Labor Day weekend in the U.S. is synonymous with trips to the beach or hot dogs on the grill.
But for followers of this website that weekend in 2018 was all about what was on the screen. The late Orson Welles’ unfinished The Other Side of the Wind debuted at two major film festivals after its completion by a crackerjack team that included some of the original crew. Shot between 1970 and 1976, Welles’ scathing take on New Hollywood, European art films and the demise of the studio system had remained out of reach for more than 40 years.
The gala premiere at the Venice Film Festival took place at the historic Sala Grande on the Lido on Friday, August 31, 2018. Taking part in a panel there were editor Bob Murawski and producer Filip Jan Rymsza, who read statements on behalf of Oja Kodar, Beatrice Welles and Danny Huston. The Other Side of the Wind had its U.S. debut on Saturday, September 1, at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado with producer Frank Marshall, executive producer and co-star Peter Bogdanovich and cast member/ consultant Joseph McBride taking part in a Q&A session there. (Also debuting that weekend was Morgan Neville’s companion documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, based largely on the Josh Karp book Orson Welles’s Last Movie, and Ryan Suffern’s A Final Cut for Orson.)
Since The Other Side of the Wind played at the Venice and Telluride film festivals, it has been available to 277 million Netflix subscribers in 190 countries. Even though Netflix released the movie to fewer than 45 theaters, it still found a spot on nearly four dozen Best of 2018 year-end lists, including Sight & Sound, The Hollywood Reporter, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair.
Below is a trip back in time to the comments made by The Other Side of the Wind production team during Labor Day weekend 2018.
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