who will be the next orson welles

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

kenneth branagh or quentin?

[Rick Schmidlin]

There will never be another Orson, as ther will never be another Mozart, Dickens, Van Gogh, Beatles etc. There may be other artists that come and do great thing on thier own, but there will never be another Orson Welles.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

i agree.
but it seems like almost every time i see an article, the phrase "Is he Orson, yet?" appears

knuckleheads

don't they know that there won't be. if not, maybe someone should do the honors of letting them know.

bye now!

[Welles Fan]

Well, film-wise, Branagh sort of positioned himself to become the next Olivier, beginning his film-directing career with Henry V, proceeding to Hamlet. One wonders if Ken's next Shakespeare film will be Richard III, since he is currently playing it onstage to positive reviews.

Rick's answer is really the correct one. I suppose Schubert rivalled Mozart in composing a great number of great works within a short lifetime; but he had no time to be the next Mozart-he was too busy being the first Schubert.

[Rick Schmidlin]

Right Welles Fan, Elvis was not the next Sinatra and the Beatles were not the next Elvis.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

i guess these guys have to put in his name so they have something to write there.
i wish they would use his name better. instead of just putting things like:

"like Orson Welles"
"the next Orson Welles"
"is he Orson yet"
"Orson Welles-like"

come on. can't they think of something better to write about when using his name

i guess it's better than printing a negative article.

i've been going through the articles that contain him, and about 80-90 % of the articles have nothing but his name with the phrases above.

oh well.

bye now!

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

stupid computer

[Jeff Wilson]

The problem with anointing anyone the "next Orson Welles" or some such tag is that said person would need the credentials across multiple art forms that Welles had; after all, he succeeded, and brilliantly so, in not only film, but theater and radio as well. Branagh was an obvious choice, as he led his own theater company, but he wasn't the driving artistic force as much Welles was in the Mercury, at least from what I recall. Branagh's films have been hit and miss as well, although I applaud his attempts as popularizing Shakespeare. Love's Labours Lost was a total disaster, though.

In terms of anyone else, Julie Taymor has possibilities, as she has succeeded in theater and film, but she's only directed the one film (Titus). But overall, it's unlikely anyone will ever do the types of things Welles did, and at his age.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Jeez, I tell ya, between my books by Pauline Kael and my books by Jonathan Rosenbaum, and a few others, I feel like I can come up with a quote or passage for every occasion. I think the following paragraphs express - if slightly modified - my POV on the matter:

From Rosenbaum's review of Pulp Fiction (quoted in fragments, not in its entirety):

"In Vamps & tramps, Camille Paglia's latest collection of sound bites and press clilps, one finds an extended account of her long-term obsession with Susan Sontag, including the following nugget: 'She is literally being passed by a younger rival, and she's not handling it, I'm afraid, very gracefully...I am the Susan Sontag of the 90s, there's no doubt of it.'

"Her statements recall Wynton Marsalis's compulsive self-positioning as Miles Davis's rival/replacement - especially in the 80s, when Davis was still alive - as well as the repeated assertions reviewers have made over the past several weeks that Quentin Tarantino is Jean-Luc Godard's successor. All three comparisons belittle the talent, intelligence, and historical roles of Sontag, Davis, and Godard, but it's become increasingly apparent in our postmodern age that the logic of such comparisons has little to do with the original artists' accomplishments. They're about something else - an assertion of market value in a market defined by preexisting molds.

[Jaime C.: It's not relevant to the current subject, but I think any attack on Tarantino that's founded on what the reviewers have said is built on sand. Just a thought.]

"When Sontag wrote Against Interpretation, Davis recorded Kind of Blue, and Godard made Breathless, in the late 50s and early 60s, thereby expanding the possibilities of criticism, jazz, and movies, none of them was the successor to anyone else; for better and for worse, they were creating new molds, not filling old ones. Sontag made popular art, movies in particular, a suitable subject in serious discussions of art, literature, and philosophy, while Godard, apart from popularizing jump cuts, introduced those discussions into movies; Davis introduced scales or modes as a basis for improvisation, which eventually made other kinds of jazz possible, such as certain long works by John Coltrane. Their would-be successors, however, are generally heralded not for their innovations but for their cleverness in recycling old works and attitudes, revitalizing their market value. With the present economic setup, which also defines our cultural setup, Godard himself couldn't qualify as 'the new Godard,' even though he continues to be an innovator, because 'the new Godard' mainly means the old Godard three decades later."

BOOM-SHAKALAKA!

[mteal]

Jaime N. C.,
Thanks for printing those excerpts from Rosenbaum, very interesting. Tarentino may have the attitude to be a new Godard wanna-be, but he doesn't have either the intellect, the political mindset, or the cultural taste to be another Godard. He's a flash-in-the-pan who got lucky and had a hit film. That's about it. Looks like he's already disappearing.

Coltrane was a great artist, but he never completely redefined himself the way Miles Davis did in the 70s. Of course, he didn't get the chance to either. In this respect Davis can possibly be seen as the Orson Welles of jazz, (although some of his "disco-and-rap" period from the 80s was pretty weak). As for Wynton Marsalis being the next Miles Davis, that's like saying Glenn Miller was the next Duke Ellington. And as Welles Fan put it, truly great artists don't want to be "the new" anything anyway. They are new themselves.

Jeff and Rick,
You're right that there will never be another Orson Welles and that the only reason so many people get compared to him is strictly for publicity purposes. David Lynch has some Wellesian qualities in that his creative work cuts across so many different media. I'm thinking also of someone like Clint Eastwood, with his ability to function gracefully both behind and in front of the camera, as well as his career in politics. But he has no genius. Branagh likewise, has alot of talent in alot of different directions, but again - no genius for anything that I can see. There may be young geniuses at work today whose work won't be recognized as such until it stands the test of time. But even the most talented of the new generation of artists would have a long way to go before any Wellesian comparisms would be even remotely apt.

[jaime marzol]

every artform has it's pinnacle which becomes the criteria by which all other works and artists measured by.

orson and kane have become the unit of measurement used to grade other directors and films.

this happens all the time; "is he louis armstrong yet?", "the next beethoven", "he IS michealangelo reborn."

would be imposible to replace kane or welles and long as long as this medium doesn't reinvent itself. 50 years from now if movies move to another level where maybe you don't watch it on a screen anymore and screen watching becomes old hat, a thing of the past. But now you take a pill, or you actually experience it; like a 2 hr ride complete with action, spurting blood, murder, travel, love, emotion, SEX(!), another man will emerge an the genius of that artform by hitting every corner leaving nothing but trotted ground for the next generation, then others will be measured by his accomplishments.

but difficult to imagine anyone coming along in films as they are today, and finding ground not touched by welles, or griffith.

DISSCLAIMER:
this is my opinion being offered TO wellesnet readersat at no charge. nothing included herein was researched, or thought out in any way.

[jaime marzol]

i don't think the words quentin and orson should ever ever appear on the same page.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Well, Tarantino had two hits, one small and one big, plus Jackie Brown, a highly underrated, and much more mature, third film. Plus he's got a new one due out next year.

I'd like to reiterate that it seems like a lot of the things people take Tarantino to task for comes from what reviewers have praised him for. I've never read or heard him proclaiming himself as anything more than a video store clerk who loves movies and got lucky. Certainly not "the new Godard." Although JR makes a terrific argument that has a significant bearing on this discussion, his attack on Tarantino is kinda suspect.

But whatever, I can see I'm in the minority here. I've kept quiet about Spielberg, I'll keep quiet on Tarantino, too.

[Jeff Wilson]

Don't feel like you need to keep quiet about defending your directors of choice, Jaime. I have nothing against Tarantino myself, and I'm glad he's championed Asian film here in the States. Spielberg, well, I'm not going to get into him. And yes, the whole discussion of "who is the next <insert name here> is rather silly, as one doesn't simply duplicate someone's career (unless you're Brian DePalma). It's an amusing question, in terms of who has or will have a similar impact across art forms. It has no bearing on reality, though.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Trouble is, I feel rather ambivalent about Spielberg, 'cuz he's far from my favorite directors - he's made some real stinkers, Hook for example, and the magic of the Indiana Jones trilogy has kinda faded over the years. But he's also made at least four movies that I feel deserve to be called great, and those are, in descending order of preference: Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Jaws, and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial.

And Tarantino, well, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs remain two of the most entertaining (in a black comedy kind of way) pictures I've ever seen, and Jackie Brown, as I said before, is very underrated. But he's hardly a Great Director. He makes movies that he would like to see, and that's cool in my book.

For da record, an off-the-cuff list of my favorite directors: OW, Tati, Fuller, Spike Lee, Michael Almereyda, Kurosawa, Hitch, Chris Marker, the Coens, Lynch, Fellini, Renoir, Kubrick, Sokurov, and probably a few more that I need to revisit or see more work from, like Tourneur, Sirk, Nicholas Ray, Miklós Jancsó, Shinji Aoyama, Amos Gitai, etc.