Updated on March 21: Producer Filip Jan Rymsza told crowdfunding contributors the orchestral recording sessions were taking place in Malmedy, Belgium. “Michel has been writing since December and it’s exhilarating to hear his score come to life.”
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Michel Legrand, who scored Orson Welles’ 1973 film essay F For Fake, has composed music for the soon-to-be-released The Other Side of the Wind.
Orchestral recording began today in Belgium and will continue with a jazz ensemble later this week in Paris. Legrand, 86, began working on the score since December.
Producer Frank Marshall reflected on Legrand’s participation in an interview with Variety.
“After working with Michel on F for Fake and wanting a jazz-based score, Orson always spoke about him doing the music for Wind,” recalled Marshall, who was a line producer on the 1970s shoot. “So it is wonderful to have this three-time Academy Award winner on board, and a thrill to sit and spot the music with Michel, who, at 86 years old, still has tremendous energy, creativity and a twinkle in his eye.”
Legrand described what he has composed as “one of the most exciting and delicate scores” he has written in his 60 years of scoring films.
“I asked myself constantly, ‘How would Orson have reacted?’ The very subject of the film touched me: the idea of the passage of time, the renewal of inspiration,” Legrand told the trade paper. “I am proud to be the link between these two Welles films. I take it as a gift from Orson, through the clouds.”
Unedited at the time of Welles’ death in 1985, the film is being completed by a post-production team headed by Marshall and fellow producer Filip Jan Rymsza. Academy Award winners Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker) and Scott Millan (Gladiator) are handling the editing and sound re-recording, respectively.
Legrand is a multiple Oscar and Grammy Award winner. His more than 100 movies credits include The Thomas Crown Affair, Summer of ’42 and Yentl.
Shot between 1970 and 1976, The Other Side of the Wind negative was locked away in a film laboratory outside Paris until Rymsza and Marshall reached agreements with the rights holders and teamed with Netflix last year. The streaming giant, which has 117 million subscribers worldwide, will also distribute a companion documentary by Oscar winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom).
The Other Side of Wind, originally a Welles and Les Films de L’Astrophore production, is being produced by Marshall and Rymsza’s Royal Road Entertainment.
Welles’ film takes place at the 70th birthday party of director Jake Hannaford (John Huston), who is struggling to make a comeback film during the Easy Rider era. The party is attended by young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), hangers-on and critics. Hannaford dies in a car accident at the conclusion of the party. His final hours are recounted using a mix of still photos, 16mm and 35mm color and black-and-white footage shot at the party, along with scenes from his unfinished movie. Rounding out the cast are Oja Kodar, Bob Random, Cameron Mitchell, Mercedes McCambridge and Susan Strasberg.
The film’s executive producers are Bogdanovich, Jens Koethner Kaul, Beatrice Welles, Dominique Antoine, Carla Rosen-Vacher, Olga Kagan and Jon Anderson.
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