Interview links of interest

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

in nearly all the interviews i see of other actors, they make him sound as if orson is the devil and they were perfect angels.

bye now!

p.s. i think i've posted this before. don't remember. if so, permitted to be deleted.

[jaime marzol]

................

i find another charecteristic in orson interviews:

ever notice how the question always pops up, what orson thinks about other directors? i never read them asking ford, or huston, or hitch what they think about the other guys, but that question seems to pop up in a lot of orson interviews.

it's been said that KANE is the ruler that other films are measured by, maybe they were carrying that ruler to welles?

in one interview, the guy asked welles what he thought about rock & roll music! what in the world was the guy thinking?

...............

and i must thank nat the obssessed for this very funny 'partial' quote from playboy 1983.
Heavymetal music isn't the only way Welles has tuned in to the younger generation. Last year, he agreed to deliver the opening address at the massive anti-nuclear-weapons rally in New York's Central Park. His speech was to show that the old-timers were as deeply concerned about the prospect of nucleaar war as the kids. That morning, before the 900,000 demonstrators arrived, Welles was ushered through a cordon of police to the speakers' platform, which had been constructed high above the sprawling Great Lawn. Unfortunately, he quickly discoved he couldn't walk up the exceedingly long ramp, which was much too steep for his bulk. Nor could he ascend it in the wheelchair he had brought with him.

Figuring that the security guards hired to monitor the rally might be able to help, the ever-helpful Henry Jaglom searched out one of the supervisore.

"Listen," Jaglom told him, "I've got Orson Welles here."

"Hey, Orson Welles!" said Security. "No shit! Where is he?"

"I'd like you to come and meet him," said Jaglom.

"Yeah," agreed Security, straightening his tie. "I'd love to."

"But I've got a problem," Jaglom added, explaining the sticky situation.

"No problem!" assured Security, who instantly called a Brooklyn friend employed in construction.

In an hour, Brooklyn arrived with a forklift used to construct skyscrapers. Attached to a chain was a platform onto which Jaglom pushed Welles in his wheelchair. As the forklift hoisted them up, Jaglom gripped the chain with one hand and the wheelchair with the other, since the platform was swinging wildly to and fro in mid-air. "What are they doing? What are they doing? Welles asked with each dip. Nervous about rolling off if Jaglom let go, he was really sweating now.

"Hey!" yelled Security from below. "There's no problem! Don't worry!" When the platform was finally at rostrum level, several broad swings were necessary to maneuver it to where the wheelchair could easily be rolled off. "This is how it ends," Welles blurted out as the platform tipped at an especially precarious angle. "I can see this is what the obituary is, New York Times, tomorrow: 'Elderly overweight actor rolls to his death, crushing young director friend in his path!"

[Le Chiffre]

So that's what it came to: Welles having to be forklifted onto the stage. Too bad somebody didn't get that on film. I would've paid money to see it.

Welles' taste has always fascinated me (especially his taste in literature) and I think his taste and opinions interested many others too. As one book put it, "The boy genius had become the great pontificator".

[Harvey Chartrand]

I recently interviewed actor Edmund Purdom in Rome. Here is the Q&A on LAFAYETTE.
_

In 1961, you played Silas Deane (a hero of the American Revolution) opposite Orson Welles as a hefty Benjamin Franklin in Lafayette. What are your recollections of working with Welles during his European nomad phase?

Edmund Purdom: All of my scenes, which were quite substantial, I shot with Orson Welles at a studio in Nice. I think I worked with nobody else in Lafayette. When I was finished, I went straight off to Yugoslavia and started a movie there (Suleiman the Conqueror). Then it was decided to add one more scene to Lafayette. So they shot Welles in single shots and still had to pick me up and cut me in to make it like a two-shot. Which they did, eventually, after many arguments and after I insisted that they pay me beforehand, because I didn’t trust them. They came and shot me in a mock-up set in Belgrade, where I was working. And they did a very good job on this added scene.

I found Welles to be a charming man. I had absolutely nothing to do with him off the set. He was a mystery to me. Welles was very courteous and professional. We played our scenes together, said our lines at one another — and that was that.

[Harvey Chartrand]

I direct your attention to an excellent article in the Jan.-March 2004 edition of FILMFAX entitled THE KALEIDOSCOPIC CAMERA OF GARY GRAVER. The veteran cinematographer discusses working with Welles on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, John Cassavetes on THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, and Al Adamson on DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN (Lon Chaney, Jr.'s last picture).

[Harvey Chartrand]

Just stumbled across this Q&A at a Vincent Price tribute site. Here are a couple of quotes from Lawrence French's 1979 interview with Price à propos Orson Welles:

"Welles was a marvelous director. I did two plays with him, THE SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAY and HEARTBREAK HOUSE. He was a really brilliant director, although I never thought he was a very good actor. I mean he's too Orson Welles. There's absolutely no characterization at all. More he did when he was young, than he does now, because he really is a caricature of himself now. I mean, that fat!"

"I think (Welles had a fear of completion). Like Michelangelo. I think he could have been the greatest director of the American theater and of the cinema, but there was something missing there."

It's strange how Welles predicts his own fate in The Magnificent Ambersons. He strongly identifies with Mama's boy George Minafer, a spoiled, undisciplined youth who is utterly ruined and humiliated later in life. No wonder. During Welles' childhood and adolescence, he never heard a discouraging word from his elders about his limitless potential. His guardians and mentors never prepared this child prodigy for adversity, rejection and failure.

George Minafer and Orson Welles both get their comeuppance three times over. However, in his fall down the social ladder, George discovers decency and humility and a sense of responsibility for others; he deeply regrets keeping his mother and Eugene Morgan apart, and volunteers for dangerous work with explosives in order to make more money so he can pay for Aunt Fanny's lodgings in her grim boarding house.

In The Battle Over Citizen Kane, writer Richard France notes that courting controversy paid off for Welles until he locked horns with William Randolph Hearst. Big mistake, France says. Horrible consequences for the next 45 years of Welles' life. Much as I feel sorry for Welles, I can't say I'm surprised at his descending career arc, the way his life tails off and tails off and tails off, as Robert Wise puts it. Welles wasn't easy to work with as a young man, despite the astonishing results he brought to his stage and radio productions. Such hubris invites the fates to retaliate, as I'm sure Welles himself realized before the fact, being a scholar of the Bible and Shakespeare.

When interviewed in 1982, Welles seems saddened by memories of his struggles after his exile from Hollywood. The earlier confidence and arrogance are long gone. Welles' whole demeanor is different (slightly wounded and baffled). He doesn't even sound like his younger self – his voice is wheezy, quavering, hesitant. There is barely any resemblance between the old Welles and the young firebrand who achieved in only five years a measure of fame and record of achievement in the arts that has yet to be duplicated. France points out that we forget how famous Welles was in his prime. He was as well known in Depression-era America as President Franklin D. Roosevelt!

Nearing the end, Welles almost seems to be admitting that he needed more than one lesson, and that he got more than one lesson... as Boss Jim W. Gettys predicted would happen to Charles Foster Kane.

[Terry]

Price was very proud of having worked with the Mercury and Welles. It was a mainstay of his speech when he was on the Talk America (I think that's what it was called) tour in the 1980s (lots of people were on that tour, including David Letterman before he landed his TV gig.) I wish to God I could remember what all Price said about Welles, but I'm afraid it's gone (unless some Scientologist could retrieve it for me!)

[purplepines]

The Bob Edwards Show had Joseph McBride on today, pushing his book What Ever Happened To Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career for an hour.

I heard it, it was really in-depth.

The show is for sale as audio at Audible.com for like 2 bucks.

[Jim Spriggs]

Hello, first time poster.
Just read an article by the English chat-show king Michael Parkinson who interviewed Welles and mentions him in today's British newspaper "Daily
Mail". Here is an excerpt.

Booking the show grew easier as word got around, but we were still searching for the big star to impress the agents. Our ideal was Orson Welles, then a man of towering reputation in the world of movies and theatre.

We were certain he would deliver a performance that would impress the critics, delight the audience and, most of all, convince our bosses to give us another series.

Richard Drewett, a tenacious booker, finally managed to persuade him to come on the show and I spent a week or more worrying and fretting over the structure of the interview. It was our first one-man show and it had to work.

Come the day, I was still fussing over the interview when there was a knock on my dressing-room door. I opened it and came face to face with Orson Welles - an enormous figure, blocking out the daylight.

'Mr Parkinson?' he said, as he swept past me into the room. He was dressed entirely in black - including a black shirt, black bow tie and a black fedora.

He looked around the room and saw my questions on the dressing table. 'May I?' he asked, and gave them the brief sweep of his gaze. Then he looked at me and said: 'How many talk shows have you done?'

I told him this was the eighth. 'I've done rather more than that,' he said. 'That being the case, would you mind a little suggestion?'

I nodded. He indicated the questions. 'Throw those away and let's just talk.'

And we did. Everything from the making of Citizen Kane to the innate good manners of peasants in a remote part of Spain. He was exceptional, not just in the scope of his intellect and knowledge, but in his use of language.

[Glenn Anders]

Welcome, Jim.

And thank you for Michael Parkinson's memoir of his first meeting Orson Welles. What he tells us adds to the impression that Welles, from early on in his career, preferred to appear casual, both in his best work, and in his public appearances, in order to modulate the heavy weight of his voice, appearance and style. Certainly, by the 1970, all three qualities were no longer so appreciated as they had been in the 1930's and 1940's.

Glenn

[NoFake]

This week's PARADE magazine has an interview with Christopher Buckley in which he's asked to name his favorite memoirs http://www.parade.com/parade-picks/2009 ... moirs.html. One of them is Peter Viertel's "Dangerous Friends: At Large With Huston and Hemingway in the Fifties," about which he says:

Viertel attached himself to directors John Huston and Orson Welles, among others, and soaked up all their stories.

The book seems to be unavailable, at least on Amazon. Has anyone here read it?

[Eve]

a nice little 'interview' ...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Grafic-MAGICIAN-GWY ... 7C294%3A50

[Roger Ryan]

Interesting how diplomatic Welles is when discussing "taking the time" to ensure Hayworth's performance is top drawer in LADY FROM SHANGHAI when, in fact, he was forced to do retakes/inserts by Cohn which were diluting his original vision for the film.

I was surprised, as well, to hear him discuss his plans for a bare-stage MOBY DICK performance this early.

Thanks Eve for providing us with this link.

[Alan Brody]

Welles also mentions wanting to do a film of Ben Hecht's short story The Shadow. I tracked it down at the library and it's a good little 12-page read, with a doppelganger theme of the type that ran through some of Welles's work. He actually did do it on radio, but changed the title to 'The Marvelous Borastro'. I think it's likely Hecht wrote the original story with Welles in mind:

"... But Sarastro was the true charlatan and one forgave him this. One even demanded it of him.
--Often, while listening to his Mother Goose mysticism, his Munchausen adventures, his garbled and pompous chatter of genii, sylphs, and undines, I have grown annoyed at my own skepticism. How much more marvelous was the Marvelous Sarastro if one believed him? How much more entertaining this Arabian Night in which he lived, could one accept it with the heart of a child rather than the dull incredulity of a modern author." (from 'The Shadow' in The Collected Stories of Ben Hecht, 1945)

[K Dobry]

There is an interesting Tom Waits CBC radio interview from last week in which he discusses his favorite scenes from Touch of Evil. He does some rather amusing impressions of Dennis Weaver and Marlene Dietrich.

The whole program is available to download at

http://www.cbc.ca/q/pastepisodes.html

It was the Podcast for Friday, October 2, 2009, and the Waits interview begins at about 23 minutes into the program.