In late 1973, Orson Welles was in Paris editing The Other Side of the Wind when companion and collaborator Oja Kodar began writing a story set in Spain — Crazy Weather.
Intrigued by the project, Welles asked to have an active role in the writing and suggested his partner include bullfighting references in the story. The script focuses on the dynamics of the American couple, who are getting ready for the intense period of celebrations linked to the bullfighting season. To make the story more interesting and engaging, Kodar decided to include a third character who bursts in on the boring tranquility of the married couple.
This unpublished and incomplete work was rediscovered by Matthew Asprey Gear. During an investigation of the Welles archives at the University of Michigan, Gear found a 144-page document combining parts of the treatment and the actual script, which he described in his 2016 book, At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Orson Welles and the City .
Now, film scholar and author Massimiliano Studer has explored the Welles archives at the National Cinema Museum of Turin, which had other copies of the of Crazy Weather screenplay, including a 150-page draft. (Studer, co-founder of Forma Cinema, and Alessandro Aniballi, co-founder of Quinlan.it, first publicized the little known Welles collection in 2018.)
Studer’s findings are presented in an essay recently published by Bright Lights Film Journal. Read his details on the incomplete script and its themes at brightlightsfilm.com/the-shadow-of-ernest-hemingway-on-crazy-weather-orson-welless-unpublished-1973-bullfighting-screenplay
Related content:
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