Updated May 16: In a posting to Indiegogo contributors, producer Filip Jan Rymsza revealed that donors who are slated to receive a DVD/ Blu-ray of The Other Side of the Wind as a perk can look forward to receiving a copy of the Morgan Neville documentary as well.
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By RAY KELLY
Academy Award winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal) will direct a feature length documentary for Netflix on Orson Welles’ unfinished The Other Side of the Wind.
Filip Jan Rymsza, who is producing the completion of The Other Side of the Wind with Frank Marshall, said he had envisioned a companion documentary to the completed film from the get-go.
“I fought very hard to make this happen,” said Rymsza, who will serve as executive producer of the documentary with Marshall. “It’s another piece of the puzzle. It does away with the myth that Orson was not creative in that period.”
Neville told Wellesnet that he became interested in exploring the making of The Other Side of the Wind after reading a May 2015 article by Josh Karp in Vanity Fair. He reached out to Rymsza and Marshall about obtaining the rights to the footage before the pair had inked a deal with Netflix.
Rymsza and Marshall included the Neville-directed documentary – tentatively titled They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead – in their talks with Netflix and rights co-owner Oja Kodar.
“I have long admired Morgan’s work,” Rymsza said. “His Best of Enemies blew me away. It was 90 percent archival… He has the perfect sensibility for this.”
Neville won an Oscar for 20 Feet from Stardom and received Grammy nominations for three other films. The Los Angeles native and founder of Tremolo Productions has worked with Netflix before on Keith Richards: Under the Influence and Abstract: The Art of Design.
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, which takes its name from a prophetic comment Welles made to Peter Bogdanovich, will center on Welles’ return to the U.S. in the early 1970s to shoot his ill-fated Hollywood comeback film. The documentary concludes with his death in October 1985.
“Welles is the protagonist of my documentary,” Neville said. “(The Other Side of the Wind) is so autobiographical, even though he said it was not.”
A self-professed Welles fan. Neville said that the late director’s F For Fake is one of his favorite documentaries. “It’s why I wanted to make documentaries in the first place.”
It is far too early to speculate about a completion date or how the documentary’s release will be coordinated with The Other Side of the Wind, said Neville, adding fans should expect They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead to run about 90 minutes and have a limited theatrical release. (Netflix is listing The Other Side of the Wind as a 2018 release on its website.)
Welles’ unorthodox nature of filming and his recasting of roles means there is plenty of footage from The Other Side of the Wind shoot to fill the documentary. (Yes, Rich Little’s shelved performance as Brooks Otterlake will likely be used in Neville’s documentary).
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead will rely heavily on footage shot by Welles for his comeback film more than 40 years ago, rather than recently filmed interviews with colleagues and admirers. Neville is presently recording audio recollections of surviving cast and crew members.
“By giving myself that restriction, I think it is going to make the film do something different, which is what I am interested in. It’s a more immersive experience… To me, I would rather work out a visual language and let the voices come in and out. It will not be a ‘talking heads’ picture,” Neville said.
He added, “I am trying to interview everybody — and everybody at this point has been receptive. There has always been a deep reserve of goodwill toward Orson.”
The negative, dailies and rushes from Welles’ shoot are currently being scanned by Technicolor in Hollywood after spending decades in a Parisian film laboratory. Rymsza and Marshall’s editing team will soon begin work on completing the movie as Welles intended in 1976 using his detailed notes, scripts and the 41 minutes of footage he had edited himself.
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