Hickenlooper's "Big Brass Ring"

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

Has anyone seen The Big Brass Ring?

What did you think of it?

I saw it. Missed Orson as the lead role.

Just wondering if he was really the screenplay writer.

[Jeff Wilson]

Welles and Oja Kodar wrote the original screenplay, which was adapted by FX Feeney and George Hickenlooper. I've seen it. It's decent.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

I know that is has their name on the cover as the screenplay writers. But wonders have been going through my head. Even on his movies that have come out after he died.

So many cuts. Then says they were put back. But were they really the cuts they made or did they rearrange the movie or add their own thing too it.

Sorry. I just don't know what to believe anymore.

Some articles and books said that he had fear of completion. Well, if I was making movies and they were taken out of my hands and cut, rearranged, re-edited, etc. I would have fear of that too.

The movie was decent. It was different. It was good.

Sorry for all the questions. And thanks for all the answers.

[maxrael]

don't know if everyone's seen this, but there's an interesting article written by F.X.Feeney of what went into the adaptation of The Big Brass Ring at:

http://www.wga.org/WrittenBy/1998/1298/BigBrassRing.html

This is where the notion of "written by" becomes intensely personal, because as it happens, I collaborated with George in adapting the Welles script. The path to this partnership was circuitous. Before we got together, it was a dream we had pursued separately since 1987, when The Big Brass Ring was published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. Unaware of one another's existence, George bought one and so did I--and at separate times and in separate ways, we both fell in love with the story. A certain amount of Welles-worship was the motivator in both cases, but personal passions were involved, too...

From the moment the project was announced, people have asked: How could you adapt Welles? (Sometimes they didn't ask--they'd exclaim: "How could you!") Did you have to make big changes? Weren't you intimidated?

We've remained true to Welles in every one of his eccentric essentials: The presidential hopeful still steals his wealthy wife's necklace, and heads upriver in a little launch to have a secretive encounter with his old mentor. (The river was the Congo in Welles, the Mississippi in ours, but the feeling of archetypal journey is preserved intact.) When we meet Kim, he's got a monkey on his shoulder and a pair of naked women playing backgammon close at hand. Characters spar with each other in quick jibes, peppery jokes, and ruminations about fate, and Blake is ultimately obliged to confront the central figure from his past. In Welles' script, this ghostly person was a mistress--in ours, a long-lost brother. This is the one radical liberty we have taken, and we've done it mindful that Oja Kodar, Henry Jaglom and Jonathan Rosenbaum will one day be sitting in judgement of the result. Our reasons were partly practical--a mistress is no longer the kind of secret that can destroy a presidential hopeful, in America post-Clinton--but a more profound consideration applies, too, which is that Blake's anquish, his capacities as a leader, a lover, an amateur thief and possible killer, all register more tellingly if his guilt and shame are directed at a betrayed blood-relative.

In writing free of the script, we sought inspiration from the life: Welles himself had a ghostly relationship with his schizophrenic older brother, Richard--a derelict to whom he provided lifelong income but whose path he crossed no more than once or twice after becoming famous. This is a topic Welles never touched on in any of his films, doubtless because the pain was too deep. We broached it in his honor, not to "improve" Welles or invade his privacy, but to enter those uncharted spaces his death left unexplored, where his deepest sorrows may break bread with all of ours.

[Harvey Chartrand]

I saw THE BIG BRASS RING.
It's a real stinker.
A BOMB, for sure. One of the most unpleasant viewing experiences I had in the 90s, as I recall.
Haven't read the original script. It's probably better than what finally made it to the screen, but I have a sense that the story is just too much of a downer to work....
For all you completists out there, George Hickenlooper directed a 6-minute short subject titled 'The Big Brass Ring' in 1997, with Malcolm McDowell essaying the role of the old queen.
The sad part is, the failure of THE BIG BRASS RING kills off any chance of other Welles scripts being dusted off and reworked for a contemporary audience. I'd like to see some enterprising director take on "Because of the Cats" and "The Assassin", for example.

[maxrael]

i've seen it once and didn't think it was too bad!!
(once i'd gotten over how much had been changed from the original screenplay... (i wanted more of the monkey!)) maybe it's time for a second viewing...

It's a shame it didn't fare better commercially considering the amount of love and effort put in by Hickenlooper and Feeney
...but then as we all know, just because something's had a lot of work put into it, it doesn't necessarily mean it's any good!

The Hickenlooper short version is currently available on dvd compilation of short films called, 'Short 2'...
(though i'm still waiting for my copy to arrive!)

see this thread in the trading area:

http://wellesnet.com/cgi-bin....=4;t=33

[maxrael]

there's quite a nice review and a comprehensive list of the changes made at:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click....=121127

(though there seems to be an equal amount of reviews condemning it!)

For Welles fans there are a few delicious references: Brandini's biography of Mennaker is titled "Bright Lucifer" (the titles of a play Welles wrote as a teenager) and Pellarin gets to quote the famous Shakespeare line that climaxes "Chimes at Midnight": "I know thee not, old man." Neither of these bits are in the original script (Welles was not one for referencing his art, only his life) and they neither add nor detract from the film, but they are fun little tidbits for the faithful.

I've followed the development of this film from the moment I heard Hickenlooper had optioned the story from Oja Kodar. You can count me among the Welles aficionados waiting with a mixture of anticipation and dread, and I'm happy to say that he makes a respectable, compelling, rich and complex work. The Big Brass Ring is not a Welles film. It's a George Hickenlooper film, and a good one.

[Wellesnet]

Citizen Kane's followup: The Greatest Sequel Never Made? (written for the BBC):
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201510 ... never-made

(The Big Brass Ring) was about an old political advisor to Franklin Roosevelt, a homosexual named Kimball Menaker. He’s mentored a young, Kennedy-esque senator from Texas with presidential ambitions named Blake Pellerin, who runs against Ronald Reagan and loses. Pellerin, wrote Welles, as if describing himself, “is a man who has within him the devil of self-destruction that lives in every genius… Like all great men he is never sure that he has chosen the right path in life. Even being president, he feels, may somehow not be right: ‘Should I be a monk? … Should I just… forget about everything else?’ That is what The Big Brass Ring is all about.”

[RayKelly]

Twelve years after Orson Welles' death, George Hickenlooper shot five pages of the Welles-Oja Kodar screenplay for THE BIG BRASS RING to drum up support for a feature film The resulting 1997 short film starred Malcolm McDowell as Kim Menaker and Ivana Milicevic as journalist Cela Brandini — roles originally intended for Welles and Kodar themselves. Check out the video.