(Editor’s note: The following excerpts were taken from a Rolling Stone interview with John Huston, conducted by Peter S. Greenberg in 1981. The interview took place four years before the death of Orson Welles and six years before Huston’s own passing.
In these excerpts, Huston discusses Welles and Ernest Hemingway, who was one of the inspirations for the character of Jake Hannaford, played by Huston in The Other Side of the Wind. Filmed between 1970 and 1976, the completed movie will be released by Netflix in the coming months.)
There are those in the movie business who look on Orson Welles as one of the great wasted talents. Why is that?
Well, it’s a combination of things. In the first place, he offended the establishment in two ways. He started off with Citizen Kane — which was conceived to be an insult to William Randolph Hearst. The industry was indebted to Hearst, and out of some extremely false sense of loyalty, mixed in with their own gains to be had materially, they went about detracting Orson, even while he was making it and immediately after it. And then Orson had the arrogance and downright insolence to have made the movie a great success. It was enormously popular. Right off the bat, in other words, he violated two cardinal rules. First, you’re not supposed to go against the establishment. And if you do go against the establishment, you’re supposed to suffer. I remember the trade papers, after the opening of Citizen Kane. Orson simply ran a recapitulation of the things that had been said against him, against the picture and so on. So he really made them eat dirt, as they damn well should have.
Then he made a very serious error as a poker player, which he is not. He was down in South America to do a picture (It’s All True) and he got caught up in the gala festival in Rio, the carnival. And I forget how much film he shot, but it was a lot. And in the middle of it, they told him to come home. He didn’t. He stayed down there and shot and shot until they wouldn’t send him any more negative. This gave him a reputation for irresponsibility. When he did finally come back, he was again in deep disgrace. What happened is quite understandable to me, because Orson is an artist. He was acting in the service of history. But the studio couldn’t have been less interested in history.
Or art.
Or art. Either one. They wouldn’t have sent a second unit out to see Washington cross the Delaware. Orson is not a man who can bow down to idiots. And Hollywood is full of them. Orson has a big ego. But I’ve always found him to be completely logical. And I think he’s a joy.
I also look on Orson as an amateur. I mean that in the very best sense of the word. He loves pictures and plays and all things theatrical, but there is something else that needs accounting for. So many of his things go unfinished. I don’t know why. That is one question I can’t answer. Even the one that we did together, The Other Side of the Wind. I haven’t seen a foot of it myself, and I don’t know why it hasn’t been released. Now there’s always a reason. But it’s happened too often with Orson for it to be entirely accidental.
Do you think he might have been afraid of failure after Citizen Kane?
No.
Or perhaps he was afraid of success again?
I don’t know. I’m sure Orson doesn’t. He’d be the last to know. If he knew he’d try and do something about it.
Welles based Jake Hannaford, the character you play on Ernest Hemingway and you were friends with Hemingway and spent time with him in Cuba. Were you surprised when he put a gun to his head and shot himself?
No, I wasn’t. It was exactly what I would have expected him to do under the circumstances. And I say that with profound admiration for both him and the act.
Really?
Oh, yes. He was on his way out mentally, and he had tried once before. He was very canny about it. He had these flashes of sanity. Once they were taking him to the Mayo Clinic on a chartered plane and he tried to jump out of the plane. They subdued him. Then he talked his way out of Mayo and got home. And if you saw the pictures of him near the end, you could see it in his face. The smiling one — the flesh was gone — that was somebody else.
You say “with profound admiration for the act under those circumstances.” Do you think you would consider doing something like that?
I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else. If I didn’t, it would be out of cowardice and nothing else. I mean Hemingway wouldn’t have done it had it been cancer. But he was on his way to imbecility. That is a hell of a thing to have around. I’m intrigued by the way suicide is approached by different cultures. In some places it’s the thing to do. But the bourgeois of the United States legislates against it. In this society, death is a kind of a shameful thing and is to be concealed even after the spirit has left.
Have you ever been at a point in your life when you’ve contemplated suicide?
Only theoretically.
Then you talked yourself out of it?
I don’t mean that I came that close to it. No, I wonder if I would if…
If what?
Well, if I had a flash like Hemingway, for instance. Because I like to live. But in a situation like Hemingway’s, I hope I would pull the trigger. I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t.
(Taken from Rolling Stone interview with John Huston; copyright 1981, Wenner Media LLC.)
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