Beatrice Welles says she will attend the world premiere of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind at the Venice Film Festival later this month, but had harsh words for those who completed her late father’s film.
Speaking with The Sunday Times, she said she thought she would be let in on the editing process of the decades old material, but wasn’t.
“I’m turning up in Venice, and I’ll have my name up in stars. It’s not what I wanted for it, it’s not my movie, it was never my movie, I just had better ideas about how it could end,” she told the British newspaper. “It’s in the hands (of people) my father would have hated. I have to talk about it, and I have to be Orson Welles’ daughter. I really honestly can’t tell the truth on this one. I hope I’m going to be writing a book finally, and I hope I’m allowed to tell the truth of what’s going on behind that movie.”
Her remarks will likely baffle many fans since ― as she acknowledged ― it is not her movie and never been her movie. She has no ownership claim to the material nor was she involved in the 1970s shoot. Her father bequeathed his partial ownership of The Other Side of the Wind to his longtime companion, Oja Kodar, rather than his wife of 30 years and Beatrice’s mother, the late Paola Mori.
However, the producers needed Beatrice Welles on board to gain access to the negative in Paris because of stipulations in French law. She served as a paid consultant and was named one of the seven executive producers on the film in 2014.
She publicly supported producers Filip Jan Rymsza and Frank Marshall during a 2015 crowdfunding campaign. However, she was critical of distributor Netflix’s decision to pull the movie from the Cannes Film Festival lineup three months ago.
The completion of The Other Side of the Wind was overseen by a team that includes director Peter Bogdanovich, who Welles tasked with completing the movie in the event of his death; Marshall, Welles’ line producer on the 1970s shoot; and Rymsza, who worked for nearly nine years to iron out the complicated rights that have stymied past efforts to finish the movie. Oscar winner editor Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker) completed the film using Welles’ scripts, notes and 40 minutes of edited footage left behind.
Beatrice Welles did not indicate whether she had seen the finished film or any of the edited footage during the months of post-production. Netflix will screen the movie in Venice on August 31.
“They’re flying me over to see it,” she said in what The Sunday Times described as a sad tone. “I don’t know when. It’s complicated for me. I have animals and I don’t have an easy life.”
Wellesnet reached out to Beatrice Welles, Netflix and producers for comment.
Kodar, who stars in the film is credited as co-author of the script, told the Croatian Audiovisual Centre last month that she had chosen not to see the finished film until it is unveiled to the public.
It was unclear from Kodar’s comments if she had seen any of the footage during post-production, though her longtime friend, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, was a consultant on the movie.
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