OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND - John Huston on making the film

[Harvey Chartrand]

They trot that story out every five months.
Doesn't mean a darn thing.
Lies, miserable lies!

[wannabe-director]

Hi everyone,
Just wanted to say that this is a great forum, i'm new here. In regards to the Other Side of the Wind, did Welles leave any notes behind on how he wished the film to be completed? If so, then I definitely think they should try and complete the film based on his notes. BUt if he didn't leave any notes behind then I think they should release what Welles had completed and show the rest in a documentary format. I can't believe that a great director like Orson Welles could not complete many of his films. How could he be so underappreciated? Even in the 60s and 70s people did not fully respect him. I thought those were times of experimentation in films but someone as experimental as Welles could not even get his films completed!!!?

From

Andy

[Hannaford]

Heres some of Welles comments on OSOTW taken from the excellent interview done by Bill Krohn printed in the Munich Film Museum's beautifully done book on THE UNKNOWN ORSON WELLES. This long interview is alone worth the $25.00 price of the book, as is was done in 1982, and essentially covers all of Welles uncompleted projects.

From these comments, it seems that Welles clearly realized that OSOTW had become quite dated from when he first began shooting it, 12 years earlier, and it may be one reason he ceased working very actively on it's completion - especially in light of the difficultly he was having with the Iranians backers at the time.

ORSON WELLES: Most of what’s good in "The Other Side Of the Wind" was made in America before I came back to Europe and got into the hands of my crooked Iranian partner. And we’ve been suing the Iranians, chief of whom is the brother-in-law of the Shaw (of Iran), Mehdi Bousheri. The outcome of it looks pretty good... If I ever get it back again, I’m going to do it as an entirely different film. I’m going to stand outside of it and talk about it, as myself, you know. Less as a narrator, and more as myself… So it will be a movie within a movie. It’s one of those endless plots. It’s not so much the making of it, as the unmaking of it and what it is to be a director and all of that. Because there’s John Huston being this kind of an archetype of a great Hollywood director, then there’s the movie he's making, which is another kind of movie; it’s a highly erotic, almost a pornographic movie, and then there’s the movie that was going to be made out of all the pieces of film that the people around the director are shooting.

The only way to make sense of it now (because too many of the actors are dead), is for me to show it to an audience somewhere, like at UCLA, and have me talking about it with them. But there’s not much interest in the “essay movie.” I had a great failure with "F For Fake" in America and a great success with it abroad, so I’m going to try… but I’m hoping that the age of the cassette is going to change that, so I can go back to the business of talking directly with the audience, as I did in "F For Fake." I'd like to do those kind of pictures more than anything. I think "F For Fake" is one of the truest pictures that I’ve done, but it’s seen as a minor work in America and a major one in Europe.

I’ve got this history of—tragic is too big a word—but of catastrophically terminated films. I’ve wasted an awful lot of my life trying to finish them. Rather than just letting them go (like "It’s All True"), I should have said, “to hell with everybody.” Now that I look back on it, I deeply regret this steadfast and stubborn loyalty that I’ve expended on them. If people see it the other way I can understand it, because on the face of it there are all these unfinished films. But my God, what I’ve been through trying to get them all done! What I’ve never done was to leave a film when there wasn’t any way to keep shooting it, even with no money…

(which of course began when the money ran out during the shooting of "Othello")...

[Hannaford]

Check out the plot description for THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND at the Wikicities site here:

http://welles.wikicities.com/wiki/Main_Page

[jbrooks]

I saw Peter Bogdanovich speak last night at the "Afterwords" discussion following the performance of "Orson's Shadow" at the Barrow Street Playhouse in New York.

Bogdanovich spoke at length about "The Other Side of the Wind" and its current status. But unfortunately, most of what he had to say has been said before. He said that a major U.S. cable company (presumably Showtime -- though he said he didn't want to jinx the deal by naming it) was still negotiating with all parties (Oja, Beatrice, and the Iranian producer), and that a deal was close. He said that he hoped the film would finally see the light of day in the next few years.

He said that it was "supposedly" all shot. (I am not sure why he hedged that answer -- but he did). He also said that Welles had tightly edited about 40 minutes of material and had loosely edited about 30 minutes more. He said that there was probably about an hour left to be edited. He also said that there was a lengthy script available to guide the completion.

When asked whether it was any good, he answered affirmatively and described it as "very modern."

On other Welles fronts, he mentioned that there had been some recent discovery related to Welles' Don Quixote. He didn't elaborate on that. Does anyone have any idea what he might have been referring to?

As for Orson's Shadow, the play, it was quite good. I highly recommend it.

JBrooks

[Eve_h]

At last the Locarno Film Festival (properly speaking Stefan Droessler) issued another statement concerning the programme of the festival.

A maybe truely interesting part seems to be a forthcoming publication of a "volume monografico" about 'The Other Side of the Wind' from the Loacrno Film Festival & Cahiers du Cinema, also containing the screenplay ...
(please excuse my bad english)

here's the link
Comunicato Stampa

[R Kadin]

Tanto grazie, Eve_h. That promised special edition is likely to become a highly sought-after resource for Welles enthusiasts. One has to wonder whether Cahiers du Cinema might have plans to sell copies of it after the Festival is over.

To complement Eve's link, above, here's a link to the English language version of the same document.

[Tony]

I hate to say it, but TOSOTW reads as well as Mr. Arkadin or Big Brass Ring: i.e. very badly: stilted, arch, pretentious, cliched dialogue; I'm actually glad he didn't finish it. Welles really never recovered from the loss of John Houseman, imo, as Jack was a double asset: a great script writer/editor, and a great manager of the Mercury and Welles who could organize projects, deal with the moneymen and keep the boy genius on schedule;just imagine what they could have accomplished together in the 45 years they had after Kane! As it is, they revolutionized Radio, theatre, and film in 5 years flat. And orson was always better off when he avoided his original scripts: Arkadin is for sure his weakest film, and TOSOTW would have been a late disaster, I'm sure.

It's just painful to watch and to read; Big Brass Ring, Anyone?

:0

[jaime marzol]

after welles left hollywood his films had less and less to do with the screenplays, probably because he only needed the screenplays to show to the money people, he was so advanced he didn't need a good screenplay to make a great film.

arkadin is a radical film, i never read the screenplay. touch of evil is a radical film, the screenplay is pedestrian at best. i agree with TOSOTW screenplay not being good, he knew the story, he had been living it, so i don't think it's safe to assume that TOSOTW will be bad because the screenplay reads bad.

welles was the most radical, intuitive man that ever commanded a movie camera and editing machines. i've never seen anything from him that didn't excite me.

all those hip, trendy tv police shows that have gotten all those awards, are edited like F-fOR-fAKE, the battle scene in CHIMES, the closet flogging in THE TRIAL, and the segments i've seen of TOSOTW. welles first did it in 1958 in the strangle scene in TOUCH OF EVIL, and was immediately ripped off by hitch.

i don't think he lost anything as he got older, he was more radical, highly advanced. what he lost in spades was the ability to get work as a director.

big brass ring had a few brilliant moments, but it's hard to read and stay awake. project-891 i could not read. parts of kane don't read well. way to santiago is hard to read, but lady from shanghai and the stranger read real well. huston was on the stranger, so how do we account for lady from shaghai?

have not read the deamers, or heart of darkness yet but will get to them too.

[Harvey Chartrand]

"Welles was so advanced he didn't need a good screenplay to make a great film."

No director in the entire history of world cinema was ever that good. No director has ever made a great film from a bad screenplay. There are no exceptions to this rule, not even the multitalented Orson Welles. As his writing and acting skills atrophied (TOUCH OF EVIL was Welles' last good script), his directing skills remained formidable. I too was disappointed viewing the clip from THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND on THE ONE-MAN BAND. The writing is just terrible, although John Huston, Susan Strasberg and Peter Bogdanovich are doing their best with the clunky dialogue, but the mise en scène and editing are splendid, however ragged the print quality.

[tony williams]

Joseph H. Lewis once said that a good screenplay represents 75% of a good film. On the other hand, following the screenplay like a blueprint leaves little scope for those "happy accidents" Welles appreciated in his new role as "guerilla filmmaker" which is how we should view his post 70s ventures.

It is also dangerous to rely on clips since they often relate to a broader context, one we have yet to see. These clips may belong to a particular type of 70s cinema which is no longer with us today. Hence seeing TOSW in its entirely may deliver a new resonance towardfs understanding both performance and style. Otherwise, we might be in danger of becoming like that Robert Evans studio executive Welles satirises in one of those well known clips. We need to see the final product (a problematic entity in itself) before we rush to judgement.

[jaime marzol]

harvey says:
There are no exceptions to this rule, not even the multitalented Orson Welles.

how do you account for--

martin scorsese - the raging bull, screenplay is a sponge, shrader failed, marty came through.

copolla, godfather 1 screenplay is just ok, the film is a masterpiece.

have you read the screenplay for cassablanca? not the one that was patched together to be put on the modern day market, the actual screenplay (s) were a mess, it's a patchwork from a bunch of writers that curtis patched together. he had hunks of papers in boxes, but the film is #2 on the AFI list.

chinatown, the screenplay is just ok, polanski made a great movie from an ok screenplay, and towne wrote it!

and the list goes on and on.

of course, i don't doubt that all directors would love a great screenplay to work from but it's not a perfect world and if you have to go into production with a crappy screenplay, that is life. happens all the time.

films have been completely rewritten during production because of the stregths and weaknesses of the actors that were discovered during production. you have the crew and the money, a great screenplay, shooting begins, you dicover the main actor sucks, you have to shift the focus of the film and the screenplay goes out the window. happens all the time because it's not a perfect world and sometimes things are not as they seem.

every film class in the world tells you that great films come from great screenplays, then they send you out into the real world and you read actual screenplays from films that you know, and you realize that school was ful of crap. they were just trying to teach you not to go into production till you have a great screenplay.

there is absulutely nothing in the touch of evil screenplay that are the things that we admire about the movie. touch of evil is visual, and there is absolutely nothing of the look of the picture in the screenplay. the touch of evil screenplay could have been an episode of manix in the hands of another director, but welles made it a masterpiece, because welles didn't need a screenplay to make a movie.

there actually are hundreds of exeptions to the rule, you just have to read screenplays to figure it out. and if harvey thinks touch of evil is a good screenplay, i'm in a discussion with the wrong guy.

you wanna read some great screenplays that great movies came from?
treasure of the sierra madre
taxi driver
goodfellas
night of the hunter
night at the opera
ed wood
maltese falcon

a have read about 30 screenplays and these stand out as great.

a great screenplay that an ok to bad movie came from, 8 million ways to die. how do you account for a great screenplay that is made into a bad movie? bad director. how do you account for a bad screenplay made into a masterpiece? a great director. there isn't one rule that can be applied to all the way across the board, it really is a crap shoot.

i would guess that as many lousy movies came from great screenplays as great movies that came from bad screenplays. it's not a cookie cutter world and there are no rules. the only rule a director knows it to get through it as best as you can regardless of what you have to work with, drunk actors, bad screenplays, a camera man that cries.

[Tony]

Jaime: As usual, your arguments are persuasive and subtly articulted, however in this case we've seen some of "Wind" and I think it's just awful: cringe inducing. Perhaps the ugly truth is that Welles DID lose it in the 70's, and that the money wasn't there for a good reason. Would YOU finance a muti-million dollar project based on the script and shot scenes of TOSOTW, or the shot scenes of The Dreamers, or the script for Big Brass Ring? As much as I love Orson Welles, as a studio exec or film producer, I probably wouldn't.

And maybe they were all doing Orson a favour.

[jaime marzol]

that is where we differ, i think the clips from the OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND are sublime, and i yearn to see more. as i've stated many times before, i don't need a complete narrative to keep me interested, i want to be told a story, even a trite story, in an imaginative way, and who besides welles is the king of trite narrative and sublime direction?

[jaime marzol]

tony, you should see SACRED BEAST. welles pitching the bull fighter story to a bunch of wealthy spaniards. that is when my friend and me realized why welles was never able to raise money for a film. producers are conservative, and welles liked to work on the edge.