Orson Welles

p.s.

http://www.edconroybooks.com/images/140263x.jpg

It's not like he wrote an intro to The Films of Jan-Michael Vincent.

btw the film rights to Karp's book about Other Side have been purchased. So we may see a movie about the making of TOSOTW before the thing itself...

Bogdanovich weighs in on the Indiegogo campaign

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/orson-welles-last-picture-show-peter-bogdonavich-on-the-other-side-of-the-wind-20150511

It's not like he wrote an intro to The Films of Jan-Michael Vincent.

hey, I love Burt Reynolds!

I think he comes off rather well in that "talk show," too.

i'll be pretty amused if they finish "the other side of the wind" and it turns out to be a huge turd, but you know almost everything welles had a hand in is, at the very least, interesting. as with that talk show above.

so for The Making of The Other Side, DD Lewis and de Niro as Huston and Welles? with Shia leBouef as Bogdanovich?

the sex scene in the 'Antonioni film' w/ in Other Side does go on too long for a parody unless there's a payoff that can't be judged out of context. I could see it being a film maudit.

jason schwartzmann as bogdanovich, no?

xpost

like 75% of orson's films are films maudits, no?

have you seen "the immortal story"? i should catch up with that one. it's his last /completed/ (semi-)feature, i believe. made for european TV IIRC.

that argument could be made. maybe it'll be like The Immortal Story, only twice as long. xp! I saw it again earlier this year. It's good.

Schwartzman, that could be

The guy who played OW in the Linklater movie, maybe he could play him at 57.

Gleaning what pleasure I can from watching The Lady from Shanghai a third time. This one's for you, Morbs.

it's a broight guilty wurld.

for my own part i have Macbeth and Mr Arkadin out of the liberry (which i think i've seen once each -- counting all 3 versions of the latter?)

i'll be pretty amused if they finish "the other side of the wind" and it turns out to be a huge turd, but you know almost everything welles had a hand in is, at the very least, interesting. as with that talk show above.

― he quipped with heat (amateurist), Monday, May 11, 2015 7:57 PM (1 hour ago)

i've seen everything welles released (except filming othello which i've never been able to find) and i think everything he directed is worth watching, even the stuff that isn't exactly good. and it's hard to know who to blame for the not-good stuff because so many of his films were so profoundly damaged. i love lady from shanghai but the film we have was so radically altered (an hour chopped out, random closeups of rita hayworth added to what feels like every scene) that it's almost not welles's film anymore. all of the films that welles seems to have had total control over (kane, the trial, chimes, f for fake -- um, that's it?) are exceptional, so i tend to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I saw Chimes this weekend in the best print I've ever seen; the syncing and Welles' habit of murmuring his lines into his beard or gut keep it from being a masterpiece. My favorite film Shakespeare.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/arts-feature/9520712/dont-believe-orson-welles-says-his-biographer-simon-callow-especially-when-he-calls-himself-a-failure/

yet more about the future of Wind -- there is no fucking way we are seeing it in a year.

http://moviemorlocks.com/2015/05/26/finishing-the-other-side-of-the-wind-an-interview-with-peter-bogdanovich-and-filip-jan-rymsza/

http://www.vulture.com/2015/05/nsfw-watch-orson-welless-porno-movie.html

that URL should be a very strong warning

Reading that other side of the wind book now -- a total blast.

there is no fucking way we are seeing it in a year.
almost feel like i'm ok with not seeing it -- there's almost no way the movie could be as good as the story of the movie. (i still want to see it of course)

Saw Chuck Workman's Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles this afternoon. Lots of interview clips, the expected film clips, nothing especially surprising but worth seeing. Actually, I knew Chimes at Midnight was highly regarded, but it was a surprise seeing two or three people, one of them one of his biographers, saying it was his greatest film. I've never seen it--there was a note about it being in legal limbo right now. I watched a budget VHS of The Trial years ago; the clips here make me really want to see that again.

Love The Trial, which actually *is* available on DVD (in case anyone was unaware).

clemenza behind the curve about 20 years

"nothing especially surprising" was basically what every review of it said

Chimes available on YouTube in a good print.

OW films need to be seen in a theater if at all possible (certainly that one).

AND The Trial.

I set my metronome to the beat of your replies.

It hasn't occurred to you that for some people this is the only way to watch'em, right? ("If at all possible" is your escape hatch). So not only are you criticizing people for not watching the movies you're criticizing the medium they choose.

thats why i said "if possible," doink.

No possibility exists for me to watch The Trial on screen, but after my experience w/Netflix streaming last month I doubt I would've loved it any more than I already did.

and eventually it should be possible, since you have your lil cinematheque (pats head) xp

I's a false choice; it shouldn't have even come up. Most people who love film aren't going to prefer watching it on screen.

at home rather

I've just seen that third volume of Callow's bio comes out in November

entitled One Man Band

just watched F for Fake the other night, absolutely loved it. so much fun, and so unlike his other films.

Reading the Rosenbaum collection. This script for the intro to heart of darkness is bonkers in the best way.

Been on a real welles binge lately - lady from shanghai, magnificent ambersons, third man

Rosenbaum book's piqued my interest about a bunch of Welles projects but it's a little frustrating too - lots of repetition of various points (perhaps unavoidable given the nature of the book as an assemblage of essays rather than a single cohesive work) and the overwhelming focus on things that are incomplete or unavailable. Does make me want to read one of the bios.

i need to read that.
i really enjoyed the simon callow bios ... if anything they showed off how films were just one part of his life. wonder if callow is going to keep going with them? second volume only made it through the 40s.

oh hey! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Orson-Welles-Volume-One-Man-Band/dp/0224079352

I would recommend the David Thomson biog Rosebud, too - one of his best books, I think. He is pretty tough on Welles, and apparently the book is not 100% reliable factually, but there's something about Thomson's waywardness that feels very well-suited to the subject.

am I wrong in my impression that Rosenbaum hates Thomson? Particularly re: the latter's less than enthusiastic view of some of Welles' work?

Thomson is not loved by Welles scholar. I have affection for his book.

*scholars

xpost
I wouldn't be surprised - I think Thomson annoys quite a few 'serious' film scholars. Personally, I like the fact that he wasn't one of Orson's groupies back in the day.

Bogdanovich seemed fairly hostile to Rosenbaum when he was speaking about Other Side of the Wind recently

i think rosenbaum is particularly irked by thomson's airy suggestions that it would be better if welles's unfinished/lost works were never seen because the "myth" of all those lost films is more entrancing than the reality could ever be. that's probably not precisely what thomson wrote but i read that book more than a decade ago, iirc it's more of a meditation on welles's life and works than it is a "biography" in the strictest sense.

only Thomson I've read is the Big Screen (which I really enjoyed); his discussion of Citizen Kane and Magnificent Ambersons is largely ambivalent.

xxp

I own the book. The passages about TMA contain some of the loveliest and most trenchant criticism Welles has gotten. As a guy who gives not a damn about outtakes and most B-sides, I don't care if his unfinished movies remain unreleased tbh