Welles, Orson

[Sunrise]

I saw that yesterday. This is a great...great thing.

[tpfkabi]

I never go to see my movies once they're finished, because they're on film, in a tin can and can never be changed. If you direct a play, it's opened, and if you see it again after it's been running awhile, and you don't like it too well, you can take the cast and say, "well, we'll have a rehearsal tomorrow, we'll rewrite that scene, we'll play that a little differently," but a movie is locked up forever. You can always do it better, but you can't change a finished movie. So I never see my movies, because it makes me nervous not to be able to change anything. I have two main projects which are unfinished. One is THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND and when I tell you that my partner in that project is the brother-in-law of the late Shaw of Iran, you will understand why we are having a little legal difficulty. The other unfinished film is DON QUIXOTE, which was a private exercise of mine, and it will be finished as an author would finish it- in my own good time, when I feel like it. It is not unfinished because of financial reasons. And when it is released, it's title is going to be "WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FINISH DON QUIXOTE?"

-Orson Welles

http://www.wellesnet.com/wind_index.htm

there's some info. i had never heard of this project. my first thought was that he died before finishing shooting, but apparently he had all the film in the can 10 years before his death, he just hadn't finished editing it. correct me if i'm wrong.

[Sunrise]

You are not wrong. My understanding is that Welles shot all the footage and edited a great deal of it...just never finished the editing, etc. The supplements on Criterion's F for Fake release explain a lot of this and are also quite terrific.

[MacGuffin]

Orson Welles heading back to big screen
Source: Hollywood Reporter

The late Orson Welles is back in the movie business. A rare recording only recently discovered of the filmmaker narrating a children's Christmas novel is being used as the basis for a film. It is being produced by Drac Studios, best known as a special effects and makeup shop for movies like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" but now moving into full-fledged production.

Drac is in development on "Christmas Tails," a 3D live-action/CG hybrid movie to be directed by Todd Tucker and narrated by Welles, who died in 1985.

"It's a movie about how Santa's dog saves Christmas, but on one level, this a story about the discovery of Orson's lost tapes," Drac president Harvey Lowry said. "This is a substantial find. It's something that a filmmaker dreams of."

More than 25 years ago, author Robert X. Leed self-published a book titled "Christmas Tails," and in 1985 got his friend -- who happened to be the legendary Welles -- to narrate it, making five reel-to-reel recordings. The filmmaker passed away a few months later, and apart from Leed making the occasional copy of a reel to pass along with his book, the recordings stayed on a shelf in a closet of his Las Vegas home.

In December 2008, Lowry was discussing a project with a colleague, Karl Fritz, who mentioned in passing a rumor of the "lost tapes," believed to be the Welles' last professional recordings. The remarks went over Lowry's head at the time, but a month later he called Fritz back and wanted specifics.

Lowry contacted Reed, who confirmed the tapes' existence and sent them to Lowry's Burbank offices. Lowry heard the distinct voice and began brainstorming.

"We worked out a deal to option the book, and I got the recordings from him," Lowry said. The tapes were so old, he had to have them go through a chemical bath and baking process at Chemical Records so they could be digitized. He also verified their authenticity.

Lowry then approached Welles' estate to make a deal about getting the film icon back onscreen.

"I had the recording, but that didn't mean I could use them," he said. Deal in hand, Lowry began getting the movie on track.

In "Tails," Santa's reindeer fall ill, forcing him to consider canceling Christmas. Meanwhile, his dog gathers other canines in the North to help save the day. Matt Thompson wrote the screenplay based on Leed's book, and Tucker, who directed "Monster Mutt," an upcoming feature Lowry produced, came on board as helmer.

Drac, using its expertise in animatronic movie animals, will create the dog heroes and create a fantastical North Pole with computer graphics. The creative team -- Lowry, Tucker, Ron Halvas and creative director Greg Cannom -- has won Oscars for "Bram Stoker's Dracula," "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Benjamin Button" and was nominated for "Titanic" and "The Passion of the Christ" among others.

Welles' voice will be interspersed throughout the movie, much in the same way Boris Karloff's voice was used in the 1966 animated version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

Lowry said he already has fielded interest from talent from word-of-mouth alone. "People see this as their last opportunity to act in a movie with Orson Welles," he said.

Leed will serve as a consultant on the movie, and Fritz will be an executive producer. The plan is to shoot in the summer or fall with an eye toward a Christmas 2011 release.

"We're still hoping to do the project we were talking about, but this one took over as priority, you know what I mean?" Lowry said.

[MacGuffin]

Lost Orson Welles Film Found in Italy
George Eastman House supervised restoration of 1938's 'Too Much Johnson'
Source: Variety

Orson Welles' long-lost 1938 film "Too Much Johnson" was recently discovered in an Italian warehouse and has now been restored, according to the George Eastman House and other preservation orgs.

The restored film will premiere October 9 at Pordenone, Italy's silent film fest Le Giornate del Cinema Muto. U.S. premiere is set for October 16 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y.

The silent film was originally meant to be shown as part of the Welles' stage adaptation of an 1894 William Gillette play, and the Mercury Theater planned to show the three short films as prologues to each act of the play. The three-part slapstick comedy, which starred Joseph Cotten, was originally planed to be screened with music and live sound effects, but was never finished.

The film was found in a warehouse by the staff of Pordenone arthouse Cinemazero.

Other Mercury Theater actors that appear in the film include Eustace Wyatt, Edgar Barrier, Ruth Ford, Arlene Francis, Mary Wickes, Welles and his wife Virginia Nicholson. The play opened without the film on August 16, 1938 and flopped.

The unfinished nitrate work print was given by Cinemazero to Italian film archive Cineteca del Friuli, which transferred it to George Eastman House to be preserved with a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

The only known print until now was thought to have burnt in a fire at Welles' home near Madrid in 1970.

"This is by far the most important film restoration by George Eastman House in a very long time," said Paolo Cherchi Usai, senior curator of film, who supervised the project for George Eastman House. "Holding in one's hands the very same print that had been personally edited by Orson Welles 75 years ago provokes an emotion that's just impossible to describe."

More information on the restoration process and screenings are available on the Eastman House website.

[Reel]

wracking my brain trying to come up with a porn title for this one..

Man, I really need to hit up that Eastman house sometime. They're always premiering Lost shit

[wilder]

Workman Orson Welles Documentary Will Debut at Telluride
via Thompson on Hollywood



You can always count on a few cinephile documentaries to show at the Telluride Film Festival. This year Chuck Workman will debut his newest film "Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles."

Workman digs into Welles' oeuvre on the eve of his centenary, from his career as a Hollywood star and troubled director to his true identity as an independent filmmaker.

"Magician" includes clips from almost every existing Welles film, from "Hearts of Age," which he shot in one day at age 18 to rare unfinished films "The Other Side of the Dream," "The Deep," and "Don Quixote" as well as some appearances on television and commercials. Also in the film are interviews with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Richard Linklater ("Me and Orson Welles"), and of course, critic and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.

[wilder]

August 24, 2015

"Around the World with Orson Welles" (1955) on blu-ray from BFI



"Around the World with Orson Welles" (1955) - Amazon UK

Around the World with Orson Welles is a series of six short travelogues originally written and directed by Orson Welles for Associated-Rediffusion in 1955, for Britain's then-new ITV channel. Despite its title emphasizing the world, it was entirely filmed in Europe. Among other incidents in the episodes, Welles visited Jean Cocteau and Juliette Gréco in Paris, attended a bullfight in Madrid and visited the Basque Country.

In March 1955, Associated-Rediffusion had originally commissioned a series of 26 half-hour programmes, but in the end, only 6 were broadcast, and even then, in rather troubled circumstances. Before a contract had even been signed, Welles had rapidly shot a pilot episodes himself (the third episode broadcast, "Revisiting Vienna") using loaned money and on the basis of an informal agreement. As Welles had made an agreement with producer Louis Dolivet in 1953 to work exclusively for him (beginning with their troubled film production Mr. Arkadin), Dolivet was brought on board as the series producer.

The filming schedule was ambitious. Once the contract was signed, Welles was expected to make a further 25 episodes in 25 weeks spread out over nine months, with the first broadcast scheduled for September 1955. However, Welles's other commitments interfered with his ability to meet deadlines, and much of the series was left incomplete. Welles spent much of 1955 working on writing, directing and acting in his London stage production Moby Dick—Rehearsed, and after that flopped on the West End, he switched to shooting an (aborted) film adaptation of the play, first in London, and then in Rome - filming Moby Dick—Rehearsed in Rome was under the pretext of working on the Around the World with Orson Welles TV series.

Although Associated-Rediffusion retained a number of rights, including approval of episode synopses, script approval, music approval, and viewing rights for the rushes and final cut, film scholars Jean-Pierre Berthomé and Francois Thomas argue that Welles remained in control much of the time, due to the fragmentary, piecemeal way in which much of the footage was shot, with the writer/director/presenter being the only person who could piece it all together. For instance, Welles shot most of his interviews with only one camera, focussed on the interviewee, and all of the reverse shots of him asking questions had to be shot later in a studio. Frequently, Welles's entire episodes would be heavily studio-dependent; his entire participation in an episode on bullfighting consisted of filming himself entering and sitting down at a bullfight, then filming the bullfight; and the reconstructing part of the audience seats in a studio, so he could record his bullfight commentary months after having watched it.

The first episode missed its initial broadcast deadline, and it was still not finished when it went out the following month - Welles had to provide the voiceover himself, live from Rome, when it was broadcast in the UK. The second episode was missing a voiceover in several sections. The third and fifth episodes, were the most complete.

Welles had effectively abandoned the production to move back to the USA at the end of 1955, so the fourth and sixth episodes were particularly badly hit. Episode four, on the Paris district of St.-Germain-des-Prés, had to be padded out with stock footage from other documentaries. Episode six had only half the necessary footage, so it was padded out by having two friends of Welles's, Kenneth Tynan and Elaine Dundy (who had been present at the same bullfight he recorded), become guest hosts for the first half of the episode, until the existing footage of Welles could be used. The seventh episode was not originally completed or broadcast.

[wilder]

IndieGogo campaign to raise $2 million in finishing funds for Orson Welles' last film, The Other Side of the Wind

[OpO1832]

This is such an exciting time to be a Orson Welles fan. I am so happy these treasures are being unearthed! For me Welles and Cassavettes are the greatest American Directors!

[wilder]

Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach chime in on the restoration effort

[tpfkabi]

TCM is showing Welles films on Fridays this month with David Edelstein doing intros.
Saw Journey Into Fear. Even though it was not technically directed by Orson, it really feels like he was pretty involved by the look of it - reminds me of the Poltergeist/Hooper/Spielberg situation.
Apparently, the studio chopped it up. It looks like it had the potential to be a decent noir.

Re-reading my really old comments about Mag A's, it seems the film is still not really that easy to get ahold of (DVD appears out of print on Amazon). That film and Journey were supposed to get nice DVDs, but it looks like it didn't happen.

Good that I read the questions on the fund raiser - that was my thought, too - why don't all the millionaires promoting it pay up themselves?

Why don't Turner Classic Movies and Criterion put up some money, and then later they will get rights to broadcast and manufacture the finished film later.

[OpO1832]

good idea

[wilder]

The Shadow: A hundred years of Orson Welles - The New Yorker

[wilder]

Netflix Negotiating To Complete & Distribute Orson Welles' 'The Other Side Of The Wind'
via The Playlist

It has been a long and winding road for Orson Welles' "The Other Side Of The Wind." For years, there has been a concerted effort to try and complete the director's "lost" film, but it has been slow going. A 2015 release date was teased but never materialized, while last year, an Indiegogo campaign raised $406,605 to help with the editing, score, and post-production work required. Word on the movie has gone quiet since, but it looks like one of the biggest movers and shakers in the industry is aiming to finally finish "The Other Side Of The Wind."

Wellesnet reveals that Netflix is negotiating with producers for a two-picture, $5 million deal that would include the completed "The Other Side Of The Wind," along with a companion documentary. The potential deal needs the signoff of producer Oja Kodar, and apparently talks have been going on for months.

Featuring a roster of Welles' buds including John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Henry Jaglom, Susan Strasberg, Dennis Hopper, Paul Mazursky and Claude Chabrol, the movie, shot in 8mm, 16mm and 35mm, follows an aged Hollywood director attempting to revive his career by making a trippy film filled with sex and violence.

Who knows if this latest attempt to finally finish "The Other Side Of The Wind" will pan out, and it's worth bearing in mind that Sasha Welles, Kodar's nephew, "has indicated negotiations have not gone as smoothly as he had hoped." Moreover, an attempt was made by Bogdanovich to complete 'Wind' for Showtime in 1999, but he ran afoul of Kodar, who he blamed for stalling the project.

"For decades we have been optimistic, otherwise we wouldn't be trying for so long to get this film released," Sasha Welles said about the current situation. "How optimistic should we be about this particular deal? Hard to tell. We have been dealing with [producer] Filip [Jan Rymsza]'s not-so-honest claims and promises; [producer] Frank [Marshall] brings the only legitimacy and fairness to their side. All in all, I am not so optimistic since they keep on chiseling away from our old agreement. Every time I give in to something they want, they come up with something else, this keeps going on and on and I don't know where the end is."