By RAY KELLY
A series of Friday night dinners gave birth to a six-part documentary series, which will look at the private life of iconic director Orson Welles.
Life with Orson Welles: The Man Behind the Legend comes from his youngest daughter, Beatrice Welles, and director Dax Phelan (Jasmine). The two were involved in the production of The Other Side of the Wind.
“Over the last couple of years, I’ve been having regular dinners with Beatrice on Friday evenings and they’re absolutely epic,” Phelan told Wellesnet. “It isn’t uncommon for me to arrive early around 4 p.m. and leave well after midnight. As a filmmaker, I’m always interested in the personal lives of filmmakers I admire – i.e., how they balance the personal and professional lives, how they react to bad reviews, what they enjoy doing during their downtime between projects, etc. I’m also just as interested in how their wives and children’s lives are affected by the path they’ve chosen. And, the stories that I’d hear during these epic dinners were just extraordinary. They’re stories no one will ever hear anywhere else or from anyone else.”
He added, “One night, I was driving home from one of these dinners and I wished I’d recorded our conversation that night for posterity because I really felt the public would be interested. A week later, I was at a screening and mentioned my Friday nights with Beatrice to a TV executive and he said, ‘I’d do anything to be a fly on the wall during one of these dinners. Who do I have to kill to get invited?’ An idea was born.”
The series, first revealed at the Berlin Film Festival in The Hollywood Reporter, is being styled as a collection of casual, but revealing dinner conversations, during which Phelan, Beatrice Welles, and a revolving door of special guests discuss the late director, his work and the private life few got to see.
Beatrice Welles and Phelan told Wellesnet that they are currently lining up the special guests.
“Much is known about my father as this legendary Renaissance man, but very little is known about what he was really like in private and the extraordinary gypsy life we lived off the set,” Beatrice Welles said. “I plan to dispel a few old rumors and spread some new ones.”
Last year, Beatrice Welles worked with director Mark Cousins on the acclaimed documentary The Eyes of Orson Welles, which looked at the late director’s work as an artist. It will be released to U.S. theaters next month. She was also involved in the book, Orson Welles Portfolio, which will be published by Titan Books on February 19.
Phelan recently wrote an adaptation of the New York Times best seller, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, for producer Stratton Leopold (Mission: Impossible III) and is currently adapting the life story of record-breaking aviatrix Jennifer Murray for Leopold and producer Eric M. Klein (Jasmine).
The documentary series is being repped to buyers in Berlin by Lon Haber & Co.
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