They'll Love Me When I'm Dead

Film Without Control
or
"A Desperate Venture Shared by Desperate Men"

With their part in the legal untanglement, restoration, editing and post-production of the last Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind, Netflix decided that they'd better increase their investment by simultaneously making a documentary on the making of the film—a story that is as fascinating and convoluted as the film itself (how could it not be with Welles as the central figure?). It might also be useful as a as testimony and evidence for a tale that might not be believed. Titled They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, it documents Welles' idea for the film from its inspiration through the chaotic filming some ten years later, through the complications about rights that prevented Welles from completing it in his lifetime, and ultimately covers the efforts by die-hard associates and completists to make it happen 33 years after the director's death. Documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville (who made 20 Feet from Stardom, Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal, and the recent Won't You Be My Neighbor?) has done a nearly encyclopedic job of gathering together archive footage, out-takes, interviews with survivors of the project, and bits and pieces to tell a great deal of the story—without some of the more head-scratching intricacies—and keeps it wildly entertaining...and properly melancholy, as well. Just like Welles might have done it.

Cinematographer Gary Gravers' audition—filming Orson

All of that stuff makes it fascinating, and behind it all is Welles, both master of his craft and victim of it. The story is well-documented in Josh Karp's book "Orson Welles' Last Film" in such detail that one can't help but admire Welles the film-maker making a movie with the barest bones of support, but shake your head ruefully at Welles the producer, robbing Peter to pay Paul, constantly over-spending the funds he's able to attract as performer, voice-over actor, and lecturer.

The film starts with an informal interview of Welles, where he speculates about the possibility of making "a film without controls"—"All my films have been controlled. I'd like to make a film as IF it were a documentary and all the actors improvise"—the idea being to get that one thing that Welles prized above other in his films—"the divine accidents," where the movie gods conspired to drop opportunity in your lap to photograph them and be praised for your brilliance, when it was merely happenstance taken advantage of. 

At the end of the interview, he mugs at the camera, shrugging his shoulders, as if to say "I dunno, I'm making this stuff up as I go..."

"The movie director must always remain a slightly ambiguous figure, after all, because so much of what he signs his name to came from elsewhere, so many of his best things are merely accidents over which he presides. Or the good fortune he receives. Or the grace.""This is Orson Welles" p. 259 Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich; ©1998 Da Capo Press

There is also that too many people asked him "what did you do after Citizen Kane?" and he had the hope that, in coming back to Hollywood, after a self-imposed exile during the McCarthy years, he was seeing kids with far less experience making movies and enjoying success—"I've lived too long not to make a successful picture."

He'd been kicking around an idea, partially inspired by an encounter with Hemingway, partially bitterness at his own circumstances, partially autobiographical, partially not, about making a movie about an old time Hollywood director (he chose John Huston to play the part) who is making an artsy movie of the type Antonioni was making at the time and trying to get funding from the studios, who are dubious at his age, dubious that there's no script, and just aren't interested. The movie juxtaposes "found footage" of the director's birthday party by (and for) his sycophants, juxtaposed with sequences from the film. That's a nutshell take on it (there'll be a review next week), but the making of it was chaotic, willfully so, in order to capture the energy and dangerousness of a Maysles Brothers film.

Huston and Little at the beginning of filming

During the course of the movie (which started filming July 4, 1970 and ended...sometime in 1975), actors came and went, ideas were filmed then tossed, then new material added, locations switched—Peter Bogdanovich started off playing one role, then years later was asked to come back and play the role that Rich Little was initially signed to play (one that was vaguely based on Bogdanovich himself). Filming finally moved from Welles' rented locations to Bogdanovich's house, which eventually caused a rift between the two film-makers, exasperated by Bogdanovich's successful directing career, creating a Shakespearean Falstaff-Prince Hal analogue. It wasn't the only one.  

Bogdanovich's nebbishy cineaste at the beginning of filming

Welles was tireless when he was creative, and he demanded a tireless loyalty. He rarely got it, but one of the technicians on the film devoted his life to Welles' every whim, just to be a part of an Orson Welles film. Cinematographer Gary Graver heard Welles was in Hollywood and simply called him up at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Welles demanded that he come over immediately with equipment and, there and then, auditioned the cameraman for the Director of Photography job. 

And Graver never left, devoting his life to filming Welles' many a-borning projects and, after Welles' death in 1985, to trying to resolve the conflicts that prevented completion of The Other Side of the Wind, until his own death in 2006.

Welles' partner, Oja Kodar, and Gary Graver.

Welles, during his last years, tried to negotiate settlements between financiers and holding companies and banks, all to no avail. After his death, there were those who were trying to protect Welles' last film (including his partner during the last years, Oja Kodar, and Beatrice Welles, his daughter by wife Paola Mori—to whom he was still married) and those making false claims that they owned the rights. One of the investors was the brother-in-law of the Shah of Iran, and after the Iranian Revolution, those funds dried up. Two of the original crew-people, Bogdanovich and Producer Frank Marshall were among those who kept the dream alive for decades...companies like Showtime and Netflix started doing their own productions to fill the need for content, and crowd-sourcing raised some funds. 

It's a maze  of cul-de-sacs, but Neville manages to make a great through-line of the history of the film—now that there IS a film, one that actually has an ending. And the way he weaves in all the archive footage is close to masterful. It's quite the juggling act, even if the star of the piece is killed off mid-way in the story.

Alan Cummings narrates

Now, it will be even more fascinating to see the end product. We'll have a review next week.

Best of Enemies

Purple Prose Punditry
or
"Jane, You Ignorant Slut"

Two guys in chairs in a corner of a stage, both elitists and men of letters, giving commentary during the truncated political coverage by the third-string network in a three-network race.

And it changed everything. And not for the better.

I'm not even sure who reads this thing anymore, but I can probably bet that few people remember Gore Vidal or William F. Buckley, Jr., who they were or what they stood for. Both men were similar in backgrounds: they grew up in East Coast affluence and went to the best schools. Buckley went to Yale and Vidal resolutely resisted going to college. Buckley went on to create and edit the conservative weekly The National Review. Vidal became a novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Both ran for political office and lost. Very smart men. After that, they're polar opposites: Buckley was the best of the conservative thinkers and his weekly debate show "Firing Line" was a political jousting match that raised the level of discourse. Vidal was considered a liberal, even a radical, but one could make the case that he was more of a libertarian than what passes for libertarianism these days. Vidal was fascinated by power in all forms—political, financial, sexual—and despised those who craved it (even if he did, himself) and exploited it.

The year was 1968, an election year. Lyndon Johnson was in the White House and was a controversial figure. He had overseen some amazing social changes domestically, but was mired down in the Vietnam war debacle—Americans had turned against him and he famously announced that he would not run again for a second term (he had become President when Kennedy was assassinated and elected legitimately to a full four year term) and America was at a crossroads. 1968 was a bad year. Martin Luther King had been assassinated and soon after Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down while running for President. There was a power vacuum politically and Nature may abhor vacuums but politicians relish them.

And what politicians relish, the power-brokers at the television networks and their news departments relish like a multi-course meal, with a good wine and a self-satisfied cigar at the end. 

Unless you were ABC news. ABC was an off-shoot network and it didn't matter what it did (that wasn't related to football), it was always the red-headed step-child of network TV. CBS was the "champagne network." NBC had a rich history of broadcasting, as CBS had in radio, to the point where it had two networks, the red and the blue network. ABC started as NBC's blue network, and was perpetually the third network in a three network race for attention—one of the broadcast talking heads in Best of Enemies says that the only reason ABC was number three is that there wasn't a number four commercial network.

The political conventions were a monetary drain for all three, and in 1968, ABC made the bold move to limit its convention coverage to only 90 minutes per night, eschewing what was traditionally "gavel-to-gavel" coverage. And to gin up ratings for their truncated broadcast, they decided to hold a "commentary/analysis" segment featuring Buckley and a commentator from the left—Buckley was asked who he didn't want in the opposite chair and he replied either a communist or a socialist or (as an after-thought) Gore Vidal. ABC, grasping an immediate opportunity for fireworks, hired Vidal. The two men despised each other.

The result proved popular for ABC, garnering higher ratings, but its worth as commentary on the the conventions, both Republican and Democrat, was negligible, providing more heat than light. Rather than analysis, it turned, from the beginning, into a bitch-fest between Vidal and Buckley, with the two taking personal swipes, talking over each other, and rarely mentioning the conventions, the candidates, or any of the issues that might affect the American people. No, it became about Vidal carping about past Buckley views that in present circumstances seemed controversial and Buckley's gibes about Vidal's relationship with the Kennedy's, and more about personal reputations—all in the most polite of tones and using multi-syllabic words that were probably going over the heads of many viewers. Dictionary sales surely must have gone up.

The suits at ABC were pleased...until the rancor became so acute that it turned into name-calling and physical threats (sadly appropriate for the events during the Democratic convention in Chicago), which led to nervous network affiliates, lawsuits that dragged on, and the last convention commentary that would have such back-and-forth for ABC.

But, the ratings jump did not go unnoticed. The respectable "60 Minutes" program began doing a "Point/Counter-point" segment with columnists Shana Alexander and James J Kilpatrick (which SNL parodied with Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin and the memorable counter-argument "Jane, you ignorant slut!"). This begat "Crossfire," which begat "Hardball," which begat "Hannity and Combes"...

...which begat the general decline in news coverage and the entree  to the blurred lines between commentary, opinion and anything that might objectively be called "news" when one has to fill up 24 hours of air-time. Sparks generated ratings, so facts be damned. The age of so-called punditry began.

Now, as contrast, let me tell you a story of two such commentators that were used locally on Seattle's evening news. John Carlson and Walt Crowley were the right and left for a commentary segment of the KIRO-TV evening news for quite a few years, post Buckley-Vidal. The debates were often contentious and the two rarely agreed on anything and neither were afraid to take pot-shots at each other. Despite televised appearances, however, the two were good friends and confidantes, and when Crowley was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, one of his supporters and presences during the ordeal was his old sparring partner, Carlson. When a post-operation stroke finally claimed Crowley's life September 21, 2007 among those paying last respects at his hospital bed was Carlson. The friendship and respect were mutually shared, even if their opinions were not. That's the way the world should work, as that's how learning is accomplished.

In the years since Buckley-Vidal, we've lost the rules of order that go with debate—what used to be called "civil discourse" when done well and done properly. Now punditry is pugilism and the Buckley-Vidal "debates" had a lot to do with that demise done for entertainment's sake, rather than enlightenment's. Ratings and the lowest common denominator have gone a long way to chip away at the exchange of ideas to make it seem more like professional wrestling and that "bread and circuses" manner ("style" is giving it too much credit) has crept into the current political campaign (it was always been there, now it's a lot more crude and more obvious). Best of Enemies is a reminder of the demarcation point of what we lost.

Carlson (left, uncharacteristically), Buckley and Crowley (right)