One Man Band tonight on Showtime

[Jeff Wilson]

Post any and all thoughts about the new cut of the One Man Band documentary here, as the first screening is tonight (10/14) on Showtime at 10PM EST. There are two more screenings this month if you miss the first. It's generally well done, and I posted a few thoughts on the News page of Wellesnet.

[Jaime N. Christley]

I'm watching the DVD screener that the Showtime pubs sent me. I can't remember exactly how the original OMB opens (my boot tape runs about 75 minutes) but this has definitely become a Bogdanovich film, in the same way that the DON QUIXOTE mess became a Franco film (except this time it's for the better, not for the worse). PB is gunning for a "big overview" type thing, much like any hack documentary would cover OW's career. It isn't that PB is "using" his Welles association to boost himself, but that's the effect, and although it's clear that he loved OW and felt very close to him, personally, that love isn't enough to distinguish this from something the History Channel could do in their sleep. (Although the TOUCH OF EVIL montage is very nicely done. Like something Chuck Workman does. Ha ha, do I call it Workman-like?)

But the important thing for OMB is the clips, the clips.

Is it just me, or did that first big OSOTW clip look like it'd been ground to bits? It looks horrible. I thought I remembered the exact same clip, from the AFI tribute, looking really striking and also very clean. Maybe they've run the thing too often?

[Jeff Wilson]

I'm curious how much of the choice to make the film a retrospective of Welles' career was PB's choice or Showtime's given the nature of the unfinished material. The framing of the film through the entire career of Welles maybe makes it easier for the non-Welles type to get interested. The European version opened with Welles doing the magic trick with goose, if I remember right. Now it does seem very much like something PB made. I too was surprised by how rough the OsotW clips looked; I wonder how much of that they could clean up for any future release if they really do look like that. I was frankly hoping for longer clips, as what we get seems so piecemeal and over too soon. Given the number of projects Welles was working on during the 70s though, I can understand wanting to hit them all.

[Peter Tonguette]

I thought it was very good, an improvement from the original in several respects: the narration is much better (personal as opposed to quasi-poetic); the clips are more clearly identified; and there's a bit more material included from the unseen films. For instance, the big montage of shots from OSOTW was astounding - little bits and pieces of scenes; so tantalizing. The big disappointment, for me, is that the "Dreamers" material is presented fairly incoherently, as it was in the original, and they don't present the entire garden fragment. I'm not sure why, because it's only several minutes total - no longer than the full "Merchant of Venice" clip which was excerpted.

Peter

[Jaime N. Christley]

There is definitely a concerted effort to pitch OSOTW to Showtime viewers! It was like a subliminal trailer, listing all the cast members and making it sound all great and everything. I hope it has a positive effect.

Don't (or do) watch this DVD on your computer with headphones. The soundtrack to the clips and the doc itself comes apart in splinters, every bit of dubbing evidence seems to be coming from a different acoustical realm entirely. This has a strange effect on the flow of ONE-MAN BAND, making it seem very disjointed.

[Peter Tonguette]

Oh, I absolutely agree, Jaime. I mean, what, we got the three extant publicly screened clips from OSOTW in full; a full listing of the cast (with a shot from the film of each cast member!); and Bogdanovich as narrator saying how it looks as though the legal tangles will be untangled soon.

Fingers crossed...

Peter

[blunted by community]

MY TWO CENTS:
i thought bogdanovich did a superb job, and i'm really surprised at all the complaining, and nit-picking i'm reading here from the technical wizards, and the cineasts that post here.

quote from jaime:
The soundtrack to the clips and the doc itself comes apart in splinters, every bit of dubbing evidence seems to be coming from a different acoustical realm entirely.

the ambient sound didn't match. peter had no foley artist. you find this in a lot of films. tons of films. i heard everywhere bogdanovich dubbed something in. did it hinder my enjoyment? not at all. i was glad he fix these rough spots. you find this in films like THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, it's ALL over the GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, THE NAKED SPUR, and a ton of other films. In the GRAPES OF WRATH, the opening of the film; wide shot, fonda walking towards that truck stop where he catches a ride. it's a wide open space but fonda's footsteps have a room echo. did it ruin the film for me and made me feel it's disjointed? no.

sometimes it's cool to appreciate the silver cloud and not turn it upside down feverishly looking for the brown spots. it's so seldom that any one cares about a welles product. i for one am glad they did it, i'm thrilled i got a first generation copy, and i think bogdanovich did a superb job with what he had to work with.

i grade this new version of OMB and A, as opposed to the D grade i would give the german OMB

[jbrooks]

I only caught part of "One Man Band" last night, but I have a few thoughts. First, wasn't the reference to the fire at Orson's house in Spain peculiar? I saw the German version in 1996 and I seem to recall that the German narration suggested that Welles invented the story of the house fire and that it wasn't true. Here, Bogdanovich replaced that narration with narration saying that the house is still there but that part of it did burn down and that many of Welles' things were destroyed. It is as though Bogdanovich is giving a rebuttal to the allegation that Welles lied about, but because he doesn't repeat the lie as a setup, it seems an oddly random comment. Also, it looked to me as though the screening room sequence from "The Other Side of the Wind" was lifted directly from the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award Ceremony (you could hear the AFI audience laughing over the clip). Again, this struck me as strange -- does Bogdanovich not have access to the original film elements?
I'm going to watch the whole thing again soon so I'll comment more later. I am interested to hear everyone else's thoughts. So keep them coming.

[blunted by community]

brooks, i didn't catch that, the laughter during the screening room. will have to check out again. i do think i noticed, though i could be wrong, that this one man band did some clipping in the screening room sequence. seems to move better than i remember it in the afi, or german OMB, where ever i saw it last time.

i did notice the difference that the house burned down, then it was a wing that burned down. maybe it's one of those things where welles said he lost everything when his house burned down, but it was actually a wing, and the best way welles could cover his character flaw about possessions was to claim his house burned and he lost everything, and that ends the questions. was bogdanovich lying and made up the wing story? more colorful is that welles hated possessions, and claimed his house burned down as a way of shutting up reporters about unfinished films.

i think the wing burned and a few things burned. the rest of his stuff was left strewn about the odd corners, and exotic locations of the world. under hotel beds, under cluotier's bed, in hotel lost and found, in laboratories, in the back seats on cars, etc.

too bad richard wilson didn't have a bigger garage and welles could have mailed him everything.

[jbrooks]

Just to be clear, Blunted, I don't disbelieve Bogdanovich when he says a wing of Welles' house burned down. I am sure that's true. What I find peculiar is that Bogdanovich didn't just cut out the whole house fire anecdote entirely. In the German version, as I recall (it has been a while) the purpose of the story was to make Welles seem mysterious (and perhaps unreliable) and to point out that not all Welles-related legends were true-- "He said many things were lost when his house burned down, but the house is still there." -- But now in the Bogdanovich version, it just says "His house burned down, not the whole house, just a wing, but much was lost." So it played to me as just an odd random fact thrown in to the middle of the film for no particular reason. Of course, as I said before, I didn't watch the whole thing closely. Maybe I'll change my mind when I sit down to watch the whole thing carefully.

[Glenn Anders]

The fire occurred all right, caused by a pair of fine actors, Robert Shaw and his wife Mary Ure, what one critic called "a pair of highly dangerous drunks." They were renting the house in Spain, at the time of the fire. Now whether as much was lost as Welles and others said is another matter.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

robert shaw? he was a drunk. Had richard harris been in attendance they could have burnded down the whole block.

but look at poor welles, facing hoards of fans and writers. what a great way to close the lid on anything he did not want answer? 'i don't know, it burned'. most likely nothing burned except except robert shaw's hair because he was too drunk to find his way out.

I found the sgment interesting because we get to see the cool place our hero lived in. the man lived in fine style.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Hey blunted, please don't put words in my mouth, I didn't say the doc was ruined. If I didn't love it as much as you, don't take it so hard (as it seems you are doing). I noticed some things about the sound when listening to the DVD on my computer, with headphones, that were different than watching it on TV, or without headphones. Yes, I notice dubbing all the time - but even the messy Franco-Italian-Sino-Russian coproductions sound smoother than what I heard on my computer's DVD player.

Is this a big deal? Shit no. Can I make a few observations regarding what I heard? I hope so.

Jeez, and people tell me to lighten up.

[blunted by community]

i don't need to put words in your mouth. you have a god given talent to open mouth and insert foot, without any one's help. i see you do it all the time.

i was just making a few observations regarding what you typed

i posted a counter point to the giggling you guys posted. i found a lot of work, and effort to respect, and to be thankful for.

i think my observation was that these rough spots in great films did not ruin it for 'me.' I don't think i said 'you,' but i might be wrong. don't want to scroll down.

if a good hunk of america tuned in, some restorer somewhere could venture some bucks to make a dvd of 3 unfinished films.wouldn's that be great.

after being a welles fan for 11 years and loving everything film he made, that toughens you up. You can handle fractured narrative, bad dubbing, no dubbing, missing hunks of scenes. no big deal. if you are a welles fan, you can handle anything. i don't think OMB is bubbed any worse than ImMORTAL STORY

also, before i saw OMB, i was wondering how bogdanovich was going to structure it because the german version had no structure. all film books and writing books always advise the best way to approach something is in a logical chronological order. you guys are supposed to be writers but you were giggling at bogdanovich's chronological approach. i found that odd. i thought bogdanovich's approach worked. don't forget, his edit had to address welles beginers, and addicts, and i think he put in enough meat for everybody.

[Oscar Christie]

Jaimes please, let us remember our common adversary.
What did you think of the line, 'Licensed but not endorsed by'