Tiburon Film Festival - Gary Graver Brings "New Footage."

[Glenn Anders]

For those in and around the Bay Area, or anyone planning to visit the Bay Area in the next couple of weeks, The Tiburon International Film Festival, March 11-17, 2005, is presenting A Tribute to Orson Welles. It leads off on Saturday, March 12, with an illustrated presentation by Gary Graver, featuring "footage never seen before," at 2:30 p.m. A showing of F. FOR FAKE will follow in the evening. What the actual material is, as seems so often the case, remains to be seen.

For more details, go to:

http://www.tiburonfilmfestival.com

Glenn Anders.

[moviefan]

I did enjoy the first segment where The Other Side of the Wind was shown. He is still trying to get a distribution deal for this movie. Showtime was mentioned.
Graver also showed The Fountain of Youth, which gave me a few laughs.

[Knowles Noel Shane]

I've heard before about a tentative deal for Showtime to air TOSOTW. I don't know if it's a question of distribution or end money for post-production. In either case I don't know why any network or distributor wouldn't leap at the chance to do either. Is Welles still considered to be too uncommercial? Or are strange legal tanglings still tying things up? I wish we could start some online fund-raising campaign to finance the deal ourselves, as I have heard has been started to resurrect the recently cancelled Star Trek Enterprise series. I wouldn't know how to start it, though I'd certainly contribute to my meager ability. The original Trek series was saved by a letter-writing campaign. Is there anyone we could write to finally get TOSOTW to the screen?

[L French]

The Gary Graver program of unseen Welles material lived up to it's claims, since he showed about 40 minutes of scenes from THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. About half of the scenes I had seen previously in Stefan's Munich film restorations, but there were also many scenes I had never seen before, including great scenes between Lilli Palmer and John Huston, talking about what he (Jake Hannaford) is going to do because his leading man had walked on on him, and a long scene on a studio backlot where Oja Kodar finds Bob Random, (the leading man in Hannaford's film) sleeping naked. She takes his pants and runs off throught the studio sets... and when Random wakes up, he puts on only his shirt and chases after Oja half naked until he catches her and they engage in a playful tug of war, with Oja throwing his pants around his neck and pulling her towards him and they kiss passionately.

Another great scene shows the lights going out at Jake's birthday party at his ranch, and Edmond O'Brien takes a director's bullhorn and tells the assembled guests, all holding candles or flashlights in the sea of darkness, that the power has failed and that the projection of Jake's last film will not be able to go on... (apparently, later everyone goes to a drive-in theater where the projection of Jake's film is able to be continued).

Before the lights go out several directors at the party are discussing Hannaford's film, including Dennis Hopper,
Paul Mazursky, Henry Jaglom, Curtis Harrington, Claude Chabrol and Monte Hellman.

Hopper explains the impact Hannaford's movies have had on him:

DENNIS HOPPER:
(referring to the characters in Hannaford's movies)

Man, they're real! He made 'em real; gave 'em existence - he molded the clay - he conceived 'em - like a God.

Joe McBride interviewed Gary on stage, and Gary told many great stories about working with Welles. However, a special treat was that Malcolm McDowell was in the audience, along with upcoming actor Marton Csokas (Celeborn in LORD OF THE RINGS, and Guy de Lusignan, the bad guy in Ridley Scott's upcoming KINGDOM OF HEAVEN).

I had the chance to interview both of them and I strongly urged them to come to the Welles program, which they did and Malcolm McDowell told me he met Welles while working with him on VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED. Later both he and Marton said they were floored by the sex scene between Oja Kodar and Bob Random in the Mustang driving through the rain...

Then during Malcolm's evening tribute (after a showing of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), he mentioned the great directors, giving a salute to John Ford, Lindsay Anderson, Robert Altman, Stanley, and pointing to Gary Graver sitting in the audience, said, "and of course, Orson."

[colwood]

Isn't this 40 minutes of footage, the total sum of Welles' finished work on this film I believe, the same footage that was shown by Stefan in NY and LA last year?

[jbrooks]

No, I saw Stefan's presentation last year at Film Forum and it did not include all the scenes L. French describes above.

[Glenn Anders]

Well, I can see that, after getting this started, I missed something by fulfilling another engagement.

Thank you for such a detailed description of what you saw, Larry.

The Tiburon Festival seems quite a relaxed kind of affair, in contrast with some other Bay Area festivals that are rather stiff.

Thank you again, Larry. Sorry that I couldn't make it.

Glenn