Ambersons links and info

[DrG]

Hi,
is anyone aware of these two books by Laurence Klavan? I'd be interested about some whereabouts...

Relating The Magnificent Ambersons
The Cutting Room: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/034 ... UTF8&psc=1
Quote the amazon page:
"Like the hero in a classic Hitchcock thriller, the innocent movie buff at the center of this witty and suspenseful novel finds his ordinary life suddenly transformed when he’s plunged into a harrowing game of intrigue, duplicity, and danger. Spurred into a frantic race from New York to Hollywood to Barcelona and back, he’ll encounter enough hairpin twists, shocking surprises, white-knuckle tension, and sinister characters to give even the master of suspense himself a serious case of vertigo. But in this scenario, the mayhem and murder are all too real.
Self-proclaimed movie geek and divorced thirtysomething Roy Milano lives alone in a cramped Manhattan apartment, toiling as a freelancer to make ends meet. It’s a life perfectly suited to the creator of Trivial Man, Roy’s self-published newsletter—filled with tidbits of little-known Tinseltown lore for the delight of other fringe-dwelling cinemaphiles. And it’s a tantalizing phone call from one such kindred spirit that thrusts Roy headlong into his waking noir nightmare.
“I’ve got The Magnificent Ambersons,” declares Alan Gilbert, host of a homemade cable-TV show about the silver screen, who now claims to possess the rarest of the rare: the long-lost and never-released complete print of Orson Welles’s classic follow-up to Citizen Kane. But when Roy arrives at his fellow movie maven’s abode to sneak a peek at celluloid history, the front door is ominously open, Alan Gilbert is dead, and The Magnificent Ambersons is nowhere in sight. Even though the cops arrest a local drug addict for the murder, Roy knows they’re wrong—because the theft of the movie masterpiece points to a different kind of junkie. The kind Roy knows only too well . . . and the kind he’s certain only he can catch.
But Roy Milano is no Sam Spade, even if he does run into more gun-toting goons, sucker punches, and double-crosses than Bogey on a busy day. And the suspects prove to be anything but usual—including a bodybuilding film fanatic obsessed with bizarre rumors about an A-list actress, a rotund reporter who holds Hollywood in thrall via red-hot Internet dispatches from his parents’ basement, and a starstruck street punk with a thousand voices. And then there’s the transatlantic love triangle that finds Roy caught between his very own eager Gal Friday and a sultry Spanish siren with a stunning secret. But when the bodies start to fall faster than a box-office bomb, Roy must cut to the chase in his perilous quest to save the Holy Grail of cinema—and unmask a killer—before everything fades to black."


Relating Jerry Lewis' The Day The Clown Cried
The Shooting Script: A Novel of Suspense: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/034 ... UTF8&psc=1
Quote the amazon page:
"Following his critically acclaimed novel The Cutting Room, Laurence Klavan returns with The Shooting Script. Establishing shot: New York City, present day. Zoom in on a run-down tenement building, somewhere west of Times Square, the home of Roy Milano, a thirtyish, divorced typesetter who lives for the movies. In fact, by pursuing the legendary uncut print of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, Roy has become something of a minor celebrity among the fellow misfit film fanatics he caters to in his homemade newsletter, Trivial Man. But there’s nothing trivial when Roy’s old rival Abner Cooley shows up with a check in his hand and the words “Someone is trying to kill me” on his lips.
With his mother ailing, Roy needs the money as badly as Cooley needs someone to head off a trigger-happy stalker who’s determined to put both him and his controversial new screenplay into permanent turnaround. And though Roy does his best, like many a private eye before him, he quickly finds his head turned by an enticing distraction. Not a femme fatale, but a flick.
Roy is all but powerless to resist an e-mail from a mysterious fan that lures him with the promise of an elusive treasure as fiercely sought after by the celluloid cognoscenti as the Ark of the Covenant was by Indiana Jones. It’s Jerry Lewis' famous unreleased drama, The Day the Clown Cried. But when he arrives at a rendezvous too late to save a dying man, Roy realizes he’s stumbled into a dangerous race to possess a piece of cinema history. To catch up, he’ll have to match wits with a rogues’ gallery: a bored and bitter superstar comedian, a hot-shot producer turned drugged-out has-been, a ferocious German actor who likes to role-play off-camera, a mercurial director with a scary sense of humor, and a hard-bitten cop who’s mad about movies.
Meanwhile, Roy will be tempted by the wiles of three fetching females–and tormented by a single-minded psychopath with more faces than Lon Chaney. He’ll even go on location, pursuing and being pursued from the mansions of the Hamptons to the harbors of Maine, the boulevards of L.A. to the canals of Amsterdam. No one’s ever gone to this much trouble just to see a movie. But for Roy, the reward far outweighs the risk. And a chance to glimpse the Big Picture might just be worth coming face-to-face with the Big Sleep."

I've ordered both and intend to read them during my vacations, i can report afterwards.

[Roger Ryan]

I've read the one that uses the lost reels of Ambersons as the story's "McGuffin". As one could imagine, it has next-to-nothing to do with Welles' film but name-checks a lot of film geek favorites amid the usual private eye tropes. Nothing offensively inaccurate in the novel...and nothing particularly memorable either.

[Wellesnet]

75 years ago last Friday, Orson Welles’s follow up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, was previewed in Pomona, California, while Welles was down in Brazil, making a film of the Rio Carnival for the US Government’s “Good Neighbor Policy”. The Pomona preview was deemed a disaster by RKO studio head George Schaefer, who wrote the following to Welles:

“Never in all my experience in the industry have I taken so much punishment or suffered as I did at the Pomona preview. In my 28 years in the business, I have never been present in a theater where the audience acted in such a manner. They laughed at the wrong places, talked at the picture, kidded it, and did everything that you can possibly imagine.
I don't have to tell you how I suffered, especially in the realization that we have over $1,000,000. tied up. It was just like getting one sock in the jaw after another for over two hours.
The picture was too slow, heavy, and topped off with somber music, never did register. It all started off well, but just went to pieces.”

Subsequently, Schaefer ordered drastic changes to the picture, which included eliminating many scenes, and reshooting others with different dialogue and without Welles’s involvement. Most egregiously, Welles's original boardinghouse ending was scrapped in favor of a simpler, more upbeat ending. Eventually, the released version of the film clocked in at 88 minutes, roughly one third shorter then it’s original 131-minute running time. As Welles would later say, “They destroyed Ambersons, and the picture itself destroyed me. I didn’t get a job as a director for years afterwards.”

Welles's original version has never been found, and is presumably gone forever, but as the amazing news this week about "The Other Side of the Wind" shows, there's always room for hope.

Here's a good article by the A/V Clube website:
"75 years later, Orson Welles’ troubled follow-up to Citizen Kane continues to enchant":
http://www.avclub.com/article/75-years- ... ize-251171

From Facebook:

Conrad Steeves: Wasn't the preview audience a younger crowd who were there for a preview of another film of lighter fare than MA? I remember reading some account of that event years ago which explains the terrible reaction to Welles' vision.

Wellesnet: Yes, they had come to see The Fleet's In, a patriotic musical which fit the mood of the country better at that time. Sounds almost like a set-up by RKO.

Joseph McBride: I found that contrary to legend, AMBERSONS was doing well in some theaters when RKO abruptly pulled it after two weeks. Definitely a setup, part of their whole orchestrated plan to bring Welles down.

*

John F. Colaresi: Did I read somewhere that a complete print of AMBERSONS was sent to Welles when he was working in Brazil so he could edit it after its disastrous preview? If that's true, it could be there waiting to be found...

Roger L. Ryan: A print of the 131 minute version was sent to Welles in Brazil just days before the first preview. The reels were left at the Cinédia film studio (where RKO had an office that Welles worked out of while shooting "It's All True"). A memo from RKO's New York office, dated "Dec. 21st, 1944", was sent to a representative at the Brazilian office requesting he "junk" the "Ambersons" reels. A hand-written note at the top of the memo says "Dead issue...6/26/1946". So the question remains: were the reels actually destroyed as ordered?

John F. Colaresi: Thanks. Let's hope it was misplaced and be discovered some day.

[Wellesnet]

Homemade commentary to the film by film critic Benjamin Kerstein addresses Pomona and other issues surrounding the film's unmaking:

[tadao]

Meant to post something on this subject for a while, never got round to working it up into an article. Going to throw it out as a talking point instead. Something that's seemed to be a small mystery is what RKO thought they were getting in The Magnificent Ambersons, and maybe a consensus that it was set up as a loss-leading prestige picture that subsequent regime change got cold feet on and rejected (in favour of "Showmanship instead of genius"). In a job lot of Laserdiscs a couple of years ago I ended up with copies of By The Light of the Silvery Moon, On Moonlight Bay, Presenting Lily Mars and Alice Adams, all based on Tarkington's works and all successful at the box office. My not very thorough search finds Tarkington was the source for a number of silent films, and followed by post-code hits in Alice Adams (1935) that revitalised the career of Katharine Hepburn; Mississippi (1935) based on Magnolia (haven't seen this); Gentle Julia (1936) listed among 'Good performers', halfway down on a scale of excellent to poor from 'Harrison's Reports' (as compiled at https://immortalephemera.com/17888/1935-36-box-office-performance-rankings/); Penrod and Sam (1937) that spawned several sequels; Presenting Lily Mars (1946), Metro's 7th biggest grosser of the year; Monsieur Beaucaire (1946) 26th biggest grosser of 1946 (on the same Variety list, Welles projects Tomorrow is Forever is at 30 and The Stranger at 59); and On Moonlight Bay (1951), By The Light of the Silvery Moon (1953) based on characters from Penrod stories. Non-Tarkington turn of the century subjects of both the wistful and celebratory kind did well through the 40s, in the likes of Meet Me In St Louis, In The Good Old Summer Time etc. I'm persuaded to think that the Schaefer regime may have expected a sumptuous but popular melodrama of a picture. I guess those adaptations are all somewhat loose and play towards crowd pleasing nostalgia rather than a hard-hitting lament for the decline of gracious living, but Tarkington in that context looks like a good bet for box-office cert for movie execs.

I also hadn't quite clocked that Tarkington lived until 1946. Is he on record with any views on the Welles Ambersons (or any of the other films of his works)?

[Le Chiffre]

Interesting question, wish I had an answer. I read someone else on Facebook who had a similar question and someone else responded that Tarkington must have been blind by that time. Have no idea if that is accurate or not.

[tonyw]

For J.G. Ballard, the automobile was more than a "useless nuisance."

"Sadly, despite the enormous benefits which the car has created...the car has brought with it a train of hazards and disasters, from the congestion of city and countryside to the serious injury and deaths of millions of people. The car crash is the most dramatic event in most people's lives apart from their own deaths, and for many the two will coincide...If we really feared the crash, most of us would be unable to look at a car, let alone drive one."

"The Car, the Future." A USER'S GUIDE TO THE MILLENNIUM. New York: Picador, 1997,263.

[Le Chiffre]

The automobile industry is often associated with the rise of the Middle Class in America, and in other countries as well. To a large extent, it's what allowed the creation of the suburbs. Maybe that's what Welles meant when he said that the Middle Class was the enemy of society. Marc Blitzstien had said pretty much the same thing with THE CRADLE WILL ROCK back in the 1930s.

"I don’t believe we’ll see as many of those ottomobiles next summer. I’ve begun to agree with George about their being more of a fad than anything else. Like roller skates. Besides, people just won’t stand for them after a while. I shouldn’t be surprised to see a law passed forbidding the sale of ottomobiles the way there is with concealed weapons." - Fanny, starting out the missing "1st Porch Scene" from the original version of Ambersons.

[tonyw]

I assume "ottomobiles" is from the script? If so, I assume Aunt Fanny is equating them with the old Ottomon Empire seeing them as a device of those fiendish Turks?

[Le Chiffre]

I'm not sure about the script, but it's definitely in the cutting continuity. George also says "Ottomobiles" to Lucy earlier in the film during the ballroom scene. The word is also in Tarkington's novel ALICE ADAMS, so it's probably in the Ambersons novel too.

It could also be a reference to Otto Von Bismarck, since Germany is generally credited with the invention of the automobile, as Barack Obama found out the hard way a few years ago when he described the auto as an American invention.

[tonyw]

Could be. The attraction of Welles is his invite to multiple interpretations and speculation.

[Wich2]

(Many of which would likely bring forth the Old Boy's charming, wicked chuckle!)

[Le Chiffre]

Craig and Tony,
that reminds me of the story Susan Strasburg told in Gary Graver's video doc, WORKING WITH ORSON WELLES. She said that, while they were filming a scene for THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (maybe the scene on the bus), Welles suddenly decided to make an extended shot of a stop sign. When Strasburg asked Welles what the stop sign shot was for, Welles replied that it wasn't for anything, but that he was going to put it in the film anyway, so that critics and film buffs could spend days and days arguing about what it was supposed to mean.

[tonyw]

Yet, did not D.H. Lawrence once say, "Never trust the author, trust the text"? Whatever his motivations, conscious or otherwise, the object became part of the text and something that could generate interpretations in a ludic play of possibilities.

Since, I've not seen the film recently, assuming the shot is still there, the sign could signify the "dead end" or Sartre's "No Exit" for the film's protagonist?

Other interpretations are possible.

I remember Fritz Lang once positively comparing the work of film critics to psychoanalysts in terms of excavating buried meanings. RThen Lang began to object to meanings he disagreed with!

He certainly did not approve of Sartre's "Roads to Freedom" here.

[JMcBride]

During the shooting of OTHER WIND, Welles was being driven in a convertible
down Sunset Blvd. near the Bel-Air gate. The car pulled up at a spotlight. A young woman was sitting
on a bench at a bus stop right there. She was reading a book on David Lean.
She looked up and saw Orson Welles looking at her from five feet away.
He said to her, "Wrong director, my dear." Then the car sped off. I wonder
if she thought she was hallucinating.