Curtis Harrington on Orson Welles - Bright Lights Film Journal story

[Harvey Chartrand]

I direct your attention to 'You Look Pretty Splendid Yourself, Orson,' Peter Tonguette's marvellous interview with actor/director Curtis Harrington in the current edition of Bright Lights Film Journal —http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/44/curtis.htm.
Curtis was of course a great admirer of Welles and worked with him on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. However, he confirms Welles' fear of completion syndrome and regrettably informs Mr. Tonguette that THE DEEP is a great disappointment, standard made-for-TV movie fare. Curtis' anecdote about the last time he met Orson at Ma Maison is genuinely moving. Bravo, Mr. Tonguette, for an exceptional interview!

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Harvey: Congratulations to Peter.

Sometime ago, someone inquired after Graver's documentary, WORKING WITH WELLES. That picture has Harrington, on camera, telling some of the stories he relates for Peter.

Regards to you both.

Glenn

[Christopher]

My thanks to Peter Tonguette for bringing out in his interview with Curtis Harrington the innate courtesy and graciousness of Orson Welles, as anyone who knew him personally will confirm.

As for Welles's "complex about finishing things," as Harrington puts it, Welles pointed out in numerous interviews that what stood in his way most of the time was not a "fear of completion" but a lack of funds. However, his habit of continually revising a work-in-progress until it satisfied him meant that in the course of his artistic life, he would complete fewer works. Every great artist has left unfinished works behind him. Why this constant harping on Welles's "fear of completion?" It seems unbelievably stupid to me.

[Peter Tonguette]

Thanks to all for their very kind words about my Curtis Harrington interview. As I state in the interview itself, the people I've spoken to who really knew and worked with Welles all stress what a gracious, kind man he was. Sadly, it seems that many biographers don't choose to speak to these people or they emphasize Welles' enemies.

As far as "The Deep": it is not my personal opinion that Welles suffered from a "fear of completion." As I state in my footnotes to the piece, I believe that "The Deep" was a very specific case in Welles' career; if he did stop work on it, it was only to funnel his money (since all of these films were being financed or partially financed out of his own pocket) to projects he regarded as more important. "The Other Side of the Wind" being the most important, although Oja feels that "The Magic Show," for example, was also a priority (evidenced by the fact that he did return to it so often in the years between 1976 and his death). I think Welles WOULD have completed "The Deep" had complications not arose due to lack of funds, the death of Harvey, etc.; but by the mid-70s, to paraphrase Bogdanovich, he felt he had to prioritize his projects and "The Deep" was not per se a priority. That's my opinion, anyway.

Also, please note that it was Welles who described the film as "looking like a TV movie," not Mr. Harrington. I wouldn't take that as the final verdict though; I know a number of Welles scholars who have seen significant portions of the film and consider it to be visually wonderful. I think Orson just had high standards for himself; he didn't care for "Portrait of Gina" either, I've heard.

Again, thanks to all for their compliments. I'm currently at work on a number of other Welles interviews, including one with his good friend and collaborator on "The Magic Show," Abb Dickson.

Cheers,

Peter

[Harvey Chartrand]

Curtis Harrington also sings the praises of another (if lesser known) maverick director in the current issue of FilmfaxPlus Magazine — Timothy Carey, whose masterpiece THE WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER will soon be released on DVD in a special 40th anniversary repackaging. Carey's oeuvre includes the underground classic TWEET'S LADIES OF PASADENA, which inspired John Waters and other iconoclastic directors. Carey also wrote a brilliant script entitled NECROPHILIA, which will soon be directed by his son Romeo Carey.
I urge you all to pick up a copy of the latest FilmfaxPlus and read TIMOTHY CAREY: THE WORLD'S GREATEST DIRECTOR.

[Roger Ryan]

Film fans may remember Timothy Carey better as a very visible character actor throughout the 50's and 60's. Kubrick cast him in both "The Killing" (1956) and "Paths Of Glory" (1957), the latter better a really good showcase for his talent. His performance in The Monkee's feature "Head" (1968) is disturbingly eccentric and may be indicative of an against the grain personality that rubbed some Hollywood legends the wrong way: apparently both Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando physically attacked Carey, reportedly out of frustration and in self-defense respectively.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Christopher,
There is a school of thought that CITIZEN KANE is not about William Randolph Hearst or Howard Hughes or Robert McCormick, but is a thinly veiled biography of Orson Welles himself — and a prediction of the course the rest of his life would take!
If one subscribes to this theory, Orson himself predicted his own "fear of completion" syndrome in the script of CITIZEN KANE, when Charles Foster Kane's best friend Jedediah Leland tells Thompson the reporter: "(Charlie) never finished it [Xanadu], never finished anything. He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own..."
I rest my case.

[Jeff Wilson]

The old "fear of completion" theory is one more thing that Charles Higham needs to be kicked in the nuts for. Welles had a self-destructive streak in him, there's no doubt of that, but I think the whole fear of completion thing is overblown. Welles' problem is that he worked in a very public, very commercial medium, a medium that places a premium importance on getting a product finished and getting money out of it, as soon as possible. But Welles didn't work this way for much of the latter period of his career. He paid for his own projects, and if he completed them, fine, and if he didn't, then he either moved on or continued trying to complete it if it truly meant something to him and if he had the wherewithal to do so.

In the end, I think the whole "fear of completion" theory boils down to a couple things: expectations of Welles, and expectations of movies and the way they are made. With someone like Welles, audiences expected great things, and he delivered as best he could. When left to his own devices to make movies, as he often was after 1968 or so, he obviously felt no compunction to rush a product to cinemas. When Welles had a reasonable amount of funding, he produced a completed feature. He didn't have "fear of completion" when he had the proper backing, did he? The financial power behind a picture may not have liked it and chopped the film up, but you can't say Welles got cold feet and bailed before the film was done. A minor case could be made for Arkadin, as it was pulled out of his hands due his missing a deadline for editing, but were Touch of Evil, The Trial, Chimes at Midnight, The Immortal Story, and F for Fake left incomplete for others to patch together from scraps? If Welles took his time making Don Quixote or anything else he financed himself, do you blame him?

A writer can toss a bad draft of a novel, or move on to something else if he loses interest, or it fails to live up to what was intended, or what have you. The filmmaker, working in a medium so visible and expensive and involving so many other people, cannot. In the end, doesn't this reputation rest, really, on the failure to finish Quixote and The Deep? How many of the others can he really, seriously be blamed for not finishing in a "timely" manner, free of circumstances beyond his control, and which were risks of the way he worked, ie independently?

[Peter Tonguette]

Of course, I agree 110%, Jeff, which is why I tried to emphasize the very particular circumstances of "The Deep" in my footnotes. My hunch is that Welles did purposefully stop work on "The Deep" at some stage, for reasons stated, but I think this is an exceptional case and - in my opinion - doesn't have much to do with "fear" so much as practicality. Who can blame him if he felt his money was better spent on "The Other Side of the Wind" or "The Magic Show" or "Orson Welles Solo" than "The Deep"? It's his money!

The fear of completion myth arises not just from, as you write, people's expectations of Welles and the way that movies are made: it also arises from people's conceptions of what cinema can be. One of the things I tried to do in my article on "The Dreamers" is argue that there's no legitimate reason to dismiss the (extraordinary) fragments he completed on that project simply because they are fragments. Bill Krohn evoked Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn" as a point of comparison. I think he's absolutely right. The problem is that the fragment has never been established as a legitimate form in narrative cinema, as it is in poetry or literature. Perhaps one day it will be regarded as a legitimate form in narrative cinema; at that time, we will all be better equipped to deal with this exceptional body of work Welles left behind at the time of his death.

Thanks for the heads-up on the Harrington Filmfax piece, Harvey!

Peter

[blunted by community]

indeed higham deserves a swift kick in the nuts for coining that. once he coined it, it followed welles till the day he died.

from what i've read of welles' later life, it was spent struggling to finish projects. the only project he never wanted to release was DON Q. he loved it, he owned it, and didn't want to hold it up for public ridicule.

another huge problem he had was that he took a long time to edit. George Stevens took a year to edit GIANT and no one ripped it out of his hands and gave it to the director of THE MOLE PEOPLE to finish it.

i read an article that said since welles was assured of his place in cinema, he didn't feel the need to finish films. what a stupid thing to write.