BRIGHT LIGHTS 55 TOSTW Interview

[Glenn Anders]

As you say, rizibo, if we can agree with the proposition, Welles wanted Bogdanovich to complete the film for him.

Secondly, the two of them had constantly discussed the concept of the film. They are talking about it back in the years when they were making the tapes which became This Is Orson Welles. Bogdanovich has an intimate understanding of the film's germ, of its writing, of its production, and a great deal of collaboration on the project with Gary Graver and Oja Kodar -- not to mention Rick Schmidlin and Frank Marshall -- in the years since.

Glenn

[rizibo]

I'm sure I will like TOSOTW when it is released. I didn't mind the Jess Franco edit of Don Quixote, not because I like his editing of this film but because I was finally able to see the footage Welles shot. I liked the Don Quixote movie theater scene posted by Hadji, even though it didn't have any sound. I like Welles because he is the most visually interesting of all the directors and I like to see his mise en scene. If I can tolerate Jess Franco's Don Quixote I think I can tolerate anyone editing TOSOTW.

[Tony]

" If I can tolerate Jess Franco's Don Quixote I think I can tolerate anyone editing TOSOTW."

Ok: We'll have the studio janitor edit it!
:laugh:

[rizibo]

" If I can tolerate Jess Franco's Don Quixote I think I can tolerate anyone editing TOSOTW."

Ok: We'll have the studio janitor edit it!
:laugh:

Okay maybe not just anybody. I must have had low blood sugar when I wrote that. I just mean that if someone could give a logical narrative when editing the film and we can see the great shots that Welles took then I will be satisfied. Bogdanovich is supposedly very good in doing impersonations and I hope when he edits the film he could impersonate Welles style.

[Tony]

I agree with you, but of course I'm sure we'd both prefer if they got a really talented team together. Still, I'd like the option of seeing only what Welles cut/edited, his rough footage, and also a new version by a team.

I must disagree with you on Bogdanovich's impernations: he's pretty bad. I'm just watching a new video on Capote, "Infamous", and PB is imperonating Bennett Serf, and he's awful!.

Oh, you mean "impersonate Welles's editing style? I don't think PB could do that: his style is so different. I guess we'll just have to wait and hope, but my vote still goes to Frank Marshall, Oja Kodar, and Walter Murch.

[rizibo]

I heard Bogdanovich do an impersonation of Welles during an interview when he was discussing how he finished making The Last Picture Show (which has nudity and sex in this movie) and then started impersonating Welles saying "I'm going to make a movie. A dirty movie. If you can make one then so can I." I thought the impersonation was just okay but it was really funny.

Of course I also want the film to be great and to have the input of the most talented people available in order to make the film the Welles envisioned. I was thinking of some great directors like Scorcese, Coppola, Speilberg, Stone and Eastwood to be envolved but then I remembered reading that many of these directors (Eastwood and Stone) have seen the work print and have been indifferent about editing it. I have even read that Stone used Welles style of using different formats in Natural Born Killers and Eastwood took a line from TOSOTW and used it in another film. It's so frustrating that these directors are not helping to make this great film and some are actually stealing from this film. This is not new as I have heard stories of how Speilberg refused Welles in helping him to make the Cradle Will Rock. I also heard a story of how George Lucas hardly said a word to Welles when he asked him for help. I don't know if Scorcese or Coppola are different. It just seems like everbody is treating Welles like he has the Ebola virus. Seeing how other directors have been so unsupportive, Bogdanovich is the only choice. Bogdanovich has even put up his own money to get TOSOTW finished. If Bogdanovich can get the Murch or another good editor to really care about the work and can see the editing style that is present in the 40 minutes of film that Welles edited and try to make the film have the same style (it looks like a quick cutting MTV video style to me) it would be a success.

We Welles fans are also lucky that Showtime has be supportive for TOSOTW. I think Showtime helped The One Man Band and The Brass Ring to be made. Universal helped to restore The Touch of Evil. I don't think any other studio has been helpful. I have been paying for Showtime in two homes (my parents and my home) for over 10 years and I am glad I have because no one else has cared about the unfinished work of Welles, not Paramount, Fox, Universal, Miramax, Sony nor PBS. I was thinking I should write a letter thanking Showtime for their support for the greatest director which ever lived

[Glenn Anders]

Rizibo: Of the directors you mention, only Francis Ford Coppola might take a hand. Stone has been under attack by the Right Wing ever since he made JFK. He did possibly use the tinting and color stocks he saw in TOSOTW in his own NATURAL BORN KILLERS. Both Scorsese and Eastwood are very deliberate film makers. Their help, should they offer it, would be marginal. All but Coppola have too much ego to work on a project that would not put their reputations first.

[Scorsese has championed directors like Michael Powell and others, but never Welles.]

Coppola, on the other hand, clearly saw Welles an influence on APOCALYPSE NOW. He has the skill and the facilities, the interest in tecnical ingenuity, to make THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND work. Whether he would lend himself may be another matter.

I'm glad Tony agrees with two of my suggestions.

Your suggestion, rizibo, is an excellent one. I subscribe to the Showtime Newsletter, and I am going to follow your advice to write them.

Before we leave the subject -- Four words: David Lynch, INLAND EMPIRE.

Glenn

[tonyw]

??? This is a very difficult problem. Obviously, Stone borrowed from TOSW while Eastwood wanted to see how he could do a Huston impersonation in BLACK HUNTER WHITE HEART. Stone's latest film represents an appeasement to the right wing both stylistically and thematically. Since TOSW, from the brief extracts I've seen, represent deliberate references to stylistic practices of the now-defunct New American Cinema of the 70s, maybe Bogdanovich and Coppola are the two best choices since they were both involved in that movement.

However, both moved on in their different ways. A team would be ideal but this raises the question of common agreement which might hinder the project. The most positive aspect is that we are all getting near to seeing it finally. But then we will have to defend it from the Richard Shickels and David Thomson who will use it as evidence to boost their ideas of post-KANE decline rather than view it in the context of those ephmeral, but interesting cinematic directions, the new Hollywood took in the 1970s. Perhaps Dennis Hopper could be on the team? I'm thinking here not so much of EASY RIDER but his avant-garde, modernist Western THE LAST MOVIE which he screened in the Birmingham (U.K) Arts Lab in 1983 after finally getting the rights restored. It has been shown under the alternative title CHINCHERO. Anyway, somebody active at that time should be on board.

[Kevin Loy]

Maybe Antonioni should edit it

[ToddBaesen]

While everyone, including me, seems to think Walter Murch would be a good choice to edit the film, he has stated quite emphatically he doesn't want to touch the material.

Meanwhile, last night at the Ha-Ra club, Glenn and I were talking about the script. Out of the 160 page screenplay Welles wrote, guess how many pages are devoted to the film Hannaford is making?

50% would be 80 pages...

25% would be 40 pages...

But quite amazingly, none of those scenes are described in the script AT ALL!

Of course they were shot, but it seems apparent they would never have been meant to take up half of the running time of a movie which is already close to 150 minutes long, based on the script.

[Tony]

Kevin, you're a sick man.

[rizibo]

Coppola sounds like he could help Bogdanovich. Dennis Hopper is an inspired choice because Easy Rider looks like the movie being made by Hannaford. Wasn't Hopper an actor in the movie also? That might give him an added incentive to help. Unfortunately we all could be putting the cart before the horse as there is still no definitive green light to release the film

[chipm]

These are all great pie in the sky names for help with TOSTW...but I doubt anyone but Bogdanovich will go near the project who has a "name." It's hard enough for even A-list talent to get their own projects going...getting the stars to align in the sky on script, cast, studio, etc. ad nauseum. But to then throw your energy towards a project that has 30 years + of bad blood attached to it...? Whether there is a contract or not signed by all parties, that doesn't preclude those parties from renegging on their agreements, causing more legal hassle. A contract, as it is said, is only as good as the two parties involved are willing to follow it.

As for the oft quoted line of Speilberg not ponying up to help Welles...I think it's very easy for someone to look at this situation and see Speilberg in a bad light. But I think there is something in the middle here that is more true. In my salad days, when I had more piss and vinegar flowing through my veins and access to a sizable chunk of cash, I came accross a film maker who had an incredible project that "just needed money to finish." I believed in the project and the artist and said obstacle, "the money" was removed. Shortly thereafter, the artist choked. It became evident, and was a great lesson to me, that "the money" wasn't what was holding this person back, but it was himself. And he found new and interesting obstacles to make sure the project was not completed. And finally, when after an interminable struggle the project was finished, the artist made sure that it was half of what it could have been.

I suspect that my experience with this artist is something akin to other's experience with Welles. While I admire and enjoy his later work, seeing the immense amount of unfinished material in One Man Band leads me to believe that as the years wore on Welles became more process driven and less project driven. I don't subscribe to Welles having a fear of completion. Men are more complicated than that. I believe Orson fought his own demons. In the end, we are lucky to have what we do...as they are victories over his own worst nature.

Either case, I look forward to seeing TOSTW seeing the light of day in some format and hope the project does come to a final head after all these years.

Chip

[Glenn Anders]

For tonyw and rizibo, a final remark from me:

Dennis Hopper could indeed fit into the team, and perhaps he would be more willing than some to spend the time and effort on such a project.

As Baesen and I have remarked to each other somewhere along the line, Hopper's footage in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND is most amusing. He might be interested in doing the work for that reason alone.

Glenn

[rizibo]

As for the oft quoted line of Speilberg not ponying up to help Welles...I think it's very easy for someone to look at this situation and see Speilberg in a bad light. But I think there is something in the middle here that is more true. In my salad days, when I had more piss and vinegar flowing through my veins and access to a sizable chunk of cash, I came accross a film maker who had an incredible project that "just needed money to finish." I believed in the project and the artist and said obstacle, "the money" was removed. Shortly thereafter, the artist choked. It became evident, and was a great lesson to me, that "the money" wasn't what was holding this person back, but it was himself. And he found new and interesting obstacles to make sure the project was not completed. And finally, when after an interminable struggle the project was finished, the artist made sure that it was half of what it could have been.

I suspect that my experience with this artist is something akin to other's experience with Welles. While I admire and enjoy his later work, seeing the immense amount of unfinished material in One Man Band leads me to believe that as the years wore on Welles became more process driven and less project driven. I don't subscribe to Welles having a fear of completion. Men are more complicated than that. I believe Orson fought his own demons. In the end, we are lucky to have what we do...as they are victories over his own worst nature.

Chip, you are right in defending Speilberg. I think it would be hard for anyone to give up money for the production of art. Speilberg eventually started Dreamworks and he funded a few Woody Allen films so in my eyes he redeemed himself.

Your bad experience with funding a film with a director who couldn't make the film as promised is unfortunate but I don't think it applies to Welles. When Welles had the funding from independant producers he was able to complete Othello (although he funded most of it), Chimes at Midnight and The Trial. I think Welles was mostly on time when shooting his studio pictures. Don Quixote was funded by Welles alone and he had to work as an actor in other pictures to complete this film and that surely delay it. Welles once said that these films didn't have the technical expertise so he probably disappointed with the results and made it took longer. TOSOTW had the Shaw of Iran problem and the law after it and possible ailing health problem. I think it was a mistake when Welles was not supported financially for his pictures.