The long, long trailer - F for Fake

[jaime marzol]

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but jaime c, first of all, i agree with everything you said about me.

i was not refering to what jardin said about the trailer, if you scroll up a bit you will see that i am not a fan of the 9 minute trailer either. i called jardin prissy because of this:

"Furthermore, Gary Graver shamelessly pads this superficial study with a series of innocuous screen tests as well as a full-length trailer for Citizen Kane"

he calls the documentary a superficial study. he says 'innocuous screen tests.' do we need to see a pair of welles' huge BVDs so it's not superficial? AMERICAN MASTERS documentaries, and THE GODFATHER dvd set have screen tests, and slates all over it. is that shameless padding?

these welles projects have such little commercial interest, unless you are writing sensationalist stuff. so when some smarmy critic kicks it around a well meaning project, it angers me.

one that takes up a welles project, it's not for the money. i didn't know just how little commercial interest a welles project had till last week. i had a visit from a writer now working on a welles bio. he is a known writer. i got 17 hits on his name in amazon. a writer like me writes the book first, then tries to sell it. he writes a proposal for a book, then shops it around. meaning he's proven, he has a track record. he said he was shocked at how uninterested publishers are in a welles project. he was almost going to give up on it when he finally got a publisher.

so when something on welles comes out, something well meaning, not a higham, callow, or thomson, i feel protective over it. it's like kicking a family member. those comments by jardin seem to me very nasty. and after reading those 2 or 3 sentences from his review i don't think i need to read the rest of it. it's obvious where it's going. in fact, judging from that jardin quote, i think he fits what you said about me:

"the Jaime Marzol I've observed is generally given to making nasty, cutting remarks that aren't defensible"

i also like the bowery boys. i have this 2 hr documentary, looks home made, but it's well researched, has inteviews, a really nice thing to have. and on one of the sites i saw some writer doing a bio, slam it as that 'god awfull piece on the boys.' i think he expected 3-d effects, fancy lighting, a real glossy thing. and gloss i think would tarnish the charm it has.

[jaime marzol]

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just out of curiosity, i wonder what jardin wrote about the callow, and thomson books?

some critics are just not intune with just what it takes to get out a project no one is interested in, and they don't give it the respect it should get.

but that is just my opinion.

[ChristopherBanks]

This reminds me of something a friend of mine said after seeing some clips of a movie I was working on that he absolutely hated.

He said, "Just because Richard (the director) has made a movie, doesn't mean the world has to watch it."

That was his answer to being told that the film was being made for $0 and that he should appreciate the effort that was being put in by scores of unpaid crew and cast.

It's kinda the same with this, isn't it?

[jaime marzol]

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chris, not even close. how could you compare your home made film to a welles documentary. your friend that looked at 'richard's' film and thought it sucked, might be right on the money.

welles was a beleagured genius that directed masterpieces. the few that believe in what he did find it an uphill struggle to get his work out.

chris, ever hear the welles/bogdanovich tapes? wonderful as they are, you know why part 2 never came out? smarmy critics kicked it around. they complained about the sound, they complained about the background noise, they complained about the ambersons part being hard to hear, one critic complained about hearing a siren in the b.g., never giving an inch that welles and pb were in a mexican restaurant when they recorded it. bitch, bitch, bitch. i read 2 good reviews that knew what to appreciate in the tapes, and wrote on that. the rest were obssessed with finding the brown spots in the cloud, because they did not know what to appreciate in it.

need we be reminded that the more welles work that comes out, and is not kicked around by smarmy critics that use it as a springboard for their rhetoric, the better chance that it will sell, the better chance that some day an investor might see fit to battle the estate and get OSOTW put together.

i do feel that jardin was needlessly snappy, and vicious on the graver documentary. perhaps the ghost of pauline kael was looming over his head while he was pecking at the keys. had graver's thing sold, we might have graver part 2 to add to the collection. but we don't.

should all critics feel the way i do about these projects? of course not. but i can't help the way i feel. my view is not the popular view, but marching with the crowd has never been my bag.

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[Jeff Wilson]

had graver's thing sold, we might have graver part 2 to add to the collection. but we don't.

That's the only key here. Not what critics say, because people ignore them most of the time anyway. If the Welles/PB tapes had sold more when they came out, we'd have more of them, regardless of what critics said. Critics could sing Welles' praises to the heavens, and he still wouldn't sell. Citizen Kane did very well on DVD, but we don't have significantly more unreleased titles of his coming out, do we? No, because the public at large doesn't care about his work. They never will. It is not appealing to the masses, which is hardly news.

As for Graver's documentary, I daresay Graver could do another one if he wanted; stitching together interview footage and Welles footage he already had access to hardly seems likely to break the bank. The fact is, Graver's film was about stuff that only hardcore cinephiles may care about, and it wasn't going to sell.

[jaime marzol]

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and graver's thing didn't sell. he needed that vasili guy (the guy with the funny accent, and funny tie at the end of graver's documentary) for the money to make the first one. it got slammed, and didn't sell. vasilli was probably not anxious to lay out more bucks to make another. had it had possitive reviews, and not sold well, vasilli might have taken another stab at it. but it got 2 thumbs down.

the public today, as in julius caesar, is swayed by what it's told and shown. that is where hype originated. that is why hulk hogan is selling long distance service with alf. if critics knew to appreciate certain products, and wrote about them in a positive light, maybe the public would also appreciate things it might not ordnarilly look at, we would have darker products with more distinguished releases. better prints, more supplements.

when some critic gets on his desk a video of a newly released classic, like the silent WIZARD OF OZZ, they do jourmalistic crit, they are as low down the ladder as a wedding photographer is to photography. this critic knows nothing but mall movies. he sees this poor film, and is suddenly empowered, and smirking at how brilliant he can sound cutting this work to shreds. oooh, the bitting sarcasm he can use on this work will be a hoot! we all know this happens because we have all seen this. and if he's not cutting to shreds something showing that is showing at the theater, it's no problem for the critic to get his cutting, bitting, snippy piece of writting past his publisher.

welles never sold. but who knows, the graver thing might have touched a nerve had it been presented in the proper light. no one can say for sure because it was not presented in the proper light, is was kicked around viciously.

welles felt there were too many critics, not enough artists, i feel the same way.

but this is all pointless chasing around the tree because it's an imperfect world, and we are just wasting our time and passion trying to fix it here at wellesnet.

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[ChristopherBanks]

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chris, not even close. how could you compare your home made film to a welles documentary. your friend that looked at 'richard's' film and thought it sucked, might be right on the money.

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It wasn't a home-made film, actually, most films in this country are made for $0 (relatively) compared to the US. This picture ran the festival circuit here and had very well-known local actors in it. I'm sure the hundreds of people who turned out to the see the film across the country would disagree with my friend, but that wasn't my point.

My point was that you can't make people care. I remember one of the James Bond people complaining about critics slagging off the movies, saying that they don't realise just how much effort goes into those films. (And please, no comments about James Bond movies being crap, because that isn't the point either)

Look at all the effort that went into restoring "Touch of Evil", only for fans to complain about the aspect ratio and the milky tones.

People aren't hanging on Welles' every word, unfortunately, because he is a cult hero. The fact that the public are constantly told that he made "the greatest movie of all time" doesn't exactly help, either. Any potential casual fan of Welles has that burden to overcome before they can be interested in anything he's done.

[jaime marzol]

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of course you can't make people care, and give projects the respect they deserve, unless you have a gun.

and the bitch on the TOE restoration was not off base. you get a pair of well meaning guys like schmidlin, and murch to give it their all, they do it, they give the film back to the company, and the conglomerates sodomised it AGAIN!

once the framing is set for a film, come hell or high water, or radom black stripes across the top and bottom of the screen, that is where it will stay. i wonder why that is.

mca/universal i have no problem slagging. it's the little guys like graver that i have a problem with.

[Mr Clay]

The long F for Fake trailer was shown by the BBC when they broadcast One Man Band in 1996, in colour, with sound. It was fantastic; no good as a cinematic trailer of course, but a breathtaking piece of off-the-cuff movie-making - a quick sketch artist by a genius at the movieola.
If any DVD of F for Fake is ever released it really should be included.
And has anyone seen the actual BBC documentary which inspired Welles to start making the movie?