“What’s important for you now is to get soldiers — good soldiers. They followed Napoleon, they followed Hannibal, they really crossed the Alps. They’re the real heroes of any story.” ― The Baron to Brooks Otterlake in The Other Side of the Wind.
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By RAY KELLY
With footage from The Other Side of the Wind now at a Technicolor lab in Hollywood, completing Orson Welles’ legendary unfinished movie is no longer a quixotic quest.
For the cast and crew who worked alongside Welles on the 1970-1976 shoot, it had been a series of bitter disappointments until an agreement was reached and the footage freed from a Paris film laboratory on March 9. Produced by Filip Jan Rymsza’s Royal Road Entertainment and Frank Marshall, The Other Side of the Wind will be streamed to 93 million Netflix subscribers in 190 countries.
The Other Side of the Wind centers on veteran director Jake Hannaford (played by the late John Huston), struggling to make his comeback film in the New Hollywood era.
Wellesnet reached out to surviving cast and crew members for their reaction. Their reactions ranged from understandable skepticism (“I will believe it when I am sitting in the Cinerama Dome in downtown Hollywood”) to utter jubilation (“My film faith is restored.”) Here are some of the highlights:
Bob Random (Plays John Dale in TOSOTW. He appeared on such television shows as Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, Gunsmoke, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Gidget. His big screen credits include Village of the Giants, This Property is Condemned and …tick…tick…tick…): “Perseverance Furthers…’ – I Ching. As for how excited I am, my wife just now came up with a good one: ‘I would have been more excited 45 years ago.’ Perhaps the best words are slightly dazed. Throughout the years there have been many rumors and faux reports of a release, but obviously this is it. Thank you Peter and Oja! Am I surprised it is finally going to happen? Not really, but I am curious as to its reception. I was 25 during the shooting, now I’m 72 and I know I’ll get a kick out of seeing it. Not bad for a kid from North Vancouver, eh?”
Larry Jackson (The former manager of the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge, Jackson was invited by Welles to work on the crew and plays a member of a documentary film team in TOSOTW. In the years that followed, Jackson, who had also worked on Filming Othello, served as head of acquisitions, marketing and production for the Samuel Goldwyn Company, vice president in charge of production at Orion Pictures, and executive vice president of worldwide acquisitions and co-productions at Miramax): “Despite the passing of so many years, I truly hope this film, so very far ahead of its time in its conception and shooting, will be properly judged for the amazing visionary work of art that it was and is. I’m so very proud to have been a part of it and grateful to Filip and Frank and everyone who helped to cut the Gordian knot.
Creatively, it may well be the bookend to the breakthrough of Kane, and at the same time Orson’s final statement about the place of the artist in the movie industry, looking at it from the reverse of the joyous youthful optimism he had making Kane at 25, when he called moviemaking ‘the biggest electric train set a boy ever had!’
Many of the film students I teach today don’t get the reverence for Kane. Everything that was a breakthrough in 1941 strikes them as old hat in the world they’ve grown up in. Some of the footage from the The Other Side of the Wind has been seen through the years by people in the industry and some of the fresh ideas have been imitated (like the mixed media scenes in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers). The film’s satire of Hollywood’s changing of the guard in the late 1960s and early 70s and pretentious worship of Europeans like Antonioni were entirely of the moment when the film was shot. Some viewers may be tempted to see them as dated today, yet I dearly hope the film can be judged for its original context and foresight, just as we appreciate Kane for what its ideas and techniques represented when it was made.”
Peter Bogdanovich (The co-author of This Is Orson Welles and a successful director, Bogdanovich first portrayed a film critic at the start of filming TOSOTW and later the key role of young director Brooks Otterlake. He was tasked by Welles to complete the movie in the event of his death and will serve as one of its executive producers): “I never doubted for a minute that eventually Orson’s picture would get finished. Somehow. I was just hopeful that I would live long enough to see it, and help to make that happen. Good for Netflix!”
Eric Sherman (The son of director Vincent Sherman, he was an assistant cameraman on TOSOTW and appears in the film. A film teacher, he has also produced, directed, photographed, consulted on and edited numerous films and founded the production company Film Transform Inc.): “I never gave up hope (of it being released). The bits of it I’ve seen suggest to me that it’s a major work … The takeaway (of working on it) was, for me, quite profound. (A.) I learned without question what it was like to work under the watch of a master; (B.) I was pushed to the limits of my creative and technical ability; (C.) I came to understand what it was to embody completely the goals of a true artist.”
Frank Marshall (Line producer on TOSOTW shoot whose later blockbusters included the Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Jason Bourne and Jurassic Park franchises. He is a producer on the movie.): “I can’t quite believe it, but after 40 years of trying, I am so very grateful for the passion and perseverance from Netflix that has enabled us to, at long last, finally get into the cutting room to finish Orson’s last picture.”
Peter Jason (A veteran character actor with a lengthy list of TV credits, Jason made his feature film debut in Howard Hawks’ Rio Lobo and will be seen in Jurassic World 2. He worked both behind-the-scenes and in front of the camera on TOSOTW.): “It sounds fabulous, but it has sounded fabulous so many times before. It’s been so close so many times before that you get used getting your hopes dashed. When I heard about this, I called Frank and asked him if it was bullshit. And he told me, no, it’s true. I guess I will really believe it when I am in a theater watching it and eating popcorn.”
Pat McMahon (His performance as Marvin P. Fassbender in TOSOTW was shown during the AFI tribute to Welles. A veteran Phoenix radio and television personality, McMahon is best known for his portrayal of numerous characters on the The Wallace and Ladmo Show.): “HUZZAH! HUZZAH! My film faith is restored. This time, I’ll really believe it. Finally, my grandchildren will see me with hair. The response of this generation of film buffs should be interesting … and unpredictable. I won’t have an opinion on the place that Wind will have in the Welles canon till I see it, but since so many of the cast have passed, my position in the closing credits seems to be improving.”
R. Michael Stringer (He was an assistant cameraman and gaffer on TOSOTW and crew member on F For Fake, Filming Othello and Orson Welles’ Magic Show. Stringer worked on more than 200 films and TV shows, including The Big Lebowski, The X-Files pilot and Memento.): “I knew the day would come when Orson’s epic film is released, and of course I had hoped it would come sooner. I think the hangers on who wanted a piece of the action kept the project in the vault for so many years. I’m pleased to hear that Netflix has come in and been able to put the pieces together. The obvious problem is that there is no longer a director with a vision. We only have what he put together in his first pass, and the fine tuning will have to be done by other’s who have no intimate knowledge of Orson’s vision. Any version is better than no film to watch. The critics will of course compare this to his other projects and find objections, but what Orson Welles achieved during the filming of The Other Side of the Wind is unique enough today to put the film in the books.
In the beginning his choices were bold and adventurous. We began shooting the movie within the movie with Gary Graver’s hand held Arriflex camera. No sound, just brilliant color footage of the Jake Hannaford movie that was the basis behind Orson’s film project. We shot segments of that Hannaford film for a while, and then went to doing a Hollywood party sequence at Orson’s home in the canyon. We did interviews with many Hollywood notables, Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom, Paul Mazursky, Richard Donner and many many others. Orson chose to use his 16mm Eclair for the interviews, and Super 8 and (video) cameras for a Cinema Verite look at the party goers. He mixed the mediums as a reinforcement to reality. I remember using black and white negative in Gary’s Arriflex and the results were disastrous. Because the celluloid in 35mm B&W neg is significantly thinner than 35mm color negative, the space between the film gate and raw stock and static electric pops exposed the film and made it look like lightning strikes on every frame. We had to reshoot all that footage and make it black and white in post.
We usually shot for about three months or until the cash he had ran out and he returned to Paris. Orson lived in Paris in the early days and only came to the States to gather the crew and shoot again. He would rent a luxurious home in one of the canyons, either Coldwater, Benedict, or Beverly Canyon. We’d turn his home into a film studio and shoot til we dropped. The next time he returned to the States he’d rent another big house in one of the canyons and we’d begin the whole thing again.
I was privileged to meet some of the most important people in Hollywood who came when Orson Welles called.”
Mike Ferris (He was an assistant cameraman on TOSOTW before becoming John Cassavetes’ cameraman on A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night. His numerous credits include Die Hard, Back to the Future II and III, Forrest Gump and Fast and Furious 3.): “Let’s put it like this, I will believe it when I am sitting in the Cinerama Dome in downtown Hollywood with a bag of popcorn and a soda-Coke in my hand. As I sit there and credits roll and footage that I KNOW Orson and Gary shot and actors the like of John Huston, Mercedes McCambridge, Norman Foster, Susan Strasberg, Oja Kodar, Bob Random, Joe McBride, Peter Jason, Paul Stewart, oh, I could go on, are actually speaking lines I once read in a script. That is the point when I will smile perhaps the biggest smile I have smiled since I got in the movie business 47 years ago.
Until that time and ONLY then will I think it is going to happen. It wouldn’t hurt to have Michael Stringer sitting next to me when the lights come up verifying everything we had just seen. (It’s) impossible to gauge how it would be received. These are illiterate times compared to Orson’s era and only a fool would expect it to be one thing or another. But, I am deeply interested in how it holds up versus OW’s vision.”
Henry Jaglom (He directed Welles in A Safe Place and later Someone to Love. In TOSOTW, Jaglom is featured in a heated exchange with fellow director Paul Mazursky on the state of the film industry.): “I can’t quite believe that they’ll really put the film together. Hard to imagine how, but I hope so. I loved doing my scenes with Mazursky, Orson and I had so much fun teasing him. Good luck to them all. Orson worked so hard…. (In 1983,) we formed a company, WelJag, that claimed to have the funds to finish it, thought we’d won but then after all that the French refused to give it up until that Iranian bastard was paid. Orson was so devastated.”
Joseph McBride (Portrayed Mister Pister in TOSOTW. His screenwriting credits include co-writing Rock ’n’ Roll High School and five American Film Institute Life Achievement Award tributes. He is a professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University and author of nineteen books, including three on Welles.): “Now that the film footage is actually back on the ground in Los Angeles, where most of it was shot, we can look to the future of The Other Side of the Wind rather than dwelling on its insanely troubled past…. Some important aesthetic decisions remain to be made. No doubt some controversies will arise in the process. The completed film will startle people; as happened with every Welles film (and every Stanley Kubrick film, for that matter), opinion will be divided on it, and it may take years to be acclaimed as a classic, as usually happened with Welles’s work…. But the news that the film has finally been freed for editing and completion by a dedicated team of Welles collaborators and aficionados is already cause for celebration, even more than the recent rediscovery of his early film Too Much Johnson. We who worked so hard with Orson on The Other Side of the Wind have been waiting more than forty years to get to this point, and it’s a gift for everyone who loves Welles and cinema.”
Filip and I with WIND negative from Paris at lab in Hollywood. All good, scanning begins immediately. #netflix #orsonwelles @Technicolor pic.twitter.com/kLeYlGXJAR
— Frank Marshall (@LeDoctor) March 23, 2017
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