Orson Welles

hfs "My Lunches With Orson" does not disappoint! Dying @ his petty European prejudices ("Sardinians have stubby fingers. Croatians have short necks. Everybody knows these things.")

he was OTM about Reagan, Ike, and FDR, fullashit about Renoir, Jimmy Stewart, Bogart.

is that the Jaglom book?

Croatians have short necks

"Orson you can't say that"

"Measure them, measure them!"

well it's credited to Biskind (cuz he edited it) but yes it's transcripts of Jaglom's recordings. Which Orson asked him to make (contrary to what is stipulated upthread)

it's just a joy to read, laugh-out-loud funny

I'm still waiting for the third volume in paperback of Callow's biography. Hardcovers are beyond my budget atm.

It's solid, the best critical bio.

it's odd, prior to this book, outside of his involvement with Easy Rider I had absolutely no knowledge of Jaglom's work. Never heard of it, never seen any of it.

jaglom has always skeeved me out viscerally

wiki summaries of his work do not inspire confidence. and the one lunch where Orson gives him notes on one of his screenplays (which sounds fucking awful) his suggestions are 100% better than the crap Jaglom had.

I don't think Welles cultivated a group of wormy little fuckers but they certainly sought him out

Some of Jaglom's films are worth seeing imho - Tracks, Sitting Ducks, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, Deja Vu. His debut, A Safe Place, which tries to relocate the nouvelle vague to New York and features a cameo from Welles as a magician in Central Park, is one of the great 'I wish I could have seen the faces of the Columbia executives when they screened this one' movies.

There's not a lot going on in this interview, but I didn't expect to see Welles and Andy Kaufman together!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrGlWAFy1LU

oh hell yeah, i just stumbled on that video a few weeks ago during an andy kaufman youtube wormhole. so good

well there is something going on, Welles talking to Kaufman about a show he apparently hated doing.

Is Welles subbing for Dinah Shore there? It's obviously not the Carson set (tho I'm p sure OW subbed there too).

Merv Griffin show, I think

OK, he was a guest with Griffin a lot (including the evening before he died). The set looks a little too homey for Merv though.

OK, it is Griffin, per the AV Club...

well!

http://www.wellesnet.com/other-side-wind-screening/

well indeed

i wonder if surviving cast member Rich Little was there; I don't see him.

Crispin had a better seat than Tarantella tho!

pretty interesting ... wonder if it'll actually be good?

Reading the third Callow bio now. Possibly the best of these for me so far, especially since it dives into my fave years of Welles' life. Callow often a laugh out loud funny writer, too.

I'd read another three

yeah, me too!

Reading the third Callow bio now. Possibly the best of these for me so far, especially since it dives into my fave years of Welles' life. Callow often a laugh out loud funny writer, too.

― Acid Hose (Capitaine Jay Vee),

Agreed. The Touch of Evil captures that sense of exhilaration shared by Heston, Leigh, Welles, the supporting cast, and crew who knew they were making something that pushed them beyond their abilities.

The chapter on Olivier and Rhinoceros is grimly funny too.

The radio broadcasts that Orson Welles dedicated to the case of Isaac Woodard, Jr. deserve to be as well known as his War of the Worlds: https://t.co/ort1TjzTFI

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) May 6, 2018

started in on the Callow bio, so far it's pretty great. 99% of the theater references go over my head, but whatever.

which volume?

Volume 1, figured it would be best to start at the beginning!

It's the only one I haven't read.

Callow's writing has both an acidity and a floridness that I associate with the theater (and also find intermittently silly and charming). Seems pretty perceptive in general though, and his editorial asides are always interesting.

Vol. 1 is essential. The preschool genius years, the truth about the semi-mythic trip to Ireland, the triumph of the early Mercury plays and then the first of many disastrous follies with Five Kings. All fascinating stuff.

Oh, and Kane, if you're not bored of that.

I tend to skip first volumes. I didn't even read the first part of Caro's LBJ book.

Patrick McGilligan's 2015 bio I did read.

I guess I just trust an old luvvie like Callow more on the early years because they're so theatre-focused. Convinced a relative ignoramus like me anyway.

Probably no one needs to read an in-depth examination of every play young Orson produced at the Todd School but I still ate it up

I didn't even read the first part of Caro's LBJ book

lol me too, looked a bit dreary (and is also summarized pretty succinctly in subsequent volumes)

depends how much you're dying to read about young LBJ stealing his high school glee club's election, or whatever

starting with like a hundred pages about his great-grandparents or whatever is the ultimate taunt to the undecided reader from Caro

the opening 100pp about soil yield in the texas hill country are vital you slackers

do you start in balbec, too

they actually are great. The original settlers awed by the seemingly endless fields of grass, only to be reaping dust a few decades later

Coming Soon https://t.co/YtkQFPimWe

— Janus Films (@janusfilms) July 19, 2018

icymi

https://www.criterion.com/films/28711-the-magnificent-ambersons

Can't wait.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4XB6jmfT8A4/UQDM_A6UE_I/AAAAAAAAFoM/cIlKphvYmQs/s1600/agnes-moorehead-the-magnificent-ambersons-2.jpg

shoulda waited til they find those 40 minutes tho

They shouldn't make any more movies period until they find those 40 minutes.

good idea, i got enough to watch

excerpts from an unfinished 1982 memoir by Welles

be very interested in reading this!

did he publish a memoir? you could probably assemble one from all the interviews in his last 15 years, but he's a rather unreliable narrator.