Updated on March 17: Technicolor Creatives tweeted a photo today of the negative at its Hollywood laboratory (see below) and teased of more information to come. Also, a video of Filip Jan Rymsza at LTC Laboratories outside Paris on March 9 has been added to this article.
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By RAY KELLY
After more than 40 years of failed attempts and missed opportunities, Orson Welles’ unfinished The Other Side of the Wind will be completed and streamed to 93 million Netflix subscribers worldwide.
The 1,083 reels of negative footage, dailies, rushes and other materials ― once housed by LTC Laboratories outside Paris — were flown to Los Angeles on Monday, March 13, for a 4K scanning by Technicolor, according to Filip Jan Rymsza, who is producing the movie alongside Frank Marshall. The latter was a line producer on the 1970s shoot. Director Peter Bogdanovich, who co-starred in the film and was tasked by Welles to complete it in the event of his death, will consult on the editing.
“Everything is signed. All the deals are fully closed, both the Netflix deal and all of the rights deals,” Rymsza told Wellesnet. “Everything we have done for the past year and a half has been grueling, but that’s finally over and now we get to be creative and finally bring this film to life.”
Marshall, who has worked toward the film’s completion for decades, thanked Netflix in a statement, saying “I can’t quite believe it, but after 40 years of trying, I am so very grateful for the passion and perseverance from Netflix that has enabled us to, at long last, finally get into the cutting room to finish Orson’s last picture.”
Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos added, “Like so many others who grew up worshipping the craft and vision of Orson Welles, this is a dream come true. The promise of being able to bring to the world this unfinished work of Welles with his true artistic intention intact, is a point of pride for me and for Netflix.”
A U.S. Customs inspection at LAX is currently underway and the footage could arrive at Technicolor’s lab in Hollywood by the end of the week. All of the 35mm, 16mm and 8mm footage and sound elements will be digitalized.
“The same day (the footage arrives at Technicolor), we start scanning,” said Rymsza, who will be on hand for that next step in the process. “There is no lag. We hit the ground running.”
Welles began filming The Other Side of the Wind in August 1970, finished principal photography in January 1976, and struggled to complete the movie until his death in October 1985. He was stymied by issues ranging from IRS woes to the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the negative remained locked away in Paris.
In the years after Welles’ death, his cameraman, Gary Graver, who died in 2006, and cast member and author Joseph McBride worked with Showtime to finish the movie. But, they failed to broker a deal acceptable to the Welles Estate and the film’s co-owners, Welles’ companion, Oja Kodar, and Les Films de l’Astrophore led by the late Mehdi Boushehri, brother-in-law of the Shah of Iran. (The saga was extensively reported in Josh Karp’s book Orson Welles’s Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind.)
Rymsza, whose involvement dates back seven years, acquired the rights held by Les Films de l’Astrophore. He embarked on negotiations with Beatrice Welles, who oversees her father’s estate; and Kodar, who was represented in talks by her nephew Sasha Welles.
It has been a roller coaster ride for both fans and the parties involved. Hopes for the film’s release were buoyed after a front page story in The New York Times on October 29, 2014 trumpeted an agreement between Kodar and the producers. But problems arose as producers hunted for a suitable distributor and Kodar’s payment was delayed. Undaunted, Rymsza pressed on, raising $406,405 toward editing the footage through a spring 2015 Indiegogo campaign and months later bringing Netflix on board at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
What followed was nearly 18 months of complex renegotiations on rights and global distribution with Kodar, which came to fruition with a deal signed by the parties in late February 2017.
Rymsza described that year-and-a-half period as a “small step back to take a giant leap forward,” adding that “this was what was best for the film. We were not going to rush something or go into a distribution deal just because it was a shortcut if it was not in the best, long-term interest of the film.”
“A lot of people might not understand that Netflix is a totally different model, it’s unlike any other distributor or studio,” Rymsza said. “Once this became the plan… and I knew the interest was real, we moved forward into the dealmaking phase. I knew it would require my redoing every single rights deal. They are structured differently and (the previous agreements) would not be compatible. But at the end of the day, it would be extremely worth it because of their reach and because they really understood what we were doing on a macro level.They are such wonderful partners and their level of commitment is beyond anybody else.”
Without question, Netflix gives The Other Side of the Wind the type of prestigious worldwide distribution Welles could never have imagined in his wildest dreams. Available in 190 countries, the streaming giant has already taken on big-screen efforts like Beasts of No Nation, the Oscar-winning The White Helmets and Martin Scorsese’s upcoming The Irishman starring Robert De Niro.
Unknown to many, Rymsza had a team quietly at work at LTC during the lengthy negotiations. Each film can was opened and the footage checked for signs of deterioration. Metadata and handwritten information from each reel or film can was collected and entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The footage was then transferred onto modern cores and prepped for its 4K scan at Technicolor. The sound elements, contained on quarter-inch analog audio tapes, were packaged for their eventual conversion into digital files. The materials were placed in moisture-proof bags with absorbent paper, securely boxed and then packed onto eight pallets for shipment.
“We definitely made good use of that time,” Rymsza said. “We have a very good sense from an inventory of what’s what. It’s extremely well-organized.”
Finally, on the afternoon of March 9, the film footage left France after four decades in storage. Rymsza, a Technicolor-Paris representative and LTC went through the inventory list, pallet by pallet, before workers loaded the elements onto two trucks bound via ferry for Heathrow Airport in London. An established film courier, Bluebird Express, was contracted to fly The Other Side of the Wind to Los Angeles.
“It was such an exciting moment, a little bit of release, and certainly a lot excitement,” Rymsza said. “It’s incredible that we now get to move on to the next part of this.”
The production team’s excitement was shared, he said, by those at LTC, who have watched over The Other Side of the Wind. “There is a kinship.”
Rymsza acknowledged the apprehension among some Welles aficionados during the silence he maintained during the lengthy negotiations.
“At some point, (the progress) was month-to-month, then I felt it was week-to-week and then finally it was day-to-day. And when it felt like day-to-day, it still took another two and a half months,” Rymsza said. “It was a very complex deal. As we were going through it, I did not want to be checking in or updating because everybody is very passionate about this and it is emotional torture … It’s grueling not to be able to celebrate with the rest of Orson’s fans and all of the crowdfunding contributors something exciting like the Netflix deal, but ultimately it’s worth it. We are here in service to the film. I certainly hope they will understand and appreciate why we did it this way.”
Work will soon begin to honor perks for the 2,859 Indiegogo contributors, Rymsza said. Donor rewards include T-shirts, bathrobes and DVDs of the completed film. (Note: Following publication of this article, Rymsza revealed in an update to Indiegogo contributors that Netflix was allowing limited edition Blu-ray and DVDs just for donors.)
Far more important, Rymsza and Marshall will soon put together a team to edit, score and mix The Other Side of the Wind. Editor Affonso Gonçalves (Beasts of the Southern Wild, True Detective) was tapped in May 2015, but the Emmy Award winner now has other projects in post-production and may be unavailable. The completed film will be a produced by Rymsza’s Royal Road Entertainment and Netflix.
“We’re not going to suffer for people who are extremely talented and decorated,” Rymsza said. “We have a bounty of riches when it comes to interest from people who want to help and who appreciate the amount of work we’ve done and who want to be involved.”
The Other Side of the Wind takes place at the 70th birthday party of maverick movie director Jake Hannaford (the late John Huston), who is struggling to make a comeback film during the rise of New Hollywood. The party is attended by young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich), hangers-on and critics – many of whom are patterned after people in Welles’ life. Hannaford dies at the conclusion of the party and his final hours are recounted in the movie using a mix of still photos, and 8mm, 16mm and 35mm color and black-and-white film shot at the party, along with scenes from his unfinished movie. Rounding out the cast are Kodar, Cameron Mitchell, Mercedes McCambridge, Susan Strasberg, Edmond O’Brien, Norman Foster, Paul Stewart and Robert Random. The executive producers are Peter Bogdanovich, Jens Koethner Kaul, Beatrice Welles, Carla Rosen-Vacher, Olga Kagan and Jon Anderson.
A production timeline is being developed for The Other Side of the Wind and a release plan drafted by Netflix. The agreement calls for producers to deliver to Netflix, among other elements, a 35mm print of the completed film, which leaves the door open to some type of theatrical release.
“During my first meeting with Netflix, I had kind of a philosophical approach,” Rymsza said. ” I told them very early on that to me they were the ‘dream release’ — to have it global and to be able to have it with that wide of a reach; more than any Orson film by a magnitude of I-don’t-know-how-many. I felt it was a wonderful match and also one where Orson’s film is never going to be judged by its box office. His films weren’t commercially successful and I am sure that affected him. The films were appreciated decades later. I felt this was fitting. It will be purely a celebration and nobody is going to be looking at the numbers.”
He added, “In terms of release, we are going to continue to do things in unconventional ways. I love that Netflix has been open to that idea. Ultimately what the plan is, we will see. We are really going to focus on just finishing the film. And, again, what makes Netflix such a great partner is that they are going to give us the time to do so. We don’t have to work toward a release date. If we need more time, we have more time … I can’t overstate how great a partner they have been.”
Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind just arrived at #Technicolor!
We’re thrilled to be part of #OrsonsLastFilm. Stay tuned for more. pic.twitter.com/cKXNiNJMPb— TechnicolorCreatives (@TechnicolorCrea) March 17, 2017
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