Pat McMahon, left, greets John Huston in a scene from the unfinished Orson Welles movie “The Other Side of the Wind.”
By RAY KELLY
When Sony Entertainment emails were hacked last winter, media attention centered more on embarrassing tidbits about big name stars like Angelina Jolie, Adam Sandler and Kevin Hart and less on routine business dealings.
On April 16, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange posted a searchable database of 30,287 Sony documents and 173,132 emails, which stretch back to May 2009 and as recent as November 2014. The database is loaded with correspondence about potential projects, including discussion of Orson Welles’ unfinished movie The Other Side of the Wind.
In a June 7, 2014 email to Steven Bersch, president of Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions, TOSOTW producer Filip Jan Rymsza made his pitch following a conversation between his partner, Carla Rosen-Vacher, and Sony CEO Michael Lynton.
“We’re in the process of completing Orson Welles’ last film, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which Orson wrote, directed and shot, but never finished editing.
I’ve been at this for about four years, doing the chain-of-title and unraveling the byzantine legal wrangle that kept this masterpiece unfinished, but that’s since been sorted. We now own the negative, which was locked in Paris under court-order… and we’re ready to purchase the remaining rights and ship the negative here for restoration and completion.
We’re joined in this effort by Frank Marshall and a handful of Oscar winners who will carry out the edit, sound design and score…
We’ve kept news of this quiet, but we’re now reaching out to certain parties to gauge interest in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Would you be interested in discussing?
Bersch responded favorably and provided his phone number to Rymsza . However, Bersch was noncommittal in a very brief note sent to Lynton.
After the Page 1 story in the New York Times about TOSOTW broke on Oct. 29, Lynton responded to an email from Rosen-Vacher, saying, “wow, now this is a movie I want to see.”
Whether Sony truly was – or is – interested in TOSOTW is unknown. And Rymsza’s email makes it clear that he reached out to multiple studios at the time.
There are no further Sony emails regarding TOSOTW, which is not surprising since the hackers scooped up files dated before Nov. 29, 2014.
Welles’ name is also mentioned in a July 13, 2014 exchange between producer Scott Rudin and Sony co-chair Amy Pascsal when they discussed filming Antony and Cleopatra starring Jolie.
Rudin cites Welles’ Chimes at Midnight in a lengthy list of successful Shakespearean films, though he obviously is unfamiliar with its poor critical and box office reception in the U.S. in 1967.
“If we did this, and had Fassbender or Tom Hardy – like that – as Antony, we would have a stunning movie. Look at Polanski’s Macbeth or Olivier’s Richard or Hamlet or Zeffirrelli’s Romeo or Shrew with the Burtons or Branagh’s Henry or the Orson Welles Chimes at Midnight or even Baz’s Shrew – these are genius movies and big fat hits, and they shower glory on everybody who touches them.”
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