Peter Tonguette’s book about Welles, Orson Welles Remembered, has just seen publication, and he sent along the following about the book and why he put it together. – Jeff Wilson
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By PETER TONGUETTE
My fascination with Orson Welles began when I saw the restored Touch of Evil in December 1998.
I was 15 at the time. I soon found myself watching as many of his works as I could. I remember watching The Trial on video shortly after Touch of Evil; at the time, I heartily agreed with the comment by Welles quoted on the video box – that it was the best movie he’d ever made. (Of course, then I saw Chimes at Midnight/Falstaff a few years later…)
I also began reading a lot about Welles. It was in books like This Is Orson Welles and Joseph McBride’s Orson Welles that I first learned about The Other Side of the Wind, The Dreamers, and The Magic Show – projects I would later devote much time to in my own research.
A few years later, when I was writing film criticism regularly for several Internet publications, I began conducting interviews with Welles’s colleagues. My book – Orson Welles Remembered: Interviews with His Actors, Editors, Cinematographers, and Magicians – collects 30 of my interviews. It has just been published by McFarland & Company.
Many of the interviews relate to the later Welles projects named above. For example, I spoke with some of the key participants from The Other Side of the Wind, such as Peter Bogdanovich, Gary Graver, R. Michael Stringer, Michael Ferris, and Rich Little (among others). But I also included interviews with people from other important periods of Welles’s career.
I was very fortunate to be among the last journalists to interview Robert Wise about Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. I also spoke with key craftsmen from The Fountain of Youth – editorial supervisor Dann Cahn and editor Bud Molin – who were invaluable in giving me a picture of what Welles was like to work with in the cutting room.
I cover Chimes at Midnight in-depth, as well as the 1948 film of Macbeth, the 1955 stage production of King Lear, and F for Fake, among others.
Link to The McFarland site where you can see more on Orson Welles Remembered
www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-2760-4
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