The Other Side of the Wind
Encyclopedia
The Other Side of the Wind is an unfinished film directed by Orson Welles
, shot between 1969 and 1976, and starring John Huston
, Bob Random
, Peter Bogdanovich
, Susan Strasberg
and Oja Kodar
.
The film presents a cynical portrait of Hollywood in the 1970s, parodying the passing of the studio system, and the experimental new film-makers of the new Hollywood
, as well as mocking successful European directors such as Antonioni. It was shot in a variety of different styles - colour, black-and-white, still photography, 8mm, 16mm and 35mm film, all rapidly inter-cut together, and was planned as a collage of these different styles.
. The film opens with narration over the wreckage of Hannaford's crashed car, casting doubt as to whether the crash which killed him on his 70th birthday was really an accident. The narrator sets the tone for the film by telling us "This [film] was put together from many sources — from all that footage shot by the TV and documentary film-makers — and also the students, critics and young directors who happened to bring sixteen and eight millimeter cameras to his birthday party..."
Just before his death, Hannaford was trying to revive his flagging career by making a "hip, with-it" film in the style of Antonioni, laden with gratuitous sex scenes and violence
, with mixed results. At the time of Hannaford's party, this film (The Other Side of the Wind) has been left unfinished after its star stormed off the set, for reasons not immediately apparent to the audience. The film includes extensive excerpts of this film-within-a-film, as well as excerpts of a documentary on Hannaford's life.
After the titles, we see a screening of some incomprehensible parts of Hannaford's unfinished experimental film. The screening is being held to attract "end money" from clearly-unimpressed studio boss Max David (Geoffrey Land). Hannaford himself is absent, and a loyal member of his entourage, the ageing former child star Billy Boyle (Norman Foster
) makes an inept attempt to describe what the film is about. When David asks "Jake is just making this up as he goes along, isn't he?", Boyle can only reply, "He's done it before." after an awkward pause.
Intercut with this scene, we see various groups setting out for Hannaford's 70th birthday party at his Arizona
ranch, including Hannaford and his young protégé Brooks Otterlake (played by Peter Bogdanovich
), a young, commercially successful director who has a talent for mimicking well-known celebrities. (Bogdanovich, then a successful young director, also has a talent for mimicry.) One of the people they share their car with is the obnoxious cineaste
reporter Mr. Pister (Joseph McBride
), whose flurry of intrusive questions culminates in, "Mr. Hannaford, in the body of your film work, how significantly would you relate the trauma of your father's suicide?" and he is thrown out of Hannaford's car.
Stranded in the desert, Pister hitches a lift on a bus that is taking crew and reporters to Hannaford's birthday party. Although there are many journalists in the bus, they are also carrying several dozen life-size clay dolls of Hannaford's leading man, taken from the set of the unfinished film. The scene is indicative of the experimental nature of the picture, and includes much overlapping dialogue: a tape recorder belonging to reporter Juliette Riche (Susan Strasberg
) playing back Hannaford's voice, while a member of Hannaford's entourage Pat (Edmond O'Brien
) reads out an authoritarian anti-hippy diatribe of Hannaford's, fellow reporter Pister struggles to thread the tape back onto his reel-to-reel tape recorder, and at the same time, film footage of the scene is rapidly intercut with footage from Hannaford's film.
Further scenes depict the festivities at Hannaford's party, including fireworks
, assorted midgets, and a musical number with John Carroll
leading a rendition of "The Glow-Worm
".
Many of the journalists attending are all brandishing cameras, and the film follows the perspectives of individual journalists as they follow Hannaford everywhere, even to the toilet
, asking personal questions. In the second half of the film they begin querying Hannaford's sexuality
and whether he has long been a closet homosexual, in spite of his macho public persona. Each camera's footage is displayed in a distinctive style, representing the perspectives of different directors and cameramen.
Throughout the film, there is rapid inter-cutting between simultaneous conversations at Hannaford's party, so that the viewer hears a few lines of dialogue from one conversation, switches to another conversation, then another, before returning to more of the original conversation. (A similar technique was used in the 1998 restoration of Welles' Touch of Evil
.)
Several party guests comment on the conspicuous absence of John Dale (played by Bob Random), Hannaford's androgynous-looking, leather-clad leading man in his last film, whom Hannaford first discovered when Dale was attempting suicide
by jumping into the Pacific Ocean
off the Mexican coast.
Meanwhile, guests are shown more scenes from the film in the private cinema Hannaford has at the ranch.
The scenes of the film-within-the-film intercut throughout the film include:
As the party continues, Hannaford gets progressively drunker. He is washing his face in the bathroom when he tearfully breaks down in front of Otterlake, asking for the young director's help to revive his flagging career, and desperately trying to sober up before returning to the screening of his still-unfinished film.
A power cut in the middle of Hannaford's party interrupts the screening mid-way. The party continues by lantern-light, and eventually reconvenes to an empty drive-in cinema, where the last portion of Hannaford's film is screened.
Later in the film, Dale arrives at the party. At one point, a drunken Hannaford makes a pass at Dale, and is rebuffed. Hannaford has a history of seducing the wife or girlfriend of each of his leading men, but maintains a strong attraction to the leading men themselves. Hannaford then uses a rifle from his Indian trophy room to shoot several life-sized clay dolls of Dale. This is paralleled by a subplot about the unnamed actress playing "The red red Indian" seducing Dale at Hannaford's party and being rebuffed, leading to her shooting at him towards the end of the film. Dale is no longer alive by the end of the film.
Having relocated to the drive-in cinema, intrusive journalist Juliette Riche asked Hannaford the most explicit questions of all about his sexuality. At this moment, Billy Boyle stops the film cameras, although with the soundtrack still running, and through a montage of still photos, we gather that Hannaford violently assaults Riche.
The film's final scene features Hannaford's sports car - which he had originally bought as a present for Dale - crashing into the screen of the drive-in cinema, killing him. At the time, the screen had been projecting the end of Hannaford's new film, and the sun sets behind it. It is left ambiguous whether his death was the result of drunk driving or suicide
.
A monologue from Hannaford is heard in voice-over
during the final scene: "Remember those Berbers - up in the Atlas
? They wouldn't let us point a camera at 'em. They're certain that it...dries up something. The old eye, y'know, behind the magic box. Could be it's an evil eye at that...Medusa's
...Who knows, maybe you can stare too hard at something. Huh? Drain out the virtue; suck out the living juice...You shoot the great places and the pretty people - all those girls and boys...shoot 'em dead..."
The film concludes as Hannaford's voice says, "Cut!"
The most commonly seen of these are two edited scenes (in workprint form), which can be seen in the documentary film Orson Welles: One Man Band, which is available as a bonus feature on both the Criterion Collection
R1 and Madman Entertainment
's Directors Suite R4 DVD release of F for Fake
. The scenes included in the documentary are:
The scenes were originally cut by Welles to show during his AFI
Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony in 1975. Both of them run to around two and a half minutes, with the second scene being slightly longer. (The full sex scene runs to around seven minutes, and follows the clearly uncomfortable driver becoming increasingly incensed, and ends in Kodar's character being ejected from the car mid-climax
, but the released version only shows the first part of this.)
Welles screened a further scene for the AFI in 1975:
This scene has been less widely seen because it was not included in the One Man Band documentary; but the entire AFI ceremony was broadcast in the 1970s as the TV special AFI Salutes Orson Welles, and was subsequently released on VHS
. The tape includes the above two scenes, as well as the third scene.
A fourth scene is included in Gary Graver's 1993 direct-to-video documentary Working with Orson Welles, and uses footage in Graver's possession:
A fifth scene has been circulated on internet video websites, in two different cuts of the same scene. Both versions are filmed in black and white and consist of Henry Jaglom
and Paul Mazursky
arguing together on the nature of film, then asking increasingly personal (and sometimes pretentious) questions to Hannaford.
The film features an exceptionally large number of film director
s in acting roles in the film, including Claude Chabrol
, Norman Foster
, Gary Graver
, Curtis Harrington
, Henry Jaglom
, Paul Mazursky
and Dennis Hopper
, mostly playing Hannaford's entourage of journalists and young film-makers.
Impressionist Rich Little
was originally cast as Brooks Otterlake, but walked out of the film part of the way through. Filming was completed with Bogdanovich playing Otterlake. This necessitated reshooting all of Little's scenes. Little's interpretation of the Otterlake character would have had him using a different accent or impression for every single scene - a device which Joseph McBride thought "uncomfortably labored". By contrast, although Bogdanovich did several impressions in character as Otterlake, he played most of his scenes with his own voice.
According to McBride, several of the characters were based on real-life people. "The Baron" parodied Welles' former business partner John Houseman
, whom he had acrimoniously separated from in the 1940s. "Max David" ridiculed then-studio boss Robert Evans. "Jack Simon" mocked young macho director John Milius
. "Abe Vogel" was a play on veteran agent Abe Lastfogel
. "Mavis Henscher" poked fun at Bogdanovich's then-girlfriend, actress Cybill Shepherd
. "Juliette Riche" was a thinly-veiled spoof of film critic Pauline Kael
, with whom Welles was in a public feud over her allegation (later disproved) that he did not write Citizen Kane
. (The role had originally been written with Jeanne Moreau
in mind, and was initially played by Bogdanovich's then-wife Polly Platt
, who also served as the film's production designer
, before eventually being taken over by Strasberg, who reshot the scenes with Platt.) "Charles Higgam" was a parody of Charles Higham
, who had written an influential and unflattering 1970 biography of Welles which had wounded him with its accusation that he had a "fear of completion" on films. McBride's own character, "Mr. Pister", was an amalgamation of various cinephiles and socially awkward film critics whom Welles had met over the years.
Bogdanovich taking over the role of Otterlake meant refilming the scenes featuring Higgam, since Bogdanovich had originally played that (much smaller) role. Bogdanovich played Higgam by doing an impression of Jerry Lewis
(at Welles' request), although there is no evidence that Howard Grossman played the role that way when he took over.
The characters played by Foster, Jessel, McCambridge, O'Brien, Stewart and Wilson form Hannaford's entourage, representing the "Old Hollywood"; while Chabrol, Harrington, Hopper, Jaglom and Mazurski play thinly-veiled versions of themselves, representing the "New Hollywood." The "Old Hollywood" characters serve as something of a chorus for Hannaford, providing various commentaries on his life.
According to the shooting script, Welles intended to provide the film's short opening narration, intending to dub it in post-production. However, he never recorded it.
Many of the cast and crew worked either for free, or for low wages and/or in exchange for favours from Welles. Huston, a close friend of Welles, worked for the nominal fee of $75,000. Welles said he could not afford to pay his cinematographer Gary Graver
, so instead gave him his 1941 Academy Award statuette for the script of Citizen Kane
by way of thanks. Joseph McBride's salary comprised two boxes of cigars. Paul Mazursky recalls that he was never paid for the one night of filming he acted in.
The project evolved from an idea Welles had in 1961 after the suicide
of Ernest Hemmingway. Welles had known Hemmingway since 1937, and was inspired to write a screenplay about an ageing macho bullfight enthusiast who is fond of a young bullfighter. Nothing came of the project for a while, but work on the script resumed in Spain 1966, just after Welles had completed Chimes at Midnight
. Early drafts were entitled Sacred Beasts and turned the older bullfight enthusiast into a film director. At a 1966 banquet to raise funds for the project, Welles told a group of prospective financiers:
When Welles moved back to the United States in the late 1960s, the script's setting changed to Hollywood, and filming started in 1969. Early filming in 1969-71 focused on Hannaford's film-within-a-film. Welles was initially unsure who to cast as the film director and whether to play the role himself, finally settling in 1971 on his friend the actor-director John Huston
. The few party scenes shot before 1971 were shot without Huston, and often contained just one side of a conversation, with Huston's side of the conversation filmed several years later and intended to be edited in to the earlier footage.
In 1972 Welles said that filming was "96% complete," (which seems to have been an exaggeration, since many of the film's key scenes were not shot until 1973-5) and in 1976 the last scene of principal photography was completed.
Welles described the film's unconventional style to Peter Bogdanovich during an interview on the set:
John Huston confirmed that the film was photographed in a highly unconventional style: "It's through these various cameras that the story is told. The changes from one to another - colour, black and white, still, and moving - made for a dazzling variety of effects." He added that principal photography
was highly improvised, with the script only loosely being adhered to. At one point, Welles told him, "John, just read the lines or forget them and say what you please. The idea is all that matters."
A ranch in Arizona
was rented out for many of the party scenes, while much of the film was shot in Bogdanovich's own Beverly Hills house, which Welles stayed in for nearly two years, and which doubles for other parts of Hannaford's house. Other scenes were shot in Reseda
(where the drive-in cinema scenes were filmed in the same location as the climax of Bogdanovich's Targets
), Culver City, Connecticut
, France
, Holland, England
, Spain
, Belgium
, and the MGM backlot. (The latter was filmed without MGM's permission, with Welles smuggled onto the backlot in a darkened van, whilst the rest of the cast and crew pretended to be a group of film students visiting the backlot. The backlot, which was seriously dilapidated, was demolished shortly afterwards, and only one more film - That's Entertainment!
(1976) - was made on it before its demolition.)
Principal photography was undermined by serious financial problems, including embezzlement by one of the investors, who fled with much of the film's budget. Barbara Leaming described the situation in her biography of Welles (based on extensive interviews with Welles):
This story is corroborated by Peter Bogdanovich, who wrote in November 1997 of the production, "another producer ran back to Europe with $250,000 of Orson's money and never was heard from again (although I recently saw the person on TV accepting an Oscar for coproducing the Best Foreign Film
of the year.)"
In February 1975, Welles was awarded an AFI
Lifetime Achievement Award, and used the star-studded ceremony as an opportunity to pitch for funding to complete the film. (With a touch of irony, one of the scenes he showed his audience featured Hannaford screening a rough cut of his latest film to a studio boss, in a bid for "end money" to complete his picture.) Sure enough, one producer made what Welles later called a "wonderful offer", but Antoine turned it down on the assumption that an even better offer would arrive. No such offer came, and Welles later bitterly regretted the refusal, commenting before his death that if he'd accepted it "the picture would have been finished now and released."
Welles estimated that the editing of the film in a distinctive and experimental style would take approximately one year of full-time work (which was how long he had spent on the experimental, rapidly-cut editing of his previous completed film, F for Fake
). A change of management at the Iranian production company in 1975 resulted in tensions between Welles and the backers. The new management saw Welles as a liability, and refused to pay him to edit the film. The company made several attempts to reduce Welles' share of the film profits from 50% to 20%, and crucially, attempted to remove his artistic control over the film's final cut
. Welles made numerous attempts to seek further financial backing to pay him to complete the editing full-time, including attempting to interest a Canadian
backer, but no such funding materialised, and so Welles only edited the film piecemeal in his spare time over the next decade, between other acting assignments which the heavily indebted actor-director needed to support himself.
came back to haunt him after the Shah was overthrown. A complex, decades-long legal battle over the ownership of the film ensued, with the original negative remaining in a vault in Paris
. At first, the revolutionary
government of Ayatollah Khomeini had the film impounded along with all assets of the previous regime. When they deemed the negative worthless, there was extensive litigation as to the ownership of the film. By 1998, many of the legal matters had been resolved and the Showtime cable network had guaranteed "end money" to complete the film.
However, ongoing legal complications in the Welles estate and a lawsuit by Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles, caused the project to be suspended. When Welles died in 1985 he had left many of his assets to his estranged widow Paola Mori, and after her own death in 1986 these were inherited by their daughter Beatrice Welles. However, he had also left various other assets, from his house in Los Angeles
to the full ownership and artistic control of all his unfinished film projects, to his longtime companion, mistress and collaborator Oja Kodar
, who co-wrote and co-starred in The Other Side of the Wind. Since 1992, Beatrice Welles has claimed in various courts that under California
law, she has ownership of all of Orson Welles' completed and incomplete pictures (including those which he did not own the rights of himself in his own lifetime), and The Other Side of the Wind has been heavily affected by this litigation. The Guardian
described how she "stifled an attempt by US cable company Showtime and Oja Kodar (Welles's partner in the latter part of his life) to complete The Other Side of the Wind", whilst the Daily Telegraph stated that Beatrice Welles had "blocked" the film. A clause of Welles' will, specifying that anybody who challenges any part of Kodar's inheritance will be automatically disinherited, remains unenforced.
While the original negative of the film remains in a Paris vault, two workprint
versions of the raw footage were privately held - one by Welles' cinematographer the late Gary Graver
, who shot the film, and one by Welles himself, who covertly smuggled a copy out of Paris after the legal difficulties started. Welles left his own workprint copy to Kodar, as part of the clause of his will giving her all his unfinished film materials.
Peter Bogdanovich, a director in his own right as well as a Welles expert and film historian, announced in 2004 that he planned to restore the film and release it soon. He cited a conversation before Welles' death in which 'Orson said to me, "If anything happens to me, you will make sure you finish it, won't you?" It was, of course, a compliment and also a terrible moment. He pressed me to give some assurance." It was rumored that Oja Kodar's nephew Sasha Welles was to edit the final release of the film. Details of the release, however, were murky at best. A common reservation was that while raw footage exists for the entire film, editing the remaining footage in Welles's style may be difficult. However, Welles himself finished editing between 40 and 50 minutes of the film and reportedly left behind extensive editing notes for the rest of the film.
A turning point came in 2006, when Mehdi Bouscheri died, resolving several of the film's legal problems. At a March 29, 2007, appearance during the 16th Florida Film Festival, Peter Bogdanovich responded to a question about the status of the film. He announced that the four parties involved (Oja Kodar, Mehdi Bouscheri's heirs, Beatrice Welles and the Showtime network) had come to an agreement earlier that week and that the film would be edited and released in the very near future.
Bogdanovich stated in an April 2, 2007, press report that a deal to complete the film was "99.9% finished," with a theatrical release planned for late 2008. However, in March, 2008, Bogdanovich said that there was over a year's worth of work left to be done.
In December, 2008, Showtime put the project back on hold due to unspecified complications. A piece in Variety
in February, 2009, stated that Showtime was still willing to pay for its completion, but they wanted to be sure all the materials exist. The negative resides in a lab in Paris, but the permission from all the estates must be obtained before access to the negative can be granted. Bogdanovich commented, “It’s going to happen in the next month or so. We’re aiming for Cannes (in 2010). Everybody wants it to happen. It’s film history. It will be something for it to finally be seen after all these years.”
In January, 2010, during a public Q&A after a screening of one of his films in Columbus, OH, Bogdanovich stated that the film had been examined and was in good condition, but "Orson left such a mess with who owned what," and wondered whether editing the film would even be possible.
A report in The Guardian
in January, 2011, suggested, once again, that a legal settlement was close and that a release would be possible in the near future. This report, however, was accused by Welles' partner Oja Kodar of being a hoax.
As of 2011, the situation is that all copyright difficulties have theoretically been resolved between the respective parties. However, the Showtime network which had previously pledged to provide funding for the project has refused to specify what the budget would be. Oja Kodar has stated that she does not want a repeat of the debacle over Welles' posthumously-completed Don Quixote
, which was universally panned after being cheaply put together from badly decayed, incomplete footage which was sloppily edited, badly dubbed, and often incoherent. As such, she will not grant permission to proceed until she has received assurances that the project will be done professionally, and to a high standard, with an adequate budget.
saw the rushes
, and later saw a two-hour rough cut
assembled by Gary Graver in the late 1990s to attract potential investors. McBride wrote that the film "serves as both a time capsule of a pivotal moment in film history - an "instant" piece of period nostalgia set in the early seventies - and a meditation on changing political, sexual and artistic attitudes in the United States
during that period." However, he differentiated the bulk of the film - which he praised very highly - from the footage of Hannaford's film-within-a-film:
Film critic and historian Jonathan Rosenbaum
has seen most of the film, either in rushes, or in scenes cut by Welles, and has praised "its complex and shocking reflections on machismo
, homophobia
, Hollywood, cinephilia, eroticism
, and late-60s media, not to mention its kamikaze
style", and has contrasted this with the opinion of David Thomson
, who has not seen the film, and who wrote in his highly critical biography of Welles, "One day, it may be freed. I hope not. The Other Side of the Wind should stay beyond reach." John Huston described a private screening in which Orson Welles showed the unfinished film to some friends: "I didn't get to see it, but those who did tell me it is a knockout."
For years, bootleg
copies of various screenplay drafts offered the most detailed glimpse of the film. Despite threats of legal action from Beatrice Welles, Cahiers du Cinéma
and the Locarno International Film Festival
went ahead with joint publication of a screenplay in 2005, in a limited edition. The published edition is an amalgamation of two versions of the screenplay. Although the edition is in French, it includes the original English-language screenplay text, and numerous photographs from the shoot, as well as French-language essays by Kodar, Bogdanovich, Giorgio Gosetti, Bill Krohn, Paolo Mereghetti, André Labarthe, Stefan Drössler and Daniel Kothenshulte:
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, shot between 1969 and 1976, and starring John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
, Bob Random
Robert Random
Robert Random , usually billed as Bob Random, is a Canadian-born character actor, who appeared in both movies and television from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s.-Television and film roles:...
, Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
, Susan Strasberg
Susan Strasberg
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American film and stage actress.-Background and career:Strasberg was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio and former actress Paula Strasberg...
and Oja Kodar
Oja Kodar
Oja Kodar is a Croatian actress, screenwriter and director, best known as the girlfriend of Orson Welles for the last 24 years of his life.-Life:...
.
Summary
The film covers the 70th birthday party of movie director Jake Hannaford, who is struggling to make a commercial comeback. It opens with Hannaford's death just after the party, and mostly focuses on the night before his death. We also see extracts of Hannaford's daring new film-within-a-film, The Other Side of the Wind. As we learn more about Hannaford at his party, the audience realises that he is a far more complex character than he seems, and harbours several big secrets.The film presents a cynical portrait of Hollywood in the 1970s, parodying the passing of the studio system, and the experimental new film-makers of the new Hollywood
New Hollywood
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and...
, as well as mocking successful European directors such as Antonioni. It was shot in a variety of different styles - colour, black-and-white, still photography, 8mm, 16mm and 35mm film, all rapidly inter-cut together, and was planned as a collage of these different styles.
Plot
The film features John Huston as Jake Hannaford, an aging Hollywood director modeled on Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
. The film opens with narration over the wreckage of Hannaford's crashed car, casting doubt as to whether the crash which killed him on his 70th birthday was really an accident. The narrator sets the tone for the film by telling us "This [film] was put together from many sources — from all that footage shot by the TV and documentary film-makers — and also the students, critics and young directors who happened to bring sixteen and eight millimeter cameras to his birthday party..."
Just before his death, Hannaford was trying to revive his flagging career by making a "hip, with-it" film in the style of Antonioni, laden with gratuitous sex scenes and violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
, with mixed results. At the time of Hannaford's party, this film (The Other Side of the Wind) has been left unfinished after its star stormed off the set, for reasons not immediately apparent to the audience. The film includes extensive excerpts of this film-within-a-film, as well as excerpts of a documentary on Hannaford's life.
After the titles, we see a screening of some incomprehensible parts of Hannaford's unfinished experimental film. The screening is being held to attract "end money" from clearly-unimpressed studio boss Max David (Geoffrey Land). Hannaford himself is absent, and a loyal member of his entourage, the ageing former child star Billy Boyle (Norman Foster
Norman Foster (director)
Norman Foster was an American film director and actor.Born John Hoeffer in Richmond, Indiana, Foster originally became a cub reporter on a local newspaper in Indiana before going to New York in the hopes of getting a better newspaper job but there were no vacancies...
) makes an inept attempt to describe what the film is about. When David asks "Jake is just making this up as he goes along, isn't he?", Boyle can only reply, "He's done it before." after an awkward pause.
Intercut with this scene, we see various groups setting out for Hannaford's 70th birthday party at his Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
ranch, including Hannaford and his young protégé Brooks Otterlake (played by Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
), a young, commercially successful director who has a talent for mimicking well-known celebrities. (Bogdanovich, then a successful young director, also has a talent for mimicry.) One of the people they share their car with is the obnoxious cineaste
Cineaste
Cineaste is a film magazine published quarterly. It has been publishing reviews, in-depth analyses and interviews since 1967. The magazine independently operates out of New York City with no financial ties to any film studios or academic institutions...
reporter Mr. Pister (Joseph McBride
Joseph McBride
Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter and Associate Professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University.McBride has published 15 books including acclaimed biographies of Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and John Ford. His most recent work is an updated edition of...
), whose flurry of intrusive questions culminates in, "Mr. Hannaford, in the body of your film work, how significantly would you relate the trauma of your father's suicide?" and he is thrown out of Hannaford's car.
Stranded in the desert, Pister hitches a lift on a bus that is taking crew and reporters to Hannaford's birthday party. Although there are many journalists in the bus, they are also carrying several dozen life-size clay dolls of Hannaford's leading man, taken from the set of the unfinished film. The scene is indicative of the experimental nature of the picture, and includes much overlapping dialogue: a tape recorder belonging to reporter Juliette Riche (Susan Strasberg
Susan Strasberg
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American film and stage actress.-Background and career:Strasberg was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio and former actress Paula Strasberg...
) playing back Hannaford's voice, while a member of Hannaford's entourage Pat (Edmond O'Brien
Edmond O'Brien
Edmond O'Brien was an American actor who is perhaps best remembered for his role in D.O.A. and his Oscar winning role in The Barefoot Contessa...
) reads out an authoritarian anti-hippy diatribe of Hannaford's, fellow reporter Pister struggles to thread the tape back onto his reel-to-reel tape recorder, and at the same time, film footage of the scene is rapidly intercut with footage from Hannaford's film.
Further scenes depict the festivities at Hannaford's party, including fireworks
Fireworks
Fireworks are a class of explosive pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. The most common use of a firework is as part of a fireworks display. A fireworks event is a display of the effects produced by firework devices...
, assorted midgets, and a musical number with John Carroll
John Carroll
-People:*John Carroll , American actor*John Carroll , Australian neoconservative writer*Sir John Carroll , British scientist*John Carroll -People:*John Carroll (actor) (1906–1979), American actor*John Carroll (author) (born 1944), Australian neoconservative writer*Sir John Carroll (astronomer)...
leading a rendition of "The Glow-Worm
The Glow-Worm
"Das Glühwürmchen", known in English as "The Glow-Worm", is an aria from Paul Lincke's 1902 operetta Lysistrata, with German lyrics by Heinz Bolten-Backers...
".
Many of the journalists attending are all brandishing cameras, and the film follows the perspectives of individual journalists as they follow Hannaford everywhere, even to the toilet
Toilet
A toilet is a sanitation fixture used primarily for the disposal of human excrement, often found in a small room referred to as a toilet/bathroom/lavatory...
, asking personal questions. In the second half of the film they begin querying Hannaford's sexuality
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
and whether he has long been a closet homosexual, in spite of his macho public persona. Each camera's footage is displayed in a distinctive style, representing the perspectives of different directors and cameramen.
Throughout the film, there is rapid inter-cutting between simultaneous conversations at Hannaford's party, so that the viewer hears a few lines of dialogue from one conversation, switches to another conversation, then another, before returning to more of the original conversation. (A similar technique was used in the 1998 restoration of Welles' Touch of Evil
Touch of Evil
Touch of Evil is a 1958 American crime thriller film, written, directed by, and co-starring Orson Welles. The screenplay was loosely based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson...
.)
Several party guests comment on the conspicuous absence of John Dale (played by Bob Random), Hannaford's androgynous-looking, leather-clad leading man in his last film, whom Hannaford first discovered when Dale was attempting suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by jumping into the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
off the Mexican coast.
Meanwhile, guests are shown more scenes from the film in the private cinema Hannaford has at the ranch.
The scenes of the film-within-the-film intercut throughout the film include:
- A scene set in a Turkish bath, which plays over the opening titles.
- John Dale's onscreen character pursuing "The red, red Indian" (Oja KodarOja KodarOja Kodar is a Croatian actress, screenwriter and director, best known as the girlfriend of Orson Welles for the last 24 years of his life.-Life:...
) on his motorcycleMotorcycleA motorcycle is a single-track, two-wheeled motor vehicle. Motorcycles vary considerably depending on the task for which they are designed, such as long distance travel, navigating congested urban traffic, cruising, sport and racing, or off-road conditions.Motorcycles are one of the most...
, with increasing ambiguity as to which of them is pursuing the other. These scenes involve extensive use of flat landscapes and plains; and tall, high-rise glass skyscrapers, the mirrors and windows of which form various optical illusions reminiscent of the 'hall of mirrors' scene in Welles' earlier The Lady from ShanghaiThe Lady from ShanghaiThe Lady from Shanghai is a 1947 film noir directed by Orson Welles and starring Welles, his estranged wife Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane. It is based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King.-Plot:...
. (This is mixed in with the sound of the audience responding unenthusiastically.) - A graphic sex scene between Random and Kodar in a station wagonStation wagonA station wagon is a body style variant of a sedan/saloon with its roof extended rearward over a shared passenger/cargo volume with access at the back via a third or fifth door , instead of a trunk lid...
being driven through heavy rain, culminating in the driver of the car (Robert Aiken) throwing Kodar out. - A sexual dream sequence involving Kodar walking at least partially nude in front of a giant black phallusPhallusA phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...
. (Commentary from Huston can be heard through this.) This short scene was directed by Kodar. - The violent death of John Dale's character in the film-within-the-film.
- A graphic sex scene between Random and Kodar, filmed from below, looking through the bedsprings in the style of Russ MeyerRuss MeyerRussell Albion "Russ" Meyer was a U.S. motion picture director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, actor and photographer....
. The scene takes place on a rusting bed in a deserted movie lot. Throughout this scene, Hannaford provides increasingly voyeuristic and intrusive/abusive off-screen direction, prompting an enraged and humiliated John Dale to storm off the set.
As the party continues, Hannaford gets progressively drunker. He is washing his face in the bathroom when he tearfully breaks down in front of Otterlake, asking for the young director's help to revive his flagging career, and desperately trying to sober up before returning to the screening of his still-unfinished film.
A power cut in the middle of Hannaford's party interrupts the screening mid-way. The party continues by lantern-light, and eventually reconvenes to an empty drive-in cinema, where the last portion of Hannaford's film is screened.
Later in the film, Dale arrives at the party. At one point, a drunken Hannaford makes a pass at Dale, and is rebuffed. Hannaford has a history of seducing the wife or girlfriend of each of his leading men, but maintains a strong attraction to the leading men themselves. Hannaford then uses a rifle from his Indian trophy room to shoot several life-sized clay dolls of Dale. This is paralleled by a subplot about the unnamed actress playing "The red red Indian" seducing Dale at Hannaford's party and being rebuffed, leading to her shooting at him towards the end of the film. Dale is no longer alive by the end of the film.
Having relocated to the drive-in cinema, intrusive journalist Juliette Riche asked Hannaford the most explicit questions of all about his sexuality. At this moment, Billy Boyle stops the film cameras, although with the soundtrack still running, and through a montage of still photos, we gather that Hannaford violently assaults Riche.
The film's final scene features Hannaford's sports car - which he had originally bought as a present for Dale - crashing into the screen of the drive-in cinema, killing him. At the time, the screen had been projecting the end of Hannaford's new film, and the sun sets behind it. It is left ambiguous whether his death was the result of drunk driving or suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
.
A monologue from Hannaford is heard in voice-over
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...
during the final scene: "Remember those Berbers - up in the Atlas
Atlas Mountains
The Atlas Mountains is a mountain range across a northern stretch of Africa extending about through Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The highest peak is Toubkal, with an elevation of in southwestern Morocco. The Atlas ranges separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert...
? They wouldn't let us point a camera at 'em. They're certain that it...dries up something. The old eye, y'know, behind the magic box. Could be it's an evil eye at that...Medusa's
Medusa
In Greek mythology Medusa , " guardian, protectress") was a Gorgon, a chthonic monster, and a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto. The author Hyginus, interposes a generation and gives Medusa another chthonic pair as parents. Gazing directly upon her would turn onlookers to stone...
...Who knows, maybe you can stare too hard at something. Huh? Drain out the virtue; suck out the living juice...You shoot the great places and the pretty people - all those girls and boys...shoot 'em dead..."
The film concludes as Hannaford's voice says, "Cut!"
Released scenes
Although the film is unfinished, at least five scenes have been available to a wider public over the years.The most commonly seen of these are two edited scenes (in workprint form), which can be seen in the documentary film Orson Welles: One Man Band, which is available as a bonus feature on both the Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
R1 and Madman Entertainment
Madman Entertainment
Madman Entertainment is an Australian company that distributes international films as well as Japanese anime and manga in Australia and New Zealand. The company is owned by Funtastic Limited and is one of the major entertainment companies in Australia. It employs 130 people and has an annual...
's Directors Suite R4 DVD release of F for Fake
F for Fake
F for Fake is the last major film completed by Orson Welles, who directed, co-wrote, and starred in the film. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a fast-paced, meandering...
. The scenes included in the documentary are:
- 1. A scene from the start of the film featuring John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich and Susan StrasbergSusan StrasbergSusan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American film and stage actress.-Background and career:Strasberg was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio and former actress Paula Strasberg...
at Hannaford's 70th birthday party.
- 2. A scene from Hannaford's sensationalist film-within-a-film featuring Oja KodarOja KodarOja Kodar is a Croatian actress, screenwriter and director, best known as the girlfriend of Orson Welles for the last 24 years of his life.-Life:...
and Bob RandomRobert RandomRobert Random , usually billed as Bob Random, is a Canadian-born character actor, who appeared in both movies and television from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s.-Television and film roles:...
having sex in a station wagonStation wagonA station wagon is a body style variant of a sedan/saloon with its roof extended rearward over a shared passenger/cargo volume with access at the back via a third or fifth door , instead of a trunk lid...
driven by actor Robert Aiken.
The scenes were originally cut by Welles to show during his AFI
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony in 1975. Both of them run to around two and a half minutes, with the second scene being slightly longer. (The full sex scene runs to around seven minutes, and follows the clearly uncomfortable driver becoming increasingly incensed, and ends in Kodar's character being ejected from the car mid-climax
Orgasm
Orgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
, but the released version only shows the first part of this.)
Welles screened a further scene for the AFI in 1975:
- 3. This involved the screening of a rough cut of Hannaford's film to a clearly unimpressed studio executive, while Norman FosterNorman Foster (director)Norman Foster was an American film director and actor.Born John Hoeffer in Richmond, Indiana, Foster originally became a cub reporter on a local newspaper in Indiana before going to New York in the hopes of getting a better newspaper job but there were no vacancies...
plays a Hannaford aide ineptly trying to describe what the film is about.
This scene has been less widely seen because it was not included in the One Man Band documentary; but the entire AFI ceremony was broadcast in the 1970s as the TV special AFI Salutes Orson Welles, and was subsequently released on VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
. The tape includes the above two scenes, as well as the third scene.
A fourth scene is included in Gary Graver's 1993 direct-to-video documentary Working with Orson Welles, and uses footage in Graver's possession:
- 4. It involves an extensive dream-like sequence from the film-within-the-film, portraying Bob Random's character chasing Oja Kodar. Much use is made of optical illusions with mirrors and reflections in glass skyscrapers and phone booths.
A fifth scene has been circulated on internet video websites, in two different cuts of the same scene. Both versions are filmed in black and white and consist of Henry Jaglom
Henry Jaglom
- Life and career :Born January 26, 1941 in London, England to Simon and Marie Jaglom, Henry Jaglom trained with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York, where he acted, wrote and directed off-Broadway theater and cabaret before settling in Hollywood in the late 1960s...
and Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
arguing together on the nature of film, then asking increasingly personal (and sometimes pretentious) questions to Hannaford.
- 5a. The shorter version is more tightly edited and runs to five and a half minutes, featuring only Jaglom and Mazursky.
- 5b. The longer version runs to six and a half minutes, contains the same footage as above, but also has Dennis HopperDennis HopperDennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
joining in, as well as contributions from John Huston's character. At the time this scene was filmed, in 1971, Huston had not yet been cast, so his own lines are unread, and were evidently meant to be dubbed in later. In this version, Welles can occasionally be heard providing off-screen direction between lines of dialogue.
Cast
- John HustonJohn HustonJohn Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
as Jake Hannaford - Bob Random as John Dale
- Peter BogdanovichPeter BogdanovichPeter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
as Brooks Otterlake - Susan StrasbergSusan StrasbergSusan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American film and stage actress.-Background and career:Strasberg was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio and former actress Paula Strasberg...
as Juliette Riche - Oja KodarOja KodarOja Kodar is a Croatian actress, screenwriter and director, best known as the girlfriend of Orson Welles for the last 24 years of his life.-Life:...
as The Actress aka The Red, Red Indian - Joseph McBrideJoseph McBrideJoseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter and Associate Professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University.McBride has published 15 books including acclaimed biographies of Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and John Ford. His most recent work is an updated edition of...
as Charles Pister - Lilli PalmerLilli PalmerLilli Palmer , born Lilli Marie Peiser, was a German actress. She won the Volpi Cup, the Deutscher Filmpreis three times, and was nominated twice for a Golden Globe Award.-Life and career:...
as Zarah Valeska - Edmond O'BrienEdmond O'BrienEdmond O'Brien was an American actor who is perhaps best remembered for his role in D.O.A. and his Oscar winning role in The Barefoot Contessa...
as Pat - Mercedes McCambridgeMercedes McCambridgeCarlotta Mercedes McCambridge was an American actress. Orson Welles called her "the world's greatest living radio actress."-Early life:...
as Maggie Fassbender - Cameron MitchellCameron Mitchell (actor)Cameron Mitchell was an American film, television and Broadway actor with close ties to one of Canada's most successful families, and considered, by Lee Strasberg, to be one of the founding members of The Actor's Studio in New York City.-Early life and career:Born Cameron MacDowell Mitzel in...
as Zimmer - Paul StewartPaul StewartPaul Stewart is the name of:*Paul Stewart , writer of The Edge Chronicles*Paul Stewart , motor racing driver/team director, son of World Champion Jackie*Paul Stewart , Canadian pianist...
as Matt Costello - Peter JasonPeter JasonPeter Jason is an American actor who performs in many plays, movies, and TV commercials, including Desperate Housewives and Deadwood. In his free time he makes his own furniture out of wood. He has appeared in 12 Walter Hill films, 7 John Carpenter films, has acted in over 100 commercials and...
as Marvin P. Fassbender - Tonio SelwartTonio SelwartTonio Selwart was a Bavarian actor and stage performer.-Biography:Named Antonio Franz Theus Selmair-Selwart at birth, Tonio Selwart was born in Wartenberg, Bavaria, Germany, and raised in Munich. After studying medicine like his father , he decided instead to become an actor, following a life-long...
as The Baron - Howard Grossman as Charles Higgam
- Geoffrey Land as Max David
- Norman FosterNorman Foster (director)Norman Foster was an American film director and actor.Born John Hoeffer in Richmond, Indiana, Foster originally became a cub reporter on a local newspaper in Indiana before going to New York in the hopes of getting a better newspaper job but there were no vacancies...
as Billy Boyle - Dennis HopperDennis HopperDennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
as Lucas Renard - Gregory SierraGregory SierraGregory Sierra is an American actor known for his roles as Detective Sergeant Chano Amenguale on Barney Miller and as Julio Fuentes, the Puerto Rican neighbor of Fred G...
as Jack Simon - Benny RubinBenny RubinBenny Rubin was an American comedian and film actor. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Rubin made more than 200 radio, film and television appearances over a span of 50 years.-Radio and television:...
as Abe Vogel - Cathy Lucas as Mavis Henscher
- Dan TobinDan TobinDan Tobin was an American supporting actor who generally played gentle, urbane characters, sometimes with a concealed edge of malice....
as Dr. Bradley Pease Burroughs - George JesselGeorge JesselGeorge Jessel may refer to:*George Jessel , American actor*George Jessel , English jurist*George Jessel of the Jessel Baronets...
as Himself - Richard WilsonRichard WilsonIan Colquhoun Wilson OBE better known as Richard Wilson, is a Scottish actor, theatre director and broadcaster, best known for playing Victor Meldrew in the popular BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave. He currently appears in the BBC drama Merlin.- Life and career :Wilson was born in Greenock, Scotland...
as Himself - Other cast members include Stéphane AudranStéphane AudranStéphane Audran is a French film and television actress, known for her performances in Oscar winning movies such as Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie and Babette's Feast and in critically acclaimed films like The Big Red One and Violette Nozière .She married...
, John CarrollJohn Carroll-People:*John Carroll , American actor*John Carroll , Australian neoconservative writer*Sir John Carroll , British scientist*John Carroll -People:*John Carroll (actor) (1906–1979), American actor*John Carroll (author) (born 1944), Australian neoconservative writer*Sir John Carroll (astronomer)...
, Cameron CroweCameron CroweCameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....
, Pat McMahonPat McMahonPat McMahon is a former American college and professional baseball coach.In his twelve seasons as a head coach, he has compiled a career record of 527-259-1. He served as the head coach of Old Dominion, Mississippi State and Florida Gators. He has appeared in two College World Series, in 1998,...
, Cameron MitchellCameron Mitchell (actor)Cameron Mitchell was an American film, television and Broadway actor with close ties to one of Canada's most successful families, and considered, by Lee Strasberg, to be one of the founding members of The Actor's Studio in New York City.-Early life and career:Born Cameron MacDowell Mitzel in...
and Robert Aiken.
The film features an exceptionally large number of film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
s in acting roles in the film, including Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
, Norman Foster
Norman Foster (director)
Norman Foster was an American film director and actor.Born John Hoeffer in Richmond, Indiana, Foster originally became a cub reporter on a local newspaper in Indiana before going to New York in the hopes of getting a better newspaper job but there were no vacancies...
, Gary Graver
Gary Graver
Gary Graver was an American film director and cinematographer. He was a prolific film-maker but is perhaps best known as Orson Welles' final cinematographer. Under the pseudonym of Robert McCallum he also directed adult films.Graver was born and raised in Portland, Oregon...
, Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films, and episodic television.-Biography:...
, Henry Jaglom
Henry Jaglom
- Life and career :Born January 26, 1941 in London, England to Simon and Marie Jaglom, Henry Jaglom trained with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York, where he acted, wrote and directed off-Broadway theater and cabaret before settling in Hollywood in the late 1960s...
, Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
and Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
, mostly playing Hannaford's entourage of journalists and young film-makers.
Impressionist Rich Little
Rich Little
Richard Caruthers "Rich" Little is a Canadian-American impressionist and voice actor. He has long been known throughout the world as a top impersonator of famous people, resulting in his nickname, "The Man of a Thousand Voices"....
was originally cast as Brooks Otterlake, but walked out of the film part of the way through. Filming was completed with Bogdanovich playing Otterlake. This necessitated reshooting all of Little's scenes. Little's interpretation of the Otterlake character would have had him using a different accent or impression for every single scene - a device which Joseph McBride thought "uncomfortably labored". By contrast, although Bogdanovich did several impressions in character as Otterlake, he played most of his scenes with his own voice.
According to McBride, several of the characters were based on real-life people. "The Baron" parodied Welles' former business partner John Houseman
John Houseman
John Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane...
, whom he had acrimoniously separated from in the 1940s. "Max David" ridiculed then-studio boss Robert Evans. "Jack Simon" mocked young macho director John Milius
John Milius
John Frederick Milius is an American screenwriter, director, and producer of motion pictures.-Early life:Milius was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Elizabeth and William Styx Milius, who was a shoe manufacturer. Milius attempted to join the Marine Corps in the late 1960s, but was rejected...
. "Abe Vogel" was a play on veteran agent Abe Lastfogel
Abe Lastfogel
Abraham Isaac "Abe" Lastfogel was one of the first employees and a long-time President of the William Morris Agency, a large diverisified talent agency....
. "Mavis Henscher" poked fun at Bogdanovich's then-girlfriend, actress Cybill Shepherd
Cybill Shepherd
Cybill Lynne Shepherd is an American actress, singer and former model. Her best known roles include starring as Jacy in The Last Picture Show, as Betsy in Taxi Driver, as Madeleine Spencer in Psych, as Maddie Hayes on Moonlighting, as Cybill Sheridan on Cybill, and as Phyllis Kroll on The L...
. "Juliette Riche" was a thinly-veiled spoof of film critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, with whom Welles was in a public feud over her allegation (later disproved) that he did not write Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
. (The role had originally been written with Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française...
in mind, and was initially played by Bogdanovich's then-wife Polly Platt
Polly Platt
Mary Marr "Polly" Platt was an American film producer, production designer and screenwriter.-Early life:Platt was born Mary Marr Platt in Fort Sheridan, Illinois on January 29, 1939, later using the name Polly. Her father John was a colonel in the army while her mother Vivian worked in...
, who also served as the film's production designer
Production designer
In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...
, before eventually being taken over by Strasberg, who reshot the scenes with Platt.) "Charles Higgam" was a parody of Charles Higham
Charles Higham
Charles Higham may refer to:*Charles Higham , British archaeologist, specialising in the archaeology of Southeast Asia*Charles Higham , biographer and poet...
, who had written an influential and unflattering 1970 biography of Welles which had wounded him with its accusation that he had a "fear of completion" on films. McBride's own character, "Mr. Pister", was an amalgamation of various cinephiles and socially awkward film critics whom Welles had met over the years.
Bogdanovich taking over the role of Otterlake meant refilming the scenes featuring Higgam, since Bogdanovich had originally played that (much smaller) role. Bogdanovich played Higgam by doing an impression of Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...
(at Welles' request), although there is no evidence that Howard Grossman played the role that way when he took over.
The characters played by Foster, Jessel, McCambridge, O'Brien, Stewart and Wilson form Hannaford's entourage, representing the "Old Hollywood"; while Chabrol, Harrington, Hopper, Jaglom and Mazurski play thinly-veiled versions of themselves, representing the "New Hollywood." The "Old Hollywood" characters serve as something of a chorus for Hannaford, providing various commentaries on his life.
According to the shooting script, Welles intended to provide the film's short opening narration, intending to dub it in post-production. However, he never recorded it.
Many of the cast and crew worked either for free, or for low wages and/or in exchange for favours from Welles. Huston, a close friend of Welles, worked for the nominal fee of $75,000. Welles said he could not afford to pay his cinematographer Gary Graver
Gary Graver
Gary Graver was an American film director and cinematographer. He was a prolific film-maker but is perhaps best known as Orson Welles' final cinematographer. Under the pseudonym of Robert McCallum he also directed adult films.Graver was born and raised in Portland, Oregon...
, so instead gave him his 1941 Academy Award statuette for the script of Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
by way of thanks. Joseph McBride's salary comprised two boxes of cigars. Paul Mazursky recalls that he was never paid for the one night of filming he acted in.
Production history
The film has a troubled production history. Like many of Welles's personally funded films, the project was filmed and edited on-and-off for several years.The project evolved from an idea Welles had in 1961 after the suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
of Ernest Hemmingway. Welles had known Hemmingway since 1937, and was inspired to write a screenplay about an ageing macho bullfight enthusiast who is fond of a young bullfighter. Nothing came of the project for a while, but work on the script resumed in Spain 1966, just after Welles had completed Chimes at Midnight
Chimes at Midnight
Chimes at Midnight, also known as Falstaff and Campanadas a medianoche , is a 1965 film directed by and starring Orson Welles. Focused on William Shakespeare's recurring character Sir John Falstaff, the film stars Welles himself as Falstaff, Keith Baxter plays Prince Hal , and John Gielgud plays...
. Early drafts were entitled Sacred Beasts and turned the older bullfight enthusiast into a film director. At a 1966 banquet to raise funds for the project, Welles told a group of prospective financiers:
-
- Our story is about a pseudo-Hemingway, a movie director. So the central figure...you can barely see through the hair on his chest; who was frightened by Hemingway at birth. He's a tough movie director who has killed three or four extras on every picture...[but is] full of charm. Everybody thinks he's great. In our story he's riding around following a bullfighter, and living through him...but he's become obsessed by this young man who has become...his own dream of himself. He's been rejected by all his old friends. He's finally been shown up to be a kind of voyeur...a fellow who lives off other people's danger and death.
When Welles moved back to the United States in the late 1960s, the script's setting changed to Hollywood, and filming started in 1969. Early filming in 1969-71 focused on Hannaford's film-within-a-film. Welles was initially unsure who to cast as the film director and whether to play the role himself, finally settling in 1971 on his friend the actor-director John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
. The few party scenes shot before 1971 were shot without Huston, and often contained just one side of a conversation, with Huston's side of the conversation filmed several years later and intended to be edited in to the earlier footage.
In 1972 Welles said that filming was "96% complete," (which seems to have been an exaggeration, since many of the film's key scenes were not shot until 1973-5) and in 1976 the last scene of principal photography was completed.
Welles described the film's unconventional style to Peter Bogdanovich during an interview on the set:
-
- I'm going to use several voices to tell the story. You hear conversations taped as interviews, and you see quite different scenes going on at the same time. People are writing a book about him - different books. Documentaries...still pictures, films, tapes. All these witnesses...The movie's going to be made up of all this raw material. You can imagine how daring the cutting can be, and how much fun.
- [PB: Have you written a screenplay?]
- Four of them. But most of it's got to be ad-libbed. I've worked on it for so long - years... If I were a nineteenth-century novelist, I'd have written a three-volume novel. I know everything that happened to that man. And his family - where he comes from - everything; more than I could ever try to put in a movie. His family - how they were competing with the Kennedys and the Kellys to get out of the lace-curtain-Irish department. I love this man and I hate him.
John Huston confirmed that the film was photographed in a highly unconventional style: "It's through these various cameras that the story is told. The changes from one to another - colour, black and white, still, and moving - made for a dazzling variety of effects." He added that principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
was highly improvised, with the script only loosely being adhered to. At one point, Welles told him, "John, just read the lines or forget them and say what you please. The idea is all that matters."
A ranch in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
was rented out for many of the party scenes, while much of the film was shot in Bogdanovich's own Beverly Hills house, which Welles stayed in for nearly two years, and which doubles for other parts of Hannaford's house. Other scenes were shot in Reseda
Reseda
Reseda may refer to:*Reseda , a plant genus also known as mignonette*1081 Reseda, a minor planet that orbits the Sun; named for the reseda plant genus*Reseda, Los Angeles, a suburb in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California...
(where the drive-in cinema scenes were filmed in the same location as the climax of Bogdanovich's Targets
Targets
Targets is a thriller film written, produced and directed by Peter Bogdanovich.-Plot summary:The story concerns a quiet insurance agent / Vietnam veteran, played by Tim O'Kelly, who murders his young wife, his mother and a grocery delivery boy at home and then initiates an afternoon shooting...
), Culver City, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Holland, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, and the MGM backlot. (The latter was filmed without MGM's permission, with Welles smuggled onto the backlot in a darkened van, whilst the rest of the cast and crew pretended to be a group of film students visiting the backlot. The backlot, which was seriously dilapidated, was demolished shortly afterwards, and only one more film - That's Entertainment!
That's Entertainment!
That's Entertainment! is a 1974 compilation film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It was followed by two sequels and a related film called That's Dancing!....
(1976) - was made on it before its demolition.)
Principal photography was undermined by serious financial problems, including embezzlement by one of the investors, who fled with much of the film's budget. Barbara Leaming described the situation in her biography of Welles (based on extensive interviews with Welles):
-
- The first of the backers Orson managed to find in Paris was a Spanish acquaintance of his from the international film community who enthusiastically agreed to kick in $350,000, a little less than half of what Orson and Oja had already invested. Shortly thereafter an equivalent sum was pledged by a French-based Iranian group headed by Mehdi Bouscheri, the brother-in-law of the Shah...Dominique Antoine, a Frenchwoman, made the deal with Orson on behalf of the Iranians...Orson left France with the understanding that the Spanish partner would act as intermediary with the Iranians in Paris...
-
- But no sooner were Orson and Oja in Spain than trouble started. "We were perfectly all right as long as I was using Oja's money and mine," says Orson, "but the moment we got associates!" The Iranians appeared not to be living up to their end of the deal. Orson heard from the Spaniard who had flown in from Paris, that the Iranians had not given him the money they had promised. There were heavy rains and flooding in Spain, so Orson and Oja were basically cooped up in their hotel, where they worked on a new script together. The Spaniard returned to Paris to try again. "In a minute they're going to have it," he told Orson later. "It looks all right." In lieu of the Iranian funds, he gave them very small sums of money, which he said were part of the investment he had agreed to make. Not until afterward did Orson discover that the Iranians had indeed been giving the Spaniard the promised money, which had come from Iran in cash, and that, instead of bringing it to Spain, the sly fellow was pocketing it. Says Orson: "We just sat, month after month, while he went to Paris, received the money, and came back and told us that they wouldn't give him any money. He was very convincing to us, and very convincing with them in Paris. He kept flying back and forth extracting money from them. We didn't know them, you see. We knew him." The small sums of money he had been giving Orson as if from his own pocket actually came out of the Iranian funds. His constant reassurance to Orson that the Iranians were about to come through was calculated to keep Orson in Spain out of contact with them. On his part, Orson did not want to interfere in what he presumed were his emissary's delicate negotiations with them. It simply never occurred to him that the fellow was lying - and had never any money of his own to invest in the first place...
-
- Meanwhile, on account of the foul weather, Orson had decided to abandon Spain for Arizona, where John Huston and a host of other faithfuls joined him...The swindler continued his game of collecting cash from the Iranians who, having heard only from him, still did not know that anything was wrong. When they received a telex purportedly from John Huston's agent to ask for a $60,000 advance, Dominique Antoine did ask for further verification. But this did not deter the swindler, who sent her a Screen Actor's Guild form with a bogus Social Security number and signature from the States. The Iranians dispatched the $60,000, which was pocketed by the Spaniard rather than Huston, who, out of friendship for Orson, was actually working for much less. After having sent the money, Dominique Antoine had second thoughts about it. Until now she had deliberately left Orson alone because she sensed he preferred it that way. But now something told her there was a problem. "I think I have to go there," she told Bouscheri, "even if Orson isn't pleased." Since Orson had yet to receive a penny from the Iranians, their French representative was the last person he expected to see in the Arizona desert. He could not have been happy to see her. When almost instantly he asked her where the money was, and she nervously told him that she had been making regular payments to the intermediary, who obviously hadn't passed them on to him, he broke down.
This story is corroborated by Peter Bogdanovich, who wrote in November 1997 of the production, "another producer ran back to Europe with $250,000 of Orson's money and never was heard from again (although I recently saw the person on TV accepting an Oscar for coproducing the Best Foreign Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
of the year.)"
In February 1975, Welles was awarded an AFI
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
Lifetime Achievement Award, and used the star-studded ceremony as an opportunity to pitch for funding to complete the film. (With a touch of irony, one of the scenes he showed his audience featured Hannaford screening a rough cut of his latest film to a studio boss, in a bid for "end money" to complete his picture.) Sure enough, one producer made what Welles later called a "wonderful offer", but Antoine turned it down on the assumption that an even better offer would arrive. No such offer came, and Welles later bitterly regretted the refusal, commenting before his death that if he'd accepted it "the picture would have been finished now and released."
Welles estimated that the editing of the film in a distinctive and experimental style would take approximately one year of full-time work (which was how long he had spent on the experimental, rapidly-cut editing of his previous completed film, F for Fake
F for Fake
F for Fake is the last major film completed by Orson Welles, who directed, co-wrote, and starred in the film. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a fast-paced, meandering...
). A change of management at the Iranian production company in 1975 resulted in tensions between Welles and the backers. The new management saw Welles as a liability, and refused to pay him to edit the film. The company made several attempts to reduce Welles' share of the film profits from 50% to 20%, and crucially, attempted to remove his artistic control over the film's final cut
Final cut privilege
Final cut privilege is a film industry term, usually used when a director has contractual authority over how a film is ultimately released for public viewing.- Condition :...
. Welles made numerous attempts to seek further financial backing to pay him to complete the editing full-time, including attempting to interest a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
backer, but no such funding materialised, and so Welles only edited the film piecemeal in his spare time over the next decade, between other acting assignments which the heavily indebted actor-director needed to support himself.
Legal difficulties, and efforts to complete the film
By 1979, 40 minutes of the film had been edited by Welles. But in that year, the film experienced serious legal and financial complications. Welles's use of funds from the brother-in-law of the Shah of IranMohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...
came back to haunt him after the Shah was overthrown. A complex, decades-long legal battle over the ownership of the film ensued, with the original negative remaining in a vault in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. At first, the revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
government of Ayatollah Khomeini had the film impounded along with all assets of the previous regime. When they deemed the negative worthless, there was extensive litigation as to the ownership of the film. By 1998, many of the legal matters had been resolved and the Showtime cable network had guaranteed "end money" to complete the film.
However, ongoing legal complications in the Welles estate and a lawsuit by Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles, caused the project to be suspended. When Welles died in 1985 he had left many of his assets to his estranged widow Paola Mori, and after her own death in 1986 these were inherited by their daughter Beatrice Welles. However, he had also left various other assets, from his house in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
to the full ownership and artistic control of all his unfinished film projects, to his longtime companion, mistress and collaborator Oja Kodar
Oja Kodar
Oja Kodar is a Croatian actress, screenwriter and director, best known as the girlfriend of Orson Welles for the last 24 years of his life.-Life:...
, who co-wrote and co-starred in The Other Side of the Wind. Since 1992, Beatrice Welles has claimed in various courts that under California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
law, she has ownership of all of Orson Welles' completed and incomplete pictures (including those which he did not own the rights of himself in his own lifetime), and The Other Side of the Wind has been heavily affected by this litigation. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
described how she "stifled an attempt by US cable company Showtime and Oja Kodar (Welles's partner in the latter part of his life) to complete The Other Side of the Wind", whilst the Daily Telegraph stated that Beatrice Welles had "blocked" the film. A clause of Welles' will, specifying that anybody who challenges any part of Kodar's inheritance will be automatically disinherited, remains unenforced.
While the original negative of the film remains in a Paris vault, two workprint
Workprint
A workprint is a rough version of a motion picture, used by the film editor during the editing process. Such copies generally contain original recorded sound that will later be re-dubbed, stock footage as placeholders for missing shots or special effects, and animation tests for in-production...
versions of the raw footage were privately held - one by Welles' cinematographer the late Gary Graver
Gary Graver
Gary Graver was an American film director and cinematographer. He was a prolific film-maker but is perhaps best known as Orson Welles' final cinematographer. Under the pseudonym of Robert McCallum he also directed adult films.Graver was born and raised in Portland, Oregon...
, who shot the film, and one by Welles himself, who covertly smuggled a copy out of Paris after the legal difficulties started. Welles left his own workprint copy to Kodar, as part of the clause of his will giving her all his unfinished film materials.
Peter Bogdanovich, a director in his own right as well as a Welles expert and film historian, announced in 2004 that he planned to restore the film and release it soon. He cited a conversation before Welles' death in which 'Orson said to me, "If anything happens to me, you will make sure you finish it, won't you?" It was, of course, a compliment and also a terrible moment. He pressed me to give some assurance." It was rumored that Oja Kodar's nephew Sasha Welles was to edit the final release of the film. Details of the release, however, were murky at best. A common reservation was that while raw footage exists for the entire film, editing the remaining footage in Welles's style may be difficult. However, Welles himself finished editing between 40 and 50 minutes of the film and reportedly left behind extensive editing notes for the rest of the film.
A turning point came in 2006, when Mehdi Bouscheri died, resolving several of the film's legal problems. At a March 29, 2007, appearance during the 16th Florida Film Festival, Peter Bogdanovich responded to a question about the status of the film. He announced that the four parties involved (Oja Kodar, Mehdi Bouscheri's heirs, Beatrice Welles and the Showtime network) had come to an agreement earlier that week and that the film would be edited and released in the very near future.
Bogdanovich stated in an April 2, 2007, press report that a deal to complete the film was "99.9% finished," with a theatrical release planned for late 2008. However, in March, 2008, Bogdanovich said that there was over a year's worth of work left to be done.
In December, 2008, Showtime put the project back on hold due to unspecified complications. A piece in Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
in February, 2009, stated that Showtime was still willing to pay for its completion, but they wanted to be sure all the materials exist. The negative resides in a lab in Paris, but the permission from all the estates must be obtained before access to the negative can be granted. Bogdanovich commented, “It’s going to happen in the next month or so. We’re aiming for Cannes (in 2010). Everybody wants it to happen. It’s film history. It will be something for it to finally be seen after all these years.”
In January, 2010, during a public Q&A after a screening of one of his films in Columbus, OH, Bogdanovich stated that the film had been examined and was in good condition, but "Orson left such a mess with who owned what," and wondered whether editing the film would even be possible.
A report in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
in January, 2011, suggested, once again, that a legal settlement was close and that a release would be possible in the near future. This report, however, was accused by Welles' partner Oja Kodar of being a hoax.
As of 2011, the situation is that all copyright difficulties have theoretically been resolved between the respective parties. However, the Showtime network which had previously pledged to provide funding for the project has refused to specify what the budget would be. Oja Kodar has stated that she does not want a repeat of the debacle over Welles' posthumously-completed Don Quixote
Don Quixote (unfinished film)
Don Quixote is an unfinished film project directed and produced between 1955 and 1969 by Orson Welles.-Television project:Don Quixote was initially conceived as a 30-minute film for CBS. Rather than offer a literal adaptation of the Miguel de Cervantes novel, Welles opted to bring the characters...
, which was universally panned after being cheaply put together from badly decayed, incomplete footage which was sloppily edited, badly dubbed, and often incoherent. As such, she will not grant permission to proceed until she has received assurances that the project will be done professionally, and to a high standard, with an adequate budget.
Missing elements to the film
Ten hours of raw footage exist, but the film is missing the following elements:- Welles never recorded the opening narration. Bogdanovich has speculated that he could do the narration instead, in character as Otterlake.
- There is one scene missing - Hannaford's car exploding as it crashes into the cinema screen. Since the ResedaResedaReseda may refer to:*Reseda , a plant genus also known as mignonette*1081 Reseda, a minor planet that orbits the Sun; named for the reseda plant genus*Reseda, Los Angeles, a suburb in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California...
drive-in theatre used has been demolished since filming in the 1970s, this would most likely need to be accomplished by a model shot. - With 40-50 minutes of film edited by Welles, approximately 70-80 minutes still require editing. Welles consistently maintained that he did not like films over 2 hours long, and most of his films were just under 2 hours.
- The film currently lacks a musical score.
Critical opinion of the film
As a member of the cast, film historian Joseph McBrideJoseph McBride
Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter and Associate Professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University.McBride has published 15 books including acclaimed biographies of Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and John Ford. His most recent work is an updated edition of...
saw the rushes
Dailies
Dailies, in filmmaking, are the raw, unedited footage shot during the making of a motion picture. They are so called because usually at the end of each day, that day's footage is developed, synched to sound, and printed on film in a batch for viewing the next day by the director and some members...
, and later saw a two-hour rough cut
Rough cut
In filmmaking, the rough cut is the second of three stages of offline editing. The rough cut is the first stage in which the film begins to resemble its final product...
assembled by Gary Graver in the late 1990s to attract potential investors. McBride wrote that the film "serves as both a time capsule of a pivotal moment in film history - an "instant" piece of period nostalgia set in the early seventies - and a meditation on changing political, sexual and artistic attitudes in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
during that period." However, he differentiated the bulk of the film - which he praised very highly - from the footage of Hannaford's film-within-a-film:
-
- I found that while the languid visual style of the film-within-the-film interludes would give the audience ample time to recover from the frenetic pacing of the party scenes, a more serious obstacle to the film's playability is the largely undramatic nature of much of the material putatively shot by Hannaford. Little or nothing happens in these sequences except for Oja mysteriously wandering seminude around picturesque locales and Bob Random doggedly roaring his motorcycle through expressionistically lit landscapes. The footage is beautifully shot, and there is some stunning photographic magic, such as a sequence filmed among the skyscrapers of Century City with the two characters' images vanishing into ten mirrors arranged invisibly among the stone steps and glass columns of the coldly geometrical modern office buildings...However, in the rough cut assembled by Graver to show potential investors, the film-within-the-film sequences not only interrupt the narrative but also go on at such length that they lose their satirical point, becoming exasperating examples of what Welles was trying to spoof.
Film critic and historian Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
has seen most of the film, either in rushes, or in scenes cut by Welles, and has praised "its complex and shocking reflections on machismo
Machismo
Machismo, or machoism, is a word of Spanish and Portuguese origin that describes prominently exhibited or excessive masculinity. As an attitude, machismo ranges from a personal sense of virility to a more extreme male chauvinism...
, homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, Hollywood, cinephilia, eroticism
Eroticism
Eroticism is generally understood to refer to a state of sexual arousal or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love...
, and late-60s media, not to mention its kamikaze
Kamikaze
The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....
style", and has contrasted this with the opinion of David Thomson
David Thomson (film critic)
David Thomson is a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.-Career:...
, who has not seen the film, and who wrote in his highly critical biography of Welles, "One day, it may be freed. I hope not. The Other Side of the Wind should stay beyond reach." John Huston described a private screening in which Orson Welles showed the unfinished film to some friends: "I didn't get to see it, but those who did tell me it is a knockout."
Screenplay
Welles declared that he had written at least four versions of the screenplay by 1972. However, the improvisational style of filming meant that none of them was followed to the letter. For instance, in the various versions of the screenplay John Dale is not present at the party, yet in the final shoot Bob Random improvised some scenes playing him at the party, leading to Dale's death.For years, bootleg
Bootleg
The term bootlegging originally came from concealing hip flasks of alcohol in the legs of boots.Bootleg or bootlegging* Bootleg , the use of illegal equipment, frequencies, or operating procedures in two-way radio...
copies of various screenplay drafts offered the most detailed glimpse of the film. Despite threats of legal action from Beatrice Welles, Cahiers du Cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
and the Locarno International Film Festival
Locarno International Film Festival
The Film Festival Locarno is an international film festival held annually in the city of Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. After Cannes and Venice and together with Karlovy Vary, Locarno is the Film Festival with the longest history...
went ahead with joint publication of a screenplay in 2005, in a limited edition. The published edition is an amalgamation of two versions of the screenplay. Although the edition is in French, it includes the original English-language screenplay text, and numerous photographs from the shoot, as well as French-language essays by Kodar, Bogdanovich, Giorgio Gosetti, Bill Krohn, Paolo Mereghetti, André Labarthe, Stefan Drössler and Daniel Kothenshulte:
External links
- Wellesnet articles on the film
- Article:"Deal Near on a Lost Welles", April 2, 2007 New York Sun