Callow

[nextren]

Can't wait for Volume 3 "One Man Band." Hopefully as expressed on the excellent new Wellesnet home page Mr. Callow will consult all the detail - forensically - about Welles's last, ultra-independent-minded years. I don't believe anyone else has done so in one place.

One thing certain other writers on Welles's life have done is to ignore the need to have a precise understanding of the actual facts before creating a synthesis or spinning a legend. One writer explicitly dismissed everything Welles did after 1965 as a long slide into the gutter, and refused to write about it (though supposedly writing A Story of His Life), declaring that Welles's last unfinished film must not be seen. Mr. Callow seems to be of rather more curious and rigorous mind.

In connection to the Macbeth film discussed on the home page here, I notice an error (?) Mr. Callow makes in both the hardcover and later softcover editions of Volume 2 "Hello Americans." Mr. Callow omits to mention Welles's Salt Lake City Macbeth in the Appendix on Welles's theatre work during the years covered by this volume (and discussed with unique éclat in the text). Surely this staging of Macbeth was a bona fide production, though occurring in Utah?

I'd advise Mr. Callow to drink long and deep and joyously of Wellesnet as part of his characteristically fine and omnivorous research. This is the least explored, least understood part of Welles's life. IMO Mr. Callow has a chance to produce a really original volume here. Power and strength to him!

[tonyw]

In terms of the last paragraph I fully agree.

HELLO AMERICANS was a vast improvement over THE ROAD TO XANADU and he now has the work of Joe McBride and others as well as the recent wswsor.g. interview noted in anothe rposting.

[NoFake]

Speaking of the marvelous new MACBETH articles on the homepage, the "restored" MACBETH is, appropriately, getting a screening at New York's Lincoln Center next Thursday: http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/shakespeare/wellessmacbeth.html

[Alfred Willmore]

Is there any news on Vol. 3 of his biography?

[Jay]

I'll reiterate the last post. Where is Volume 3? Does anyone have any news on it at all?

Also, is the third volume intended to cover the rest of Welles' life?

[NoFake]

According to the Robin Straus Agency http://www.robinstrausagency.com/author ... mon-callow, "Simon is writing the third volume of the Orson Welles biography, which will be published by Viking Press, a division of Penguin Books." Perhaps we could ask Viking.

[mteal]

It was eleven years between the publication of ROAD TO XANADU in 1996 and HELLO AMERICANS in 2007. So I guess we should expect it somewhere around 2018.

[tonyw]

As long as he does a better job than the first volume, that will be fine. The second book showed that he was moving beyond the usual scam biography typified by Patrick McGilligan. Let us hope that he is doing some good research.