Oja Kodar at Welles Screening in Hollywood - February 22, 2004

[PT Caffey]

At the "Touch of Evil" screening at the Egyptian in Hollywood, it was announced that Oja Kodar would be present for the screening of footage from Welles' unfinished films on Sunday, Feb. 22, at 4:00 pm. Perhaps this is an opportunity for someone to question her about the status of this or that. (Sadly, I'll be out of town.)

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Yes, please! Someone do that! Will anyone be near Hollywood to do that?

[Sir Bygber Brown]

OI!!!!

[maxrael]

i know this has spilled into various other threads, but i just wondered if any wellesnetters are going to be able to make the rare welles showings at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood?..

The various features seem to have already grown and progressed from what was showing at London's NFT last year...

The wonderful Stefan Droessler was very engaging and made a point of standing around and talking to OW fans at any opportunity... unfortuantely away from the safety of this computer screen i'm quite shy in real life and thus didn't approach him... but i wonder if he's aware of Wellesnet. As an enthusiastic and dedicated fan i'm sure he'd enjoy it!

i know Rick Schmidlin ran into some troubles when he was here but imagine how great it would be if we could hear updates on how the various Welles restoration projects were going direct from the horses mouth!!

cheers,
max!

[blunted by community]

judging from his last few posts, i don't think schmidlin is doing anything with welles projects any more. he's persona non grata with the estate by no fault of his. it would be like the battle scene in chimes if he tried to wrestle with beatrice.

schmidlin didn't get into any trouble here, why our wellesnet members are the politest people on the web.

[Oscar Christie]

Could those of us who are going to be there Sunday gather somewhere at 3:30 to meet each other in person?

[Sir Bygber Brown]

IN PERSON... this is like a scene out of You've Got Mail...

and i'll be a few oceans away to miss it! Enjoy the screenings - and don't forget to ask Oja about Wind and Merchant of Venice!!

[PT Caffey]

Rick Schmidlin was present at the Feb. 15th screening of "Touch of Evil." He discussed, at length, his work on this, the "memo-version" of the film. And although he was not directly asked, he mentioned no further work on any Welles-related projects; the clear impression was that he is not involved in any.

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I haven't seen the original theatrical release of Touch of Evil, so my opinion is only of limited validity, but i thought Schmidlin did a fantastic job on Touch of Evil. When i saw it, i thought it was an absolute masterwork.

[blunted by community]

it's unfortunate that murch and schmidlin had nothing to work with when they did touch of evil. no footage survives. and you can read it in the memo, welles provided universal with a wealth of stuff, welles was not happy with what was used, and no unused footage exists.

i was very happy with the restoration but for me it did not replace the theatrical release, and the theatrical release was improved upon by the restoration. so it's like arkadin. you have to see all 3 versions and no version can be said to void the others. of course, this is just how i feel about it. others here are of the viewpoint that the criteriun version voids out the other 2 versions.

and last but not least, i prefer the non-letterbox version of the touch of evil restoration. the non-letterbox version has more image, and better composition than the letterbox version. i am the minority on this viewpoint. but until others turn the laserdisc into a dvd them zoom back on the image, they really can't argue this point.