Official OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND Thread - All things OSotW he

[ToddBaesen]

Just saw some more clips from OSOTW and found them to be awesome in their beauty and their grace...

They are mostly scenes from a sex scene Jake Hannaford has been filming for his movie, involving incredibly precise cross-cutting between Hannaford's two leading actors...

Here it is presented in the context of the published script. In Welles script, incidently, none of the movie that Hannaford is shooting is described, so those descriptions are not by Welles, but everything else is...

This scene comes towards the end of the movie, when everyone has left the party at Jake's house after the power fails, to see his movie at a nearby Drive-in theater (an idea that in the script is suggested by Jack Nicholson!! - could he have a cameo in the movie?) And once again, Welles even had the idea, way ahead of DVD's, to combine storyboards with the finished film itself...


************************


THE DRIVE-IN THEATRE

The last act begins (as did act two) with:

A BLANK MOVIE SCREEN

Standing lonely in the desert country, it jumps out of the darkness under the sudden swoop of headlights... Then:

HANNAFORD'S FILM IS PROJECTED ON THE SCREEN

The images paling at first under the headlights of arriving cars. There aren't too many of these (not many have been told about this emergency screening).

NOW THE FILM PROCEEDS FORMALLY AND WITHOUT INTERRUPTION...





A TITLE:

MEANWHILE
BACK AT THE RANCH...

A flashlight's beam, crossing a few remnant patches of the birthday party, has come to rest on a piece of black illustration board. Upon this, in the style of an old silent movie title, some wit has scrawled the words we've just been reading. We are, indeed, back at the ranch, and in:

THE BIG ROOM

Among the litter, an idle scattering of photographers are still idiotically photographing each other... The guests are stoned, discursive or both. Somebody snatches the illustration board from somebody else.

FIRST VOICE
Hey, who gave you that? It's part
of the story board.

SECOND VOICE
The what?

FIRST VOICE
Come on - I'll show you...


THE “STORY BOARD ROOM”

We've been in this room before - caught glimpses of the drawings on the wall during one or another of the lamp-lit conversations... The sketches are for set-ups to be photographed for HANNAFORD'S FILM. These illustrate the action...

CLOSE-SHOTS of the storyboards are INTER-CUT with the FILM itself (being shown on the screen of the drive-in theatre).

On screen we see JOHN DALE asleep in a half built room on the studio back lot. The INDIAN ACTRESS comes in naked, and proceeds to pull Dale’s pants off, and runs off with them before the groggy Dale realizes what is happening. Fully awakened by the loss of his pants, DALE begins to pursue the INDIAN ACTRESS through the maze of sets on the studio back lot...

(Here we see a dazzling series of extremely precise matched cross-cuts, which alternate between the INDIAN ACTRESS and JOHN DALE as he pursues her through the back lot which turns into a labyrinth that might best be described as a cross between the funhouse scene in LADY FROM SHANGHAI and Anthony Perkins fleeing from the young girls near the end of THE TRIAL).

Finally, as JOHN DALE catches up with the INDIAN ACTRESS the rapid cross-cutting ceases for a long leisurely take that moves in on there faces as they begin to embrace. She playfully throws DALE'S pants around his neck and pulls him towards her with one of the pants legs. Then they come together while standing between two buildings on the studio back lot. DALE is naked from the waist down, wearing only his shirt, and the ACTRESS is completely naked. She begins unbuttoning DALE’S shirt, and as their faces come closer toward the inevitable kiss, suddenly JAKE’S voice interrupts the action. Once again he is directing his two actors from behind the camera:

JAKE
(off screen)
Listen, kid, listen. Somebody’s watching
you. There’s somebody else out there...


As HANNAFORD’S FILM continues on screen we hear MAGGIE and BILLY doing their valiant best to explain their story board sketches to a small group of truth-seekers:


HIGGAM'S VOICE
...This old man is HIDING - spying on her?

AL'S VOICE
Yes, but then she chases him, remember?

MAGGIE'S VOICE
He finally holes up in some old wreck of
a movie prop –-

PAT'S VOICE
(breaking in)
And now she's pushing all this crazy
shit around you see - trying to close
the guy in, when a whole lot more of it
collapses –

BILLY'S VOICE
That's being worked out.

PAT'S VOICE
So now this character is trapped -–

AL'S VOICE
But then we hear his voice –

HIGGAM'S VOICE
The singing?

PAT'S VOICE
Old Manolito - Jake always tries to get
him a job.

BILLY
(on camera)
But he won't PLAY the part –

MAGGIE
(on camera)
It won't be any midget, either.

PISTER
(the intelligent truth-seeker)
But who IS he?

MAGGIE
See the movie...


Back to THE FILM as it continues on the DRIVE-IN theater screen. From a tape-recorder comes an unaccompanied Flamenco lament, as the VOICES continue off-screen:


PISTER
What does he REPRESENT?

PAT
Aw, just some screwey old squatter
out there in the back-lot of a studio -–

DELLA
But what's he doing in the STORY -?

MAGGIE
You'll have to ask Mr. Hannaford.

JACQUELINE
But will he tell us?

Silence...

As THE FILM continues at the DRIVE-IN Theater we see:

THE ACTRESS – she appears on the screen alone...


JACQUELINE'S VOICE
How about asking HER -?

PISTER'S VOICE
(under his breath)
What if... he's Hannaford himself?

BILLY'S VOICE
Don't be nuts.


HANNAFORD'S FILM continues...

INTER-CUT: THE FILM AND THE VARIOUS GROUPS WATCHING IT.
The groups of guest are now mostly at:

THE DRIVE-IN THEATRE

HANNAFORD’S FILM shows a hurricane force windstorm raging on the studio back-lot, growing in intensity, until it knocks over several of the standing sets. The tiny figure of JOHN DALE is seen braving his way through the ferocious wind...




--

[Glenn Anders]

With many thanks to Todd Baeson, I have had been able to browse a copy of Welles' script for TOSOTW for a couple of weeks now, and over last weekend, was able to read it carefully.

Everything that Todd says is true.

I would add these general observations:

If the raw footage reflecting the entire screenplay exists in good shape, the material has the makings of a great film about the last gasp of the Hollywood Studio Era.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND would clearly be a story, a kind of tragi-comedy, based on the late career of George Stevens in his puritanical and hypocritical THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD and GIANT Period, but, on another level, about the life and mauling of Orson Welles in his later decades, but represented in the lean person of Welles' old friend and colleague, John Huston. It touches on many of Welles' career experiences, with some of Huston's and others (Bogdanovich) thrown in.

To conflate some examples, the picture begins in a steam bath and ends in a drive-in movie theater, where the picture's leading lady has been having "a little target practice" on effigies of her leading man. And of course, as in a number of Welles' later films, there is the atomic cloud -- plus a whirlwind!

[The latter possibly a reference to David Selznick's prediction on the end of the Hollywood Studios?]

Unlike "The Old Man and the Sea" by Hemingway (whose ethic Welles bitterly mocks here), and despite the toughly cynical humor found in every scene, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, as projected, is a profoundly sad and pessimistic film, reflecting the underlying despair Welles must have felt, whatever courage, bravery and refusal to give in that he constantly conjured for us.

TOSOTW is his legacy, and the fact that it is about a picture which can't be finished may be Welles' last cosmic joke.

The other evening, I saw Michael Winterbottom's TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY. If that movie (about the weird and twisted film making process now) can be made and given a major release today, then THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND can be, too.

To actually produce the film would be Welles' final magic act.

One final magnificently funny and melancholy dream.

Let's get it done!

Glenn

[alex_cox]

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone knows who Dennis Hopper played in TOSOTW? I know he's listed as a cast member on IMDB and Gary Graver mentions him being part of the cast in "Working With Orson Welles".
Has Johnathan Rosenbaum, who named Hopper's "Out of the Blue" the best film of 1980, ever talked about Dennis working with Orson? It sounds like a weird combo.

[jollytinker]

I believe he plays himself: a filmmaker at Hannaford's party, blowing 'smoke' up Hannaford's butt, though I'm not perfectly certain.

[ToddBaesen]

Dennis Hopper played a character named Lucas Renard, but it may be that due to the extended shooting schedule, he didn't finish his entire part, at least as it was originally scripted.

It also appears that Hopper's character in OSOTW would be a perfect match for his acting abilities, probably done in much the same way as Hopper's excitable journalist in Apocalypse Now. In the script excerpt below, Lucas Renard has a tape recorder in his lap and is speaking about Jake Hannaford and how he has created the leading men for all of his pictures.



CUT TO:

THE ACTRESS (DRIVING HER CAR)

Driving very fast and concentrating on the job. TRUMAN, CICCIO and LUCAS RENARD are also in the car.


LUCAS
Man, they're REAL. He MADE 'em real;
gave 'em existence - he molded
the clay -

TRUMAN
Or cut 'em out with a pair of scissors.

LUCAS
He CONCEIVED 'em. Like a God.

THE ACTRESS
GOD!

LUCAS
...a terrible and jealous god... That's
just what he’s been for this new boy of
his. John Dale is Hannaford's PERSONAL
CREATION. (lowering his voice) There’s
Something else, too... an even stronger
claim... (with a smile) very much in the
Hannaford style...


CUT TO:

ANOTHER SCENE BEFORE WE RETURN TO LUCAS RENARD IN THE CAR AGAIN...


LUCAS RENARD in the back seat of the car is playing his tape of JAKE'S comments.


JAKE'S VOICE
(continuing from the previous scene)
I happened to notice 'em. But Dale I
FOUND. Literally. Fished him out of
the sea. Now that’s what you'd call
a DISCOVERY... Dale was flapping around
like something you bring up in a net...

BILLY'S VOICE
(playback from tape-recorder)
You should have thrown him back. He
was too small.

LUCAS
(quickly to the other's
in the car)
Just listen...

MAGGIE'S VOICE
(playback)
You had to go and make him an ACTOR.

JAKE'S VOICE
(playback)
We did what we could. Kept him on the
yacht; signed him on as a deck-hand, made
a sailor out of him. Or tried to...
Sure I rescued him. (grimly after a moment)
I’ve been rescuing him ever since.


CLOSE-UP OF LUCAS

He turns off the playback.


LUCAS
You get it? He saved the cat’s life.

TRUMAN
(turning to the actress,
half questioning)
So John Dale’s in debt to the old man for
that...?

LUCAS
(earnestly)
Can you imagine a relationship more
all consuming? – between master and
slave?


===

[alex_cox]

Cheers!!

It just makes me want to see the movie all the more.

[jollytinker]

Well, in the script parts I have, Hopper is simply called Dennis Hopper, so now I know different, thanks. I was missing most of that scene until now.

[bactor]

I'm a bit unclear on exactly what the version on amazon.fr offers as opposed to going through Sabrina. Is the screenplay itself (in English) the same with each script?
Going through Sabrina, I got the impression that the script contained a great deal of photographs, rather than textual content. I was just trying to clarify the differences in the two versions, so I can be sure of which one to buy.

[ToddBaesen]

Just came across a 1976 article on OSOTW which is pretty interesting... part one is below:

__

MOVIE PREVIEW WITH PICTURES:
ORSON WELLES AND FIVE YEARS OF
"THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND"

By VIOLA HEGYI SWISHER -- AFTER DARK - March 1976


Orson Welles' upcoming new film. The Other Side of the Wind, is already five exciting years old. Parts of it, anyhow. It stars not only stars, but stellar directors, too. Nevertheless, all's Welles. He wrote it. Produced it. Directed. Masterminded the lighting. The cinematography. He even worked the clapboard that snaps out the number of the scene about to be shot and chalks up whether it's Take One —or Take Twenty. The only thing he didn't do in The Other Side of the Wind is act. And who knows? He may have done that too by now.

Welles assigned roles with prodigal unpredictability, in some cases casting to type, in others casting against type. John Huston was typecast. Susan Strasberg definitely not. Huston slips naturally into the role of a big-time director because, of course, that's what he is. His own most recent distinguished directorial achievement is The Man Who Would Be King, which stars Christopher Plummer, Sean Connery, and Michael Caine. Director Huston bypassed actor Huston for King. However, it should be noted that in Wind he enacts with authority the role of director not because he is a director, but because he is an authoritative actor.

As to Welles' other manner of casting—against type—there's diminutive Susan Strasberg. She combines a flair for feminine chic dramatically interwoven with the fiber of our unisex times and the delicate sensitivity of an instinctual psychic. With all these subtleties going. Susan plays a callous critic. And you know how they are! Citing their separate experiences with Welles, Huston and Strasberg, at different times and different places, arrived at parallel conclusions. The most restrained remark Huston made was a vibrant, "Orson's a rich and varied creative talent."

Her hands painting space-sketches as she described Welles' juxtaposing of 35mm color and blown-up 16mm black-and-white techniques, Susan put it this way: "His concept is brilliant." Clearly, this motion picture, with its film-within-a-film idea and image, can be a new experience for audiences as it was for participants. "Only Orson could have done this picture." John Huston, with an air of finality, puffed life into one of those huge, expense-be-damned cigars. Grizzled, gracious as he beamed his personal mid-morning salute to Welles, Huston greeted the California sunshine with matching warmth. All pale gold and green, the canyon outside was only minimally tamed to accommodate the spacious dwelling in an apparent wilderness not far from the Pacific Ocean. Inside the house, pre-Columbian art, modern paintings, books—classic and contemporary—and the memorabilia of the illustrious gave special distinction to the living room of Huston's home away from home in Ireland.

"Several years ago," he recalled, "Orson told me he had an idea for a film and he'd like to have me do it. I automatically said yes. But I didn't get the script he said he would send me. Some time passed and I heard he was making the film." Huston shrugged massive shoulders. "I assumed the picture had taken another course and he had given someone else the role we'd talked of earlier. But not at all. "He had been doing the other half of duologues with various people— Lili Palmer, for one—in Switzerland, in Turkey, in God-knows-where. Afterward, much later, I filled in my half of the dialogue. "Some scenes I did with the company on location in Arizona. There was a big birthday party being given for the director I play. It's assumed that he's on top of the world. Actually, the rug has been pulled out from under him. And he hasn't got the money to finish his film."

What happens is told through a number of cameras—surrogates for eavesdroppers. Depending on which cameras were shooting, the film goes from one technique to another, from color photography to black-and-white and back again to color, as The Other Side of the Wind recounts both a story and the story of a story. "A very novel and excellent way of creating a film," Huston commented. His long cigar became a conductor's baton marking the echo of remembered pleasures. "It was a marvelous experience. I had a wonderful time. Orson was just at his best—which is a hell of a big thing to say.

"What does the title The Other Side of the Wind mean?" He pondered a moment, finally shook his head. "I'm not at all sure what it means." Nor was Susan. The dark-eyed actress had just returned to her San Fernando Valley home after sitting in on a session of Barbra Streisand with Susan's father. Lee Strasberg. ("Terrific," reported Susan.) Wearing bright yellow, sharply tailored pants and a sweater of soft, cloudy blue. Susan curled up on a sofa in her rose-laden living room. Every blossom had been cut from her own gardens, which are at the end of a little lane lined with orange trees. Nibbling a late luncheon salad, she gently separated the petals of dozens of overblown blossoms—red, white, yellow, pink—to be dried and used in fragrant pomander balls. "I haven't the vaguest idea what The Other Side of the Wind means." Susan ventured a speculative "Maybe it just amused Orson to think that people might try to figure out some esoteric meaning for his title. He's a deep, serious person, but he also has a wicked sense of humor. "One day while we were shooting at Cave Creek, Arizona, he spotted some kind of a road sign with a cross on it. He immediately wanted it put in the middle of the shot. One of the men on the set complained, 'But Orson, it has nothing to do with the scene. What does the sign mean?' Orson answered, 'Oh, absolutely nothing. But Pauline Kael will spend six paragraphs describing what it's supposed to represent."

As a director-actor—or actor-director—who has himself directed actor-director—or director-actor—Orson Welles, John Huston is singularly equipped to understand and deal with the dualities involved. To a degree, the director hosts within himself the qualities and character of the philosopher. The actor, on the other hand, is best fulfilled as activist. For him, doing is living. "When you direct," Huston settled confidently into a solid position of objectivity, "you stand back, of course. You detach yourself from the scene. Look at everything critically. That detachment is required. "But when you're being an actor, why, you're right in there." He laughed. "You are thinking primarily of yourself. Acting is a very selfish profession. The more one thinks about himself, the better the acting is likely to be. Actors are exhibitionists anyway."

Exhibitionists? What about all our shy actors? The ones who say they don't like to expose themselves, so they hide in the characters they play. They really are shy, aren't they? "Oh, yes." Huston's eyes twinkled and crinkled. "I've known many shy actors. They've learned to be shy!" A schizophrenic thing? "Well, that's true, too. There are two sides to everything. But I don't think an actor has to submerge himself into another character so much as he has to be able to construct another character. "Strutting one's stuff." His hearty laugh rang out and he raised an admonitory hand. "That's a generality."


To be continued...

[Jeff Wilson]

Anyone have a copy of an article from the Express (UK) newspaper about OSOTW from August 31, 2002? If so, please message me or send an email. Thanks.

[ToddBaesen]

Jeff:

Ask and you shall receive

_

ORSON WELLES DAUGHTER DOESN'T WANT
HIS UNCOMPLETED FINAL FILM SHOWN

THE EXPRESS AUGUST 31, 2002


One of Orson Welles last projects, "The Other Side Of The Wind" lay abandoned in a Paris film vault, until US cable network Showtime recently launched negotiations to exhume the movie, offering to edit the film as Welles had wished and planning a spectacular cinema and TV release. Oja Kodar, who starred in several Welles films and lived with him for his last 20 years, helped to negotiate the deal. "Orson left me the rights to all of his unseen films in his will, " she says. "He entrusted them to me because he knew I would do all I could to ensure they could find a public." Now living in Zagreb, Croatia, she claims that Welles's daughter knows only too well that her father would have wanted the film to be released. "Miss Welles knows that and she did not contest the will at the time, " she says. "It is unfair that she is trying to block the film. It is heartbreaking for me. I have worked for years to get it on to cinema screens. I know in my heart it is what Orson wanted."

But Beatrice Welles - the director's 46-year-old daughter by his third wife Paola Mori, the Countess of Girfalco - insists she is the rightful owner of her father's copyright under US law. She has proved a tenacious defender of her father's legacy, even stopping the 1998 Cannes Film Festival from premiering a re-edited version of Welles's 1958 classic Touch Of Evil, saying the "altered" version could not be shown without her consent and firing off numerous other lawsuits. She considers "The Other Side Of The Wind" incomplete without final editing and, without her father alive to make the final cut, is adamant that no one else should do so.

Cinematographer Gary Graver, 61, who shot every scene in the movie's six-year production (except for a year's break in 1972 when he and Welles filmed F For Fake), hopes that his lost classic finally sees the light of day but he has experience of how aggressive Beatrice can be when it comes to her father's work. The two clashed when she sued him for the return of the Oscar statuette awarded for best screenplay which Graver claims was a gift from Welles. He says of the unseen movie: "It could be considered one of Welles's great films. Its release could make people re-evaluate Welles's legacy. Filming was completed; everything has been shot. There's nothing more to do as far as photography and sound recording. Most of the editing has been done. It's as close to complete as could be but it lacks the money to finish it off and no one's going to put up the money if they think they won't be able to screen the movie and recover their investment. "Beatrice claims she has the rights to the film but the reality is that Oja Kodar owns half the rights and the other half are owned by the Iranian co-producer, Medhi Bousheri, the brother of the Shah of Iran."

Beatrice's battle is being waged by artists' rights consultant Thomas White, who has represented the estates of stars including Fred Astaire, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Edward G Robinson. "Beatrice has put her foot down and won't let her father's work be mutilated, obliterated and destroyed by other people's incompetence, " says White, from his Beverly Hills office. "The film's shooting is incomplete and the editing is incomplete so the film can't be finished because no one can step into Orson Welles's shoes. It can't be a complete 'Orson Welles film' without it being completed by Orson Welles. "It's inaccurate to say that Kodar owns all Welles's uncompleted works. Under the law, Beatrice stands in the shoes of Orson Welles in all matters that would have been his to decide. She controls the estate and protects her father and won't do anything that she knows he wouldn't have approved of. The only way this project can go forward is with her blessing."

Beatrice has been dismayed by some of her father's films that were completed in his absence with disappointing results: Don Quixote and It's All True, being forgettable pauses on Welles's fall from Hollywood favour. Welles himself complained that The Magnificent Ambersons was edited by "the studio janitor". White explains: "She won't try to pass off the film to the public as 'an Orson Welles movie, ' as past films have done, when it's incomplete. This is an artistic work that needs to be preserved and protected from exploitation by others. Beatrice is doing everything she can to protect her father's name from degradation and to protect his work from mutilation and destruction."

TODD: And what a big laugh that last comment is, coming from Thomas White, one of the biggest ambulance chasers ever seen in Hollywood.

[Jeff Wilson]

Fast service, thanks!

[Roger Ryan]

Here's a link to an article about Peter Bogdanovich published three weeks ago in which he briefly discusses the status of TOSOTW:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/movies....16.html

Here's the relevant copy:

Currently, Bogdanovich continues battling to raise the money to complete The Other Side of the Wind in which he appears, a film originally directed by Bogdanovich's late friend and colleague, Orson Welles. "It's been progressing, albeit slowly, for years. There's a major American company that we've been negotiating with. I've sort of been in the middle of it, sort of as a friend of the family, trying to help it along. I think it's going to be resolved soon. I hope so."

As to its quality, Bogdanovich says, "I've seen enough of it to know it's fascinating. John Huston gives a great performance. It's very modern in the way Orson shot it. I think, when it's done, when people can see it, which I hope will be in the next few years, I think it will be a revelation."

[Hannaford]

I wonder why Peter Bogdanovich doesn't name the major American company he's dealing with as Showtime. It's quite clear from the London Express article that Beatrice has already staked her claim, so it's not likely that she's suddenly going to find out about the project and try to stop it at this point. She's already made her demands quite clear.
But, speaking of her demands, I wonder if Beatrice might try to get greedy again and put an end to Criterion's Mr. Arkadin DVD... remember she did the same to their Othello laserdisc... and after all, Mr. Arkadin features her mother in a featured role, and as Thomas White says, "Beatrice is doing everything she can to protect her father's name from degradation and to protect his work from mutilation and destruction." And in her warped view, she may view Criterion's version of Mr. Arkadin as a "mutilation" of both her mummy and her daddies work, and throw another big tantrum.

[Gordon]

Again I say, someone with means who is interested in preserving and enhancing the legacy of Orson Welles should get a defining legal opinion from a court about what rights Beatrice has or doesn't have. Absent that, it will be the same story over and over.