Already a hit at film festivals, Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles opens on Wednesday, December 10, in Los Angeles and New York.
Academy Award winner Chuck Workman has created a documentary that as Variety aptly put it “should engage fans while providing a fine introduction for those whose knowledge doesn’t stretch beyond recognizing the words Citizen Kane.”
Workman, who has won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short (Precious Images) and a Cable ACE Award (The First 100 Years), graciously agreed to field a few questions from Wellesnet about the making of Magician.
What inspired you to take on Orson Welles’ career as the subject of a full-length documentary?
I’ve been working with films in my own work for 30 years and teach filmmaking and film history. There was no doubt for me that Welles was among the two or three great American filmmakers. I simply wanted to explore this concept further and the way I would do something like that is to make a film about it. For about 20 years, when someone asked me what I would like to do I would mention this film idea, and a couple of years ago someone said, ok, let’s do it.
How did your view of Welles change over the course of making Magician?
What impressed me the most, and continues to, is the way Welles progressed in his knowledge of filmmaking from one film to the next. Sometimes, as with his learning of editing, it was out of necessity. One could see that he was able to pull sophisticated cinema out of several individual shots once he realized he was unable to effectively get the long single scenes he could do in Hollywood. He learned more about actors, and stars, as the films progressed and he worked with more unfamiliar actors, and about sets and production design and working with less resources but beautiful economy. Without Bernard Herrmann in his later films, he was still able to make music an important design element in his cinema. And I think he even learned more about how to direct himself as a character. We can see that in Touch of Evil. He took a big chance with that character, one he had total control over.
What sources did you use for research? Were there any doors closed you wished had been opened?
It took a long time and a lot of persistence but I was able to get most of what I needed from one source or another. I used the very helpful list in wellesnet of films about Welles as a starter – there were about 40 there – then added more as I learned about them. I screened them all, often in bad or pirated copies, then had to find legal and decent-looking video, which was not always easy. I was lucky to have James Naremore as a historical adviser, and later Jonathan Rosenbaum and Joseph McBride. I used their writings a lot and of course they were helpful in person and appear in the film. We also did photo and paper research at the Welles archives at the University of indiana and the University of Michigan. Several individuals – fans, Todd School acquaintances, relatives, friends – all contributed artifacts I would use. I don’t think there was anything in particular which I wanted that I couldn’t get, but I’m sure things will turn up now that I missed and will regret not having.
What is your favorite Welles’ work and why?
My favorite when I began the project was Citizen Kane. I learned as I worked with the films over two years to really appreciate others, especially The Trial, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, and F for Fake. I knew them all but I didn’t see the art and craft in them. I’m glad that viewers of Magician have been inspired to look at the later films, even though some are so hard to find. Why do I like these films? I think they use the cinematic toolkit, as I described it in an earlier film of mine called What is Cinema as all the ways a filmmaker can influence his or her work, can use these tools to create art, to go beyond story and genre and give us something ineffable to experience. I’ll leave further whys to the critics.
Faced with making a commercial documentary, there is an obvious time limit. How difficult was it to bring Magician in at under two hours?
I suppose it could have been longer, maybe much longer, but I feel most films without a plot like a documentary should be on the short side. I always thought of it as a theatrical film, not television, so the concept of a four hour two-parter or the like wasn’t considered. There’s another five or ten minutes I might include now, more of his television work for instance, but I don’t feel the film was particularly rushed and I think most of the material Welles created got its due.
Any chance of an extended home video release?
I’d like to put in longer pieces of some interviews, especially with the scholars, and there are some outtakes I wouldn’t mind putting in but I don’t know if that will happen. it’s not my call. And it would be nice to put in some coverage of the many centenary celebrations in 2015. But for now we’ll have to go with what we have, and I thank Orson for it.
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