TOUCH OF EVIL memo - Need help transribing it

[ToddBaesen]

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I'm just finishing up a transcription of Welles' entire memo on TOUCH OF EVIL, although I haven't transcribed the excepts that were already published in FILM QUARTERLY (and later in the paperback version of THIS IS ORSON WELLES), but now think it would make sense to transcribe that as well, so the whole memo can be easily read from beginning to end in one place.

Would anyone be interested in helping transcribe the portion of the memo that was already published in FILM QUARTERLY and THIS IS ORSON WELLES? Then, we could combine the text of the whole memo, and post it on the Wellesnet site - (I'm assuming Jeff would be happy to post it).

Anyone willing to help, and who might need a copy of the memo excerpts from FILM QUARTERLY, e-mail me at: toddbaesen@juno.com


Here's a preview of the first two pages

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DATE: December 5, 1957


TO: Edward I. Muhl, Vice-President in charge of production
Universal-International Pictures


FROM: Orson Welles, writer and director of TOUCH OF EVIL.





I much regret that a business meeting Friday and illness Monday prevented me from seeing the picture until Tuesday. Work on the following notes was commenced as soon afterwards as I could obtain help in the typing.

Unhappily, my illness has slowed me up somewhat, and an unexpected shortage in secretarial help finds me, at the end of a long day, without a fair copy of the remainder of these notes to put into your hands. I shall go on working through the night, however, and with typists getting an early start tomorrow, it's safe to promise you the complete memo sometime before the end of the morning.



# # # # #



I assume that the music now backing the opening sequence of the picture is temporary...

As the camera roves through the streets of the Mexican bordertown, the plan was to feature a succession of different and contrasting Latin American musical numbers - the effect, that is, of our passing one cabaret orchestra after another. In honky-tonk districts on the border, loudspeakers are over the entrance of every joint, large or small, each blasting out it's own tune by way of a "come-on" or "pitch" for the tourists. The fact that the streets are invariably loud with this music was planned as a basic device throughout the entire picture. The special use of contrasting "mambo-type" rhythm numbers with rock 'n' roll will be developed in some detail at the end of this memo, when I'll take up details of the "beat" and also specifics of musical color and instrumentation on a scene-by-scene and transition-by-transition basis.

In the version I was shown yesterday, it's not clear where you have decided to place the credits. A brief report on this will determine whether or not my old ideas for sound and music patterns in this opening reel are still of some potential value. Since a clear description of this original plan will occupy some space and take a little more time to put together, I'll postpone this pending your reply.

The moment when Vargas says to Susan, "Don't be morbid..." is an unpleasant one and creates a harmful impression. (In an earlier memo, I made a strong point of this.)

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In Welles script the scene goes as follows:


MIKE: Susie, don't you come any closer... it's bound to be messy... We'll have to postpone the soda, I'm afraid...

Susan: Why? Can't I come and see, too?

Mike: Darling, don't be morbid.

Susan: Well, what are you being, for golly's sake? Anyway, it happened over here on the American side -- so --

Mike: So it's none of my business?

Susan: That's sort of what I mean, I guess.








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[jaime marzol]

..............

i applaud wildly, "More! More!"


welles wrote that 58-Page detailed memo on the problems with their editing, on one viewing of the film, and wrote it months after the viewing.

[Jeff Wilson]

A great idea, Todd, and thanks for posting the excerpt. I've just today been sent a file with the full memo that I will duly be posting to Wellesnet as soon as I can.



Edited By Jeff Wilson on Sep. 15 2002 at 22:04

[Jeff Wilson]

The finished product is now posted. Enjoy reading it, all. It's quite long, and continues onto a second page, for which there is a link at the end.

The Memo

[jaime marzol]

Bravo, i applaud some more.

i dissagree with one thing that is said over and over, and lawrence french just said it, "the world can finally see it as orson welles intended it."

'Buzzer sound.'

The film in any form available is not even a small fraction of what welles intended. what the restoration did was fine, with what is available, but what is needed to restore it as welles intended, is all the footage shot, and welles in the editing room for 2 or 3, or 6 more months. that is not what the restoration is. they had nothing to work with but what was on the screen. the takes of the film that some hack at universal decided to use. you can see where the estate gets pissed. they ruin the film, 40 years later they tinker around with what has survived, and try to present it to the public as 'how orson welles intended.' and it's not. they need to find a different way to present the restoration and not make it sound like a resurection.

[ToddBaesen]

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Great work Jeff - I'm happy somebody has finally posted the entire memo!! But beware -- Beatrice Welles claims to own the memo (which her father sent to the head of Universal - so how she could own it, I really don't understand), but she may be asking you to send her royalties, shortly.

Intersting notes to go with it, and I agree with you, Jaime, that the re-edit is certainly not the film Welles would have delivered had he been allowed to finish it. But Lawrence French apparently was refering to the film Welles intended Universal would release, if they made all the changes he asked for in his memo. As French states, "Of course, no one can say for certain, just how Welles would have edited his movie, but as can be seen in reading Welles' long memo of detailed editing instructions, producer Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter Murch have come up with the closest approximation that we're ever likely to get."

Obviously, Welles knew he would never get back on the Universal lot (From which he had been barred) and the memo was designed to perserve a minimum of the changes Welles felt were needed to make the film resemble his original vision of the movie. In the memo, Welles noted that the final film would be Universal's movie, but he hoped to keep them from wrecking it too badly - which is of course what they ultimately did.

The memo also sheds light on earlier versions of scenes Welles had put together, but then abandoned. An earlier cut of the film would have ended with Vargas and Susan driving off together, instead of Tanya walking away into the darkness.



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[Harvey Chartrand]

All this talk of Welles' memo and how he would have edited ToE and how it'll never come close to his vision brings to mind the sentiments so beautifully expressed by private dick Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. Here they are, applied to this particular situation.

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What did it matter where your film lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a black tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Universal's cut or Murch's cut, they were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell or how they butchered your film. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Virgil Vogel ever was. But the old Wellesboard correspondent didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Orson Welles, would be sleeping the big sleep.

[Jeff Wilson]

Very nice, Harvey. Speaking of Murch, though, there's a new book out, the style of Cameron Crowe and Billy Wilder's interview book, with Murch and author Michael Ondaatje (of English Patient fame) about the art of editing. It does include a few pages on Touch of Evil, as well as covering Murch's work in such classics as The Conversation and more. A bit pricy in the States, as it's only available in hardcover, but Canada has a paperback version available.

[jaime marzol]

....................

that is chandler'ss writing? i like that. never read any chandler. have seen plenty but never read him. can any one recomend a chandler tittle?

houseman's book on THE BLUE DAHLIA, which is basically just a set-up chapter, and the screenplaay, written by chandler, is excellent. the screenplay is fine, but the real attraction is houseman's experiences with chandler while writing it.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

i dissagree with one thing that is said over and over, and lawrence french just said it, "the world can finally see it as orson welles intended it."

'Buzzer sound.

what a great statement. got right to the point too.

bye now!