By RAY KELLY
There have been grumblings about the protracted delay in completing The Other Side of the Wind, but leading Welles scholar Joseph McBride struck a chord with fans in a recent posting on social media.
McBride, author of three books on Orson Welles, a co-star in the unfinished film, and active participant in a failed deal to complete it in the late 1990s, suggested in a Facebook posting on Wednesday that producers Filip Jan Rymsza, Frank Marshall and Jens Koethner Kaul take legal action to force Oja Kodar, one of the film’s rights holders, into honoring an agreement she signed 14 months ago.
“It’s time for the producers to gear up for the inevitable lawsuit against Oja Kodar and (her representative) Sasha Welles for obstructing the release of The Other Side of the Wind,” McBride wrote. “Oja has been doing that for seventeen years now, and the much-ballyhooed announcement a year ago has been for naught. The question of why she has blocked the film will be left for future historians, and her legacy and that of her allies, including some supposed Welles admirers, will not come off well in those assessments. The discovery process should be illuminating. Hopefully the court will award the Sasha-Oja share of the rights to the producers.”
It is worth noting that Kodar and Peter Bogdanovich fired McBride from the Showtime deal before it unraveled, though McBride has retained a cordial relationship with Bogdanovich.
Further, Sasha Welles has told Wellesnet he considers the October 2014 agreement with producers to be invalid, adding that they breached the contract by not funding an escrow account by January 2015.
Welles fans have expressed irritation with Kodar for failing to get the 40-year-old film released, and producers for collecting $406,405 through a crowdfunding drive without having all of their ducks in a row.
A sampling of some of the comments that have appeared on Wellesnet’s Facebook page and Message Board in the past 24 hours:
JBrooks: “If those running the crowd-funding operation did not in fact have all of the rights secured (as they represented they did), then all the crowd-funding donations (including mine) were procured by fraud. If Oja is in breach a contractual obligation to provide access to the negative, then the producers should sue her for breach.”
Michael Hinerman: Time to take the gloves off. The Palinkas clan has been a cancer on Welles’s career since 1964. Orson had a marvelous thing going in Europe in the 60’s: a little acting troupe that included Jeanne Moreau, Keith Baxter, Tony Perkins, and Akim Tamiroff; a great group of brilliant technicians like Trauner, Richard, Lavagnino, Lucidi and Bonanni; access to well-paying acting gigs; a secure and supportive domestic situation with wife Paola Mori and daughter Beatrice; and the ability to produce the occasional masterpiece. Then Oja crashed the party, Welles had to leave Italy because of the scandal, and we got 20 years of nothing. If Oja was a muse, it’s an odd definition of one. Every project she touched collapsed, except for (F For) Fake, to which she was tangental. Oja debuted in a debacle, The Deep, and now she’s going out with one. I hope she’s pleased with herself, wandering the halls of that Croatian Xanadu she built with Orson’s money, the Susan Alexander who stayed.
Anthony Thorne: “If they don’t sort this bullshit out shortly I’d imagine it will cruel any further hopes down the track of the project being resurrected. It will make further supporters and investors much more wary. I’m not optimistic but I’d love to see the situation resolved. Very sad.”
Pete Fernbaugh: “In my reading of Welles’ life, one of the common threads has been his propensity to place his trust, especially when it came to his work and legacy, in the wrong people. I’ve resisted thinking that his trust in Oja was misplaced, but after the events of the last year and after reading (Josh) Karp’s book, it has become harder and harder to give her the benefit of the doubt.”
Michael Koening: “The problem is that the longer that Sasha waits, the more likely it is that the whole deal falls apart, since some of the funding sources are contingent on clear agreements with all interested parties by a certain date. There’s also the danger of other parties becoming dissatisfied with their deals when they see the Kodars negotiating for more. Hopefully it all gets worked out soon; this seems to be the best chance we’ll have to see the film in the foreseeable future.”
Stafford Davies: “There is little time left (with 40 years having passed since TOSOTW was filmed) to allow for pettiness. The persons able to ‘translate and decipher’ the raw footage are dead or dying. Fans have raised enough for any reconstruction’s costs, but this must be beyond money. Why can’t the billions that flow from Hollywood and museums not set aside funding to placate those still sucking from Welles’s legacy? That said, Miss Palinkas, please release the negative. And Mr. Spielberg, next time a genius asks you for help at least pick up the check.”
Steve Carter: “I give up. At age 64, I’ll never see this movie.”
Peter Rinaldi: “Don’t give up hope. This film WILL get done. [full stop. no sarcasm]”
Jason Alpine Adams: “The public donated with the impression that all disputes had been resolved and all parties had agreed to terms. The producers should have waited to solicit funds until that was true. The way to make up for that misstep would be for them to aggressively pursue completion against anyone who is blocking it. Otherwise, thousands of fans have been defrauded.”
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