Regarding the Yale conference:

[Tony]

Many thanks to Leslie Weisman for her amazingly detailed report on the Yale conference.


I have a comment on one of the observations made:

"What is cause for outrage, is that Bonanni wasn’t even invited to participate in the Franco reconstruction [of Don Quixote]. But that, said Rosenbaum, is characteristic of the way the business has been handled."

I have it from an excellent source (and I've written of this previously) that Bonannini WAS invited as a sort of advisor to the editing of DQ, but when he got there was appalled at the direction Franco was going, so took his film and went home.

[Store Hadji]

That reminds me of Lavagnino not being invited to reconstruct his soundtrack for Othello.

Yeah, Franco was a bad choice. Since then, Oja's entrusted the other unfinished films to Stefan, and she couldn't have made a better choice.

[Tony]

What scares me is Stefan's statement re: a dvd release of Portrait of Gina:

"When asked whether a DVD might be contemplated, Drössler said it would be legally prohibited, as the rights haven’t been cleared, and there is no view to obtaining them in the future."

and his statement that:

"As for Other Side of the Wind, Drössler expressed “great fears” about it, saying there is no way to make the disparate pieces fit together. He even spoke with one of Welles’s editors, who told him that Welles sometimes cut the scenes so short, they had to be spliced together to make them understandable."

Put this together with the almost impossibility of reconstructing, or constructing, "Don Quixote" without the rough cut (in addition to the "catch 22" that Oja and Mauro are in), and Paramount as seeing no commercial potantial in releasing a "Fountain of Youth "dvd, and we have a general conclusion of:

No Fountain of Youth dvd
No Portrait of Gina dvd
No properly assembled version of Don Quixote
No possibility of a reasonable construction of The Other Side of the Wind



Also, a question:

Stefan says:

"The 10-12 cans of Moby Dick 16mm reels are so fragile that they remain closed; if you open them, he said, the film will be destroyed."

Are these cans of the film which Gary shot (in colour) of Orson reading excerpts from the book in the 1970s? I can't believe that safety film from the 70s would disintegrate when opened today. Or- has Stefan found the original 1950s abandoned film of the stage play "Moby Dick Rehearsed"?

Anybody know? ???

[tonyw]

Yes, many problems still arise especially the MOBY DICK footage which, if the 1970s version, can not have disintegrated so quickly.

Anyway, I'd like to add my thanks to Leslie for providing such a detailed report for those of us who could not attend the conference. The remarkable fact about all this material is that the last word has never been spoken and Welles's "immortal story" continues making teaching about his works so fascinating. This is why wellesnet.com is such a valuable resource.

[Store Hadji]

Stefan constructed a 20 minute version of the 1970s Moby Dick, using the extant footage (seen in excerpt in OMB) and intertitles from the 1950s stage production. If there's more of it on 16mm stock which has chemically interacted with its container so that it can't be opened without destroying it, then that's just shitty. Too bad it wasn't stored properly. No, I haven't heard whether it's the 1950s or 1970s footage.

Clearing the rights to Gina would take money and expensive lawyers. Until someone feels like financing that mess, it won't see official release. But Welles did totally abandon that one; it's only dumb luck that it survived at all. The bootleg copy looks fine, fortunately.

Maybe Stefan's fears about Other Wind are justified, I haven't seen the 2-hour Graver/Kodar/Bogdanovich/McBride cut, so I don't know. Maybe Oja brought him in on the post-production, but if so, that's news to me. Good or bad, the film seems to just need end money at this point, according to Joseph McBride as of June 2006. So I disagree with "no possibilty of a reasonable construction."

There will probably be another attempt at DQ some day. If not for the Franco version, we wouldn't even have seen any of that footage, so I'm thankful for that.

Paramount is probably right in thinking Fountain to be uncommercial. Welles has always been so. Maybe they'll feel generous some day and release it. It would make a nice extra in a Touch of Evil box.

[Tony]

It's so bizarre to think that Welles needed "end-money" to finish "Wind" in 1975 at the AFI tribute, and he stills needs it in 2006!!!
:laugh:

[ToddBaesen]

Leslie, thanks for that nice report! It made you almost feel like you were on the Yale campus, amid all those brown stone buildings covered with Ivy.

And regarding OSOTW, if the Oja deal with Showtime happens, Oja and Peter Bogdanovich will be doing the editing and presumably know best how to do it, since it's all clearly indicated in the script.

If you read the script and then evaluate all the footage in the Paris vault, I don't think it really should be that difficult for an experienced film editor to put it all together... but everyone seems to think they'd be second-guessing Orson Welles.

Yes, of course it couldn't be Orson Welles editing, (except for the 40 minutes he did edit), but it will be better than not seeing it at all.

It seems to me that the key is getting a really good film editor like Dede Allen or Donn Cambern who were doing the kind of staccato cutting they helped make so popular in the late sixties. That would seem to be a perfect solution, since they could edit it like it was made in that period, which of course it was.

And so what if it's now percevied as dated, because it's set in such a well-defined period of turmoil and social change? Instead of being seen as a setback, I think it makes it even more interesting. No need to spend millions of dollars on sets and costumes trying to re-create the 70's. You can show a movie that was actually shot in the seventies...

I think it should be seen for that reason alone. Imagine if somehow ZABRISKIE POINT had been buried by MGM and never released back in 1971. Now, 30 years later it's uncovered and released in today's market. It would probably be hailed as Antonioni's great American masterpiece, although it certainly wasn't thought of as a masterpiece by critics at the time of it's release. In fact something very similar happened this year when Rialto released Jean Pierre Melville's ARMY OF SHADOWS (made in 1969) in America for the first time this year. Critics hailed it as "a masterpiece."

[Tony]

My vote is for Walter Murch to edit TOSOTW with Peter, Joseph and Oja, and for him to edit Don Quixote with Mauro Bonanini and the editor of DQ prior to Mauro (whose name escapes me but who appears in Rosabella).

I don't think you could get better than Murch, who obviously is a director as well as a sound and image editor of genius. Just the way he solved the problems of Apocalypse Redux and Touch of Evil 98 makes me know he would be the best.
:;):

[Store Hadji]

I'm a great fan of Murch's work on George Lucas' only art film, THX-1138. Though the story doesn't quite work, the soundscape is fantastic. It's odd that Lucas, who fought so hard to get his art film released by the studio, would snub The Other Side of the Wind as being uncommercial, when he could have written a check for end money (as Joseph McBride said) "out of petty cash."

[Tony]

It IS odd; the guy is a billionaire; you'd think Steve and him could split the bill and write it off.

So the question is: why haven't they?

[Store Hadji]

Unlike the young Charlie Kane, they aren't interested in "philanthropic enterprises." Lucas has become the sort of corporate entity which American Zoetrope opposed, and I love that quote in Reconstructing Evil where he calls Touch of Evil an "odd film," with a look of confoundment and disapproval on his face. And Spielberg, who knows, maybe he's still pissed off about that fraudulent Rosebud sled he bought, or that apocryphal dinner he had with Welles, when he walked out and stuck Welles with the bill.

Actually, the NEA should be the one to fund the fucking thing. I'd love to see those creatures in Congress on C-Span debate a $4 million dollar spending bill to complete a 1970s Orson Welles film.

[Glenn Anders]

Hadj: I don't think we need to bring Congress into this discussion, at least not until January.

But I think you are right about Lucas and Spielberg, in general. They seem to have been for the great directors only because they were not sitting around with Jack Warner and L.B. Mayer. Once they warmed those seats, they have looked upon creative directors just as the Moguls did.

Let's hope some people at the the Yale conference have some juice.

I think we can forget George and Steve, at this point.

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

I was being polite when I called them creatures, no matter which tribe is in charge. Still, I would think that the NEA should be interested in preserving an American treasure. With its mission "to enrich our Nation and its diverse cultural heritage by supporting works of artistic excellence" and its annual budget of $121 million, I don't see why not. Maybe Wellesnet could draft a letter to chairman Dana Gioia.

[ToddBaesen]

The thing about Lucas and Spielberg is they wouldn't even have to spend any of their own money. For instance, Lucas convinced Fox to back Kurosawa's KAGEMUSHA when that film was in financial trouble. FOX having made a bundle with STAR WARS naturally found it easy enough to come up with a few million to buy the U.S. rights.

Likewise, Spielberg could go to Paramount, epecially now that Dreamworks movies are being distributed by them and say, "why don't we put out this Orson Welles movie that Showtime is trying to buy." Then he wouldn't have to keep buying Welles memorablia. He could be the presenter, or even owner of an actual Orson Welles movie.

Maybe he'd even want to get involved creatively and add a new "happy ending" to the movie... I'm sure that would make it much more commercial. After all, look how much he "improved" Stanley Kubick's bleak vision in A.I.

Actually, Spielberg apparently got quite a thrill just from seeing his name alongside Stanley Kubrick's on the posters for A.I., so imagine what it would be like for such an egomaniac to be able see a poster that says:

"Steven Spielberg presents A FILM BY ORSON WELLES."

[Store Hadji]

That's just evil, Todd. I hope not ever to see that.

What did Spielberg do to AI? He's credited with writing the screenplay, and I was always curious whether Kubrick had written one, one which Spielberg didn't use. Things do get sappy in the last act, and there are some truly dreadful things in that movie, but some very good things as well.