Orson Russian Roulette (clip)

[purplepines]

A late era TV magic trick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG6a8HPYbfI

[ToddBaesen]

Great clip on Orson perfoming Russian Roulette from THE MAGIC SHOW... there are actually two clips, and to watch them in the correct order you should watch the one below first:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxYCIEed ... re=related

Here we see Orson showing us film of a dummy getting his head shot before he goes off to change into his Chinese costume, turning us over to a filmed episode of a card trick he had performed earlier with Angie Dickenson.

Then in the second clip, the Russian Roulette trick is given a long introduction by Welles. Seeing just the film clips of the climax of the trick itself (Angie Dickenson firing the gun at Welles) in a Welles doucumentary (I can't remember which one), shows you just how important the set up is for the trick itself to work effectively. In the documentary, seeing only the climax completely out of context robs it of all it's power and could easily make somebody think Welles didn't know what he was doing... demonstrating the great mistakes that are easily made when others excerpt his material.

[Roger Ryan]

This portion of "The Orson Welles Show" could really be considered "F For Fake, Part II". I love how Welles insists on the veracity of everything when the whole "live TV show" is faked even more than the average "shot in front of a live studio audience" show is faked. By shooting the show like a movie, Welles really draws attention to the artifice of it, but in a splendid artistic way (it's a bit like the film "Network" in that you feel like you're watching a movie about a TV show). The magic tricks themselves can't possibly be very convincing using this approach, but Welles' dynamic presentation and filmmaking skills make it entertaining nonetheless.

Incidentally, that's old Todd school mentor Roger Hill examining the bullets, isn't it?

[Alan Brody]

It sounds like Welles even tosses in a laugh track too as part of the artifice.

It's as if Welles were saying that enjoying the beauty of the illusion is more important then trying to figure out how it was done. The sequences seem to be about the introduction and setup of the trick and the joy of visual texture as much as the trick itself.

BTW, what happened to that Copperfield segment on Youtube, where Welles in 40's film footage does a card trick from the great beyond? I can't find it online anymore. That was a great clip.

[Jeff Wilson]

Beatrice sued Copperfield over that and won, so it's possibly related to her.

[Alan Brody]

I can believe that. I wonder when she's going to take all the other Welles stuff off Youtube.

[Jeff Wilson]

Well, the clip that Copperfield used is actually owned by Beatrice; you can see her copyright registration for it at the copyright.gov site; as for the rest, if she doesn't own it, she wouldn't be able to legally make them remove it, unless Youtube was afraid of a lawsuit.

[ToddBaesen]

Roger:

Very good observation, as "The Magic Show" is indeed similar to "F For Fake" as Oja Kodar notes:

Kodar described Welles as a ‘human computer’. When working with multiple editing tables, he would go around the room and easily point at frames and different shots, and tell how to put them together, because in his mind he saw what the future movie would look like. He would also often take a scene from one of his films and put it into another. Such interchanges happened in "The Magic Show" where scenes have been co-opted for use in "F for Fake."

Also, in "The Mummy's Curse" clip (link below) -- which I assume is from "The Orson Welles Show" since it includes The Muppets -- Welles sagely comments about the inheirent "fakeness" of doing magic tricks on film:

WELLES: And if you you believe that, you'll believe anything. Of course you don't do you. You know perfectly well that I haven't murdered the young lady.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F1TZALo ... re=related