By RAY KELLY
A young British filmmaker is raising funds online for My Friend Orson Welles, a film short that promises a realistic look at how someone with a physical disability and mental health issues embraces love and romance.
A graduate of Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University, writer-director Sam Judd said that My Friend Orson Welles was originally conceived as a feature length script, but his plan is to instead shoot a short film on a relatively small budget. “I do really want to make the feature, but having a short version will act as a calling card and it will be something we can show potential investors,” Judd told Wellesnet.
The movie would focus on John, an aspiring young screenwriter living in Leeds, England. John battles with social anxieties surrounding his disability. At the same time, John discovers his true feelings for a childhood friend, Becky, all under the sardonic tutelage of an imaginary Orson Welles.
“My Friend Orson Welles is a love letter to cinema, the romantic comedy genre, and a potential game-changer in terms of representation of disability both in front of and behind the camera,” Judd said in his pitch to investors. “We intend to build a team made up of at least 50% disabled cast and crew. A high percentage of which will be at the very start of their careers… On screen, the disabled community rarely are shown as sexual beings and yet alone beings capable of romance. There are exceptions of course, but they all still seem to be tied to their disability. We are more than our disabilities,” Judd said. “John’s feelings for Becky inhabit a world where his disability is quite rightly, an afterthought. It does not define him! We want the film to showcase disabled people living their ordinary lives, but with extraordinary fun, joy and playfulness, something we don’t see enough of on film.”
Judd is raising money for My Friend Orson Welles by crowdfunding at greenlit.com/project/my-friend-orson-welles. He hopes to raise £15,000, or slightly more than $20,000, and shoot it over two weekends in March and April 2025.
Judd is fascinated by Welles both as an arist and a man.
“He was definitely an individual who was ahead of his time. He staged the first all black production of Macbeth for example, which is pretty incredible for 1930s America. It is easy to see why the American New Wave loved him so much and why how ever many years later, we are still discussing him. He was a great filmmaker and probably the first experimental filmmaker but what I really admire about him is his creativity. As well as a filmmaker, actor, radio pioneer, he was also a stage magician and even entertained the troops during the second world war, Judd said.
“In my film, the main character equally finds Orson Welles’ creativity inspirational and potentially daunting. Yet despite that, Orson Welles was a flawed human being who struggled with weight issues and maintaining romantic relationships,” Judd said. “Although he enjoyed tremendous success in his professional life, his early career was in all likelihood the most creatively fulfilling for him. Due to studio interference, he was forced to sourced funding from private donors and by starring in other people’s films. Often leaving projects half finished due to the money running out. If he could have been more of a ‘yes man’ while still keeping his artistic integrity, could he have enjoyed more success later in life? He ended his career starring in commercials and appearing on talk shows. That contrast is something I desperately want to explore.”
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