Director-writer Rian Johnson (Lucasfilm photo)
One of the first filmmakers to see The Other Side of the Wind says he was “gobsmacked” by what the late Orson Welles accomplished more than 40 years ago.
Rian Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) has seen a 117-minute edit — minus its Michel Legrand score — twice, including a “friends and family screening” in Santa Monica, California, on January 16 with Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne and other VIPs.
“As a Welles fan, this movie lands so hard,” Johnson told Vanity Fair. “On a style level, it’s cut in a way that feels slightly beyond where we are now. It’s got a very fast, collage-like feel. This movie keys directly into what’s grand and tragic about (Welles’) later years. It taps directly into the fuse box of that tragedy. I’ve seen it twice, and I need to see it a dozen more times.”
The Other Side of the Wind impressed his companions, said Johnson, adding their conversation lingered so long after the screening that the valet-parking employees went home, leaving Tarantino carless.
“We were all gobsmacked,” Johnson said.
His comments were part of the first in-depth mainstream media article on The Other Side of the Wind since editing commenced last fall. Netflix is set to release the finished film and Morgan Neville’s companion documentary, tentatively titled They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, later this year.
Vanity Fair’s Rebecca Keegan spoke with Johnson, producers Filip Jan Rymsza and Frank Marshall, executive producer Peter Bogdanovich and Ian Bricke, Netflix’s director of content acquisition.
The streaming giant will “use our scale and our audience to get Orson Welles into 115 million households,” said Bricke, who revealed it was a 2015 Vanity Fair article by Josh Karp (Orson Welles’s Last Movie) that helped interest Netflix in completing the film.
Post-production work on the film wrapped on April 30, nearly 47 years after cameras first rolled.
According to Vanity Fair, a theatrical release and streaming of The Other Side of the Wind is set for this fall.
The May edition of Vanity Fair also includes four previously unpublished photographs of Welles at work during the 1970s shoot taken by the late Joe Maria Castellvi.
The Other Side of the Wind takes place at the 70th birthday party of maverick director Jake Hannaford (John Huston), who is struggling to complete his comeback film during the rise of New Hollywood. Attending the party are successful young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich), hangers-on and critics. Hannaford dies at the conclusion of the party. Welles’ movie recounts Hannaford’s final hours using a mix of 16mm and 35mm color and black-and-white film shot at the party, along with scenes from his unfinished movie.
Academy Award winner Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker) edited the film, while four-time Oscar winning sound man Scott Millan (Apollo 13, Gladiator) handled the audio mix. Rymsza’s Royal Road Entertainment and Marshall are producing the film.
Bogdanovich, who was tasked by Welles to finish the film in the event of his death, said that audiences will see “the old Orson Welles story about betrayal and friendship; about the prince taking the place of the king.”
“It’s an extraordinary film,” Bogdanovich said. “I’m overwhelmed that we got it done.”
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