By RAY KELLY
A pair of Academy Award winners and two highly respected industry veterans have joined the team completing the late Orson Welles’ long-unfinished film The Other Side of Wind.
Academy Award winner Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker) is editing the movie with four-time Oscar winning sound man Scott Millan (Apollo 13, Gladiator) handling the re-recording and mixing. The legendary film is being produced by Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza for release by Netflix in 2018.
The Other Side of Wind, originally a Welles and Les Films de L’Astrophore production, is being produced by Rymsza’s Royal Road Entertainment. Marshall, who served as line producer during the 1970s shoot and has worked to complete the movie for more than 40 years, will oversee the project with Rymsza, whose negotiating skills freed the film from cinematic limbo. They are working closely with executive producer Peter Bogdanovich, who was tasked by Welles to finish the film in the event of his death.
“After all these years, I can’t quite believe we are starting post production on The Other Side of the Wind,” Marshall said. “Thanks to Netflix, we have been able to assemble an amazingly talented post production team to take on the exciting and daunting challenge of completing Orson’s last film. It was an extraordinary experience to work with him 40 years ago and it will be an honor to help see his vision finally come together on the screen.”
Rymsza had told Wellesnet in March that “extremely talented and decorated” individuals were being eyed for post production roles. “We have a bounty of riches when it comes to interest from people who want to help and who appreciate the amount of work we’ve done and who want to be involved.”
The film’s editor, Murawski, was a neighbor of the film’s late cameraman, Gary Graver, and is long familiar with the project. In addition to The Hurt Locker, the BAFTA and ACE award winner worked on Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, Kong: Skull Island and Oz the Great and Powerful. In 2010, Murawski edited and released Duke Mitchell’s unfinished 1976 low-budget film Gone With the Pope for his Grindhouse Releasing.
“It’s a surreal honor to be working on a ‘new’ movie directed by the legendary Orson Welles, and starring filmmaking giants John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich,” Murawski said. “I feel The Other Side of the Wind is the most important film project happening in the world right now, and I am thrilled, and humbled, to be part of it.”
Millan has been nominated for nine Academy Awards and won four times. His big screen credits for sound include Schindler’s List, The Bourne Ultimatum, Ray, Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ, and the James Bond movies Skyfall and Spectre. He is the 2012 recipient of the Cinema Audio Society’s Career Achievement Award.
“Orson Welles said ‘I believe sound is the first human sense, not the eye,'” Millan said. “I could not agree more and am thrilled beyond words to collaborate with Frank, Filip and Peter with the hope that together we will recapture the seductive rhythms of one of our greatest filmmakers.”
Legendary negative cutter Mo Henry was charged with the complex task of reassembling for 4K scanning the more than 1,000 reels of footage shot by Welles. Henry’s more than 300 screen credits include Apocalypse Now Redux, L.A. Confidential, The Big Lebowski and Jaws.
Ruth Hasty (Mission: Impossible, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2) is the post production supervisor for The Other Side of the Wind. She has also worked on the sound and editing teams for such films as Jurassic Park, A River Runs Through It and The Talented Mr. Ripley.
A 4K scan of the negative was completed by Technicolor in Hollywood in September and the audio elements digitized.
The film’s executive producers are Bogdanovich, Jens Koethner Kaul, Beatrice Welles, Dominique Antoine, Carla Rosen-Vacher, Olga Kagan and Jon Anderson. The movie’s screenplay is credited to Welles and Oja Kodar.
The negative, rushes, dailies and sound elements for Welles’ comeback film spent decades in a film laboratory outside Paris until Rymsza and Marshall reached agreements with the rights holders and teamed with Netflix. The streaming giant, which has more than 109 million subscribers worldwide, will also distribute a companion documentary by Oscar winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom).
Editor Affonso Gonçalves (Beasts of the Southern Wild) was tapped in May 2015 to work on the project, but was no longer available due to his schedule being extended on Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy.
The Other Side of the Wind takes place at the 70th birthday party of maverick movie director Jake Hannaford (Huston), who is struggling to make a comeback film during the rise of New Hollywood. The party is attended by young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich), hangers-on and critics – many of whom are patterned after people in Welles’ life. Hannaford dies at the conclusion of the party and his final hours are recounted in the movie using a mix of still photos, and 8mm, 16mm and 35mm color and black-and-white film shot at the party, along with scenes from his unfinished movie. Rounding out the cast are Kodar, Cameron Mitchell, Mercedes McCambridge, Susan Strasberg, Edmond O’Brien, Norman Foster, Joseph McBride, Paul Stewart and Robert Random.
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