The June issue of Harper’s provides a first look at Peter Biskind’s upcoming book “My Lunches With Orson,” based on taped conversations between Orson Welles and friend Henry Jaglom.
The excerpt in Harper’s, “Pitches and Moan,” recounts a disastrous lunchtime meeting in 1983 the pair had with an unidentified HBO executive. Welles pitched a story to the cable TV channel, which was interested in the time in producing a miniseries.
Welles describes the setting and concept of his story as “a miniseries set in Majorca or Saint-Tropez, where the richest people in the world go. Or better, a dictatorship in a Central American country. A dictatorship is overthrown by a coup d’état, and there is a revolution. Much of it offstage, but some of it is in the story as a background for all the things that happen to people in a kind of Acapulco-type place. There are two cities on the island. One is the port and the other is the resort. The resort is on the Atlantic side, and the story is basically the life of a resort. The kind of people who are there range from (Robert) Vesco to a presidential candidate. Everybody who is anybody.”
The HBO executive interjects, “I’m very interested in doing something about the Dominican Republic. Because I think that it’s kind of an interesting —”
Welles immediately rejects the the Dominican Republic as a possible setting, declares his expertise on Latin America, and accuses the HBO executive of being uninterested in the project because it involves rich people at a resort.
The HBO executive does very little talking as Jaglom attempts to salvage the meeting.
Welles: “Her eyes went dead when she heard ‘resort.'”
Jaglom: “Her eyes didn’t go dead.”
Welles: “Sure they did.”
When the executive asks to hear the story, Welles curtly responds, “There isn’t a story.”
After an angry Welles learns the HBO miniseries episodes will be just a half-hour in length, the lunchtime meeting quickly ends.
While hardly flattering, the Harper’s excerpt support’s Jaglom’s assertion to Wellesnet in February that the book about his friend “hides no warts from this very complex man.”
“My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles” by film historian Peter Biskind (“Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”) is due out July 9 from Macmillan/ Metropolitan Books. Biskind was given access to recording made by Jaglom between 1983 and 1985.
You can listen to Biskind discuss the book at the publisher’s website.
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