It's All True, again

[Colmena]

Just watched "It's all True" again, having seen it when it first came out on VHS, some 15 years ago or so.

Most of all, I was hoping that some wonderful & illuminating new "special features" might turn up on the DVD, but no such luck.

Interesting contrast between the early B&W discussion of IAT by Welles, which is post-debacle, but where he maintain his OW style as he tells his tale of how the demise of the project was bound up with voodoo.. and later, heavier, older, wheezier OW who is clearly and frankly distressed by the whole 1942 debacle.

My pleasure in seeing the "4 Men on a Raft" footage edited into a proper chronology was undermined by the repetitious, inappropriate (wrong tone) and anachronistic (wrong era) music. Also, without any indication of the dialog, what people are saying, the plot is incomprehensible w/o watching the preceding documentary. So it can't work properly as a free-standing short, unfortunately.

The heavy filtering and tropical setting reminded me continuously of the stunning "I am Cuba," another unique movie that has been rescued from Oblivion.

I thought that My Friend Bonito was completed... but I guess not. In Callow Vol 2 he points to Welles' success in long-distance editing of Bonito as leading to his supposition that he could engage in long distance edition of Ambersons and Journey in Fear, while in Brazil-- so I took that to indicate that Bonito was finished.

[tonyw]

I agree with you about the distracting music. However, much footage still remains in the archives but it is deteriorating. Money is needed to complete the project but in today's financial climate, funding is sadly unlikely.

[Colmena]

In thinking about Welles' tragic debacle this morning, it strikes me... how different our view of OW would have been, if It's All True had been completed. Because IAT is itself so different from everything else that Welles did, especially for being outdoors, with an appreciation of the natural world, and also optimistic. And a realization of Welles' (political) populism, in film.

And if it had come to successful completion, where would Welles, the boy genius, have gone from there?

[Wellesnet]

75th anniversary of the ill-fated Latin American project:
http://www.wellesnet.com/its-all-true-7 ... ted-shoot/

[Wellesnet]

Check out Catherine Benamou in this hour-long program on Orson Welles and IT'S ALL TRUE.

http://wfhb.org/news/interchange-ears-to-hear-orson-welles-in-brazil/

[JMcBride]

I raised $9,000 from the LA Film Critics Association when I
was an officer to preserve 20 minutes of the UCLA footage
from IT'S ALL TRUE. It turned out to be mostly dull footage
of the training of a bull. But there was one striking shot
of the Jangadieros entering the harbor -- the editor of
the documentary told me if he had seen it he would
have put it into the reconstruction. Sadly, I think that
donation is all that has been given to UCLA to preserve
the mass of untransferred negative that exists (at least
it was the last I checked). No interest has been aroused.
I had hoped our donation would lead to others. The last
I heard it would cost about $200,000 to preserve all
the untransferred footage, which is in danger of rotting away.

[Le Chiffre]

$200,000 doesn't sound that unreasonable for someone with Netflix's coffers, but they would have to be convinced that a finished product could be made with it, which might be difficult since a good doc has already been made on the subject. The story I've heard was that Welles himself was not interested in seeing the footage when its discovery was made known to him in 1983, as he thought it was cursed. Too bad. He might have made a good essay film out of it. There is some wonderful footage throughout the 1993 documentary.

Real good podcast with Benamou. Last month was the 25th anniversary of the documentary's release.

[JMcBride]

The Paramount executive who supervised the documentary IT'S ALL TRUE: BASED ON
AN UNFINISHED FILM BY ORSON WELLES, Michael Schlesinger, told me when
his bosses saw the film not long before the release date, he was fired
and escorted off the lot by two guards wearing guns. I asked why, and
he said the executives were horrified to find that the documentary
was largely about poor people of color who were fishermen and that a large portion
of the documentary was a silent movie. Paramount then rebuffed offers
from some theaters to show the film, and it received limited distribution. Given
all that history, it's a wonder it was released as a DVD. I like it very much.

[Le Chiffre]

Amazing to think that Paramount bosses were that uninformed about what to expect.

[atcolomb]

So i guess chances of Paramount releasing a blu-ray is zero? I hope Criterion might re-release it.

[JMcBride]

So there are silent films-within-the-film in
both IT'S ALL TRUE: BASED ON AN UNFINISHED FILM BY ORSON WELLES and OTHER WIND.
It seems likely Welles would have narrated the Jangadieros segment if he
had been allowed to finish the film, and we hear Jake's voice directing
over two parts of his film in OTHER WIND. We also hear Oja laughing
and shouting in two parts. But there's no other dialogue. But both
show Welles experimenting with the medium, as he always did. No
one in Hollywood would pay for OTHER WIND until we got Showtime
interested, but they couldn't make it happen, and then Netflix
took a chance with it. Mike Schlesinger did try to get Sony
to do OTHER WIND, but they would not.

[Tony]

I just noticed that the name for Shakespeare's Henry VIII before it was published in the first folio was "All Is True" and that the Globe Theatre burned down during a performance of AIT; some strange synchronicity with "It's All True"...

[citizenmilton]

Hello Wellesnettians, this is my first post and I'm afraid I'll be branded an idiot. But here goes...

I could swear I remember seeing a really solid chunk of "It's All True" in a documentary or some program a while back. I thought I'd even seen the entirety of the Carnaval sequence. Am I misremembering this possibility?

What's the best source to find the most amount of the Carnaval footage shot?

[RayKelly]

Hello Wellesnettians, this is my first post and I'm afraid I'll be branded an idiot. But here goes...
I could swear I remember seeing a really solid chunk of "It's All True" in a documentary or some program a while back. I thought I'd even seen the entirety of the Carnaval sequence. Am I misremembering this possibility?
What's the best source to find the most amount of the Carnaval footage shot?

Welcome!
Are you referring to the 1993 documentary It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film By Orson Welles?

[Wellesnet]

A new DCP restoration of the "It's All True" documentary premieres at MOMA this Thursday, introduced by the film's co-director and producer, Myron Miesel:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/53 ... ak-r4S2wKw