Orson Welles

some great stories (one all-timer about churchill) in his long dick cavett interview (on youtube!) but you can't believe more than a few words of them.

he's "great chums" with a lot of people (Thornton Wilder, FDR, Winston, Zanuck).

this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpqwY7QL7r8

"i found myself paddling in the water just next to churchill." envision that: like done DUMPLINGS!.

what on earth. i just typed DUMPLINGS!.

lol

pottery

more entertaining pranks than F for Fake at least

I found a half prive copy at The Strand in NYC today and three interviews in this is a thing of hilarious beauty.

*price

He was sort of pals with Ernest Bornemann, who is very Welles-like himself, a polymath and outrageous raconteur. There's some Welles stuff in the long interview in the back of The Face on the Cutting Room Floor, and I can't remember if Bornemann also wrote a book about when he was living with and then renting from Welles, in a house Welles was squatting in, and the movie project they worked on that eventually became Ulysses with Kirk Douglas.

I believe that the movies—I’ll say a terrible thing—have never gone beyond “Kane.” That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been good movies, or great movies. But everything has been done now in movies, to the point of fatigue. You can do it better, but it’s always gonna be the same grammar, you know? Every artistic form—the blank-verse drama, the Greek plays, the novel—has only so many possibilities and only so long a life. And I have a feeling that in movies, until we break completely, we are only increasing the library of good works. I know that as a director of movie actors in front of the camera, I have nowhere to move forward. I can only make another good work.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/my-lunches-with-orson.html

(why being a film critic in the 21st century has essentially been a waste of time for me)

Orson Welles died before Vulgar Auteurism

things that are "a waste of time" I view as absolutely necessary

yeah, better wastes back then

also, motherfuckers got paid

"only" increasing

Glenn Kenny pleasantly surprised by (most of) the Jaglom book:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/07/my-lunches-with-orson.html

Rosenbaum in the comments worth reading.

I had not read any allegations that Jaglom had taped OW secretly, dunno what to think. That sucks if true, but it was a lot harder to hide recorders 30 years ago, especially on your person.

It wasn't in secret, the intro mentions that Welles didn't mind.

It also says that some parts have been edited together, some dialogue filled in when the audio was unintelligible, and some content inserted. So I take some parts with a grain of salt.

Irritatingly, that extract that was online a few weeks ago seems to have been composed of a half dozen bits from the book, so you'll occasionally run into something you already read every dozen pages.

well apparently Oja Kodar and Barbara Leaming say Welles claimed he was unaware, just before his death.

yeah, I read that in the comments just now :(

jaglom more like jagoff amirite

here's something to lead off two years of centennial screenings (we can hope)

For generations, Welles scholars have been intrigued by “Too Much Johnson,” which would seem to represent Welles’s first real experience composing a film to be seen by a paying public, with the support of a professional cast and a professional crew. But for over 50 years, no print had been known to exist....

“Too Much Johnson” has reappeared — discovered not in Spain but in the warehouse of a shipping company in the northern Italian port city of Pordenone, where the footage had apparently been abandoned sometime in the 1970s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/movies/early-film-by-orson-welles-is-rediscovered.html

http://www.avclub.com/articles/longlost-early-orson-welles-film-discovered-has-un,101353/

new book on his stay in Italy (1947-52):

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/a-conspicuous-gap-on-orson-welles-in-italy

The Lady From Shanghai comes to BluRay.

http://shop.tcm.com/the-lady-from-shanghai-blu-ray-dvd-combo/detail.php?p=505914&v=tcm_vault-collection_coming-soon

audio Shakespeare

https://archive.org/details/Orson_Welles_Shakespeare_Collection

newly digitized Othello opens in NY today

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-orson-welless-othello

pumped to see too much johnson someday

Bogdo open his card file (all Welles work, not just dir'd)

love the supermarket photo

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-orson-welles-file-part-1

too many damn adjectives

http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/32/18/39d1d6d9452db64065538d47986b/welles-and-bogdanovich.jpg

Huh, unexpected new addition to ws via time machine.

i guess that's why Cybill Shephered transitioned from Elvis

Right, Orson was slimmer than Elvis by that point.

oh!ja kodar!

Bogdo giving the camera the stare that would attract blonde models the world over.

orson giving it the hooded and beseeching look of a man desperate for a blonde model to distract the lickspittle

Welles' head looks about 3 sizes too small for that body.

Wonder if he bought some of that frozen fish with the crumb crisp coating.

Wonder if he bought any donuts or sweet rolls.

I just see Campbell's, and Madame Tana's Instant Chili

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ixt_t46k4Q

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aqPPS8_KswY/Ty6mVQMPh0I/AAAAAAAALaE/IYNAreC-bBA/s400/Mr_burns_state_of_mind+ketchup+or+catsup+grocery+store+broke+the+simpsons.jpg

I like how Orson is smoking a cigar IN THE FUCKING GROCERY STORE

it was 1970 maaan, a much more libertarian America. My childhood doctor smoked in his examining room.

(he had a hacking cough, too)

a much more libertarian America

I think in this one instance, you can admit it was a dumber America.

tbh i think my ideal america would let orson welles do whatever the fuck he wants