Orson's last performance, DVD this year

[purplepines]

Someone To Love (1987) is out on DVD from Paramount the fourth quarter of this year, director Henry Jaglom's people tell me.

[Glenn Anders]

Excellent, purplepines.

SOMEONE TO LOVE contains as close as one could imagine to "famous last words" from Welles.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

I've always loved Welles performance in Someone To Love, if it could even be called a performance. It's more like a series of brilliant observations. But Welles answers to Jaglom's sometimes annoying and idiotic questions were worth sitting throught the first half of the movie just to see Welles final performance.

I especially liked Welles observation about slavery. It's astonishing to me that in the last 2006 years since the birth of Jesus Christ, it's only been 150 years or so since slavery has been abolished in this country, a brilliant observation from Welles in his role in the film.

[maxrael]

worth sitting throught the first half of the movie just to see Welles final performance.

and with it on DVD, we'll be able to skip more easily past all the fluff...

[Harvey Chartrand]

Edward G. Robinson goes out with a great death scene in SOYLENT GREEN.
Boris Karloff's swan song is a star turn as Byron Orlok in Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS. (I am deliberately ignoring the four Mexican films Karloff made after that.)
Just before his death, the elderly Vincent Price delivers fine performances in Lindsay Anderson's THE WHALES OF AUGUST and in Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS.
Orson Welles winds up in Henry Jaglom's turkey/vanity production SOMEONE TO LOVE.
It's just not fair...
That Brazilian witch doctor's curse was still in effect, I suppose...

[Glenn Anders]

Gang: I have to disagree.

Henry Jaglom is, after all, a creation of Orson Welles.

They encouraged each other.

Welles appeared in Jaglom's first film, and Welles made his last appearance in a Jaglom picture.

Jaglom followed Welles' advice. He avoided studio entanglements. He formed his own stock company of friends and lovers. After financing that first film, A SAFE PLACE, using Welles' name and influence (and someone has said a Wellsian family inheritance), he worked out a finance plan whereby each succeeding film was paid for from the modest profits of the last one. Exactly the kind of plan Welles no doubt always dreamed of carrying out.

Jaglom's films, like those of Welles were more successful in Europe than in America. As time went on, Jaglom wrote, produced, directed, often acted in his own films. He encouraged up and coming talent like Jack Nicholson, as well as giving work to bad goods like Welles or Dennis Hopper, and a series of Oja Kodar-like beauties such as Tuesday Weld, Karen Black, Taryn Power, Patrice Townsend, Andrea Marcovicci and Oja Kodar herself.

He worked through his themes: Love, women, war, corruption, consumerism, reputation, marriage, divorce, and film making.

Most of all, he made the kind of film Welles was always working toward, the personal documentary. But like Welles, though he has stayed within certain genres, he has seldom repeated himself.

Henry Jaglom has been what we believe Welles to have been, an independent artist. As such, he has committed the unforgivable sins in America of making some bad choices and failing occasionally. He has made films about his own personal concerns and obsessions which, as for all of us, have changed as he has matured, or at least, grown older. But that is what an artist does. Otherwise, he becomes M. Night Shyamalan, a franchise, a safe money maker, repeating the same film over and over again.

None of Jaglom's pictures are CITIZEN KANE or F FOR FAKE, but A SAFE PLACE, TRACKS, SITTING DUCKS, ALWAYS, EATING, LAST SUMMER IN THE HAMPTONS, and FESTIVAL IN CANNES are significant films in their small, different ways. And he was perceptive enough to give Welles the "final cut" one last time in SOMEONE TO LOVE.

Jaglom has been making his own films for thirty-five years, and at age sixty-five, he has two new ones in post production. Welles would have been proud of him.

Glenn

[tonyw]

I very much support what Glenn has said. Although I've seen relatively few of Jaglom's fiilms, the spirit of independence which Jonathan Rosenbaum sees as a very fundamental part of Welles's creative personality, exists in these films.

These are exciting times, especially with the announcement of the non-diailogue showing of MACBETH in Los Angeles which should focus audience attention on its dramatic visual style.

[mteal]

Most of the Henry Jaglom films I've seen have been pretty forgettable, but SOMEONE TO LOVE was entertaining enough, and I think Jaglom deserves alot of credit for giving Welles one last chance to pontificate onscreen in his own words, even if it was mainly about Women's Lib. How many other filmmakers would have been willing or able to do that?

Now, about this wierd notion of showing MACBETH without dialogue, as if it was FOUR MEN ON A RAFT. Welles's voice was the glue that held all of his movies together, and eliminating that sounds almost as wacky as colorization. Let's just hope they don't decide to hire Philip Glass to gloss over Ibert's score.

[Glenn Anders]

OKAY-Y-Y-Y!!!!

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

I find it quite sad to see that some people have watched Jean Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST for the first time - their primal experience of this masterful film - with P. Glass's score. Whether Glass's score is good or bad seems to be immaterial here. The point is, can anyone imagine replacing Herrmann's score to KANE with a composition by Glass?

Well, obviously they could and would, as the RKO executives did to Welles second film, when they replaced mr. Herrmann's music on AMBERSON'S with that of RKO's resident composer, Roy Webb.

So I lament all the unfortunate people who watched BEAUTY AND THE BEAST with Glass's score before seeing it as Cocteau intended to be seen.

They'll never have a chance to realize what they where missing, since what Cocteau intended was certainly not present when the film was "updated" for a moderne audience.

And, quite obviously, when B & B is heard with the Glass score (which I personally found to be quite absurd) instead of Georges Auric's beautifully themes, it might seem to a first time viewer to actually be acceptable. Just as a viewer who had never seen Hitchcock's PSYCHO might find Gus Van Sant's re-make to be a wonderful film.

[mteal]

I find it quite sad to see that some people have watched Jean Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST for the first time - their primal experience of this masterful film - with P. Glass's score. Whether Glass's score is good or bad seems to be immaterial here. The point is, can anyone imagine replacing Herrmann's score to KANE with a composition by Glass?

You're absolutely right, Todd. Can you imagine those that will experience Welles's MACBETH for the first time without dialogue?

I've never seen BEAUTY AND THE BEAST with the Glass score, but I did see the Bela Lugosi DRACULA with Glass's work plastered over it, and absurd was the word for it. Nothing against Glass per se, either. I enjoyed his work on the four Reggio films, and have seen him perform live twice. He's an admirable artist that occasionally just has goofy ideas that don't work, not for me anyway. I think films should be seen as their filmmakers intended for them to be seen, especially when experiencing them for the first time, as you said. George Auric was a first-rate composer whose score for Cocteau's BEAUTY captured the mood perfectly because he was working WITH Cocteau. He also later did a good score for HG Clouzot's fascinating film THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO, which ironically IS a film that might actually work OK with a score by someone else (not that I would recommend that), since there is almost no dialogue in it- it's basically just Picasso at work. Here's another irony: the four Reggio films might work well with music by someone else too- to give Glass a taste of his own medicine.

[mteal]

Can you imagine those that will experience Welles's MACBETH for the first time without dialogue?

Then again, after reading L. French's interview with Robert Gitt, I suppose watching MACBETH without dialogue would not be much different from watching any other work-in-progress. Hopefully, people will take it that way. Anyway, it sounds like an exciting restoration that they're doing.

[Roger Ryan]

I would say the idea of "Macbeth" minus the dialogue sounds like a good DVD extra! Much in the same way the "Toy Story" DVD allows you to watch the film with just a sound effects track or the Looney Tune DVDs give you the option of watching select cartoons with just Carl Stalling's score, this version of "Macbeth" would highlight the sound effects and music score in addition to allowing the viewer to focus more on the visuals.

Very few of Welles' films could even be presented this way since the locked-in finished mono soundtracks are all that exist. I agree, however, that like a "DVD extra", the alternative "Macbeth" is something you'd want to experience after seeing the movie proper.

[The Night Man]

Personally, I am very much interested in being able to focus on Ibert's complete MACBETH score, which does not exist outside of the film's soundtrack. This screening will provide an opportunity (perhaps the only opportunity I will ever have) to hear the music without the dialogue.

This really is a unique opportunity, and one for which I am most grateful! Bouquets, not brickbats, from this corner.

[Jeff Wilson]

I've watched a review copy of the DVD of SOMEONE TO LOVE, which comes out next week. I found the movie to be largely insufferable baby boomer navel-gazing, with bits of Welles interspersed throughout until his final appearance at the end. Of mild interest to Welles fans will be the commentary track with Jaglom and Andrea Marcovicci, which features a few stories about Welles amidst some casual chatting about the movie.