Orson Welles

also, has anyone ever heard an orson welles story that wasn't fairly entertaining? was reading about his shenanigans on the set of "the long, hot summer"--pretty much standard-issue welles shenanigans, really--and was duly amused.

yeah.

any opinions on the best welles biography? i've only read david thomson's, many years ago, which a) i can't remember, and b) well, i can remember it was afraid of being a boring old "biography".

Thomson's has some of the best critical insights into Welles' work even when I disagree often.

i forget which one i read, it was a super-defensive post-"raising kane" one clearly out to make a point but otherwise pretty good

isn't there a definitive three-volume set, the guy currently writing the third? sorry that this isn't tremendously helpful but i maybe gathered this from an old welles thread.

that'd be simon callow's, i guess. not read anything by him (he's best known as a very actory-y actor).

but shd look up reviews.

I have the first 2 Callow vols and have only skimmed. Look good.

i read volume 1 of callow's book back when i was an obsessive wellesian. it's great stuff, very insightful and informative, espec on all the theatre stuff. i'll get around to reading the second one one of these days; i remember being relieved he had decided to continue doing it. they're coming out at the rate of once every 12 years or so.

barbara leaming's book is worthwhile if only because she was the only biographer welles spoke to, so there's a lot of wonderfully entertaining stories and quotes even if you assume he's making a third of it up.

I loooved the first volume of Callow's biography, birth thru Citizen Kane, teh second volume not so much. looking forward to the third covering Welles' long weird decline.

anybody else remember the TV commercials he did in the late 70s for Perrier and Gallo (IIRC) wines? or John Candy's priceless Welles impression on SCTV?

Sure. And there is a Paul Masson wine ad over at Morbius's shenanigans link.

I guess This Is Orson Welles is not a bio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ehxdlAlHQ

is journey into fear worth watching? its on el iplayer

it's only 75 minutes long. press play and see what you think!

no-one would claim it's a classic.

did The Immortal Story ever come out on disc?

There's an hour long Orson Welles documentary by Simon Callow (wrote Cowell first) tonight on BBC4.
Orson Welles Over Europe:
Simon Callow looks at the career of actor-director Orson Welles after he went into self-exile in Europe and immersed himself in challenging films, TV, theatre and bullfighting.

The ending of Ambersons is absolutely appalling.

don't think it has, morbs (i watched it on VHS i think)

anyone ever read jonathan rosenbaum's reconstruction of the original ending of ambersons?

anyone ever listen to OW's mercury theater radio adaptation of it?

Haha, googled Orson's F for Fake girlfriend the other day and came across an album by some Ilx0rs.

is "girlfriend" some sassy new slang for "movie" like "joint"

No, that is a nice theory but sorry. Isn't there a woman featured prominently in F For Fake who lived with him for many years and later made a documentary about him, as is mentioned up thread?

yes, OJA

(I have seen her sex scene in a car from The Other Side of the Wind)

is "OJA" some sassy new slang for "oh yeah"

I thought you were watching GWTW!

Not every one of your contributions is going to get reposted on the zing thread, s1ocki.

i wasn't trying to zing u sir

Actually, I just looked it up, her real name was Olga but Orson changed it to Oja to make it more exotic.

Will watch Compulsion tonight.

Good movie, Fleischer and Dean Stockwell in great form too.

Well, then

Not even death can keep Orson Welles down. The gargantuan film legend, wine pitchman and Transformers: The Movie voice-over artist will roar out of his coffin to narrate an upcoming adaptation of Christmas Tails, an obscure, self-published Christmas novel about Santa's dog by a friend. Welles narrated the novel on reel-to-reel tape as a favor to pal Robert X. Leed.
Leed has now hooked up with Drac Studios, a special effects and make-up company looking to get into film production. The film, a live-action/animation hybrid, hopes to begin shooting this Summer with an eye towards a December 2011 release.

spellbinding, all things considered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V421bF698sA

Dinah is so gentle and polite, in an uncondescending way.

Have you guys seen this? Enjoying it:

http://www.ubu.com/film/welles_oneman.html

NIKKA whisky
ORSON WELLES,
he is really a man

so I was in Venice CA last Friday night, and was alerted that I'd find the blocks near the beach familiar:

http://www.justabovesunset.com/id1421.html

Henry Jaglom has a book coming out on his lunch chats with OW, and oh my, the dish....

H.J.: Were things really better in the old days?

O.W.: It’s terrible for older people to say that, because they always say things were better, but they really were. What was so good about it was just the quantity of movies that were made. If you were Darryl Zanuck, and you were producing 80 moving pictures under your direct supervision, how much attention could you pay to any one picture? Somebody was gonna slip something in that’s good.

I got along well with even the worst of the old moguls. They were all easier to deal with than these college-­educated, market-conscious people. I never really suffered from the “bad old boys.” I’ve only suffered from lawyers and agents. Wasn’t it Norman Mailer who said that the great new art form in ­Hollywood is the deal? Everybody’s energy goes into the deal. Forty-five years I have been doing business with agents, as a performer and a director. As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I’ve never heard one say, “No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.” They will always say, “You don’t like him? I’ve got somebody else.” They’re totally spineless.

H.J.: In the old days, all those big deals were made on a handshake. With no contract. And they were all honored.

O.W.: In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the frontier could never have been opened, ’cause it was lawless. A man’s word had to mean something. My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn’t be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You’re a lawbreaker. It’s just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society. You see?

Richard Burton comes to the table.

Richard Burton: Orson, how good to see you. It’s been too long. You’re looking fine. Elizabeth is with me. She so much wants to meet you. Can I bring her over to your table?

O.W.: No. As you can see, I’m in the middle of my lunch. I’ll stop by on my way out.

Burton exits.

H.J.: Orson, you’re behaving like an asshole. That was so rude.

O.W.: Do not kick me under the table. I hate that. I don’t need you as my ­conscience, my Jewish Jiminy Cricket. Especially do not kick my boots. You know they protect my ankles. Richard Burton had great talent. He’s ruined his great gifts. He’s become a joke with a celebrity wife. Now he just works for money, does the worst shit. And I wasn’t rude. To quote Carl Laemmle, “I gave him an evasive answer. I told him, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ ”

http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/orson-welles-lunch-with-henry-jaglom.html

thats great

H.J.: They keep writing in the papers that, ever since Wolfgang Puck left, this place has gone downhill.

O.W.: I don’t like Wolfgang. He’s a little shit. I think he’s a terrible little man.

really hoping i get to that kinda awesome fascinating asshole phase in my life

not fond of Chaplin, Spencer Tracy, or Woody Allen either!

really wanna read that jaglom book now

note of pathos at the start of that excerpt on smelling roast pork.

can understand why Tracy was an asshole.

What would Dick & Liz be doing dining out in '83, seven years after the end of their second marriage?

also K Hepburn did A Bill of Divorcement in '32, long before Orson was in Hollywood... but Maureen O'Hara did a remake in '40, maybe Welles is conflating them and MO'H was the salty talker? Maybe he just hated anyone who was close to Mia Farrow?

someone posted this piece earlier, and I noticed the discrepancy re ABOD.

Weren't Liz & Dick doing a stage show together at the time?

oh yeah! I remember they had done (a badly reviewed) Private Lives on Broadway, but had no idea they toured with it...

love the talk about goldwyn/thalberg:

H.J.: F. Scott Fitzgerald must have been impressed by [Thalberg], to make him the model for The Last Tycoon.

O.W.: Writers always fell for his shtick. Writers are so insecure that when he said, “I don’t write, but I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this,” they just lapped it up. By the way, there were better scripts written, on the whole—this is a generalization, but it’s my opinion—even when writers considered that they were slumming by coming out here. Faulkner and everybody. “We’re going out there to get some money.” Still, they did an honest job for that money, because instead of going back to their little place up in the Hollywood Hills to write their scripts, they had to eat with each other every day in the studio commissary, which made for a competitive situation.

H.J.: But Thalberg was also creative. At least from Fitzgerald’s point of view.

O.W.: Well, that’s my definition of ­“villain.”

i think it's thalberg that my favorite story in the bogdanovich book is about. it's like a long joke with a tricky punchline and nobody i've told it to has laughed as hard as i've thought they should and obviously that's my fault. hold on a sec.