Slipping under the radar last summer was the publication of the first book to critique the completed release of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind.
Welles filmed his takedown of New Hollywood and machismo between August 1970 and early 1976, and fought to complete the movie until his death in October 1985. However, he was stymied on a number of fronts and the film’s negative remained locked away outside Paris for more than 30 years. Using Welles’ notes, scripts and partially edited workprint, it was completed by producers Filip Jan Rymsza and Frank Marshall for Netflix in 2018.
The troubled history of The Other Side of the Wind has been well-documented in such books as Orson Welles’s Last Movie by Josh Karp and Joseph McBride’s What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career. But Michael Yates‘ Shoot ’em Dead: Orson Welles & The Other Side of the Wind is the first book to critique the completed film, which was edited by Oscar winner Bob Murawski.
In his introduction to Shoot ’em Dead, Yates writes that he became aware of the unfinished movie in the late 1980s and “doubted and even dreaded its long-promised unveiling, since without Welles around to supervise its editing, it could not be a true Welles film.”
“I was never happier to be proven wrong. To the delight of even the most skeptical Welles aficionados, the finished film not only conjures Welles’ spirit more successfully than necromancy, but it’s a stunning, experimental and provocative discourse on friendship, art, masculinity, guilt and the potential of cinema itself,” Yates writes. “The major work of Welles’ final years, The Other Side of the Wind extends the themes that run through all of his films while adding substantially to his cinematic philosophy. Understanding of his work in film must now be reconfigured with this new title in the mix.”
The Other Side of the Wind is hailed by Yates in his book as a “complete triumph.”
“Overwhelmingly ambitious despite its modest scope, the film is an alchemy of caustic drama, mockumentary, autoanalysis, and critique of the film medium. It is also hypnotically entertaining. Its story and structure are symbiotic; it is what it’s about – a meditation on death whose breathless style keeps (what Welles called) ‘the illusion of life’ from fading,” Yates writes.
Yates previous books on cinema include Two Mavericks: The Films of Altman & Peckinpah, See No Evil: John Carpenter’s Stalking Trilogy and Dismantling Empire:The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.
Shoot ’em Dead is available exclusively online through lulu.com. The 260-page paperback is priced at $7.99.
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