Orson Welles

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

I am not a libertarian

otoh, there was no house music

also TV comedy was actually funny

Thanks for playing.

next week we dissect Othello, right

they look like they've just been caught in that photo. did they go for the discount ground beef or something?

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

the tragedy of america is he was allowed to smoke in the supermarket but not to make a movie

The tragedy is he was allowed in the supermarket.

Superegomarket

Fun thing I didn't know was available -- all his Harry Lime radio shows:

https://archive.org/details/TheLivesOfHarryLime

I think those are also included on one of the Criterion discs for his films. Arkadin, maybe?

http://www.spaziocineforum.it/quinlan.jpg

Too Much Johnson work print viewable here

http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/too-much-johnson-work-print

some thoughts:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2014/08/a-few-notes-on-too-much-johnson.html

http://brightlightsfilm.com/too-much-johnson-orson-welles-film-recovering-orson-welless-dream-of-early-cinema/#.U_tuA_mwJrO

centennial symposium next spring at Indiana U:

http://www.cinema.indiana.edu/?post_type=series&p=7603

Arena - The Orson Welles Story (BBC, 1982)

http://vimeo.com/71534857

So...finally?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/movies/hollywood-ending-near-for-orson-welles-last-film.html

I'll believe it when I (literally) see it. Actually I have seen a 5-minute excerpt, with Oja Kodar blowing some guy in a car.

Unless OW left awfully detailed notes, seeing "his" version of the whole thing is very unlikely, as Bogdanovich indicates above.

I gotta say, I'm not intrigued, based on the descriptions in the Bogdanovich interview book.

Well I watched the workprint of Too Much Johnson (that is, of the silent "prologues" to the stage production) at MoMA the other day, which is "chiefly of historical interest," so I'd watch this.

TMJ is probably much easier to watch as I did with a guy from Eastman House on mic and supplying production and historical notes, and seeing vanished Manhattan buildings on the big screen as Joseph Cotten scramble over their rooftops in 1938, than to watch in one sit at the link posted above.

was the footage actually used in a theatrical production or was that abandoned?

According to the Bogdo book and David Thomson, there's bits of a bemused John Huston, told to improvise lines about the rigors of filmmaking. Sounds like two old drunk men on a bored Saturday afternoon.

There's the scene Morbz mentioned and another one that has Huston's character facing the press which surfaced in a documentary that's contained with the Criterion F for Fake, along with a variety of other clips of scrapped projects. (I hadn't realized Welles was doing the original film version of what eventually became Dead Calm two decades later.)

Well the Johnson footage was not fully edited by the time the play ran and closed in Connecticut, so no one ever saw it. (Apparently the theater there essentially wasn't equipped to show it, either.)

I recognized George Coulouris w/out it being pointed out, and John Houseman still looks like Professor Kingsfield in '38.

man i really hope there's an opportunity to see whatever constitutes welles' workprint of this. really can't imagine it needs/benefits from speculatively chosen musical picks.

Well if you're going to project it as "a real movie" to rep house audiences, I can see why they'd want to do it. Beatrice W and Kodar no doubt realize the Orson Centennial is going to be the optimum time in their remaining years to monetize this.

If only Jess Franco were still alive

beatrice welles is so awful

btw you can buy her hideous handbags here: http://www.beatricewelles.com/beatrice_welles_collection.htm

i wish someone could assemble the various pieces of welles's 'don quixote' and do it right this time.

fwiw: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/aug/29/2

her MO is basically to sue, claiming she has some kind of rights to a film when she doesn't. but it prevents people from taking much action to restore let alone release many of welles's films. "chimes at midnight," which might be my favorite of all (although it's hampered by a cheap sound mix), is almost unseen these days thanks to her.

she seems to make a living forcing various companies to settle with her even though her claims are specious. certainly she isn't making a living with her handbags.

part of me thinks that this is all her way of getting back at a father who was less than attentive in her childhood--and who left her mother.

yeah, I read Christopher's book a while back and it just made me feel bad for all the Welles daughters

yeah, he was a total heel. also, he probably didn't leave her with any money. he didn't exactly managed his money well, and what he did make he usually poured either into a glass or into a variety of unfinished projects. so i doubt she was left with much when he died.

some history on "other side of the wide," courtesy a 2002 article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/croatia/1404733/Daughter-and-lover-fight-over-unreleased-Orson-Welles-film.html

accounts differ on how "finished" this film was. some think it just needed a sound mix, others say the shooting wasn't even really complete.

i'd forgotten Franco was the one who had done an edit of Don Quixote.

Film Forum in NYC is doing their centennial retro ASAP: Jan 1-Feb 3. (Not really all that many films to deal with, so a lot of acting-only.) Then Paley Center does a TV retro in Feb.

http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=10676

I wasn't aware that Filmoteca Española had done a DCP 'resto' of Chimes. Wonder if the sound is any clearer...

probably not; i think the shitty sound is just how welles recorded/mixed it.