Rymsza and company ― for making cinematic history.
-
Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
The Other Side of the Wind, envisioned by Welles as his comeback film, is a slap down of both machismo and the New Hollywood of the 1970s.
. Hannaford's unfinished movie lampoons the work of Zabriskie Point director Michelangelo Antonioni,
The conceit of Welles' faux documentary is that is comprised of "found footage" ― revealing audiotapes, still photos, and hand-held 16mm film taken by partygoers, along with 35mm scenes taken from Hannaford's never completed movie. It's interesting to note the always ahead-of-his-time Welles was dabbling in the "found footage" genre several years before Cannibal Holocaust and decades ahead of the commercial success of The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield.
Having Bogdanovich, the real-life Welles disciple tasked with completing this movie in the event of his friend's death, deliver the opening narration is especially poignant. It is also far more desirable than the alternatives producers may have weighed (i.e. a celebrity voice actor or, God forbid, Welles impersonator.)
The Other Side of the Wind is a blend of two movies, each with a unique style that bears little resemblance to earlier entries in the Welles canon.
It's surprising that PC-minded folks in some quarters have been perplexed, and a little offended, that the progressive Welles centered his film on Hannaford, as if they have never encountered a movie with a deliberately unappealing lead character before.
The young man-older man dynamics that fascinated Welles in The Magnificent Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight resurface in the complex relationship between Hannaford and Otterlake.
the second half of the script wastes time with superfluous characters ("The Baron") or moments ("The Glow Worm" sing-along) while the Hannaford-Otterlake relationship begs to be further developed. Perhaps, Welles the skilled editor would have recognized and fine-tuned some of the shortcomings of Welles the screenwriter. We will never know.
Some will argue The Other Side of the Wind should have remained unfinished because of Welles' absence, although the great man made it clear he wanted it completed and chose Bogdanovich to oversee it.
The Other Side of the Wind is a monument to the heart of a 50-something maverick; unbowed by years of having doors slammed in his face and unafraid to take bold, artistic chances.
The Other Side of the Wind concludes with several minutes of credits before we hear Hannaford's voice utter "Cut."
Against overwhelming odds, Polish-born filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza united the rights held by the Iranian financial backers, Kodar, and Beatrice Welles. It took Rymsza nearly a decade to pull this off. Thankfully, he never gave up.
it is impossible to properly thank Netflix, accused by some as anti-cinema, for making The Other Side of the Wind a reality after 42 years.
. Hannaford's unfinished movie lampoons the work of Zabriskie Point director Michelangelo Antonioni,
The conceit of Welles' faux documentary is that is comprised of "found footage" ― revealing audiotapes, still photos, and hand-held 16mm film taken by partygoers, along with 35mm scenes taken from Hannaford's never completed movie. It's interesting to note the always ahead-of-his-time Welles was dabbling in the "found footage" genre several years before Cannibal Holocaust and decades ahead of the commercial success of The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield.
Having Bogdanovich, the real-life Welles disciple tasked with completing this movie in the event of his friend's death, deliver the opening narration is especially poignant. It is also far more desirable than the alternatives producers may have weighed (i.e. a celebrity voice actor or, God forbid, Welles impersonator.)
The Other Side of the Wind is a blend of two movies, each with a unique style that bears little resemblance to earlier entries in the Welles canon.
It's surprising that PC-minded folks in some quarters have been perplexed, and a little offended, that the progressive Welles centered his film on Hannaford, as if they have never encountered a movie with a deliberately unappealing lead character before.
The young man-older man dynamics that fascinated Welles in The Magnificent Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight resurface in the complex relationship between Hannaford and Otterlake.
the second half of the script wastes time with superfluous characters ("The Baron") or moments ("The Glow Worm" sing-along) while the Hannaford-Otterlake relationship begs to be further developed. Perhaps, Welles the skilled editor would have recognized and fine-tuned some of the shortcomings of Welles the screenwriter. We will never know.
Some will argue The Other Side of the Wind should have remained unfinished because of Welles' absence, although the great man made it clear he wanted it completed and chose Bogdanovich to oversee it.
The Other Side of the Wind is a monument to the heart of a 50-something maverick; unbowed by years of having doors slammed in his face and unafraid to take bold, artistic chances.
The Other Side of the Wind concludes with several minutes of credits before we hear Hannaford's voice utter "Cut."
Against overwhelming odds, Polish-born filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza united the rights held by the Iranian financial backers, Kodar, and Beatrice Welles. It took Rymsza nearly a decade to pull this off. Thankfully, he never gave up.
it is impossible to properly thank Netflix, accused by some as anti-cinema, for making The Other Side of the Wind a reality after 42 years.
-
Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
Vanity Fair
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead: The Bonkers Backstory of Orson Welles’s Last Movie:
Here’s your first look at Morgan Neville’s documentary about the making of Welles’s fraught final film, The Other Side of the Wind.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... k1MDUwMQS2
JMcB: Um, not his last movie . .
MT: Makes for a more exciting headline, though.
JMcB: The truth is more exciting.
MT: What would you consider to be Orson Welles's final movie?
JMcB: ORSON WELLES' MAGIC SHOW.
MT: I've seen Munich's MAGIC SHOW short, which has some charm, but do you think it's possible for that to be completed in some kind of coherent, feature length form, like The Other Side of the Wind?
JMcB: It's a different kind of film, a sketch film, but he shot a lot of it. During the night he died in 1985, he was typing notes for a new sequence involving teleportation as well as notes for his new film he was to begin shooting that morning at UCLA, a one-man JULIIUS CAESAR.
MT: Working on it right up until the end. You've said it was started in 1976, so it would be interesting to know how much money was put into it over the course of those nine years, if that's possible to find out. I guess it depends on how one would define "film", and I'll admit, Orson Welles makes the word more elastic than most. In WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ORSON WELLES? you wrote that THE MAGIC SHOW "was intended as a TV show, but was really more of a hobby." Then you quote Gary Graver as admitting that he always knew it was going to be a work-in-progress.
Do you know if there was any kind of script indicating what Welles envisioned the project being as a finished entity? If not, then that kind of completion probably can't, and probably shouldn't be brought about by others, although it would at least be nice to see some kind of documentary made, like IT'S ALL TRUE. From the Munich short, there does seem to be a theme of paying tribute to past legendary magicians. Maybe Netflix might be interested, if Wind gets a good reception from it's subscribers.
JMcB: What I've seen of MAGIC SHOW is quite polished. It seemed like an ongoing project he kept adding to. As far as I know, it would not be hard to put together the material. The half-hour compilation done by the Munich Film Museum is entertaining but not the whole thing. They don't seem interested in doing more with any of their Welles material, though.
MT: That's too bad. Maybe they should sell all the material to Netflix, which has both the inclination and the money. I believe it was Jonathon Rosenbaum who said recently that Munich left out the best scene in THE MAGIC SHOW, something about a trick going awry and policemen having to come in and scramble to get the illusion back on track.
Have you seen this? It's the network special MAGIC WITH THE STARS from 1982. Orson Welles is one of the hosts, and some of the Magic Show footage is seen towards the end. A nice find by one of our Wellesnet regulars, but it's kind of a shame that we have this instead of a finished Welles Magic Show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrSrEiB ... .be&t=5408
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead: The Bonkers Backstory of Orson Welles’s Last Movie:
Here’s your first look at Morgan Neville’s documentary about the making of Welles’s fraught final film, The Other Side of the Wind.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... k1MDUwMQS2
JMcB: Um, not his last movie . .
MT: Makes for a more exciting headline, though.
JMcB: The truth is more exciting.
MT: What would you consider to be Orson Welles's final movie?
JMcB: ORSON WELLES' MAGIC SHOW.
MT: I've seen Munich's MAGIC SHOW short, which has some charm, but do you think it's possible for that to be completed in some kind of coherent, feature length form, like The Other Side of the Wind?
JMcB: It's a different kind of film, a sketch film, but he shot a lot of it. During the night he died in 1985, he was typing notes for a new sequence involving teleportation as well as notes for his new film he was to begin shooting that morning at UCLA, a one-man JULIIUS CAESAR.
MT: Working on it right up until the end. You've said it was started in 1976, so it would be interesting to know how much money was put into it over the course of those nine years, if that's possible to find out. I guess it depends on how one would define "film", and I'll admit, Orson Welles makes the word more elastic than most. In WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ORSON WELLES? you wrote that THE MAGIC SHOW "was intended as a TV show, but was really more of a hobby." Then you quote Gary Graver as admitting that he always knew it was going to be a work-in-progress.
Do you know if there was any kind of script indicating what Welles envisioned the project being as a finished entity? If not, then that kind of completion probably can't, and probably shouldn't be brought about by others, although it would at least be nice to see some kind of documentary made, like IT'S ALL TRUE. From the Munich short, there does seem to be a theme of paying tribute to past legendary magicians. Maybe Netflix might be interested, if Wind gets a good reception from it's subscribers.
JMcB: What I've seen of MAGIC SHOW is quite polished. It seemed like an ongoing project he kept adding to. As far as I know, it would not be hard to put together the material. The half-hour compilation done by the Munich Film Museum is entertaining but not the whole thing. They don't seem interested in doing more with any of their Welles material, though.
MT: That's too bad. Maybe they should sell all the material to Netflix, which has both the inclination and the money. I believe it was Jonathon Rosenbaum who said recently that Munich left out the best scene in THE MAGIC SHOW, something about a trick going awry and policemen having to come in and scramble to get the illusion back on track.
Have you seen this? It's the network special MAGIC WITH THE STARS from 1982. Orson Welles is one of the hosts, and some of the Magic Show footage is seen towards the end. A nice find by one of our Wellesnet regulars, but it's kind of a shame that we have this instead of a finished Welles Magic Show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrSrEiB ... .be&t=5408
-
Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
1. UNCERTAIN AUTHORSHIP
Obviously this is essentially an Orson Welles film, and yet, in this assemblage it could easily be considered partly a film by Peter Bogdanovich and Frank Marshall, since they are the ones who are interpreting Welles's intentions and telling the story through that interpretation. Of course, we'll never know how close this is to the film Welles would have made, but the level of quality and care and effort that has gone into the Netflix version is something no one can deny. It would be pretty hard to imagine this not becoming the definitive version, although one can't help but wonder what Oja Kodar, co-author of the screenplay with Welles, might be able to do with the 1999 Mazzola/Graver edit of the film if she were given a chance to hire her own team and work with Netflix's pristine materials. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
In addition to the forty year gestation period sitting in a Paris vault, this ambiguity of authorship puts The Other Side of the Wind in the territory of the 'found footage' genre, like F For Fake, a film made around the same time as Wind, and one where the autheurship was also questioned, since Welles had made extensive use of footage shot by another director, Francois Riechenbach.
2. THE EASY RIDER ERA
Welles's hall-of-mirrors between art and life strikes again, as the relationship between Hannaford and Otterlake (stand-ins for Welles and Bogdanovich) is really at the heart of the film. That relationship itself seems like a metaphor for the premature fall of the so-called 'Easy Rider' era in Hollywood. Or, in retrospect, even a premonition of it. The Other Side of the Wind is first and foremost a film of and about the Easy Rider era in Hollywood. In that sense, it is both nostalgiac and illuminating; both satire and elegy.
So what was the Easy Rider era in American film? Well...Bogdanovich was one of it's top dogs for awhile, but instead of creating new genres with European sensibilities, like Hopper or modern city dramas, PB, like Altman, resurrected old genres like the screwball comedy, the coming-of-age drama to put the old wine into a new bottles. While Bogdanovich - and others' - stars were fading, Lucas and Speilberg were resurrecting their own preferred genres like Sci-fi, Adventure serials. Lucas had scored his first big hit with American Graffitti in 1973.
In any event, the liberal film within the film and the conservative doc footage seem at political odds with one another.
3. POCAHANTAS
The Other Side of the Wind was filmed in the early 1970s, around the time Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" became a massive bestseller, and there was a general vogue in reevaluating the U.S.'s relationship and history with Native Americans, as well as the rest of the world, as the Viet Nam War was still raging at the time. John Ford is believed by some to be one of the models for Jake Hannaford, and the film's Arizona setting recalls many of the great John Ford westerns. By having Hannaford refer to his lead actress as 'Pocahantas', Welles paints him as a reactionary dinosaur, like Ford or John Wayne. Oja's character thus represents a dual suppression: women and Native Americans.
As blowhard machismo seems back in vogue these days, many people, rightly or wrongly, will think Trump when they hear that Pocahontas line of Hannaford's. If Wind is Welles's first feminist film, as Jonathon Rosenbaum has said, it might also be well positioned to benefit from the #Me Too movement.
4. HEMINGWAY
Hannaford was more like Hemingway in the project's previous incarnation, The Sacred Beasts, and the genesis of the whole story goes back to the row that Welles and Hemingway had in 1937 after Hemingway accused Welles's narration for The Sacred Earth - a documentary about the Spanish Civil War - of being too effeminate. Welles's later screenplay, The Big Brass Ring, more clearly conflates Viet Nam with the Spanish Civil War.
Some have complained that the film lacks a real story, and the film does indeed seem less story than psychoanalysis of the whole 'Alpha-Male' ethic. This ties in with the 'director-as-god' philosophy of France's 'auteur theory', which was imported to Hollywood during the 'Easy Rider' era, and given to young, liberal directors who had had any kind of hit. Hannaford wants desperately to get back into this game, and it is both a pathetic and hilarious irony to see such a chest-thumping dinosaur and his mafia attempting to ingratiate themselves with all these hippies.
Hannaford also carries some kind of mysterious, and somewhat bizarre torch for his leading man, John Dale, a hippie-type figure who seems modeled after Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors. Thus, Hannaford's pining after John Dale and his attempt to find a place in the Easy Rider era, becomes symbolic of his pining after lost youth in general, a'la Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice." Furthermore, Hannaford's excessive macho posturing and amibiguous sexuality, is itself representative of many different macho directors. One thinks of Maureen O'Hara's assertion that she once caught John Ford kissing another man on the set of one of his pictures. It also brings to mind something that Ali McGraw once said about Sam Peckinpah: "I think Sam had a very strong feminine side, and it scared him. I think he rebelled against it."
5. THE TEMPEST
"Our revels now are ended?" asks Otterlake to Hannaford near the end of the film. Hannaford is also a Prospero figure and it's interesting that The Other Side of the Wind was the last time Welles came close to finishing a non-documentary feature, just as The Tempest was Shakespeare's final play. Both have the sense of a valedictory, as well as a renunciation.
Hannaford plays God with his two actors, who are roaming around naked on a movie set, as if it were some Garden of Eden. Prospero does a similar matchmaking scheme with Miranda and Ferdinand, while Mr. Clay in The Immortal Story is a 'kind of director', in Welles's words, who 'stages' a sex act between two strangers. Peter Conrad's book, Orson Welles: The Stories of his life points out an interesting fact: "Tempests", the story that precedes The Immortal Story in Isak Dineson's "Anecdotes of Destiny", concerns an actor preparing to play Prospero, who sees the play spilling out into real life.
6. FILM-WITHIN-A-FILM
Like Citizen Kane's 'Projection Room' scene, The Other Side of the Wind features a film-within-a-FILM. Kane presented a newsreel short giving an objective overview of the life and career of the film's main protagonist, Charles Foster Kane. Wind, on the other hand, gives us the protagonist's latest unfinished film, which comes across almost like a subjective reflection of his distorted state of mind and God-like pretensions. Interesting that, just as Hannaford's film is unfinished, so the Newsreel film is declared unfinished by Thomson's boss.
We are told in Wind prologue that the other film, which surrounds Hannaford's unfinished film, has been put together by Otterlake. So, what we have is a film by Otterlake surrounding a film by Hannaford. Two films by two different directors, intertwined. One curious contrast about that that becomes apparent quickly is that Hannaford's film is essentially a silent film, whereas Otterlake's film is almost entirely driven by dialogue, like a stageplay. This interplay between the visual and audio parts of the film recalls the ironic and ambivalent ending of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT where the soundtrack indicates a happy ending while the visuals seem more tragic.
7. PARTY GOERS AS GREEK CHORUS
In a strange way, the partygoers at Hannaford's birthday, with all their little snatches of conversation and commentary, are somewhat reminiscent of the townspeople in The Magnificent Ambersons, commenting mainly on Jake. This would put Jake in a roughly similar position to George Amberson Minafer, an aristocrat who is in danger of falling out of that Olympus due to his financial problems, and into plebian status. The birthday party can also be seen as analogous to the Christmas party in Ambersons, where the aristocracy opens up their world briefly to average folk. "Our revels now are ended", Prospero's repentance line from Shakespeare's The Tempest can be seen as a counterpart to George's repentance scene in Ambersons.
There are some similarities between Hannaford and Mr. Clay from The Immortal Story as well. Both are trying to bring about a fictionalized coupling between two young people.
8. GOD THE FATHER
The scenes on the Hollywood back lot feature a lot nudity of Oja and Bob Random, almost to the point where I felt I was watching some kind of bizarre Garden of Eden parody, with Hannaford's voice as "God the Father" as Sara Valeska is alleged to have called him(or The Godfather, with his own little mafia?). This puts it closer to John Ford territory, since he had his own "mafia", as did Welles in the early years of his Mercury Theater.
I agree that David Ehrenstien's review is nasty but, as one of the leading LGBT critics, I think he was offended by the homoerotic baiting in the film, including the use of the word "faggot" a couple of times. However, to give him credit, his is one of the few reviews that have mentioned the John Ford/Hannaford connection. Most reviews have focused on Hannaford as Hemingway, even though John Carroll plays a Hemingway-like figure in the film named Lou Martin (He was a late addition to the cast too: 1975). Ehrenstien asserts that it was Tyrone Power who Maureen O'Hara caught Ford making out with on the set of THE LONG GREY LINE (1955), but I can find no other confirmation of this online. Power starred with Welles in a couple of movies. Not that I'm insinuating anything.
9. PARALLAX VIEW AND CINEMATIC CUBISM-
JFK assassination, many different viewpoints of Hannaford's party. Cubism, Picasso, and the influence of film, structured as parts to make up a whole. Cinema is cubist. Influence of F FOR FAKE with its Picasso section. Oja Kodar gets paintings from Picasso ("One whole Picasso period), just as she later got films from Welles (his "Oja" period).
Welles alternates between all the cameras filming Hannaford’s party, fashioning a hypnotic cinematic cubism. - Slant Magazine
https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/revi ... f-the-wind
Cubism: the abandonment of single viewpoint perspective
10. VAMPIRISM
Interesting how Hannaford dies at the break of dawn after Oja's character drives a stake through his penis. Like TOUCH OF EVIL, oil is linked metaphorically with blood; Hannaford needs oil money to finish his film.
Obviously this is essentially an Orson Welles film, and yet, in this assemblage it could easily be considered partly a film by Peter Bogdanovich and Frank Marshall, since they are the ones who are interpreting Welles's intentions and telling the story through that interpretation. Of course, we'll never know how close this is to the film Welles would have made, but the level of quality and care and effort that has gone into the Netflix version is something no one can deny. It would be pretty hard to imagine this not becoming the definitive version, although one can't help but wonder what Oja Kodar, co-author of the screenplay with Welles, might be able to do with the 1999 Mazzola/Graver edit of the film if she were given a chance to hire her own team and work with Netflix's pristine materials. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
In addition to the forty year gestation period sitting in a Paris vault, this ambiguity of authorship puts The Other Side of the Wind in the territory of the 'found footage' genre, like F For Fake, a film made around the same time as Wind, and one where the autheurship was also questioned, since Welles had made extensive use of footage shot by another director, Francois Riechenbach.
2. THE EASY RIDER ERA
Welles's hall-of-mirrors between art and life strikes again, as the relationship between Hannaford and Otterlake (stand-ins for Welles and Bogdanovich) is really at the heart of the film. That relationship itself seems like a metaphor for the premature fall of the so-called 'Easy Rider' era in Hollywood. Or, in retrospect, even a premonition of it. The Other Side of the Wind is first and foremost a film of and about the Easy Rider era in Hollywood. In that sense, it is both nostalgiac and illuminating; both satire and elegy.
So what was the Easy Rider era in American film? Well...Bogdanovich was one of it's top dogs for awhile, but instead of creating new genres with European sensibilities, like Hopper or modern city dramas, PB, like Altman, resurrected old genres like the screwball comedy, the coming-of-age drama to put the old wine into a new bottles. While Bogdanovich - and others' - stars were fading, Lucas and Speilberg were resurrecting their own preferred genres like Sci-fi, Adventure serials. Lucas had scored his first big hit with American Graffitti in 1973.
In any event, the liberal film within the film and the conservative doc footage seem at political odds with one another.
3. POCAHANTAS
The Other Side of the Wind was filmed in the early 1970s, around the time Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" became a massive bestseller, and there was a general vogue in reevaluating the U.S.'s relationship and history with Native Americans, as well as the rest of the world, as the Viet Nam War was still raging at the time. John Ford is believed by some to be one of the models for Jake Hannaford, and the film's Arizona setting recalls many of the great John Ford westerns. By having Hannaford refer to his lead actress as 'Pocahantas', Welles paints him as a reactionary dinosaur, like Ford or John Wayne. Oja's character thus represents a dual suppression: women and Native Americans.
As blowhard machismo seems back in vogue these days, many people, rightly or wrongly, will think Trump when they hear that Pocahontas line of Hannaford's. If Wind is Welles's first feminist film, as Jonathon Rosenbaum has said, it might also be well positioned to benefit from the #Me Too movement.
4. HEMINGWAY
Hannaford was more like Hemingway in the project's previous incarnation, The Sacred Beasts, and the genesis of the whole story goes back to the row that Welles and Hemingway had in 1937 after Hemingway accused Welles's narration for The Sacred Earth - a documentary about the Spanish Civil War - of being too effeminate. Welles's later screenplay, The Big Brass Ring, more clearly conflates Viet Nam with the Spanish Civil War.
Some have complained that the film lacks a real story, and the film does indeed seem less story than psychoanalysis of the whole 'Alpha-Male' ethic. This ties in with the 'director-as-god' philosophy of France's 'auteur theory', which was imported to Hollywood during the 'Easy Rider' era, and given to young, liberal directors who had had any kind of hit. Hannaford wants desperately to get back into this game, and it is both a pathetic and hilarious irony to see such a chest-thumping dinosaur and his mafia attempting to ingratiate themselves with all these hippies.
Hannaford also carries some kind of mysterious, and somewhat bizarre torch for his leading man, John Dale, a hippie-type figure who seems modeled after Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors. Thus, Hannaford's pining after John Dale and his attempt to find a place in the Easy Rider era, becomes symbolic of his pining after lost youth in general, a'la Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice." Furthermore, Hannaford's excessive macho posturing and amibiguous sexuality, is itself representative of many different macho directors. One thinks of Maureen O'Hara's assertion that she once caught John Ford kissing another man on the set of one of his pictures. It also brings to mind something that Ali McGraw once said about Sam Peckinpah: "I think Sam had a very strong feminine side, and it scared him. I think he rebelled against it."
5. THE TEMPEST
"Our revels now are ended?" asks Otterlake to Hannaford near the end of the film. Hannaford is also a Prospero figure and it's interesting that The Other Side of the Wind was the last time Welles came close to finishing a non-documentary feature, just as The Tempest was Shakespeare's final play. Both have the sense of a valedictory, as well as a renunciation.
Hannaford plays God with his two actors, who are roaming around naked on a movie set, as if it were some Garden of Eden. Prospero does a similar matchmaking scheme with Miranda and Ferdinand, while Mr. Clay in The Immortal Story is a 'kind of director', in Welles's words, who 'stages' a sex act between two strangers. Peter Conrad's book, Orson Welles: The Stories of his life points out an interesting fact: "Tempests", the story that precedes The Immortal Story in Isak Dineson's "Anecdotes of Destiny", concerns an actor preparing to play Prospero, who sees the play spilling out into real life.
6. FILM-WITHIN-A-FILM
Like Citizen Kane's 'Projection Room' scene, The Other Side of the Wind features a film-within-a-FILM. Kane presented a newsreel short giving an objective overview of the life and career of the film's main protagonist, Charles Foster Kane. Wind, on the other hand, gives us the protagonist's latest unfinished film, which comes across almost like a subjective reflection of his distorted state of mind and God-like pretensions. Interesting that, just as Hannaford's film is unfinished, so the Newsreel film is declared unfinished by Thomson's boss.
We are told in Wind prologue that the other film, which surrounds Hannaford's unfinished film, has been put together by Otterlake. So, what we have is a film by Otterlake surrounding a film by Hannaford. Two films by two different directors, intertwined. One curious contrast about that that becomes apparent quickly is that Hannaford's film is essentially a silent film, whereas Otterlake's film is almost entirely driven by dialogue, like a stageplay. This interplay between the visual and audio parts of the film recalls the ironic and ambivalent ending of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT where the soundtrack indicates a happy ending while the visuals seem more tragic.
7. PARTY GOERS AS GREEK CHORUS
In a strange way, the partygoers at Hannaford's birthday, with all their little snatches of conversation and commentary, are somewhat reminiscent of the townspeople in The Magnificent Ambersons, commenting mainly on Jake. This would put Jake in a roughly similar position to George Amberson Minafer, an aristocrat who is in danger of falling out of that Olympus due to his financial problems, and into plebian status. The birthday party can also be seen as analogous to the Christmas party in Ambersons, where the aristocracy opens up their world briefly to average folk. "Our revels now are ended", Prospero's repentance line from Shakespeare's The Tempest can be seen as a counterpart to George's repentance scene in Ambersons.
There are some similarities between Hannaford and Mr. Clay from The Immortal Story as well. Both are trying to bring about a fictionalized coupling between two young people.
8. GOD THE FATHER
The scenes on the Hollywood back lot feature a lot nudity of Oja and Bob Random, almost to the point where I felt I was watching some kind of bizarre Garden of Eden parody, with Hannaford's voice as "God the Father" as Sara Valeska is alleged to have called him(or The Godfather, with his own little mafia?). This puts it closer to John Ford territory, since he had his own "mafia", as did Welles in the early years of his Mercury Theater.
I agree that David Ehrenstien's review is nasty but, as one of the leading LGBT critics, I think he was offended by the homoerotic baiting in the film, including the use of the word "faggot" a couple of times. However, to give him credit, his is one of the few reviews that have mentioned the John Ford/Hannaford connection. Most reviews have focused on Hannaford as Hemingway, even though John Carroll plays a Hemingway-like figure in the film named Lou Martin (He was a late addition to the cast too: 1975). Ehrenstien asserts that it was Tyrone Power who Maureen O'Hara caught Ford making out with on the set of THE LONG GREY LINE (1955), but I can find no other confirmation of this online. Power starred with Welles in a couple of movies. Not that I'm insinuating anything.
9. PARALLAX VIEW AND CINEMATIC CUBISM-
JFK assassination, many different viewpoints of Hannaford's party. Cubism, Picasso, and the influence of film, structured as parts to make up a whole. Cinema is cubist. Influence of F FOR FAKE with its Picasso section. Oja Kodar gets paintings from Picasso ("One whole Picasso period), just as she later got films from Welles (his "Oja" period).
Welles alternates between all the cameras filming Hannaford’s party, fashioning a hypnotic cinematic cubism. - Slant Magazine
https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/revi ... f-the-wind
Cubism: the abandonment of single viewpoint perspective
10. VAMPIRISM
Interesting how Hannaford dies at the break of dawn after Oja's character drives a stake through his penis. Like TOUCH OF EVIL, oil is linked metaphorically with blood; Hannaford needs oil money to finish his film.
-
Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
1999 Tierranet conversation-
http://web.archive.org/web/200105302340 ... s/692.html
PC: A reliable source recently spoke directly with producer Frank Marshall ("The Sixth Sense") and apparently Showtime is about to close a deal that would finally bring Welles' last film, at least to the small screen. Marshall will produce and Peter Bogdanovich and Gary Graver will supervise the edit.
Hurray for Showtime which did such a fabulous job with "The Big Brass Ring."
?:
Welles was doing nothing but cinematic masturbation, I have seen a lot of the footage. If anyone does anything with this material it will be far away from what was intended. trust me that in the more then one screening I saw people there were worried more about Orsons legacy if this project happened.
PC:
Cinematic masturbation? I think that's what they first said about Braque and Picasso when they introduced cubism. Why don't you read a few books, moron.
?: I had the priveledge to see A two hour cut of the most borein footage ever dureing one of it's screenings a few years back. It was not what any one exspected. It was not F for Fake. There was a reason why Welles never finished this film. It took five years out of his life and he was aganst the the wall. He had many great young filmakers involved and hopes where high. A one point Huston wanted to take the negative off Welles hands and desroy it. It is a inresting footage, but at the point he was makeing this he was not at his peak, Some things go better being a myth. By the way to the moron who wrote the above post, how much footage of TOSOTW have you seen. I think in total I have seen two and a half hours. Tell me Einstein how much have you seen to base ypur judgment on me?
Anthony:
PLease everybody- let's remember that Welles's opinion about cinema was that "edīting is not an aspect of making movies, it's the aspect of making movies". That's why we will never have his "Quixote" or "Deep" or "Wind"; at the very most, we can have "Bogdanovich's Wind" or "Franco's Quixote"; yes, it's all very post-modern, but perhaps Welles would want his work open and not closed; for the post-modern mind, there are no "finished" works. In "Chahiers" In 1966, Welles said that he had only a series of sequences for "Quixote" and that he didnt know how to turn it into a film; maybe he just never solved that particular problem.
Dear F for Fake?:
I believe in a lively exchange of ideas, but how dare you refer to Welles' 'The Other Side of the Wind' as "cinematic masturbation." In its final edited form, if it's anything like the clips that were shown on the televised 1975 AFI Tribute (wake?) for Welles, TOSOTW could at the very least be a fascinating period piece of an already strangely distant era in Hollywood. Welles' directorial failures were more interesting than most other directors' successes, so I'd reserve judgement until we see what the editors come up with (working, I would hope, from notes that Welles left behind).
?: Have you ever read the screenplay to TOSOTW? Also there are no notes. Also Welles did not direct some parts.
Wouldn't it be hard to find he was out to lunch on his last film? It's eay to think that ones hero work is all worthwhile, but there is also a reality.
AJS:
Sorry, but judging by your refusal to identify yourself, your lack of any specific faults with OSOTW, and the seven spelling errors in your last post, I don't see why any of us should trust you. But hey, you're entitled to your opinion. It's just that this is starting to sound like a pretty one-sided thread. OSOTW sucks, no it doesn't, yes it does, etc. Rinse, lather, repeat.
?:
Yea, my spelling is as sloppy as Welles direction regarding TOSOTW. I just wrote a quick reply. Yes the footage will be intering but I am just scared that this could leave Orson (who I respect) in worse shape then Kubrick had as a final film. High expections and a sudden silence when the lights go up filled with remorse. Do your homework, have you ever read Joe McBides study of TOSOTW in American Film?
AJS:
No, but I've read McBride's book Orson Welles, the revised edition, and the chapter on TOSOTW is probably the most thorough account of the film's making. Judging by all the crap that whole crew went through over the years trying to put it together, I'd say that even if the film is a collosal bore, it's still worth seeing. You learn a lot more from your mistakes than from your successes. And two hours of Welles screwing up is worth more than a lifetime of Jerry Bruckheimer footage. And who the hell cares what effect it will have on Welles' reputation? I'll wage one of the reasons it never got released was because he really didn't give fat rat's fart about what other people though of his work. He did what he wanted to do. That's why I have a lot of respect for the man. Like Dietrich's line, "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?"
As for Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut was pretty boring, but no more so than 2001 or Barry Lyndon. I don't think people think any less of Kubrick because of it. If anything, it puts the rest of his work in a different perspective: in the final analysis, he's a sad little hermit of a director, a voyeur wrapped up in his own tiny little meticulously crafted world.
Honest Broker:
John Huston was a talented creep, but he gave Welles some good parts in The Kremlin Letter, Moby Dick and The Roots of Heaven. Huston also cast Welles in Casino Royale before he was fired as director. I'm sure Welles was grateful for the work, and he and Huston got on famously. One day, we'll all see the roles reversed -- Welles directing Huston in the Holy Grail of unfinished film projects, whether in a crude approximation of Welles' vision or a careful piecing together of the work by film historians and the Great One's acolytes.
http://web.archive.org/web/200105302340 ... s/692.html
PC: A reliable source recently spoke directly with producer Frank Marshall ("The Sixth Sense") and apparently Showtime is about to close a deal that would finally bring Welles' last film, at least to the small screen. Marshall will produce and Peter Bogdanovich and Gary Graver will supervise the edit.
Hurray for Showtime which did such a fabulous job with "The Big Brass Ring."
?:
Welles was doing nothing but cinematic masturbation, I have seen a lot of the footage. If anyone does anything with this material it will be far away from what was intended. trust me that in the more then one screening I saw people there were worried more about Orsons legacy if this project happened.
PC:
Cinematic masturbation? I think that's what they first said about Braque and Picasso when they introduced cubism. Why don't you read a few books, moron.
?: I had the priveledge to see A two hour cut of the most borein footage ever dureing one of it's screenings a few years back. It was not what any one exspected. It was not F for Fake. There was a reason why Welles never finished this film. It took five years out of his life and he was aganst the the wall. He had many great young filmakers involved and hopes where high. A one point Huston wanted to take the negative off Welles hands and desroy it. It is a inresting footage, but at the point he was makeing this he was not at his peak, Some things go better being a myth. By the way to the moron who wrote the above post, how much footage of TOSOTW have you seen. I think in total I have seen two and a half hours. Tell me Einstein how much have you seen to base ypur judgment on me?
Anthony:
PLease everybody- let's remember that Welles's opinion about cinema was that "edīting is not an aspect of making movies, it's the aspect of making movies". That's why we will never have his "Quixote" or "Deep" or "Wind"; at the very most, we can have "Bogdanovich's Wind" or "Franco's Quixote"; yes, it's all very post-modern, but perhaps Welles would want his work open and not closed; for the post-modern mind, there are no "finished" works. In "Chahiers" In 1966, Welles said that he had only a series of sequences for "Quixote" and that he didnt know how to turn it into a film; maybe he just never solved that particular problem.
Dear F for Fake?:
I believe in a lively exchange of ideas, but how dare you refer to Welles' 'The Other Side of the Wind' as "cinematic masturbation." In its final edited form, if it's anything like the clips that were shown on the televised 1975 AFI Tribute (wake?) for Welles, TOSOTW could at the very least be a fascinating period piece of an already strangely distant era in Hollywood. Welles' directorial failures were more interesting than most other directors' successes, so I'd reserve judgement until we see what the editors come up with (working, I would hope, from notes that Welles left behind).
?: Have you ever read the screenplay to TOSOTW? Also there are no notes. Also Welles did not direct some parts.
Wouldn't it be hard to find he was out to lunch on his last film? It's eay to think that ones hero work is all worthwhile, but there is also a reality.
AJS:
Sorry, but judging by your refusal to identify yourself, your lack of any specific faults with OSOTW, and the seven spelling errors in your last post, I don't see why any of us should trust you. But hey, you're entitled to your opinion. It's just that this is starting to sound like a pretty one-sided thread. OSOTW sucks, no it doesn't, yes it does, etc. Rinse, lather, repeat.
?:
Yea, my spelling is as sloppy as Welles direction regarding TOSOTW. I just wrote a quick reply. Yes the footage will be intering but I am just scared that this could leave Orson (who I respect) in worse shape then Kubrick had as a final film. High expections and a sudden silence when the lights go up filled with remorse. Do your homework, have you ever read Joe McBides study of TOSOTW in American Film?
AJS:
No, but I've read McBride's book Orson Welles, the revised edition, and the chapter on TOSOTW is probably the most thorough account of the film's making. Judging by all the crap that whole crew went through over the years trying to put it together, I'd say that even if the film is a collosal bore, it's still worth seeing. You learn a lot more from your mistakes than from your successes. And two hours of Welles screwing up is worth more than a lifetime of Jerry Bruckheimer footage. And who the hell cares what effect it will have on Welles' reputation? I'll wage one of the reasons it never got released was because he really didn't give fat rat's fart about what other people though of his work. He did what he wanted to do. That's why I have a lot of respect for the man. Like Dietrich's line, "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?"
As for Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut was pretty boring, but no more so than 2001 or Barry Lyndon. I don't think people think any less of Kubrick because of it. If anything, it puts the rest of his work in a different perspective: in the final analysis, he's a sad little hermit of a director, a voyeur wrapped up in his own tiny little meticulously crafted world.
Honest Broker:
John Huston was a talented creep, but he gave Welles some good parts in The Kremlin Letter, Moby Dick and The Roots of Heaven. Huston also cast Welles in Casino Royale before he was fired as director. I'm sure Welles was grateful for the work, and he and Huston got on famously. One day, we'll all see the roles reversed -- Welles directing Huston in the Holy Grail of unfinished film projects, whether in a crude approximation of Welles' vision or a careful piecing together of the work by film historians and the Great One's acolytes.
-
Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
By RAY KELLY
On a sunny Monday afternoon a week before Christmas, Peter Bogdanovich, Filip Jan Rymsza and Frank Marshall gathered in an editing suite at Tribeca West in Los Angeles to view the progress made on completion of The Other Side of the Wind.
As his colleagues arrived, Rymsza explained that editor Bob Murawski had come in over the weekend to edit a previously unknown — and quite dazzling — film-within-a-film sequence directed by the late Orson Welles.
"Who said he could work on a Saturday," wisecracked a grinning Marshall before the affable Murawski punched up the scene on a large flat screen monitor in the editing room.
The trippy scene, set in a nightclub and featuring Oja Kodar and Bob Random, played out with moments both violent and sexual. Kodar's character received a doll as a gift from Random. She quickly mutilated it as nude images of a woman swirled in the background of the nightclub. The scene precedes a bathroom orgy and the better known car sex sequence that Welles shot in a make shift rainstorm.
Murawski's editing of the nightclub sequence matches the style and tone Welles set down in the 40 minutes of footage from the film he edited himself in the 1970s.
In addition to studying the Welles-edited scenes, Murawski prepared for what he described as an intimidating task by reading extensively on the late director and the unfinished film, combing through the scripts and notes he left behind, and listening to the on-set direction he gave his actors, which was captured on Nagra audio tapes. Murawski rewatched Welles films, particularly Othello, The Trial and F for Fake, where Welles used editing to create movement. Murawski spoke with those who worked with Welles in the editing room: Yves Deschamps , Steve Ecclesine, and Jonathon Braun to better understand his technique.
"And Peter and Frank, who were there for the shoot, are a tremendous resource," Murawski said.
Actual editing by the The Other Side of the Wind post-production team began in late October 2017. Murawski's team, including first assistant editor Dov Samuel, spent weeks creating a rough first assembly of the film, which ran nearly 2 1/2 hours -- a relief amid fears the first assembly could stretch to three or four hours in length. (The film's final running time was 122 minutes and the editing is credited to Murawski and Welles.)
Known to most filmgoers for his Oscar winning work on The Hurt Locker and editing Sam Raimi's blockbuster Spider-Man trilogy, Murawski has a passion for low-budget cult films, which he has restored and released through his Grindhouse Productions. He edited and released the late Duke Mitchell's Gone With the Pope, filmed in 1976 but left uncompleted for more than 30 years.
"Yes, this is a big budget Gone With the Pope," he joked when asked whether the Mitchell project prepared him for taking on The Other Side of the Wind.
Murawski was also a friend and neighbor of Wind's late cinematographer Gary Graver, who spent the last 20 years of his life trying to find backers willing to finish the movie.
The vibrant color images shot by Graver four decades ago and newly edited by Murawski were part of the late director's ill-fated Hollywood comeback. Welles filmed The Other Side of the Wind between August 1970 and early 1976, and fought to complete the movie until his death in October 1985. He was stymied on a number of fronts and the film's negative remained locked away outside Paris.
The Other Side of the Wind is a brutal takedown of New Hollywood and machismo. It is set at the 70th birthday party of movie director J.J. "Jake" Hannaford (John Huston), who is struggling to make his comeback in a changing industry. The party, which concludes with his death, is attended by young directors, hangers-on, film buffs and critics. Welles recounts Hannaford's final hours using a mix of color and black-and-white film shot at the party, along with scenes from his unfinished movie.
Welles tasked his friend Bogdanovich, who co-starred in the movie, with completing The Other Side of the Wind in the event of his death. Bogdanovich was joined in this cinematic adventure by Marshall, now a blockbuster producer who worked as line producer on the 1970s shoot; and Rymsza, who has spent the past nine years skillfully negotiating deals with the various rights holders and landing a worldwide distribution deal with Netflix.
"Frank was around for quite a bit of the shooting and I was there for my stuff certainly," Bogdanovich said. "We have memories of Orson and the things he wanted done and things he would not have wanted done. Bob was open to the memories we had — and he is a very good cutter anyway. He did a very good job of imitating, so to speak, the cutting pattern that Orson established with the work he left behind."
The late afternoon conversation at Tribeca West ranged from the very favorable impressions of the nightlub scene to obtaining a needed bit of vintage Tonight Show footage for director Morgan Neville's companion documentary, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead. Securing the rights to a brief, bitchy clip of Welles and Burt Reynolds on the late night NBC talk show had proved to be quite difficult.
Marshall, who exudes such an Everyman air that it's easy to forget he is a Hollywood kingpin, accepted the suggestion he make a call on Neville's behalf. (The clip was acquired and included in the documentary.)
With that settled, another scene played out on the monitor; this one depicted a verbal sparring match between rival directors Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich) and Jack Simon (Gregory Sierra). Welles' camera circled the two sharp-tongued adversaries as if he was capturing a prizefight.
Bogdanovich, then a 30-something filmmaker in his own right, is quite effective as the polished, somewhat slippery Otterlake, especially in scenes opposite Huston's grizzled Hannaford. However, Bogdanovich is modest about his acting chops. ("You're very kind"), and far more talkative about the older/younger man dynamics in The Other Side of the Wind, which harken back to classic Welles movies, like Chimes at Midnight and The Magnificent Ambersons.
"I don't know where it comes from, but certainly runs throughout all of his pictures," Bogdanovich said.
The post-production team worked off Technicolor's 4K scans of Welles' original negative, which was painstakingly reassembled by veteran negative cutter Mo Henry. During editing, the 85 boxes of workprint material was kept at Tribeca West with labels bearing Welles' often cryptic descriptions of the contents: She, Fireworks, Midgets, KO and Birthday Cake. It's a labeling practice the often-burnt Welles employed for decades to deter meddlesome producers from attempting to take over the editing of his films.
Post-production supervisor Ruth Hasty tallied 241,494 feet (45 hours) of 35mm film and 112,129 feet (51 hours) of 16mm film shot by Welles for The Other Side of the Wind over a nearly 5 1/2 year span. The unused footage includes scrapped scenes of impressionist Rich Little in the Otterlake role, multiple readings by some of the inexperienced actors and repeated efforts to get certain shots in the 35mm film-within-a-film just right.
Welles filmed a few bits on 8mm, which he had blown up to 35mm with spotty results and only a tiny bit was used in the final film. There was no evidence of any early video footage from the 1970s shoot, despite passing mentions made in some books or articles over the years.
Another myth busted was a rumored complete edit of the movie by Welles, which stemmed from the late director telling interviewers and potential investors the film was 95 to 98 percent done. Murawski estimated that Welles edited one-third of the film with another 50 percent being assemblies of scenes and the remainder totally uncut.
A great deal of work had to be done to complete The Other Side of the Wind.
At one point, the producers engaged the services of Jason Brahms and his Video Gorillas. Using artificial intelligence and complex algorithms to compare 12 million frames per second, Video Gorillas was able to precisely match images on the digitized workprint to the corresponding shots on the 4K scanned negative. They were able to match the workprint to the negative in 2 1/2 days of machine time, rather than eight months of manpower.
A few bits of Welles negative could not be located, such as a party scene with George Jessel, which required Murawski to utilize a cleaned up segment of the workprint. A scene of the John Dale character (played by Bob Random) wandering around the abandoned MGM lot could not be found on the negative and Murawski had to swap in another shot.
"I would say 99 percent of (the finished film) is from the original negative," Murawski said. "It had been stored in a vault in Paris and it was pristine. It was remarkably free of problems."
The scene of mannequins being gunned down by Hannaford was incomplete. The impact of the bullets on the dummies had to be created by John Knoll's team at Industrial Light & Magic. It was a relatively easy task for the cinematic conjurers who made the Millenium Falcon soar in Star Wars and dinosaurs rampage in Jurassic World.
Producers used a bit of mid 1970s stock footage of a drive-in theater to complete a key scene at the conclusion of the film.
Perhaps the greatest challenge faced was the loss of the original quarter-inch audio for some of the key party sequences shot in 1974. Fortunately, recordings a generation or two down in quality were available and could be enhanced by sound editor Daniel Saxlid and Oscar winning re-recording mixer Scott Millan.
As with many films, looping of some dialogue was necessary and cast members, like Joseph McBride, looped their lines four decades later. Yet, the passage of time meant that some actors had died and "voicealikes" were employed to replace a phrase or line. In the case of star John Huston, his son, actor Danny Huston, performed an uncanny impression of his father, who passed away in 1987.
Completing the movie was truly a Herculean effort, as Marshall noted there was no way for producers to know exactly what they were up against until all the elements were in their possession.
It is hard to imagine how Welles could have pulled the movie together with limited resources decades ago, he added.
Welles presence was tangible at the post-production offices at Tribeca West.
The production company was named Sacred Beasts, the early title Welles gave to the project that evolved into The Other Side of the Wind. Framed movie posters of some of his classic films decorated the offices with one wall reserved for the business at hand.
More than 125 white and violet Post-It notes detailed the movie's scenes in order, beginning with the opening narration spoken by an elderly Otterlake and concluding with the closing scene of The Actress (Kodar) alone at the drive-in theater. White Post-Its chronicled the final hours of Hannaford's life, while violet Post-Its referred to the film-within-a-film sequences, which make up a significant portion of Welles' movie.
Across from the Post-Its covered wall and nearby film storage room is Rymsza's office, where four worn scripts from the 1970s shoot lie on a shelf near his desk.
Just as he was during the years of seemingly endless negotiations, the unfailingly polite Rymsza comes across very much as the Man-With-a-Plan as he oversees various aspects of the post-production.
Although Rymsza was born a year after principal photography of The Other Side of the Wind wrapped, his devotion to bringing Welles' movie to the screen rivals that of the original film crew, affectionately nicknamed four decades ago VISTOW, or Volunteers in Service to Orson Welles, by Marshall.
Rymsza, who was understandably tight-lipped during years of contract talks, offered his eager guest a tour of the workprint storage room and a wealth of exciting news, which was released in bits and pieces over the months to follow.
He noted that composer Michel Legrand had been selected to provide the score for The Other Side of the Wind. The 86-year-old multiple Oscar and Grammy award winner, who scored Welles' F for Fake in 1973, was set to screen a rough edit and immediately begin work in Europe.
Rymsza arranged for an early cut to be shown to select friends at the start of the New Year.
Showings were also set for both Netflix executives and film festival brass, as well as McBride and fellow Welles scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, who will be asked for their feedback. McBride appeared in the film as an earnest film critic and worked with Graver on an unsuccessful effort to complete the film for Showtime in 1998-1999. Rosenbaum is a longtime friend of Kodar, who held partial rights to the film following Welles' death and is credited as co-author of the script.
As the Tribeca West visit concluded, Marshall walked his guest to the door.
Referring to an off hand comment made earlier in the afternoon about some of the potential challenges, Marshall whispered to his departing guest, "Don't worry. It's going to be great."
On a sunny Monday afternoon a week before Christmas, Peter Bogdanovich, Filip Jan Rymsza and Frank Marshall gathered in an editing suite at Tribeca West in Los Angeles to view the progress made on completion of The Other Side of the Wind.
As his colleagues arrived, Rymsza explained that editor Bob Murawski had come in over the weekend to edit a previously unknown — and quite dazzling — film-within-a-film sequence directed by the late Orson Welles.
"Who said he could work on a Saturday," wisecracked a grinning Marshall before the affable Murawski punched up the scene on a large flat screen monitor in the editing room.
The trippy scene, set in a nightclub and featuring Oja Kodar and Bob Random, played out with moments both violent and sexual. Kodar's character received a doll as a gift from Random. She quickly mutilated it as nude images of a woman swirled in the background of the nightclub. The scene precedes a bathroom orgy and the better known car sex sequence that Welles shot in a make shift rainstorm.
Murawski's editing of the nightclub sequence matches the style and tone Welles set down in the 40 minutes of footage from the film he edited himself in the 1970s.
In addition to studying the Welles-edited scenes, Murawski prepared for what he described as an intimidating task by reading extensively on the late director and the unfinished film, combing through the scripts and notes he left behind, and listening to the on-set direction he gave his actors, which was captured on Nagra audio tapes. Murawski rewatched Welles films, particularly Othello, The Trial and F for Fake, where Welles used editing to create movement. Murawski spoke with those who worked with Welles in the editing room: Yves Deschamps , Steve Ecclesine, and Jonathon Braun to better understand his technique.
"And Peter and Frank, who were there for the shoot, are a tremendous resource," Murawski said.
Actual editing by the The Other Side of the Wind post-production team began in late October 2017. Murawski's team, including first assistant editor Dov Samuel, spent weeks creating a rough first assembly of the film, which ran nearly 2 1/2 hours -- a relief amid fears the first assembly could stretch to three or four hours in length. (The film's final running time was 122 minutes and the editing is credited to Murawski and Welles.)
Known to most filmgoers for his Oscar winning work on The Hurt Locker and editing Sam Raimi's blockbuster Spider-Man trilogy, Murawski has a passion for low-budget cult films, which he has restored and released through his Grindhouse Productions. He edited and released the late Duke Mitchell's Gone With the Pope, filmed in 1976 but left uncompleted for more than 30 years.
"Yes, this is a big budget Gone With the Pope," he joked when asked whether the Mitchell project prepared him for taking on The Other Side of the Wind.
Murawski was also a friend and neighbor of Wind's late cinematographer Gary Graver, who spent the last 20 years of his life trying to find backers willing to finish the movie.
The vibrant color images shot by Graver four decades ago and newly edited by Murawski were part of the late director's ill-fated Hollywood comeback. Welles filmed The Other Side of the Wind between August 1970 and early 1976, and fought to complete the movie until his death in October 1985. He was stymied on a number of fronts and the film's negative remained locked away outside Paris.
The Other Side of the Wind is a brutal takedown of New Hollywood and machismo. It is set at the 70th birthday party of movie director J.J. "Jake" Hannaford (John Huston), who is struggling to make his comeback in a changing industry. The party, which concludes with his death, is attended by young directors, hangers-on, film buffs and critics. Welles recounts Hannaford's final hours using a mix of color and black-and-white film shot at the party, along with scenes from his unfinished movie.
Welles tasked his friend Bogdanovich, who co-starred in the movie, with completing The Other Side of the Wind in the event of his death. Bogdanovich was joined in this cinematic adventure by Marshall, now a blockbuster producer who worked as line producer on the 1970s shoot; and Rymsza, who has spent the past nine years skillfully negotiating deals with the various rights holders and landing a worldwide distribution deal with Netflix.
"Frank was around for quite a bit of the shooting and I was there for my stuff certainly," Bogdanovich said. "We have memories of Orson and the things he wanted done and things he would not have wanted done. Bob was open to the memories we had — and he is a very good cutter anyway. He did a very good job of imitating, so to speak, the cutting pattern that Orson established with the work he left behind."
The late afternoon conversation at Tribeca West ranged from the very favorable impressions of the nightlub scene to obtaining a needed bit of vintage Tonight Show footage for director Morgan Neville's companion documentary, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead. Securing the rights to a brief, bitchy clip of Welles and Burt Reynolds on the late night NBC talk show had proved to be quite difficult.
Marshall, who exudes such an Everyman air that it's easy to forget he is a Hollywood kingpin, accepted the suggestion he make a call on Neville's behalf. (The clip was acquired and included in the documentary.)
With that settled, another scene played out on the monitor; this one depicted a verbal sparring match between rival directors Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich) and Jack Simon (Gregory Sierra). Welles' camera circled the two sharp-tongued adversaries as if he was capturing a prizefight.
Bogdanovich, then a 30-something filmmaker in his own right, is quite effective as the polished, somewhat slippery Otterlake, especially in scenes opposite Huston's grizzled Hannaford. However, Bogdanovich is modest about his acting chops. ("You're very kind"), and far more talkative about the older/younger man dynamics in The Other Side of the Wind, which harken back to classic Welles movies, like Chimes at Midnight and The Magnificent Ambersons.
"I don't know where it comes from, but certainly runs throughout all of his pictures," Bogdanovich said.
The post-production team worked off Technicolor's 4K scans of Welles' original negative, which was painstakingly reassembled by veteran negative cutter Mo Henry. During editing, the 85 boxes of workprint material was kept at Tribeca West with labels bearing Welles' often cryptic descriptions of the contents: She, Fireworks, Midgets, KO and Birthday Cake. It's a labeling practice the often-burnt Welles employed for decades to deter meddlesome producers from attempting to take over the editing of his films.
Post-production supervisor Ruth Hasty tallied 241,494 feet (45 hours) of 35mm film and 112,129 feet (51 hours) of 16mm film shot by Welles for The Other Side of the Wind over a nearly 5 1/2 year span. The unused footage includes scrapped scenes of impressionist Rich Little in the Otterlake role, multiple readings by some of the inexperienced actors and repeated efforts to get certain shots in the 35mm film-within-a-film just right.
Welles filmed a few bits on 8mm, which he had blown up to 35mm with spotty results and only a tiny bit was used in the final film. There was no evidence of any early video footage from the 1970s shoot, despite passing mentions made in some books or articles over the years.
Another myth busted was a rumored complete edit of the movie by Welles, which stemmed from the late director telling interviewers and potential investors the film was 95 to 98 percent done. Murawski estimated that Welles edited one-third of the film with another 50 percent being assemblies of scenes and the remainder totally uncut.
A great deal of work had to be done to complete The Other Side of the Wind.
At one point, the producers engaged the services of Jason Brahms and his Video Gorillas. Using artificial intelligence and complex algorithms to compare 12 million frames per second, Video Gorillas was able to precisely match images on the digitized workprint to the corresponding shots on the 4K scanned negative. They were able to match the workprint to the negative in 2 1/2 days of machine time, rather than eight months of manpower.
A few bits of Welles negative could not be located, such as a party scene with George Jessel, which required Murawski to utilize a cleaned up segment of the workprint. A scene of the John Dale character (played by Bob Random) wandering around the abandoned MGM lot could not be found on the negative and Murawski had to swap in another shot.
"I would say 99 percent of (the finished film) is from the original negative," Murawski said. "It had been stored in a vault in Paris and it was pristine. It was remarkably free of problems."
The scene of mannequins being gunned down by Hannaford was incomplete. The impact of the bullets on the dummies had to be created by John Knoll's team at Industrial Light & Magic. It was a relatively easy task for the cinematic conjurers who made the Millenium Falcon soar in Star Wars and dinosaurs rampage in Jurassic World.
Producers used a bit of mid 1970s stock footage of a drive-in theater to complete a key scene at the conclusion of the film.
Perhaps the greatest challenge faced was the loss of the original quarter-inch audio for some of the key party sequences shot in 1974. Fortunately, recordings a generation or two down in quality were available and could be enhanced by sound editor Daniel Saxlid and Oscar winning re-recording mixer Scott Millan.
As with many films, looping of some dialogue was necessary and cast members, like Joseph McBride, looped their lines four decades later. Yet, the passage of time meant that some actors had died and "voicealikes" were employed to replace a phrase or line. In the case of star John Huston, his son, actor Danny Huston, performed an uncanny impression of his father, who passed away in 1987.
Completing the movie was truly a Herculean effort, as Marshall noted there was no way for producers to know exactly what they were up against until all the elements were in their possession.
It is hard to imagine how Welles could have pulled the movie together with limited resources decades ago, he added.
Welles presence was tangible at the post-production offices at Tribeca West.
The production company was named Sacred Beasts, the early title Welles gave to the project that evolved into The Other Side of the Wind. Framed movie posters of some of his classic films decorated the offices with one wall reserved for the business at hand.
More than 125 white and violet Post-It notes detailed the movie's scenes in order, beginning with the opening narration spoken by an elderly Otterlake and concluding with the closing scene of The Actress (Kodar) alone at the drive-in theater. White Post-Its chronicled the final hours of Hannaford's life, while violet Post-Its referred to the film-within-a-film sequences, which make up a significant portion of Welles' movie.
Across from the Post-Its covered wall and nearby film storage room is Rymsza's office, where four worn scripts from the 1970s shoot lie on a shelf near his desk.
Just as he was during the years of seemingly endless negotiations, the unfailingly polite Rymsza comes across very much as the Man-With-a-Plan as he oversees various aspects of the post-production.
Although Rymsza was born a year after principal photography of The Other Side of the Wind wrapped, his devotion to bringing Welles' movie to the screen rivals that of the original film crew, affectionately nicknamed four decades ago VISTOW, or Volunteers in Service to Orson Welles, by Marshall.
Rymsza, who was understandably tight-lipped during years of contract talks, offered his eager guest a tour of the workprint storage room and a wealth of exciting news, which was released in bits and pieces over the months to follow.
He noted that composer Michel Legrand had been selected to provide the score for The Other Side of the Wind. The 86-year-old multiple Oscar and Grammy award winner, who scored Welles' F for Fake in 1973, was set to screen a rough edit and immediately begin work in Europe.
Rymsza arranged for an early cut to be shown to select friends at the start of the New Year.
Showings were also set for both Netflix executives and film festival brass, as well as McBride and fellow Welles scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, who will be asked for their feedback. McBride appeared in the film as an earnest film critic and worked with Graver on an unsuccessful effort to complete the film for Showtime in 1998-1999. Rosenbaum is a longtime friend of Kodar, who held partial rights to the film following Welles' death and is credited as co-author of the script.
As the Tribeca West visit concluded, Marshall walked his guest to the door.
Referring to an off hand comment made earlier in the afternoon about some of the potential challenges, Marshall whispered to his departing guest, "Don't worry. It's going to be great."
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Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
20 observations on TLMWID:
1. I'm glad they didn't shy away from Graver's porn career, or Welles's brief (?) involvement in it.
2. The film at 90 minutes, is superficial but well told. I find I had the same problem with it as Chuck Workman's MAGICIAN, although I enjoyed both films. There is simply too much story to tell, and so many angles and side stories, that it's almost impossible to get into any real depth on any one aspect in the time allowed. But "They'll Love Me" is a very good and comprehensive introduction to the whole epic debacle of Wind, and like Magician, does an artful, sometimes dazzling job of cross-cutting between numerous sources and time periods in Welles's life.
3. F For Fake is barely mentioned, even though it was made, finished and released right in the middle of the Wind shoot. Charles Higham went so far as to blame Fake for the fact that Wind was never completed.
4. Beatrice surprised me with her blunt statement that she didn't know why her mother stayed married to her father, but that that was her choice.
5. Alan Cummings host bit was somewhat superfluous, but didn't bother me as much as it has some reviewers. Neither did the odd angles or lack of identification for the interviewees.
6. The rewind towards the end was a rather dumb touch, but again, doesn't hurt the film in any significant way.
7. Orson, sadly, comes across, from Neville's point of view, as someone who really wasn't sure what he was doing, and in the process of trying to figure it all out, abused people's loyalty, like the Man Who Came to Dinner. The whole film reminded me of Bogdanovich's rather contemptuous statement made shortly after Welles's death that "There came a point in a lot of people's lives when they had to decide whether they were going to live their own life or take care of Orson. Or at least help Orson take care of himself."
8. The AFI award excerpts, which show Welles at his most appealing, also shows that he was somewhat delusional, almost obsessive in his quest to make art and life mirror each other. The is most obvious in Welles's explaining to the audience how one of his characters, a director, needs "end money" to finish his film, a clever but contrived ruse that didn't bear much fruit. How could it really, when the character in the clip admits that the director is "just making it up as he goes along?"
9. Glad they showed excerpts from the 1971 Kopykats show, which was where Welles first met Rich Little, who defends himself well in the documentary, indicating that Welles told him he would film his entire part in a week, so Little gave him three weeks, which turned out to be not enough time, so Little figured he would come back later to film the rest of his part after his standup engagements were fulfilled. Welles of course, replaced him instead. That Kopykats show was the first time I ever saw Welles, and had no idea who he was (I was 11 at the time). I hope that show becomes available in it's entirety sometime.
10. Welles guesting for Burt Reynolds' guest-host stint on the Tonight Show was a real find. I'd like to get a precise timetable on the events leading from that to Saint Jack. It's hard to know who screwed who over on Saint Jack. Here's an old thread that goes into it some more: viewtopic.php?f=60&t=1637
1. I'm glad they didn't shy away from Graver's porn career, or Welles's brief (?) involvement in it.
2. The film at 90 minutes, is superficial but well told. I find I had the same problem with it as Chuck Workman's MAGICIAN, although I enjoyed both films. There is simply too much story to tell, and so many angles and side stories, that it's almost impossible to get into any real depth on any one aspect in the time allowed. But "They'll Love Me" is a very good and comprehensive introduction to the whole epic debacle of Wind, and like Magician, does an artful, sometimes dazzling job of cross-cutting between numerous sources and time periods in Welles's life.
3. F For Fake is barely mentioned, even though it was made, finished and released right in the middle of the Wind shoot. Charles Higham went so far as to blame Fake for the fact that Wind was never completed.
4. Beatrice surprised me with her blunt statement that she didn't know why her mother stayed married to her father, but that that was her choice.
5. Alan Cummings host bit was somewhat superfluous, but didn't bother me as much as it has some reviewers. Neither did the odd angles or lack of identification for the interviewees.
6. The rewind towards the end was a rather dumb touch, but again, doesn't hurt the film in any significant way.
7. Orson, sadly, comes across, from Neville's point of view, as someone who really wasn't sure what he was doing, and in the process of trying to figure it all out, abused people's loyalty, like the Man Who Came to Dinner. The whole film reminded me of Bogdanovich's rather contemptuous statement made shortly after Welles's death that "There came a point in a lot of people's lives when they had to decide whether they were going to live their own life or take care of Orson. Or at least help Orson take care of himself."
8. The AFI award excerpts, which show Welles at his most appealing, also shows that he was somewhat delusional, almost obsessive in his quest to make art and life mirror each other. The is most obvious in Welles's explaining to the audience how one of his characters, a director, needs "end money" to finish his film, a clever but contrived ruse that didn't bear much fruit. How could it really, when the character in the clip admits that the director is "just making it up as he goes along?"
9. Glad they showed excerpts from the 1971 Kopykats show, which was where Welles first met Rich Little, who defends himself well in the documentary, indicating that Welles told him he would film his entire part in a week, so Little gave him three weeks, which turned out to be not enough time, so Little figured he would come back later to film the rest of his part after his standup engagements were fulfilled. Welles of course, replaced him instead. That Kopykats show was the first time I ever saw Welles, and had no idea who he was (I was 11 at the time). I hope that show becomes available in it's entirety sometime.
10. Welles guesting for Burt Reynolds' guest-host stint on the Tonight Show was a real find. I'd like to get a precise timetable on the events leading from that to Saint Jack. It's hard to know who screwed who over on Saint Jack. Here's an old thread that goes into it some more: viewtopic.php?f=60&t=1637
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Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
There are comments on Netflix’s trailer on YouTube who seem to think Murawski took major liberties and moderned up some footage shot by the ”Citizen Kane” guy and wouldn’t he be pissed off if he could see what was done to his film, etc. And don’t even get me started down the road of those who say you can tell Welles himself didn’t finish the movie because of how it looks.
**********
McBride:
"Rosenbaum claimed publicly at an Indiana University conference on Welles in 2015 that I had been fired because Kodar objected to my desire to go against Welles’s wishes and cut back on the film-within-the-film. I was so surprised by his comment — since Kodar had never said that to me — that I did not respond to the audience at the conference. But when I asked Rosenbaum after his talk if Kodar had told him that, he admitted she had not; it was just his surmise. I also asked if he had seen any script material she had written on the film, and he said he had not."
I am pleased to see Jonathan Rosenbaum and (apparently) Oja Kodar backing down from their extravagant claim that she is, as he put it recently, the “co-author” with Orson Welles of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. As I wrote in my Wellesnet article on the film’s authorship, she deserves abundant credit for her creative contributions, along with Gary Graver and others, but as Jonathan concedes in the face of much evidence to the contrary, she did not direct the sex sequence in the car. Jonathan’s response does not directly address the other two sequences he claimed earlier as her directorial work but by offering what he says is Kodar’s overly expansive definition of “directing” seems to back down from that statement as well. I don’t know what their motivations were for making these claims, and their motivations may be more ambiguous than Pauline Kael’s, but throwing around loose and reckless claims of this sort has the effect of undermining Welles’s achievements. As I’ve written, the film-within-the-film is influenced (satirically) not only by Antonioni but also by Russ Meyer, Graver, John Huston, and other filmmakers of that era, as well as (with more solemn intent) by Kodar’s own dubious artistic inclinations. And I note that Jonathan (and Oja) do not respond to the questions I raise about the authorship of the script of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, so perhaps a quote is in order from Thomas More in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: “Silence betokens consent.”
F.x. Feeney
As with KANE, Joe, a thorough and necessary rebuttal to scuttlebutt. Welles's close direction of the scene in the car, across years, is so well documented -- in the film ONE MAN BAND, as well as Graver's accounts -- that it is surprising Jonathan should be so casual with his surmises. One can understand Kodar's pride -- her passion for Welles and his for her; a mutually generous ferocity -- so lights up that scene as to constitute a creative-coupling. But in giving Kodar and other partners their dues, must we rob Welles of his due as a director? You provide the balanced antidote. Thank you for that!
Jonathan Rosenbaum
I already answered this. My silence betokens boredom.If Joe wants to think Welles thought of making Oja a Native American, that's his dubious privilege. Or if he concedes that Oja thought of it, surely that's a form of coauthorship. Making her A coauthor, not THE coauthor. As for who put what on paper, he can read all the scripts he can find--including the description of the film-within-the-film, which I've read--and make up his own mind about it. But I think he's trying to stir up a debate where there is none.
P.S. Does he really want Oja to recover from her latest eye operation just so she can log onto Facebook and defend her status to you as cowriter on the film? Dream on. And his own take on what he thinks was her conception of her work on the film-within-the-film strikes me as laughable, indicative only of his personal hatred for her, which she's well aware of. If he thinks that's what Welles thought, and that he invited her input in order to ridicule it, I'll gladly accept the role of Julie Rich to his Hannaford.
It's ridiculous to argue that anyone believes or ever believed that Oja was an "equal" coauthor. But I guess you take your life in your hands if you don't define "directing" as total authorship.
Sorry, Joe, but now I think you're talking to yourself, not to me or the film. I opt out--apart from a few rejoinders above to the same nonsense added to Craig Simpson's post.
**********
McBride:
"Rosenbaum claimed publicly at an Indiana University conference on Welles in 2015 that I had been fired because Kodar objected to my desire to go against Welles’s wishes and cut back on the film-within-the-film. I was so surprised by his comment — since Kodar had never said that to me — that I did not respond to the audience at the conference. But when I asked Rosenbaum after his talk if Kodar had told him that, he admitted she had not; it was just his surmise. I also asked if he had seen any script material she had written on the film, and he said he had not."
I am pleased to see Jonathan Rosenbaum and (apparently) Oja Kodar backing down from their extravagant claim that she is, as he put it recently, the “co-author” with Orson Welles of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. As I wrote in my Wellesnet article on the film’s authorship, she deserves abundant credit for her creative contributions, along with Gary Graver and others, but as Jonathan concedes in the face of much evidence to the contrary, she did not direct the sex sequence in the car. Jonathan’s response does not directly address the other two sequences he claimed earlier as her directorial work but by offering what he says is Kodar’s overly expansive definition of “directing” seems to back down from that statement as well. I don’t know what their motivations were for making these claims, and their motivations may be more ambiguous than Pauline Kael’s, but throwing around loose and reckless claims of this sort has the effect of undermining Welles’s achievements. As I’ve written, the film-within-the-film is influenced (satirically) not only by Antonioni but also by Russ Meyer, Graver, John Huston, and other filmmakers of that era, as well as (with more solemn intent) by Kodar’s own dubious artistic inclinations. And I note that Jonathan (and Oja) do not respond to the questions I raise about the authorship of the script of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, so perhaps a quote is in order from Thomas More in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: “Silence betokens consent.”
F.x. Feeney
As with KANE, Joe, a thorough and necessary rebuttal to scuttlebutt. Welles's close direction of the scene in the car, across years, is so well documented -- in the film ONE MAN BAND, as well as Graver's accounts -- that it is surprising Jonathan should be so casual with his surmises. One can understand Kodar's pride -- her passion for Welles and his for her; a mutually generous ferocity -- so lights up that scene as to constitute a creative-coupling. But in giving Kodar and other partners their dues, must we rob Welles of his due as a director? You provide the balanced antidote. Thank you for that!
Jonathan Rosenbaum
I already answered this. My silence betokens boredom.If Joe wants to think Welles thought of making Oja a Native American, that's his dubious privilege. Or if he concedes that Oja thought of it, surely that's a form of coauthorship. Making her A coauthor, not THE coauthor. As for who put what on paper, he can read all the scripts he can find--including the description of the film-within-the-film, which I've read--and make up his own mind about it. But I think he's trying to stir up a debate where there is none.
P.S. Does he really want Oja to recover from her latest eye operation just so she can log onto Facebook and defend her status to you as cowriter on the film? Dream on. And his own take on what he thinks was her conception of her work on the film-within-the-film strikes me as laughable, indicative only of his personal hatred for her, which she's well aware of. If he thinks that's what Welles thought, and that he invited her input in order to ridicule it, I'll gladly accept the role of Julie Rich to his Hannaford.
It's ridiculous to argue that anyone believes or ever believed that Oja was an "equal" coauthor. But I guess you take your life in your hands if you don't define "directing" as total authorship.
Sorry, Joe, but now I think you're talking to yourself, not to me or the film. I opt out--apart from a few rejoinders above to the same nonsense added to Craig Simpson's post.
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Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
David Ehrenstein
Most interested in hearing everybody's excuses for this debacle.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Why don't you post your own excuses for calling it a debacle?
David Ehrenstein
I should have the review I've written of it placed shortly, at which point i'll supply a link.
******
The Other Side Of The Wind reveals Orson Welles' crumbling conviction in cinema in his twilight years
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment ... 35961.html
A character modeled on a business partner who fell out with Welles in his final years, describes Hannaford thus: “Then we must wait, my dear, for him to eat us alive, unless you are a critic. He does rather tend to push them to the side of his plate. But others, we who glow a little in his light, the fireflies he does quite often swallow whole. It is a fact that some of us he chews on rather slowly.”
Most interested in hearing everybody's excuses for this debacle.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Why don't you post your own excuses for calling it a debacle?
David Ehrenstein
I should have the review I've written of it placed shortly, at which point i'll supply a link.
******
The Other Side Of The Wind reveals Orson Welles' crumbling conviction in cinema in his twilight years
https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment ... 35961.html
A character modeled on a business partner who fell out with Welles in his final years, describes Hannaford thus: “Then we must wait, my dear, for him to eat us alive, unless you are a critic. He does rather tend to push them to the side of his plate. But others, we who glow a little in his light, the fireflies he does quite often swallow whole. It is a fact that some of us he chews on rather slowly.”
-
Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
One of the most fascinating new movies of 2018 — and if you want to argue that it’s one of the best, I’m all ears — is actually over four decades old. The director who bullied it into existence died 33 years ago, in 1985. It’s called “The Other Side of the Wind,” it’s Orson Welles’s long-lost last movie, and you can watch it on Netflix right now.
And, man, should you ever.
That we’re able to finally see an unseen work by Welles, one of the major talents of film history as well as one of its greatest and most self-destructive egos, is an unexpected left-field delight. In the early 1970s, the director was coming off two decades of exile in Europe, where he had been driven by years of Hollywood mistrust and mistreatment.
To the executives of the classic studio years, he was a pariah: the smartass 25-year-old who made “Citizen Kane” and thought he was better than the rest of the town. But to the New Hollywood filmmakers of the 1960s — the hip young producers and stars whose European-influenced movies spoke to the counterculture — Welles was a rebel patriarch. To his chagrin, that didn’t translate into money to make new movies.
The aging auteur pressed on regardless. Over the first half of the 1970s, Welles worked with a core crew and a rolling banquet of actors on “The Other Side of the Wind,” a film meant to both parody New Hollywood excesses and beat the kids at their own game. But funding ran low and then out, and when the Iranian Revolution cut off the finances of a chief investor (who happened to be related to the shah), the film was seized by producers and locked away in a Paris vault for decades.
Many people have worked over the years to get Welles’s swan song out of movie-rights jail and completed according to the late master’s notes and wishes. Director Peter Bogdanovich, a Welles acolyte who stars in “The Other Side of the Wind,” and producer Frank Marshall, a major Hollywood power player who worked as a crew member on the film, spearheaded the efforts, and Netflix ultimately kicked in the funds needed to get the project into the final phases of completion.
Begun in 1971, “The Other Side of the Wind” debuted at the Venice Film Festival this August and premiered last week on Netflix. (It’s showing theatrically in New York and Los Angeles and may yet come to Boston screens.)
The movie’s a mess — intentionally and otherwise — but it’s also a gas. “The Other Side of the Wind” is actually two movies in one. The first is a roiling, chaotic mockumentary about a storied Hollywood director, Jake Hannaford (played by storied Hollywood director John Huston, clearly standing in for Welles himself), struggling to get his final film made.
That film is also called “The Other Side of the Wind” and in the lengthy excerpts we see, in studio screening rooms and at an endless party Hannaford throws for himself, it’s a parody of what’s-it-all-mean arthouse movies by Antonioni, Bergman, and the Hollywood directors who emulated them.
Because Welles was apparently incapable of making a bad movie on purpose, those film-within-a-film sequences are also mesmerizing, shot and edited with unerring moviemaking skill and featuring the striking (and mostly undraped) form of Oja Kodar, a statuesque Croatian actress and writer who was Welles’s companion at the time.
If Hannaford’s “The Other Side of the Wind” is a piece of pretentious twaddle that’s also pretty amazing (or vice versa), Welles’s “The Other Side of the Wind” — meaning the desperate scrum of backbiting and flattery that surrounds Jake — is rich, Rabelaisian, and full of pointed Hollywood observations. Because Welles shot for years and invited everyone he knew to the party, the movie’s practically a face-book of early-’70s working actors.
Bogdanovich plays a young director whose career has commercially outshined his mentor’s (as it did in real life); he replaced comedian Rich Little in the role, but Little still pops up in the faux-doc’s corners. Dennis Hopper offers stoned musings, Susan Strasberg floats through as a movie critic suspiciously like Welles’s bête noire Pauline Kael. Old Hollywood faces like Cameron Mitchell, Mercedes McCambridge, and Edmond O’Brien play Hannaford cronies, Lilli Palmer shows up in what has to be considered the Marlene Dietrich part, and studio-era director Norman Foster has the most touching role as Billy Boyle, an aging hanger-on.
To add to the meta-movie hijinks, a 98-minute documentary about the much-fraught making of “The Other Side of the Wind” accompanies it on Netflix. Directed by Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor”), “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” is as fascinating as the Welles film and, in certain ways, more outrageous as it details the behind-the-scenes creative tragicomedy of an endlessly sprawling production.
(For completists, there’s also an excellent 40-minute mini-doc about the effort to rescue and edit Welles’s film, called “A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making,” tucked away in Netflix’s “Trailers and More” section of “The Other Side of the Wind.”)
Should you watch the movie before the documentary or the documentary before the movie? It depends. If you’re coming to Welles with nothing but a college screening of “Citizen Kane” under your belt, Neville’s doc should bring you up to speed while preparing you for the shaggy, throwback-’70s style of “Wind.” If you’re an old movie junkie and/or a longstanding Friend of Orson, dive right in and then let “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” provide dishy background.
Fan or not, it’s up to you to decide whether this is “The Other Side of the Wind” Orson wanted, directed by him from the other side of the grave. Of course the movie was never finished: Despite Welles’s claims to the contrary in the Neville documentary — and like Philip Seymour Hoffman’s hapless playwright in Charlie Kaufman’s 2008 meta-movie “Synecdoche, New York” — the legendary outcast seems to have filmed a version of his life that somehow merged with the real one.
You could argue that all of Orson Welles’s movies were about Orson Welles in the end. More than any other, “Wind” may have been the great white whale that he simultaneously chased and was.
Ty Burr can be reached at ty.burr@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @tyburr.
So was Orson Welles the man who invented the mockumentary? Well, yeah — back in 1941 with the fake newsreel that opens “Citizen Kane.” The many-lensed chaos of “The Other Side of the Wind” has more of an Altman-esque circus vibe to it, but the bite of the dialogue — the mordant, exhausted asides on celebrity, the media, filmmaking, Hollywood power games — is all Welles.
And, man, should you ever.
That we’re able to finally see an unseen work by Welles, one of the major talents of film history as well as one of its greatest and most self-destructive egos, is an unexpected left-field delight. In the early 1970s, the director was coming off two decades of exile in Europe, where he had been driven by years of Hollywood mistrust and mistreatment.
To the executives of the classic studio years, he was a pariah: the smartass 25-year-old who made “Citizen Kane” and thought he was better than the rest of the town. But to the New Hollywood filmmakers of the 1960s — the hip young producers and stars whose European-influenced movies spoke to the counterculture — Welles was a rebel patriarch. To his chagrin, that didn’t translate into money to make new movies.
The aging auteur pressed on regardless. Over the first half of the 1970s, Welles worked with a core crew and a rolling banquet of actors on “The Other Side of the Wind,” a film meant to both parody New Hollywood excesses and beat the kids at their own game. But funding ran low and then out, and when the Iranian Revolution cut off the finances of a chief investor (who happened to be related to the shah), the film was seized by producers and locked away in a Paris vault for decades.
Many people have worked over the years to get Welles’s swan song out of movie-rights jail and completed according to the late master’s notes and wishes. Director Peter Bogdanovich, a Welles acolyte who stars in “The Other Side of the Wind,” and producer Frank Marshall, a major Hollywood power player who worked as a crew member on the film, spearheaded the efforts, and Netflix ultimately kicked in the funds needed to get the project into the final phases of completion.
Begun in 1971, “The Other Side of the Wind” debuted at the Venice Film Festival this August and premiered last week on Netflix. (It’s showing theatrically in New York and Los Angeles and may yet come to Boston screens.)
The movie’s a mess — intentionally and otherwise — but it’s also a gas. “The Other Side of the Wind” is actually two movies in one. The first is a roiling, chaotic mockumentary about a storied Hollywood director, Jake Hannaford (played by storied Hollywood director John Huston, clearly standing in for Welles himself), struggling to get his final film made.
That film is also called “The Other Side of the Wind” and in the lengthy excerpts we see, in studio screening rooms and at an endless party Hannaford throws for himself, it’s a parody of what’s-it-all-mean arthouse movies by Antonioni, Bergman, and the Hollywood directors who emulated them.
Because Welles was apparently incapable of making a bad movie on purpose, those film-within-a-film sequences are also mesmerizing, shot and edited with unerring moviemaking skill and featuring the striking (and mostly undraped) form of Oja Kodar, a statuesque Croatian actress and writer who was Welles’s companion at the time.
If Hannaford’s “The Other Side of the Wind” is a piece of pretentious twaddle that’s also pretty amazing (or vice versa), Welles’s “The Other Side of the Wind” — meaning the desperate scrum of backbiting and flattery that surrounds Jake — is rich, Rabelaisian, and full of pointed Hollywood observations. Because Welles shot for years and invited everyone he knew to the party, the movie’s practically a face-book of early-’70s working actors.
Bogdanovich plays a young director whose career has commercially outshined his mentor’s (as it did in real life); he replaced comedian Rich Little in the role, but Little still pops up in the faux-doc’s corners. Dennis Hopper offers stoned musings, Susan Strasberg floats through as a movie critic suspiciously like Welles’s bête noire Pauline Kael. Old Hollywood faces like Cameron Mitchell, Mercedes McCambridge, and Edmond O’Brien play Hannaford cronies, Lilli Palmer shows up in what has to be considered the Marlene Dietrich part, and studio-era director Norman Foster has the most touching role as Billy Boyle, an aging hanger-on.
To add to the meta-movie hijinks, a 98-minute documentary about the much-fraught making of “The Other Side of the Wind” accompanies it on Netflix. Directed by Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor”), “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” is as fascinating as the Welles film and, in certain ways, more outrageous as it details the behind-the-scenes creative tragicomedy of an endlessly sprawling production.
(For completists, there’s also an excellent 40-minute mini-doc about the effort to rescue and edit Welles’s film, called “A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making,” tucked away in Netflix’s “Trailers and More” section of “The Other Side of the Wind.”)
Should you watch the movie before the documentary or the documentary before the movie? It depends. If you’re coming to Welles with nothing but a college screening of “Citizen Kane” under your belt, Neville’s doc should bring you up to speed while preparing you for the shaggy, throwback-’70s style of “Wind.” If you’re an old movie junkie and/or a longstanding Friend of Orson, dive right in and then let “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” provide dishy background.
Fan or not, it’s up to you to decide whether this is “The Other Side of the Wind” Orson wanted, directed by him from the other side of the grave. Of course the movie was never finished: Despite Welles’s claims to the contrary in the Neville documentary — and like Philip Seymour Hoffman’s hapless playwright in Charlie Kaufman’s 2008 meta-movie “Synecdoche, New York” — the legendary outcast seems to have filmed a version of his life that somehow merged with the real one.
You could argue that all of Orson Welles’s movies were about Orson Welles in the end. More than any other, “Wind” may have been the great white whale that he simultaneously chased and was.
Ty Burr can be reached at ty.burr@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @tyburr.
So was Orson Welles the man who invented the mockumentary? Well, yeah — back in 1941 with the fake newsreel that opens “Citizen Kane.” The many-lensed chaos of “The Other Side of the Wind” has more of an Altman-esque circus vibe to it, but the bite of the dialogue — the mordant, exhausted asides on celebrity, the media, filmmaking, Hollywood power games — is all Welles.
Re: Wind observations
Q: Do you think the finished film is relatively close to Orson and Oja's vision for it?
Rosenbaum: Well, I think one of the things that's complicated when you talk about Welles's "vision", is that Welles's vision changed several times a day. I think that's the way artists work, and that's certainly the way he worked as an artist, and probably the way Oja as an artist works. The model of Hollywood filmmaking is that you have a very precise idea of what you want, and it's all scripted and planned in advance, and storyboarded, and then you edit according to that plan. But Welles was someone who revised based on all sorts of things, including changing attitudes towards the material, discoveries he made during the editing, and so on.
Rosenbaum: Well, I think one of the things that's complicated when you talk about Welles's "vision", is that Welles's vision changed several times a day. I think that's the way artists work, and that's certainly the way he worked as an artist, and probably the way Oja as an artist works. The model of Hollywood filmmaking is that you have a very precise idea of what you want, and it's all scripted and planned in advance, and storyboarded, and then you edit according to that plan. But Welles was someone who revised based on all sorts of things, including changing attitudes towards the material, discoveries he made during the editing, and so on.
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Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations on Facebook
Gulson Road
The film did not disappoint. I just wish I had more opportunities to see it on the big screen. I don't expect people who are not deep into Welles to really get it, though.
Nick Gilbert
I thought it was the pits.
Jaime Marzol
i also expect people not into Welles to not have a clue what OSOTW is about and what Welles was trying to do. I regret the film was not longer. I wanted to see more Welles footage
John McCarty
Norman Foster really stole the movie.
Jaime Marzol
the scene in the viewing room with norman foster and the bob evans type guy was better the way welles edited it. they should have left it like it was. the party scene cuts short that incredible scene with huston making his way past the throng of people. i liked welle's edit better
but i should not complain and just be glad we have access to it now
Linda Rushing
I thought it was a total con job beginning to end. I kept watching thinking It could not possibly be this bad with all those people putting it together and putting their name on finished product but it stayed bad. Some good shots to be sure but mostly a bunch of wastrels wondering around in what looked like a drug fueled haze. What a disappointment. Since reading the book about it I have thought that Wells Never intended to complete the movie ( Like the Producers by Mel Brooks) he just used it to get money to live on. It would be a shame if Wells is remembered for this silly product.
Liz Costales
Agree completely. It felt like an "Emperor's New Clothes" type of thing. I dare say he probably didn't ever want it released.
Johnny Hillan
Liz, I dare say you have no idea what you are talking about!
Jaime Marzol
Welles' movies are an acquired taste, much like scotch. no one likes scotch the first time they tasted it but it slowly grows on you or it does not. I for one love scotch but did not like it the first time I tried it. I'm totally addicted to Welles' films but did not like any of them the first time I saw them. They grow on you. The first time I read about THE TRIAL I called every blockbuster in town and only the blockbuster in north miami and 163 st had it. I lived in South Miami. I drove an hour to get THE TRIAL and hated it. Drove another hour to return it. But it was stuck in my mind. A few days later I made the drive again and this time made myself a copy of it and returned it. Watched it several times and now it is in my top 10 films along with CITIZEN KANE and TOUCH OF EVIL. Scotch is not for everyone and neither is Welles. If you can find the beauty and poetry in it, more power to you.
Linda Rushing
Jaime Marzol I do not for a minute believe this was a "Wells" film. I believe it was a "film" created out of desperation out of pieces Wells never intended to see the light of day by Bogdanovich and company for their own ego filled reasons.Being a senior citizen I have seen most of the released Wells films MANY times and yes his films are in a place of their own. I just do not think this IS one . As someone said it is like the Emperors new cloths fable--everyone afraid to say the obvious.
Tony Williams
Yes, Jaimie and it is good to see you back on wellesnet.again.
Jaime Marzol
tony. long time
Wellesnet: Orson Welles Web Resource
Linda Rushing, "The Other Side of the Wind" as completed is very faithful to the script Orson Welles wrote in the 1970s. You may not appreciate or understand the movie, but it's unfair to say Frank Marshall, Peter Bogdanovich and the post-production team created it out of "desperation" or did it "for their own ego filled reasons."
Also, it's wrong to say this was a scam like the stage show in "The Producers." Welles sunk a lot of his own money into the movie. He took on acting and commercial work to fund the making of this and other movies.
Zarvox Altman
nope, his movies are always great, my favorite being the trial, other side isn't an Orson movie, he never finished it.
link the script(s) I'd love to follow along to this faithfulness you speak of
Jaime Marzol
Linda Rushing, Wellesnet is right, you are so wrong. None of the people involved needed this movie. It was a labor of love and you have to be an artist to understand their sacrifice. Welles poured his blood, sweat and tears into completing this film. No doubt it would have been better if Welles was around but he is not and the people involved did a great turn to the Welles legacy. Like I said earlier, Welles is not for everyone. If you expect a great plot that comes out to a great ending, watch Hitchock. If you want cinema excellence, you watch Welles. A stumbling block for some is seeing Welles in color. Nobody is used to that
Linda Rushing
EGO Jaime. Total EGO at work. Did you read Bogdanovich's book ? Also Wells was a magician and con artist as well as a film maker. HE knew he had so many investors he could NEVER finish it and I do not believe he ever intended to.
Tony Williams
Jaime Marzol You were never forgotten and I ran one of your reconstructions in my Welles classes of yesteryear that has inspired a graduate student now an independent film director.
Jaime Marzol
tony, super
Jaime Marzol
linda, we are all entitled to think what we want
Jaime Marzol
Tony Williams, the reconstruction must have been Ambersons. I learned Adobe Premiere reconstructing Ambersons. There are a lot of things I would change today, except Mike Teal's narration. He did an incredible job. I can no longer watch the release Ambersons after seeind the Ambersons the resulted from the continuity script. It is so different
Tony Williams
Jaime Marzol Yes, it was. But as you termed it "Dinosaur", it was a work in progress - just like an Orson film - and helped see the broader context that was removed by RKO. I wrote an article on it some years back in the print issue of FILM INTERNATIONAL.
Jaime Marzol
it is still a work in progress even though no work has been done on it in years it is still in the computer. soon as i'm set up again i will be chipping away at it. is your article on line?
Zarvox Altman
Other Side of the Wind, first thing, take out as much of Peter Bogged Down o' Kvetch as possible, any good reviews are out of respect for the ghost of Orson, I didn't make it past the first ten seconds, I watched the doc initially in one sitting so, I'll wait till fan edits fix it cuz I'm not watching it, I'll stick with f for fake and my own imagination based on doc, yeah the Hollywood reporter, let's let actors talk about things, now that's some good reading/refund
Sharon Domenech
Linda, if you had any respect for the man, you'd be spelling him as "Welles" not "Wells". This is Orson we're talking about, not H.G. At least get his name right.
Jaime Marzol
lol
Zarvox Altman
Every edit of evil is amazing, trial, amazing, f for fake is an absolute masterwork, all one needs to consider is to recognize it's influence on modern editing in general, other side, to me, is something that became too expensive too quickly, a bunch of people got outpaced creatively and Orson wasn't going to explain and that's it, the only good thing about its surfacing is that in a couple years fan edits will imbue it with Orson's spirit, cuz I'm pretty sure he didn't want Peter what's his teeth hijacking the first impression and that's what he did. I haven't seen one Peter B movie, wow, a black and white movie in the early seventies did he get an A+ on that one? What's it called Margaritaville, whatever, film brat bs if you don't ask me, excitement for
NOTH-ING!
The film did not disappoint. I just wish I had more opportunities to see it on the big screen. I don't expect people who are not deep into Welles to really get it, though.
Nick Gilbert
I thought it was the pits.
Jaime Marzol
i also expect people not into Welles to not have a clue what OSOTW is about and what Welles was trying to do. I regret the film was not longer. I wanted to see more Welles footage
John McCarty
Norman Foster really stole the movie.
Jaime Marzol
the scene in the viewing room with norman foster and the bob evans type guy was better the way welles edited it. they should have left it like it was. the party scene cuts short that incredible scene with huston making his way past the throng of people. i liked welle's edit better
but i should not complain and just be glad we have access to it now
Linda Rushing
I thought it was a total con job beginning to end. I kept watching thinking It could not possibly be this bad with all those people putting it together and putting their name on finished product but it stayed bad. Some good shots to be sure but mostly a bunch of wastrels wondering around in what looked like a drug fueled haze. What a disappointment. Since reading the book about it I have thought that Wells Never intended to complete the movie ( Like the Producers by Mel Brooks) he just used it to get money to live on. It would be a shame if Wells is remembered for this silly product.
Liz Costales
Agree completely. It felt like an "Emperor's New Clothes" type of thing. I dare say he probably didn't ever want it released.
Johnny Hillan
Liz, I dare say you have no idea what you are talking about!
Jaime Marzol
Welles' movies are an acquired taste, much like scotch. no one likes scotch the first time they tasted it but it slowly grows on you or it does not. I for one love scotch but did not like it the first time I tried it. I'm totally addicted to Welles' films but did not like any of them the first time I saw them. They grow on you. The first time I read about THE TRIAL I called every blockbuster in town and only the blockbuster in north miami and 163 st had it. I lived in South Miami. I drove an hour to get THE TRIAL and hated it. Drove another hour to return it. But it was stuck in my mind. A few days later I made the drive again and this time made myself a copy of it and returned it. Watched it several times and now it is in my top 10 films along with CITIZEN KANE and TOUCH OF EVIL. Scotch is not for everyone and neither is Welles. If you can find the beauty and poetry in it, more power to you.
Linda Rushing
Jaime Marzol I do not for a minute believe this was a "Wells" film. I believe it was a "film" created out of desperation out of pieces Wells never intended to see the light of day by Bogdanovich and company for their own ego filled reasons.Being a senior citizen I have seen most of the released Wells films MANY times and yes his films are in a place of their own. I just do not think this IS one . As someone said it is like the Emperors new cloths fable--everyone afraid to say the obvious.
Tony Williams
Yes, Jaimie and it is good to see you back on wellesnet.again.
Jaime Marzol
tony. long time
Wellesnet: Orson Welles Web Resource
Linda Rushing, "The Other Side of the Wind" as completed is very faithful to the script Orson Welles wrote in the 1970s. You may not appreciate or understand the movie, but it's unfair to say Frank Marshall, Peter Bogdanovich and the post-production team created it out of "desperation" or did it "for their own ego filled reasons."
Also, it's wrong to say this was a scam like the stage show in "The Producers." Welles sunk a lot of his own money into the movie. He took on acting and commercial work to fund the making of this and other movies.
Zarvox Altman
nope, his movies are always great, my favorite being the trial, other side isn't an Orson movie, he never finished it.
link the script(s) I'd love to follow along to this faithfulness you speak of
Jaime Marzol
Linda Rushing, Wellesnet is right, you are so wrong. None of the people involved needed this movie. It was a labor of love and you have to be an artist to understand their sacrifice. Welles poured his blood, sweat and tears into completing this film. No doubt it would have been better if Welles was around but he is not and the people involved did a great turn to the Welles legacy. Like I said earlier, Welles is not for everyone. If you expect a great plot that comes out to a great ending, watch Hitchock. If you want cinema excellence, you watch Welles. A stumbling block for some is seeing Welles in color. Nobody is used to that
Linda Rushing
EGO Jaime. Total EGO at work. Did you read Bogdanovich's book ? Also Wells was a magician and con artist as well as a film maker. HE knew he had so many investors he could NEVER finish it and I do not believe he ever intended to.
Tony Williams
Jaime Marzol You were never forgotten and I ran one of your reconstructions in my Welles classes of yesteryear that has inspired a graduate student now an independent film director.
Jaime Marzol
tony, super
Jaime Marzol
linda, we are all entitled to think what we want
Jaime Marzol
Tony Williams, the reconstruction must have been Ambersons. I learned Adobe Premiere reconstructing Ambersons. There are a lot of things I would change today, except Mike Teal's narration. He did an incredible job. I can no longer watch the release Ambersons after seeind the Ambersons the resulted from the continuity script. It is so different
Tony Williams
Jaime Marzol Yes, it was. But as you termed it "Dinosaur", it was a work in progress - just like an Orson film - and helped see the broader context that was removed by RKO. I wrote an article on it some years back in the print issue of FILM INTERNATIONAL.
Jaime Marzol
it is still a work in progress even though no work has been done on it in years it is still in the computer. soon as i'm set up again i will be chipping away at it. is your article on line?
Zarvox Altman
Other Side of the Wind, first thing, take out as much of Peter Bogged Down o' Kvetch as possible, any good reviews are out of respect for the ghost of Orson, I didn't make it past the first ten seconds, I watched the doc initially in one sitting so, I'll wait till fan edits fix it cuz I'm not watching it, I'll stick with f for fake and my own imagination based on doc, yeah the Hollywood reporter, let's let actors talk about things, now that's some good reading/refund
Sharon Domenech
Linda, if you had any respect for the man, you'd be spelling him as "Welles" not "Wells". This is Orson we're talking about, not H.G. At least get his name right.
Jaime Marzol
lol
Zarvox Altman
Every edit of evil is amazing, trial, amazing, f for fake is an absolute masterwork, all one needs to consider is to recognize it's influence on modern editing in general, other side, to me, is something that became too expensive too quickly, a bunch of people got outpaced creatively and Orson wasn't going to explain and that's it, the only good thing about its surfacing is that in a couple years fan edits will imbue it with Orson's spirit, cuz I'm pretty sure he didn't want Peter what's his teeth hijacking the first impression and that's what he did. I haven't seen one Peter B movie, wow, a black and white movie in the early seventies did he get an A+ on that one? What's it called Margaritaville, whatever, film brat bs if you don't ask me, excitement for
NOTH-ING!
-
Black Irish
- Wellesnet Veteran
- Posts: 317
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:07 pm
Re: Wind observations
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
Strange that arrival of a storied, unfinished masterpiece by the notoriously talented Orson Welles—a director whose unmade films are just as legendary as the ones he did make—should feel like it came and went with barely any notice, except among critics and hardcore cinephiles. Yet that seems to be the fate of The Other Side of the Wind, which Welles filmed in bits and pieces between 1970 and 1976, and which remained incomplete upon his death in 1985. It was finished long after the fact by producer Frank Marshall (a production manager on the movie when Welles was still making it), Polish producer Filip Jan Rymsza, and editor Bob Murawski, and though there’s no doubt that the mad genius Welles might have assembled the movie differently, the raw material is strong enough—wild enough—that the resulting film is more than worth the wait.
It stars Hollywood maverick John Huston as, well, a Hollywood maverick—but one at the tail end of his career, at the tail end of his life, actually, when his reputation is flailing. His chief apprentice (played by Peter Bogdanovich) is shooting past him in success and importance; his final film project is an embattled mess. That’s not the accidental irony of history you’re sensing, by the way: the Welles of the ‘70s was very much a filmmaker in exile from Hollywood. And every gleeful turn here—from the gaudy, riotous movie-within-a-movie (a wink at the work of Michelango Antonioni) to the a not-remotely-subtle forays into the daddy issues of it all—doubles as a send-up of Hollywood at large and as playful self-excoriation. No one knew how to lay it on thick quite as handily, or daringly, as Welles. This movie is yet more proof.
Strange that arrival of a storied, unfinished masterpiece by the notoriously talented Orson Welles—a director whose unmade films are just as legendary as the ones he did make—should feel like it came and went with barely any notice, except among critics and hardcore cinephiles. Yet that seems to be the fate of The Other Side of the Wind, which Welles filmed in bits and pieces between 1970 and 1976, and which remained incomplete upon his death in 1985. It was finished long after the fact by producer Frank Marshall (a production manager on the movie when Welles was still making it), Polish producer Filip Jan Rymsza, and editor Bob Murawski, and though there’s no doubt that the mad genius Welles might have assembled the movie differently, the raw material is strong enough—wild enough—that the resulting film is more than worth the wait.
It stars Hollywood maverick John Huston as, well, a Hollywood maverick—but one at the tail end of his career, at the tail end of his life, actually, when his reputation is flailing. His chief apprentice (played by Peter Bogdanovich) is shooting past him in success and importance; his final film project is an embattled mess. That’s not the accidental irony of history you’re sensing, by the way: the Welles of the ‘70s was very much a filmmaker in exile from Hollywood. And every gleeful turn here—from the gaudy, riotous movie-within-a-movie (a wink at the work of Michelango Antonioni) to the a not-remotely-subtle forays into the daddy issues of it all—doubles as a send-up of Hollywood at large and as playful self-excoriation. No one knew how to lay it on thick quite as handily, or daringly, as Welles. This movie is yet more proof.
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