The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Scharphedin2
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 7:37 am
Location: Denmark/Sweden

The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#1 Post by Scharphedin2 » Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:41 am

solaris72 wrote:It looks like Commodore Ascot's documentary "Directed by John Ford" will be getting a release:
Actually, we're [he and Bogdanovich] re-cutting and updating the John Ford documentary. We've done new interviews with Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Walter Hill and others. It's really exciting. It will air on Turner Classic Movies [this October].
No doubt a DVD release will follow.
Sorry Solaris, not to take your thread off topic, because surely that is exciting news. However, the second half of the paragraph in the interview is no less exciting:

"We're also working with Showtime on finishing Orson Welles' last movie, The Other Side of the Wind, which I worked on in the 1970s. We have a script. We shot it all—I worked on it for over five years—but we never put it together. Showtime has been incredibly supportive. I'm producing what will be the final movie that Orson directed."

Never thought I would live to see the day, when this film was actually released.

User avatar
solaris72
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:03 pm
Location: Baltimore, MD

#2 Post by solaris72 » Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:46 am

Scharphedin2 wrote:Sorry Solaris, not to take your thread off topic, because surely that is exciting news. However, the second half of the paragraph in the interview is no less exciting:

"We're also working with Showtime on finishing Orson Welles' last movie, The Other Side of the Wind, which I worked on in the 1970s. We have a script. We shot it all—I worked on it for over five years—but we never put it together. Showtime has been incredibly supportive. I'm producing what will be the final movie that Orson directed."

Never thought I would live to see the day, when this film was actually released.
Yeah, that's also exciting, but it's a little dampened by the fact that Bogdanovich has been claiming for years that he's going to finish that movie. Still, maybe having Showtime aboard will actually get it done.

User avatar
Scharphedin2
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 7:37 am
Location: Denmark/Sweden

#3 Post by Scharphedin2 » Wed Jul 12, 2006 11:55 am

Sure, but if I remember correctly, the problem used to be the rights, did it not? I think some Arab oil company, or something like that, used to actually own the rights to the project, as they had helped finance the film (I will have to go back and check up on this)... Now, in this little comment by Marshall, it sounds like they are now actually working on the film to have it released with Showtime's backing. I take that to mean that the rights issues must have been resolved.

User avatar
Dylan
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:28 pm

#4 Post by Dylan » Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:48 pm

Showtime's been on (and I guess off?) board for about four years, maybe longer. I'm pretty sure it's Welles's daughter that's holding it back (and I don't remember her reasons as it's been a while since I've read anything about this film's release status), unless there are still legal troubles with the film's financers.

User avatar
chaddoli
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 11:41 pm
Location: New York City
Contact:

#5 Post by chaddoli » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:01 am

What is up Beatrix Welles' ass, honestly?

richast2
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:49 am

#6 Post by richast2 » Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:19 am

Scharphedin2 wrote:Sure, but if I remember correctly, the problem used to be the rights, did it not? I think some Arab oil company, or something like that, used to actually own the rights to the project, as they had helped finance the film (I will have to go back and check up on this)... Now, in this little comment by Marshall, it sounds like they are now actually working on the film to have it released with Showtime's backing. I take that to mean that the rights issues must have been resolved.
Is it F For Fake or One-Man Band that talks about how the movie was financed by the Shah of Iran's brother? Also, I feel like I've heard Ol' Boggy talk about finishing this movie for 10 years or more... I'd love this to be true, but I'm not holding my breath.

User avatar
J Wilson
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 11:26 am
Contact:

#7 Post by J Wilson » Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:09 am

Beatrice Welles and Fred Astaire's widow are both represented by the same leech, who works to squeeze every penny out of their dead relatives' work. An "artistic rights consultant" I believe is the title he goes by. At this point, the last I heard was that Beatrice was no longer an issue on WIND, so they presumably paid her fuck-off money. I think what has been holding up the completion is the egos of those involved, at least from what I have heard. The whole Mehdi Bousheri issue (the Shah's brother in law or whatever he was, I forget) was cleared up also. Now the movie just needs to be competently put together, unlike the version of DON QUIXOTE that Jess Franco shat out. But really, I'll believe it when it actually appears on a screen in front me.

User avatar
Antoine Doinel
Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:22 pm
Location: Montreal, Quebec
Contact:

#8 Post by Antoine Doinel » Sun Feb 04, 2007 6:53 pm

Apparently, the legal issues are almost resolved and this will be airing on Showtime very soon. Here's a ridiculously long and detailed interview with Peter Bogdanovich (of course) about the film:
Inherit the Wind

Talking with Peter Bogdanovich and Joseph McBride
About The Other Side of the Wind

Life with the restless ghost of Orson Welles' last movie

By Damien Love

In 1970, after two decades of European exile broken only by his brief return in 1957-58 to make Touch of Evil — one of the many films a Hollywood studio took away from him — Orson Welles came home to Hollywood to make his last feature, The Other Side of the Wind. Funding the production largely from his own pocket and shooting entirely outside the system, the fragmented filming finally wrapped in 1976. 30 years on, the movie, infamously, remains unedited and unreleased, bound up by bad luck, personal feuds and byzantine legal tangles that saw the negatives actually physically locked out of reach in a vault in Paris for decades.1

In the intervening years, as scratched and smuggled clips2 and script extracts have leaked out,3 Welles' final film's legend has grown.4 Shot on the run around L.A. and in Arizona, with a reportedly dazzling central performance from John Huston, the movie tells a story that strangely parallels its own making: the doomed tale of an embattled, aging, old-school director, trying to make a film to compete with the sex-and-symbolism flicks of the young guns of the New Hollywood of the early 1970s. A movie about making movies, it has become the Holy Grail of Welles' career, his Rosebud — perhaps the slyest, most mystifyingly revealing statement he ever committed to celluloid.

Welles spent the last decade of his life fighting to have his film released. Twenty-one years after his death, that fight goes on. Rumours about The Other Side of the Wind's completion have come and gone in abundance over the years. But, while it pays to have a pinch of salt handy, it could be that we are now getting close to finally seeing the damned thing. The latest whispers are that the Showtime channel, which has been involved in the attempts at having Welles' film completed and released over the past decade,5 will soon be making an announcement. Keep watching the skies.6

In the meantime, in the absence of the movie, all we have to go on are the tantalising accounts of those who were involved in its protracted making. Two of the most significant of these are Peter Bogdanovich and Joseph McBride.

As well as being Welles' friend, biographer, confidante and collaborator during the last two decades of his life, Bogdanovich took time out from his prestigious directing career to co-star alongside Huston in The Other Side of the Wind. McBride, a self-confessed “film-buff nerd

User avatar
Via_Chicago
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 12:03 pm

#9 Post by Via_Chicago » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:28 am

There are two clips from the film on YouTube, believe it or not:

Clip 1

Clip 2

User avatar
HerrSchreck
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am

#10 Post by HerrSchreck » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:39 am

I recall this material in the F FOR FAKE extras. The clips I mean.

User avatar
Gordon
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 8:03 am

#11 Post by Gordon » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:23 am

Phew! Amazing stuff! I can't wait to finally see this elusive phantom picture.

David Ehrenstein
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2005 8:30 pm
Contact:

#12 Post by David Ehrenstein » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:32 pm

At the Welles memorial service at the DGA several clips of it were shown, along with a clip from the barely-started The Dreamers -- with Welles and Oja.

I hope and pray the Showtime deal comes through. It's clear that The Other Side of the Wind was an experiment, in the best sense of the word. Welles had no interest in repeating himself. He wanted to strike out in new directions every time, but he was hounded by his own legacy and a "mainstream" U.S. culture that had no interest in dealing with him seriously.

As for the character of Jake Hanneford, it appears he was modelled after John Ford, especially in light of Maureen O'Hara's biographical revelations.

User avatar
John Hodson
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:25 pm
Location: Near dark satanic mills...
Contact:

#13 Post by John Hodson » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:44 pm

David Ehrenstein wrote:As for the character of Jake Hanneford, it appears he was modelled after John Ford, especially in light of Maureen O'Hara's biographical revelations.
Do you entirely trust those 'revelations' David? Despite the (very heavy) sugar coating, the way O'Hara brought them out seemed at the very least prurient, at worst, almost vengeful. I don't know quite what to believe from her account.

David Ehrenstein
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2005 8:30 pm
Contact:

#14 Post by David Ehrenstein » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:52 pm

I see no reason not to believe them. There have been rumors about Ford over the years. O'Hara was simply the first to put pen to paper.

User avatar
John Hodson
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:25 pm
Location: Near dark satanic mills...
Contact:

#15 Post by John Hodson » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:02 pm

David Ehrenstein wrote:I see no reason not to believe them. There have been rumors about Ford over the years. O'Hara was simply the first to put pen to paper.
I suppose the only issue I have with it is the way it was done; my only interest in Ford's sexuality is the way it may have informed his work. I agree, maybe she was right - but I hated the damned book...

Apologies; waaaay OT.

David Ehrenstein
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2005 8:30 pm
Contact:

#16 Post by David Ehrenstein » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:13 pm

Apologies; waaaay OT.
Not at all. Welles and Huston collaborating on a film a clef about Ford is fascinating.

Here's where you can find the latest news on all things Welles.

User avatar
John Hodson
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:25 pm
Location: Near dark satanic mills...
Contact:

#17 Post by John Hodson » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:33 pm

David Ehrenstein wrote:
Apologies; waaaay OT.
Not at all. Welles and Huston collaborating on a film a clef about Ford is fascinating.
That certainly is, my having a pop at O'Hara's purple prose probably isn't...

User avatar
Jeff
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:49 pm
Location: Denver, CO

#18 Post by Jeff » Tue Apr 03, 2007 12:19 am

The Ascot says it's almost a done deal, according to a lengthy article in The New York Sun.

fred
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2005 10:28 pm

#19 Post by fred » Tue Apr 03, 2007 1:03 am

Uh-oh: "Mr. Bogdanovich said he will work in a supervisory capacity on the editing of the film and is considering adding a further framing device to the story, depicting the lengthy struggle to get "The Other Side of the Wind" to the screen."

Why? #-o

User avatar
Darth Lavender
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2006 2:24 pm

#20 Post by Darth Lavender » Tue Apr 03, 2007 5:17 am

Actually, although I've noticed a lot of restorations can't resist a few 'improvements,' I think there is some validity to this particular idea; If I understand correctly, what actually exists is a whole lot of footage and (presumably) a script, so already Welles' artistic vision is inevitably going to be considerably diluted by the work of others (even if those others are trying their best to replicate how Welles' himself would have edited the film,) and a framing story is (ideally) there to acknowledge that all we can see of this film is Welles' diluted vision.

Now, having said that, I would certainly hope (and expect) that a DVD release would offer the option of viewing the film without the framing-story. But, framing story or not, this is inevitably going to be The Other Side of the World as presented by Peter Bogdanovish (or whoever is actually doing the final-cut) and as such is about as much a true Welles film as "The Magnificient Ambersons" (which is to say, we can certainly observe elements of Welles' genius but it is, unfortunately, (and never can be) a true "film by Orson Welles" (in the autuer sense of the term)

David Ehrenstein
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2005 8:30 pm
Contact:

#21 Post by David Ehrenstein » Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:11 pm

Few Welles films sport an "ideal" edit.

It's my understanding that Gray Graver assembled a rough cut before he died.

There are numerous notes to work from as well.

In any event we're going to have a new Orson Welles movie folks!

Roger_Thornhill
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2005 10:35 pm

#22 Post by Roger_Thornhill » Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:34 am

I have a feeling quite a few people are going to be disappointed considering the almost mythical reputational this film has developed over the last thirty years. I'm trying to not let my expectations get too high despite the tantalizing clips that were shown at Welles' AFI lifetime achievement award ceremony way back in 1975.

User avatar
skuhn8
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:46 pm
Location: Chico, CA

#23 Post by skuhn8 » Wed Apr 04, 2007 1:14 pm

Will be interesting to see a Welles film where he wasn't around to dub all the voices with his own.

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

#24 Post by zedz » Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:32 pm

skuhn8 wrote:Will be interesting to see a Welles film where he wasn't around to dub all the voices with his own.
Maybe we'll be treated to some more of Bogdanovich's impersonations?

(If this actually turns out to be the case, you have my permission to shoot me)

DrewReiber
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 3:27 am

#25 Post by DrewReiber » Thu Apr 05, 2007 5:56 pm

Why is this in the Old Films section when it's both unfinished and unreleased? Also, why is it listed as 1972 when shooting was completed in 1975/76?

Post Reply