Official OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND Thread - All things OSotW he

[mido505]

My thanks to Glenn and Todd, for their reasoned responses to my intemperate diatribe, and to tonyw for his defense of it. I will make a few more comments, then remain blissfully silent until I have the opportunity to read the full transcript of the French/Bogdanovich interview.

I have only seen the excepts from TOSOTW included in both versions of the One Man Band documentary. Those, and the scene descriptions in McBride's book, had me drooling in anticipation for the completion of this project. The thought of Peter Bogdanovich as "Brooksie" sitting there in his bloody ascot "recollecting" most assuredly does not.

Todd: even if Bogdanovich only plans to read narration that Welles never recorded, I must question "why?". Last time I looked, Welles did not play a character in TOSOTW, nor did he plan to. Lindsay Lohan could just as well voice the narration, if Bogdanovich could get a performance out of her. Bogdanovich is inserting himself here, for reasons that I cannot fathom.

Glenn: I appreciate the difficulties that any artist, let alone Bogdanovich, would face attempting to put this project together. But while references to Welles' rough cuts are notoriously contradictory and unreliable, I can pull up a boat load of references, many of them from Gary Graver, stating that TOSOTW was essentially cut, needing only some pick up shots and general tightening up to be presentable. Of course, we have other references that only 40 minutes or so, the stuff that Oja has, were fully edited by Orson. So who is telling the truth? What reason would Graver have to lie? He, unlike PB, was a true, selfless, devoted, loyal friend to Welles. I'll ask again, what is going on here?

I appreciate that Bogdanovich was gracious to you all at the presentation. I am sure that he is a very gracious man. But accounts by contemporaries are not flattering. Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls, the definitive account of the New Hollywood era, is scathing, and Christopher Frayling's description, in Sergio Leone - Something To Do With Death, of Leone's encounter with PB during preproduction for Duck You Sucker, while equally critical of both directors, is brutal.

Peter Bogdanovich was the hottest young director in Hollywood in the early seventies, even more so than Coppola, who remained the rebellious outsider even after the success of The Godfather. Yet he never managed to get Welles even an acting job. I don't buy it:

PB: Harry, I'm thinking about using Orson Welles in my next picture. I need to get him out of the house, Cybil hates the cigar smoke. How about it?

Producer: I'd love to help you Peter, but he's gained a lot of weight, he's unreliable, and we hear he drinks on the set. I'd rather not.

PB: Fine. By the way, for my next picture, I would like to shoot a musical in direct sound, with a cast that can neither sing nor dance, and with my girlfriend in the lead.

Producer: O.K. Peter, no problem, it's a go.

Enough said.

[Alan Brody]

Thanks to Lawrence French for the fascinating interview transcript. After reading it and the beginning of the Wind screenplay, I'm pretty convinced that Bogdanovich reading the opening narration could work.

Lindsay Lohan could just as well voice the narration, if Bogdanovich could get a performance out of her. Bogdanovich is inserting himself here, for reasons that I cannot fathom.

Anthony Hopkins was another suggestion made, but any outsider not originally involved in the film that they hired to narrate would be an arbitrary choice. It seems to me that having Bogdanovich read the narration as an actual character in the film might better preserve the organic integrity of the story. But I'd be happy with either approach just as long as it gets done.

One day at lunch in Arizona, we were all sitting around, Orson, Oja, Frank Marshall and myself. Out of the blue, Orson turned to me and said, “if anything ever happens to me I want you to promise me you’ll finish the picture.” I said, “what a terrible thing to say. Why should anything happen to you?” He said, “I know, but just in case it does, I want you to promise me you’ll finish the picture.” I said, “okay, of course I will.” So when Orson died I felt it was incumbent on me to make good on my promise.

Of course, that would have been during the making of the picture when Welles and Bogdanovich were still close. One has to wonder what Welles might have said later when the two were no longer close.

[ToddBaesen]

Alan:

I couldn't agree with you more regarding the possible voice over narration. Why would you want to involve some other actor, when you could have a member of the original cast do the narration?

It's not a question of ego, as the narration only appears in the first three pages of the script (of over 140 pages), but it is a vitally important set up for the entire story we are about to see (like Kane and Othello in in flashbacks). The real point is, whoever does the narration, I think the narration itself is what is important. In other words, it must be included. But since Welles never recorded it, the question is, who will read it, or do you just simply throw it out. In my opinion, it has to be included, whoever reads it.

[mido505]

On March 12, ToddBaesen wrote in response to my first rant:

I detect a hint of understandable frustration in your post, and I think you may have misunderstood Glenn's comments in his first post above, which he wrote before he had seen the PB interview transcript. I think Glenn's first comments might have been slightly inaccurate in regards to what Bogdanovich said he may (or may not) be planning to do about the opening voice over narration.

Having now read the full interview transcript, I would say that is an understatement. I stand corrected regarding Bogdanovich wanting to turn TOSOTW into a vanity project. It is clear from the transcript that Lawrence French offered the suggestion that PB read the narration, and that PB only intends to insert himself into the mockumentary as PB, production insider, in order to clarify possible gaps in the narrative. I have no problems with this.

From Interview:

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Last March in Florida, you announced that Showtime had finally green-lit plans to finish the editing work on The Other Side of the Wind. Since that time, I’ve heard stories that Oja Kodar had some kind of reservations about actually signing the final contract.

PETER BOGDANOVICH: No, it wasn’t Oja. I don’t want to go into details, but there were some rights we still needed, but hadn’t gotten. But Showtime is still going to go forward with the project. We just have to work out of few more of the rights issues. Since then, I’ve actually seen a lot of the footage I hadn’t seen before, because we got into Oja’s vault in Los Angeles which has all the positive footage. I’d only seen about 40 minutes of the film and now I’ve seen quite a lot of new footage. These are scenes we had shot but Orson never showed them to me. I still haven’t seen everything, because there is so much stuff to look at. It’s the dailies and so on and it looks great.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: What about the vault in Paris that houses the negative?

PETER BOGDANOVICH: We’re working on that still. There’s footage in Paris that I don’t think is here, so there’s a lot of material.

I stand by the rest of my previous assertions. This project is dead in the water. Showtime has still not cleared all the rights. PB has not done any editing, has only viewed Oja's positive footage, and not all of it. PB has not got into the Paris vault that houses the negative ("We're working on that still"). No clear conception as to what form the final project will take. In short, pretty much the same mess from a year ago when Showtime gave the go ahead.

Interesting how PB qualifies nearly every statement (might, maybe, probably, possibly). Interesting that PB never states that it was Beatrice holding up the project, only that she would cause problems if TOSOTW was not done in documentary form. So who is (are) the troublemaker(s)? Interesting that Oja would not let John Huston and his son Danny finish the project (Why?). Interesting that Graver stated in interviews that he had been to the Paris vault and seen the negative, but PB and Showtime are still "working on it". Interesting, interesting, interesting.

And sad. Poor Orson, so badly served in life, and in death, by the people who love him. This is amateur hour folks, pros get things done. If it has not been done by now, more that thirty years after production ended, and more than twenty years after Orson's death, it is not going to be done at all. Not by these people. Hope may spring eternal, but it should not have to last that long.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Having seen Peter Bogdanovich recently on THE SOPRANOS and LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT, I would say he is now a better actor than director. I'm sure he will be a serviceable narrator as well. And of course Bogdanovich's participation makes perfect sense, as does Roy Scheider's narration of THE SHARK IS STILL WORKING: THE IMPACT AND LEGACY OF JAWS. Someone who was integrally involved in the production should narrate, no question.

I have expressed my grave doubts about TOSTW ever being completed, and still believe this is a hopeless undertaking. There is quite simply no commercial potential for this cinematic salvage operation. End of story.

[Mr. Bernstein]

I have to agree with Harv. But if it ever does see the light of day and is released in any way, shape or form, it undoubtedly must be as the "feature" Welles intended it to be, not some half-assed documentary about the making of "TOSOTW", as Bogdanovich suggests it'll be.

[Tony]

What I find interesting is that the two sisters are causing some major problems: Bea with the same complaint she made about calling the revamped TOE "the director's cut" and stopped the Cannes showing, i.e. if it wasn't finished by Dad, you can't say it's directed by him (have to say I'm with her on this one) and Oja stopping a master like Huston from finishing it (if the claim is true). It's kinda Lear-like...

Mido: don't be so despondent: after all, you will never get to see Welle's TOSOTW: it doesn't exist. But we can hope for a reasonable construction of his basic idea, and we can hope that a team of talented individuals will do it.

Personally, I like what PB says about the movie about the movie about the movie: the more Pomo levels involved, the happier I am!

[Glenn Anders]

Again, with all due respect, I think some of us persist in the mistaken notion that Peter Bogdanovich wants to impose a documentary style on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. It was Orson Wellles -- much as in F FOR FAKE, or for that matter, CITIZEN KANE -- who intended the film to have what is now known as "a mocumentary style," even a documentary of a mockumentary style, made clear in the very first lines of the opening narration from Welles' screenplay, which Larry French appends to his interview:

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

Opening Scene:

___________
FADE IN:

A STILL PHOTOGRAPH OF A SPORTS CAR - HIDEOUSLY TWISTED AND BROKEN - GUTTED WITH FIRE.

O.W.’s VOICE
That’s the car… What was left of it
after the accident… If it was an
accident.

-----

How else would Welles (remembering his sense of humor), or anyone else, read such a line but in a mocumentarian fashion?

Welles goes on to tell us exactly how he wants the story told:

This 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…

O.W.’s VOICE
The choice of the material is an
attempt to sketch a film likeness
of the man himself as he looked –
through all those different viewfinders…

-----

For instance, on p.6:

"Various DOCUMENTARY CAMERAMEN are following the regular movie crew [led by J.J Hannaford] out the main door of the sound stage. Also JOURNALISTS and many "STILL" PHOTOGRAPHERS."

Or on p. 16:

"The bus starts with a jerk, shaking everybody -- the girls, the midgets, and the dummies. It starts to move out of the studio . . .The bus rolls onto the freeway . . . Aboard there is yet another DOCUMENTARY CAMERA CREW, but most of the passengers are DWARVES and ZIMMER'S SUPERNUMERARY DUMMIES . . . ."

When one reads a draft of the entire script, with all its grotesque indications of intercutting, gaps intended to be filled with "current" action, sequences in the cutting room, scenes at the the party, parts of the "rough cut," events at the drive-in, the mocumentary impression becomes pretty overwhelming as an indication of the way in which Welles would have completed the picture, as it now stands (which he is said to have told Bogdanovich was essentially complete).

In the matter of Bogdanovich's intent to preserve Welles' vision, let me call attention to this partial exchange from French's interview:

LAWRENCE FRENCH: The French producer of the film, Dominique Antoine said Welles was going to use Michel Legrand to score the film.

PETER BOGDANOVICH: Maybe, but I don’t think so, because it was supposed to have a documentary feel. We’ll never really know, because Orson was such a fresh filmmaker he never put anything in stone. He always kept changing his mind and he’d re-do scenes at the last minute. So to know exactly what he would have done is impossible. All you can do is take what’s there and follow his notes and follow your instincts and do the best you can with what he left behind . . . .

-----

Once again, it seems to me, Bogdanovich is expressing care and respect for his old friend's wishes.

What Mr. Bernstein calls this "half-assed documentary about the making of 'TOSOTW'," is the form of "feature" film Welles was creating. It was J.J. "Jake" Hannaford's picture, called "The Other Side of the Wind," that he was "documenting" in every way he knew how -- as "The Newsreel" attempted (vainly) to present the significance of Charles Foster Kane's life in every media known at the time.

Welles' screenplay goes on that way to the very end. For instance, on p. 140:

"As HANNAFORD'S FILM continues on the screen [of the drive-in] we hear MAGGIE and BILLY doing their very best to explain their story board sketches to a small group of truth seekers . . . ."

It would appear that all of us groundlings are just going to have to wait another year to find out what "The Other Side of the Wind" was REALLY about.

I, too, Bernstein, am hoping for a unique "feature film" of the kind only Orson Welles could have made. On the other hand, the cynics and pessimists may be right. It may be just THIS WORLD: THEN THE FIREWORKS, a Jim Thompson story Welles was said to be working on, another unfinished project, late in his career.

We should trust not, and wish Bogdanovich well.

Glenn

[mido505]

Glenn:

Is TOSOTW script available for public consumption?

[Glenn Anders]

Dear mido505: You might want to check with Larry French. He lent me his copy. It has a Hollywood phone number on it, and an Arizona zip code. I'm sure that he will know the details.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Whether or not THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND ever gets finished, it's rather bizarre how the whole story told in the film - about Jake Hannaford trying to finish his last movie - mirrors what has happened to Welles own last movie. Of course, Welles could have never foreseen this, but it's still a bit odd how life has imitated art.

In the film Jake dies when he's 70 and leaves behind an unfinished film called "The Other Side of the Wind." Jake's movie is a puzzle to most of the people who see it, just as Welles movie has been to all the studio executives and people who see excerpts from it and think it's too weird, experimental, or unusual.

Now, cineastes all over the world are still debating the fate of Welles film. Should it be finished? What's it all about? Is it about Welles? Is it a masterpiece or a mess?

Once again, all this debate was foreseen by Welles in his screenplay!

In this fascinating excerpt from the third act of the script, all the cineastes have arrived at the drive-in theater where Jakes film is now playing on the screen. As the film is projected, we hear the voices of the different groups of cineastes over Jakes film. In footage on screen THE ACTRESS (Oja Kodar) and THE BOY (Bob Random) are shown in scenes on a studio back lot (MGM) and are being watched by the unseen presence of Old Manolito, Jake's old Gypsy friend. Then, in another "experimental" bit of brilliance, Welles shows us the storyboards from Jake's film, which are inter-cut with Jake's film itself running at the drive-in. Presumably, during all of this the various voices from two different groups of cineastes, one at the drive-in and one in the storyboard room would be overlapping and trying to explain to each other their different ideas and theories about what Jake's film is really all about...


____


THE DRIVE-IN THEATER

The last act begins (as did act two) with:

A BLANK MOVIE SCREEN

Standing lonely in the desert country, it jumps out of the darkness under the sudden swoop of headlights... Then:

HANNAFORD'S FILM IS PROJECTED ON THE SCREEN

The images paling at first under the headlights of arriving cars. There aren't too many of these (not many have been told about this emergency screening).

NOW THE FILM PROCEEDS FORMALLY AND WITHOUT INTERRUPTION...



A TITLE:


MEANWHILE
BACK AT THE RANCH...


A flashlight's beam, crossing a few remnant patches of the birthday party, has come to rest on a piece of black illustration board. Upon this, in the style of an old silent movie title, some wit has scrawled the words we've just been reading. We are, indeed, back at the ranch, and in:

THE BIG ROOM

Among the litter, an idle scattering of photographers are still idiotically photographing each other... The guests are stoned, discursive or both. Somebody snatches the illustration board from somebody else.

FIRST VOICE
Hey, who gave you that? It's part
of the story board.

SECOND VOICE
The what?

FIRST VOICE
Come on - I'll show you...


THE “STORY BOARD ROOM”

We've been in this room before - caught glimpses of the drawings on the wall during one or another of the lamp-lit conversations... The sketches are for set-ups to be photographed for HANNAFORD'S FILM. These illustrate the action...

CLOSE-SHOTS of the storyboards are INTER-CUT with the FILM itself (being shown on the screen of the drive-in theater).


JAKE
(off screen)
Listen, kid, listen. Somebody’s watching
you. There’s somebody else out there...


As HANNAFORD’S FILM continues on screen we hear MAGGIE and BILLY doing their valiant best to explain their story board sketches to a small group of truth-seekers:


HIGGAM'S VOICE
...This old man is HIDING - spying on her?

AL'S VOICE
Yes, but then she chases him, remember?

MAGGIE'S VOICE
He finally holes up in some old wreck of
a movie prop –-

PAT'S VOICE
(breaking in)
And now she's pushing all this crazy
shit around you see - trying to close
the guy in, when a whole lot more of it
collapses –

BILLY'S VOICE
That's being worked out.

PAT'S VOICE
So now this character is trapped -–

AL'S VOICE
But then we hear his voice –

HIGGAM'S VOICE
The singing?

PAT'S VOICE
Old Manolito - Jake always tries to get
him a job.

BILLY
(on camera)
But he won't PLAY the part –

MAGGIE
(on camera)
It won't be any midget, either.

PISTER
(the intelligent truth-seeker)
But who IS he?

MAGGIE
See the movie...


Back to THE FILM as it continues on the DRIVE-IN theater screen. From a tape-recorder comes an unaccompanied Flamenco lament, as the VOICES continue off-screen:


PISTER
What does he REPRESENT?

PAT
Aw, just some screwy old squatter
out there in the back-lot of a studio -–

DELLA
But what's he doing in the STORY -?

MAGGIE
You'll have to ask Mr. Hannaford.

JACQUELINE
But will he tell us?

Silence...

As THE FILM continues at the DRIVE-IN Theater we see:

THE ACTRESS – she appears on the screen alone...


JACQUELINE'S VOICE
How about asking HER?

PISTER'S VOICE
(under his breath)
What if... he's Hannaford himself?

BILLY'S VOICE
Don't be nuts.


HANNAFORD'S FILM continues...

INTER-CUT: THE FILM AND THE VARIOUS GROUPS WATCHING IT.
The groups of guest are now mostly at:

THE DRIVE-IN THEATER

HANNAFORD’S FILM shows a hurricane force windstorm raging on the studio back-lot, growing in intensity, until it knocks over several of the standing sets. The tiny figure of JOHN DALE is seen braving his way through the ferocious wind...

Sometimes we can see the people who are talking, but mostly they are voices over THE FILM itself...


HIGGAM'S VOICE
Let's back up a little - The wind
it's blowing the old movie sets to
pieces...

DANNY'S VOICE
The whole world maybe...

KLEE'S VOICE
(over-lap)
It's just a wrecking job, there were
machines –-

ROGER'S VOICE
And what about that blood on her...


KLEE'S VOICE
Blood?

OSSIE'S VOICE
Her BODY –

BLACK CINEASTE'S VOICE
Whatever we're supposed to think, there's
death in it...

THE BARON'S VOICE
My dear fellow...

BLACK CINEASTE'S VOICE
Man, that's all it is - death; it's
just purely what he's all about –-


CUT TO:


A GROUP gathered around the BLACK CINEASTE'S car...

[The Night Man]

Poor Orson, so badly served in life, and in death, by the people who love him. This is amateur hour folks, pros get things done. If it has not been done by now, more that thirty years after production ended, and more than twenty years after Orson's death, it is not going to be done at all. Not by these people. Hope may spring eternal, but it should not have to last that long.

We had to wait even longer - 50 years - to get anything from It's All True, but it did eventually happen. 30 years for the release of a Welles film doesn't sound like reason for pessimism to me; at this point it sounds like par for the course!

You're right about this, Mido: that the problem here is the involvement of amateurs. The amateurs in this case, though, are Oja and Beatrice and the Bousheris. They are the reason this has dragged on for so long, not PB. We even have new evidence of that - Oja turning down Huston's offer to finish the film.

I'm prepared to give Bogdanovich the benefit of the doubt that he's sincere about finishing TOSOTW, but it can't be easy - getting everyone to agree on this project must be like trying to herd cats. If he can pull it off, it'll be a feat worthy of celebration.

We should trust not, and wish Bogdanovich well.

There's the best advice yet. Thank you, Glenn.

[mido505]

Should I be proven wrong, as I hope I am, I will gladly shave my head in penance, and fly out to San Francisco, where Glenn can place me in stocks outside the Ha-Ra Club, and Todd can pelt me with ice cubes from his Carl Kickery Gimlet.

[Glenn Anders]

Then, you merry band, let us be well met in Frisco, a year from now, for you have given the greatest hope of all, mido! But surely, if THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND is worth a tenth of the words here devoted to it, we shall all have a few celebratory Carl Kickery Gimlets at the venerable Ha-Ra Club. You can save your beauteous flowing locks. Perhaps, then repair to The Sausage Factory, where the owner may provide us with carafes of wine with our pasta, as he did the night Larry French so magnificently interviewed the dedicated Bogdanovich.

To THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND!

Dead or alive. Hopefully, alive!

A year and a day, or so, from this evening.

----- Just don't let Baesen get into the gin too early . . . .

Glenn

[Alan Brody]

Whether or not THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND ever gets finished, it's rather bizarre how the whole story told in the film - about Jake Hannaford trying to finish his last movie - mirrors what has happened to Welles own last movie. Of course, Welles could have never foreseen this, but it's still a bit odd how life has imitated art.

In the film Jake dies when he's 70 and leaves behind an unfinished film called "The Other Side of the Wind." Jake's movie is a puzzle to most of the people who see it, just as Welles movie has been to all the studio executives and people who see excerpts from it and think it's too weird, experimental, or unusual.

Now, cineastes all over the world are still debating the fate of Welles film. Should it be finished? What's it all about? Is it about Welles? Is it a masterpiece or a mess?

Once again, all this debate was foreseen by Welles in his screenplay!

Another thing that's strange is how the Hannaford/Otterlake characters mirror Welles and Bogdanovich in real life. I remember hearing an anecdote about how Welles and Bogdanovich were going to some big public event in the early 70's when Bogdanovich was hot, but Welles didn't think they should go together, since so many people in Hollywood hated them already. It seems that many people at the time really did think of them as a kind of George Amberson Minafer Jr. and Sr.. It's like the whole movie is some sort of crazy distorted funhouse mirror reflecting Welles's own attempted return to Hollywood. That drive-in scene above, for example, seems to be satirizing both film buffs and those sycophantic hangers-on that surround great artists like Welles. In fact, I wonder what Welles would have thought of this discussion we're having now?

It's hard to imagine why Oja didn't want Huston to try and finish the film. I agree that was a big mistake.