Welles quote - context?

[Jaime N. Christley]

"Film is a shallow art form."

Can anyone correctly attribute this to Welles, and if so, can you also provide the context? Knowing his thought process, I'm assuming the quote means something quite apart from a strange, negative comment on the medium.

[jaime marzol]

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welles' opinions seemed to sway with the wind, with his moods, or depending on who he was speaking with, or to. but i never heard that quote.

if he did say it, figuring out the context might be possible if you can figure out who he said it to, and if you could figure out in the weeks before he said it, what he had read that upset him, and had happened to him personally, and professionally.

bogdanovich tells a story that i'm sure most here have read, that he saw welles in a tv interview and welles said some crappy stuff about him. PB wrote welles and said that he didn't feel a friend would say the things welles said. welles wrote PB an apology letter telling him he was absolutely right, but before he could mail it he wrote another letter where he said he didn't feel like he needed to apologize, that PB should be able to take a little good natured kidding. welles stuck both letters in the envelope and mailed them to PB. what does that tell you about welles' opinions?

answering this post, i don't know why, just made me feel like watching F-For-Fake. maybe the answer lies there!

[Jeff Wilson]

I don't personally recall reading that exact quote, but as Jaime M says, Welles would state diametrically opposed points in two different interviews. I try not to take too many such pronunciations of his at face value. The "shallow art" quote sounds like the sort of thing he would have said to the Cahiers de Cinema types, to piss them off.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Welles once said that the film actor was more important than the director. [So a John Ford western was great not because of Ford, but because of its star John Wayne.] There again, Welles was courting controversy, looking for a rousing discussion with the interviewer.

[Welles Fan]

I have an old Playboy interview somewhere with Welles. I think it was around 1967-1968. I don't remember if that exact quote is in it, but I remember him saying something like "Film is not art, but it has the pretensions of art".

Isn't there a recent collection of OW interviews that includes the Playboy one? In any case, I will scrounge around for that issue.

BTW-that was an issue I really did buy for the interview!

[jaime marzol]

welles fan, you have me laughing: by the way, i bought the issue for the interview. i love it. i have that issue also.


to leslie megahey welles said the director's job is the only easy job going.

jeff's post is very funny; "to piss off one of those cahiers types." yeap, he said that in a cashiers interviewer; the importance of the director comes from you people like you, or something to that effect.

welles also said to bogdanovich: "you have no idea what i feel when i hear a negative comment about my work from some one i like, or respect." in the orson welles story when megahey tells welles he finds othello confusing, those that have some sense of psychology, can see it hit welles like a broadside. he quickly recovers and AGREES with megahey!

another time bogdanovich asked him about an interview where he said he did not like his macbeth, welles replied that the person interviewing him did not like macbeth and the quickest way to get the guy on his side was to agree with him.

welles was a man that had lost so much, had the carpet yanked out from under him so many times that i'm sure it did not matter to him what he stated in print as long as it didn't cost him something later.

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ADDITIONAL CRAPOLLA ON THAT WELLES ISSUE OF PLAYBOY:
i'm watching the nicholson/devito HOFFA, a pretty darn good movie. i'm seeing all these CITIZEN KANE shots, so i'm really enjoying it. in the overhead shot when hoffa is in the jail cell, it's that Playboy issue with the welles interview that is on hoffa's cot. to me it was like a little flag put there for the hardcore welles fans.

at a shoot about a year ago i met a guy that worked on HOFFA (i know he wasn't bs-ing because i looked it up on imdb, and he was there). i told him about the KANE stuff, and the playboy issue, asked if he knew anything about it. he said he didn't, but the KANE look could most likely can be attributed to the cinematographer, because while he was on the set, devitto only directed the actors, he never interfered with the cinematographer.

i need to find the HOFFA dvd to watch it in lbx, i love the mob stuff, and armand asante was great in it. ever since the hbo GOTTI movie i've been an asante fan.
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