Welles and Houseman: an unbeatable quartet?

[jaime marzol]

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i should have clarified what i said. KANE's narrative in it's day was pretty revolutionary. it's not to us. we have seen that story, probably inspired by KANE, in dozens of movies. what we admire today in KANE is the way that the director told the story cinematically. it's the most perfect marriage of style, form, and narrative so far.

i don't know what to think about welles' writing. he did write AMBERSONS alone. i'm convinced, after seeing AMBERSONS hacked together with storyboards, that welles' version, the version that is in the continuity book, is one of the most moving films i have ever seen. then i read an article he wrote, and it's terrible.

naturally, all movies have to have a story, and the story in KANE is great. i don't think the story in TOUCH OF EVIL really is anything special. heston compared it to a 2 hr episode of MANNIX (one N or 2?).

who knows with welles. if he had a terrific screenplay from a terrific writer to work from, he might have destroyed. like obssessed says, he was never able to leave anything alone, always tinkering. then he takes a limp story, and a limp screenplay, and turns it into the masterpiece TOUCH OF EVIL IS.

i don't know how much of LADY FRAM SHANGHAI comes from the source, but it's a good screenplay, quite good. better than TOUCH OF EVIL i think.

and hey, what is this, knocking MR. ARKADIN? i think it's a great film in it's 3 trucated forms. i even like the radio show with that zither music put in when the listener needs to imagine action.

in the writing department he was hot and cold, in the directing department he was always hot.

TONY:
you say you have a copy of the TOUCH OF EVIL screenplay? i have 8 welles screenplays, as well as a rare, early draft of TOUCH. if the screenplay you have has the deitrich scenes in it, i need that copy. my copy was written before deitrich, and weaver were onboard. i've ordered the commercially available screenplay twice and it has yet to arrive. would you like to trade copies?

cinema_vortex@yahoo.com

[Jeff Wilson]

I'm not going to get into a point by point discussion of Welles' screenplays, but I see just as much skill needed to adapt a pre-existing source as there is in coming up with an original screenplay. We've all seen enough poor translations of book into film to know that it takes real talent to do it well. What difference does it make that Welles made films mainly based from novels/plays/etc anyway? Kubrick did the same thing. It's all in what the author brings to the material. Welles could have used the original ending to Ambersons and been laughed off the screen. Instead, he came up with his own overall vision of the novel and created something vastly superior to the original work, in my opinion.

[jaime marzol]

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absolutely. in STORIES FROM A LIFE IN FILMS, he says he has no reverence for the original material, it's part of the colaboration. i think what distiction any of these works have on the screen is in small part from the writer, a huge part from the director.

i think all films begin and end with the director. lousy novels have been made into good films, great novels have been made into lousy films.

in welles' case, i don't think he would be as known today if he didn't function well in the writing department. regardless of how that goal was reached. during radio, he had grunts do what he considered the foundation then he took over. which is also how he used novels.

didn't hitch work like this? a grunt would labor writing a foundation, then hitch would come in and make it a hitch project?

i've never read AMBERSONS, but i have read how it ends. tarkington might have been a great word-smith, but seeing the original ending on the screen would be real hokey; a medium, cotten, and a crystal ball! welles ending is dynamic to the rest of the film.

this has been an interesting discussion, but if it's going to get heated i'm bailing out.

[Tony]

Jaime:
I don't think the discussion's getting heated, I think it's going real well! I think it's a good one because it centers on the main perceived weakness of Welles- his inability to get movies started and/or finished. Of course, this debate has been going on since Higham's 1970 book on Welles, Kaels "Raising Kane" and Bogdanovich's "Rough sledding with Pauline Kael" in 72. I think it's fascinating to continue the debate as new info comes out year after year... and good debates are what make a message board interesting, IMO. I hope I haven't said anything that was interpreted as aggressive, cos that's not my meaning... I'm just excited to be talking about Welles!

Jeff:
Again you've made an excellent point: it takes a great talent to adapt, and Welles was often one hell of an adapter!! But the old question remains: why didn't he make more movies? My guess is that it was a combination of many factors, some external and some intregal to his personality; it certainly is one of the great mysteries of cinema; I've got a whole other scenario based on Olga Palinkas, but that's another thread!

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

i still say he didn't do more movies for one certain reason. after he DID finish them, scissors would be provided.

i mean, can't you picture orson:

finished with shanghai, or another, ....being told by the editors "we're gonna take out this part and this part, etc"

afterwards, the movie, apparently sucking because of those cuts. because later the cuts were reinserted, when owned by others.

orson thinking "so, this is what they want to do with my movies!? ok. fine. i won't make anymore, and take my own sweet time with the ones i'm working on"

if i were in his shoes, i'd do it the same way.

bye now!

[jaime marzol]

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i don't think welles was unable to finish films. i think because of his personality flaws, he was prevented from finishing films. look at howard hughes' filmmaking history. howard had the dough to sock away THE OUTLAW for a few years, till the time was right to release it. had welles had those resources, i don't doubt that cinema would be much more advanced than it is.

undiniable is that welles is one of the four pantheon directors, along with ford, hawks, and hitch. and welles reached the pantheon of a commercial medium, with 13 films, and 12 of then lost money on release! that is an incredible accomplishment. i think once that concept is grasped, not only does welles surpass the other 3 directors, but the unfinished films should be considered treasures.

the greatest thing that happened to movies, 'welles', came and went, and because of the business end, the einstein of cinema had no lab to work in. the greatest craftsman ever, had no tools.

one of welles worst mistakes was that he gave back his 10% of KANE in order to finish IT'S ALL TRUE. he defaulted on his second payment for IT'S ALL TRUE, so it was never finished, and he lost his 10% of KANE.

in the 50s KANE was rediscovered. in the 60s tv boomed. imagine the revenue that would have come in from 10% of KANE through all the 60s, 70s, and 80s. welles would have been independently wealthy, free to piss all his money away on any film project he wanted. he would not of had been at the mercy of his personality flaws to raise dough.

too bad. as things turned out, KANE made a lot of money for a business sod like ted turner, and not a dime for the great artist that created it.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

as things turned out, KANE made a lot of money for a business sod like ted turner, and not a dime for the great artist that created it.

BINGO!

didn't it happen like that for TOE too?

[mteal]

Cole,
I think Kael was sympathetic to Welles. Yes, she made the assertion (undoubtedly false) that Welles stole a writing credit he didn't deserve for Kane. But my impression is that this may have been done more in a spirit of mischeif then genuine malice. Perhaps she wanted to see how Welles reacted to the same kind of nasty medicine he himself had given to Hearst. And sure enough, Welles reportedly broke down in tears at his lawyer's office as he discussed a possible lawsuit against Kael.

But Kael was positive towards most of Welles' post-Kane films. In her fine 1967 essay "Orson Welles - There Ain't No Way", she lamented the fact that Welles (and Olivier) had so much trouble getting financing for their Shakespearean films, and she had high praise for CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT after it was savaged by the NY Times critic Bosley Crowther. When she described his post-Kane legacy as "puny", I think she meant that it SEEMED that way compared to what was unrealistically expected of him. As far as Ambersons goes, she suggested the film might have been better held together if Welles had played George. I disagree.

Tony,
I think JOURNEY INTO FEAR is the one based on the Eric Ambler novel. You make a good point about Welles' original stories: he never did have a success with any of them. Mr. Arkadin was one of his biggest fiascos (although to me Welles' fiascos are more fun to watch then most director's GOOD movies), and THE BIG BRASS RING couldn't get financing until several years after Welles' death, when the story was utterly gutted by George Hickenlooper and company. I have to confess that, having read the BBR screenplay twice, I'm still unable to figure out exactly what the hell Welles was trying to say. It seems to be an attempt to summarize his political beliefs, but what those beliefs were and how they changed over the years is unclear.

Going back to Welles' relationship with Houseman: it's interesting to contemplate what might have happened if the two had managed to stay together. But it's also interesting to contemplate what might have happened if they had never met. Welles was working on a play called BRIGHT LUCIFER when he met Houseman. I've read it and even seen it performed. Not an adaptation, it's purely a creation by Welles, and clearly the work of a disturbed young man.

[jaime marzol]

obssessed:

TOUCH OF EVIL eventually earned a lot of money for MCA, but it was a much more delayed earner than KANE. KANE actually started making money in the mid, to late 50s.

TOE, before the 90s, couldn't be found anywhere except on the shelves at Blockbuster. probably got there as part of a quantity purchase deal.

it never showed on tv. only film students and hardcore film buffs knew about it. then soon as the restoration was announced, suddenly, it's everybody's favorite film. every cheese-doodle anouncer on tv began TOE news briefs with, "My favorite film, TOUCH OF EVIL...."

mteal:
kael, ooooohhhh, kael. how she rips things to ribbons. how she uses films as a springboard for her agenda. keal, ooooohhhh, kael. she could probably out-run welles, but i know if welles could get close enough for one punch, he would have knocked her out. then i would have jumped in and started kicking her. i can see the headlines now, "ORSON WELLES, AND WELLESNET MEMBER, IN A DRUNKEN BAR BRAWL, BEAT UP OLD-BAG FILM CRITIC, continued on page A-27.

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[Tony]

Call me romantic, but I still think the single greatest loss is the right to final cut on Ambersons; Jeff, did Orson have final cut and sign it away, or did he never have it because of Moss's antagonizing Schaeffer? If the Amberson's footage was found, I'd really believe there was a God!! Still, look what we have found: some of the "It's All True" footage, the original Macbeth, about 5 Arkadins, the restored TOE, and some day the Quixote and Wind footage will all come out. I kind of like the idea that Orson's a pre-modern, modern and post-modern artist all at the same time, and that everything is open-ended; perhaps one day (soon!) we'll be able to have a disc that will allow us to edit our own Quixote and Wind- Glenn Gould hypothesized this regarding music discs back in the sixties. And I hope you guys have the Anderegg book "OW: Shakespeare and popular culture" cos it's great, a real inspiring read, and it's his idea that OW was simultaneously pre-modern/ modern and post-modern. And of course in post-modernism, the idea of a finished work is anathema, literally impossible. Perhaps OW intuited this as he incessantly re-edited Quixote and Wind. There's a FANTASTIC documentary, "OW in Italy: Rosabella" (which for some reason I find the best documentary ever) in which one of the editors of Quixote (not Bonannini, the guy holding onto the intro with Patty McCormick, and the cinema scene, though he's interviewed also) talks about editing and re-editing scenes with OW, though it seems he thought it was always worthwhile. In fact all of the people interviewed seem to have no regrets working 22 days with OW for a year or two out of their lives.

Another memory: Marty Ritts, just after OW died, crying during a Toronto interview, asking "Why didn't he make more movies? I just don't understand!"

Hmmmmmm

[jaime marzol]

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MORE OF MY TWO CENTS:
i've thought about that too, "what if welles had not signed away final cut to ambersons?" i think his fate would have been the same. he would have run into trouble on another picture. had welles had a 1980 bio of his life in 1940, would he of have been able to change his fate? probably not. he could not help himself, that was his character.

his only salvation would have been to have unlimited finacial resources. i think that is the only thing that would have saved him; the ability to put out film after film regardless of how much they earned.
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[mteal]

Jaime,
I'm having this hilarious vision of Kael trying to outrun Welles. Thanks.
You're right about TOE. Universal studio dumped it in theatres as part of a double bill in 1958, then forty years later made it a central part of their self-aggrendizing documentary "The Universal Story". The Welles movies are like long-distance runners at the box-office rather then 100-yard dashers. Trouble is, studio stockholders weren't (and aren't) interested in long distance runners, only quick scores.

[jaime marzol]

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mteal:
yeah, that was always a big problem with welles: no investor wants to own a museum piece, doesn't give a good crap about text book reverence, and doesn't want a film that earns 25 years after it's release. to a wrestling-generation business weasel, owning COYOTE UGLY is preferable to owning KANE.

tony:
i have that andregg book. gave it a few shots, have not been able to get into it yet. people keep telling me it's a good book. i'm going to give it another shot.

rosabella is great, so is dominici affair. i think these 2 tapes should be companion pieces.

[mteal]

The Anderegg book is excellent, and I think the title sums it up pretty well: Welles spent a significant part of his career trying to get the general public to appreciate and understand Shakespeare. His success was limited, but as we've just noted, the full impact of his artistic effort is hardly tapped out yet.

Tony, you were wondering about why Welles would sign away his right to final cut on Ambersons. I don't know if anyone has THE answer, but here's an interesting excerpt from Robert Carringer's "Oedipus in Indianapolis":

"Welles liked to depict (RKO head George) Schaefer as something of a buffoon, as with the story that he had fallen asleep when The Magnificent Ambersons was first pitched to him. Perhaps he had, but Welles always neglected to mention that when Schaefer did give his assent for the film to proceed, it was with a major condition. Welles would give up the right of final cut which he had enjoyed in his original contract; after the first preview of The Magnificent Ambersons, the film could be edited at RKO's sole discretion."