Original subtitles

**

- Rosebud...

**

- Orson Welles: A magician is just an actor.

Just an actor playing the part of a magician.

You know, one sunny morning in Kenosha,

a chubby little one, you know.

(audience laughter)

- Simon Callow: Welles' family background was complex.

His parents broke up when he was about seven,

and his mother and he moved to Chicago.

She was something of a social reformer

and a bit of a cultural figure, too.

- She used to take a long piece of cord,

and she was such a dignified lady

that if she would come to the street corner

and say to a man, "Will you hold this, please?"

And then go around to the other side of the street corner

and find somebody and say, "Would you hold this, please?"

And then leave the two men holding the cord.

So that was her idea of a fun thing to do.

Very tall and handsome, and she was a great beauty.

My father lived in Peking for quite a long time,

and I spent five or six years there,

or the greater part of those years.

- His father was a businessman

who then went on to become an alcoholic,

a gambler, and a womanizer.

- He was just a playboy.

He inherited some money, and he spent it.

- And in the meantime, his mother had taken up

with this Hungarian doctor, Maurice Bernstein,

a sort of... very slippery character.

- Simon Callow: Controlling, wheedling,

emotionally blackmailing kind of a person.

- Mr. Bernstein? - Yes, Mr. Kane.

- Mr. Carter, this is Mr. Bernstein. - How do you do?

- Mr. Bernstein is my general manager, Mr. Carter.

- Chris Welles Feder: When his mother died,

he was forced to make him his legal guardian.

- Simon Callow: He was, from the earliest age, formed on,

identified as being remarkable and charming.

His mother's position was that a child had

to justify themselves in the room.

You had to say something interesting,

you had to do something extraordinary,

otherwise, you were exiled to the nursery.

Welles was not about to spend any time in the nursery.

- Orson Welles: I played the violin, and I played the piano,

and there's nothing more hateful on earth.

I was one of those.

And my mother,

who was a professional musician,

died when I was nine.

And I stopped playing immediately.

As a kid, I was moved around everywhere.

I have lots of homes,

but I would like to have the one.

But I don't.

See, I suppose it's Woodstock, Illinois,

if it's anywhere.

I went to school there for four years,

and if I try to think of the...

home, it's that.

- Feder: I think the most exciting thing

that ever happened in Skipper's life

was the arrival of Orson Welles at his school

because he had never seen such a prodigy.

- The kids, of course, hated him.

- I must have been intolerable as a child.

- He didn't want to do anything.

He... he couldn't play athletics,

he just was not athletic.

He was overweight, even as a kid.

Skipper said, "Okay, what we'll do

"is have him do what he wants,

which is the theater."

- I played Mary, the mother of Jesus,

at the age of 1 3.

Yes. Very good in drag.

- Joanne Hill Styles: He could talk about China,

I think he'd been to China.

He could talk about Shakespeare,

which... my father's favorite author.

And he could talk about the Bible.

At 11, he could do all this.

It's like...

Mozart playing music at four years old,

you can't believe it happens,

but it does happen.

But he was without a doubt

the only person I know who had

absolutely no empathetic skills.

I told him just what I thought about him.

He looked at me.

"Joanne...

everybody has their little idiosyncrasies."

This was a very unusual boy.

- Man: This is truly where Orson started his theatrical career.

He was putting on "Twelfth Night," he was putting on

a variety of Shakespeare plays

when he was a child, and he was Orson.

There's a warmth that I think

much of the world never experienced.

- Emcee: So it is a pleasure that we here in the city of Woodstock

dedicate this stage to an individual

who got it all started.

Even though he was a humble person.

- (sighs)

- "He made his American debut

"as a professional theater director

"upon this stage, now named in his honor...

the Orson Welles Stage."

(applause)

- Man: I feel his hand on my shoulder.

- All: "Rosebud!"

(ship horn blows)

- Simon Callow: He did a sort of deal with Dr. Bernstein

that he would go to university,

but that they would let him go to Ireland

on a painting holiday.

That was what he pretended he wanted.

- Orson Welles: I'd come to Ireland

and found myself in Dublin

without what are technically referred to

as financial resources.

Oh, I had a few shillings,

but I blew those on a good dinner

and a ticket to the theater.

The theater was the Gate.

I was 16 years old, my career, as you might say,

was at the crossroads.

- I saw this brilliant, not necessarily an actor,

but a brilliant creature of 16

telling us he was 1 9

and telling us he'd had lots of experience,

which was obvious to us he'd had none at all.

- And just as... for the fun of it,

I'd like to stay with them and play a few leading roles.

They were nice enough to pretend they were fooled,

and they were desperate enough for actors.

They gave me a star part. I began as a star.

(audience laughter)

And I've been working my way down slowly ever since.

(audience laughter)

- Simon Callow: The parts got smaller and smaller and smaller,

and eventually Welles,

after about nine months, left and via London, perhaps,

we're not sure about that, went back to America.

Went off again on another trip,

and then he came back to Chicago

and felt very much at a loose end.

- Joanne Hill Styles: He came to the theatre festival.

That's the last time I knew him,

in the theatre festival.

One of the students, he had a camera,

and it just fascinated Orson.

I'm sure this guy was not very knowledgeable,

and Orson would tell him what he'd want.

First he'd say, "We don't want it right here,

we want you to zoom up," so they'd go this silly way

up and down the stairs.

- Orson Welles: It's not a film at all.

It was a little joke one Sunday afternoon.

We'd all seen either Bunuel or Cocteau

or somebody's surrealist movie.

We said, "Let's make one."

And from 2:00 in the afternoon till 5:00,

we shot some dumb stuff.

- Feder: My father was married three times.

I was his oldest daughter.

He had a daughter by each of his three wives.

My half-sister Rebecca,

she was Rita Hayworth's daughter,

and then Beatrice was the youngest daughter

by Paola Mori, who was an Italian countess.

He was not really a family man, you know?

That's not where his head was.

His head was entirely in his work,

and I think having wives and daughters

was actually an encumbrance for him.

- Welles had picked up a huge amount of knowledge

about stagecraft,

added to what he already knew.

He plugged into

the absolute latest developments in the theater,

and that meant, above all, expressionism.

A very "now"

and aggressive form of theater.

- He brought, in one word, theatricality.

He united the performance,

the script, the music,

the lights, the sound.

As audience, you had an experience

you had with no other director.

I was six months older than Orson, and I met him

in his office with John Houseman

who was Orson's partner at that time.

John Houseman had great elegance,

spoke beautifully.

He had the one grey flannel suit at the time,

because nobody had any money.

The Federal Theatre was a theater

created by the government,

putting people to work throughout the country.

Orson and Houseman

used it to their advantage

to create a theater.

- Lay on, Macduff!

- Announcer: The Negro Theatre unit of the Federal Theatre Project

produced a highly successful version

of Shakespeare's immortal tragedy, "Macbeth. "

- Tyrant, show thy face!

- What is thy name?

(laughing)

My name is Macbeth.

- Orson Welles: There were so many curtain calls,

that finally they left this curtain open,

and the audience came up on the stage.

That was... that was magical.

- Norman Lloyd: There was thunderous reaction to it

in the audience. Thunderous.

Except for one critic,

a very fine critic, Percy Hammond.

There were two voodoo companies,

and they were going, "Bom, bom, bom, bom,

Percy Hammond, bom, bom..."

Percy Hammond died three days later.

- (laughing) No, sorry, that was rude,

I beg your pardon.

- Lloyd: We all left the Federal Theatre

at a given point.

Houseman and Welles left because they weren't allowed

to do "Cradle Will Rock."

They formed the Mercury Theater.

- Newscaster: In a single year, the first in the life

of the Mercury Theater,

Orson Welles has come to be

the most famous name of our time in American drama.

Time Magazine declares, "The brightest moon

that has risen over Broadway in years. "

- He was ruthless, tough, disciplined.

- Ruth Ford: We just worked all the time, we worked until

2:00 and 3:00 in the morning.

- Julie Taymor: I don't think there are rules for any of that.

If that's what he needed,

if that's when his inspiration came

and he thought he would get

the best out of his performers...

You know, the crazy thing is

it might be fine for him, but if they're dragged

out of bed and are exhausted,

I'd... they're slaves then, you know what I mean?

- Newscaster: Robert Benchley writes in "The New Yorker, "

"The production at the Mercury is,

"I should say, just about perfect.

"Welles should feel at home in the sky,

the only limit which his ambitions recognize. "

- The play made absolutely no sense

without the film.

- The film could not be shown in the theater,

because there was no real projection booth.

- He is an arrogant... - I am Orson Welles!

And every single one of you stands here

as an adjunct to my vision.

You want a career in the Mercury Theater

and in everything else I plan to do?

Then remember one simple rule.

I own the store.

- Newscaster: The Columbia Network is proud to give

Orson Welles the opportunity

to bring to the air those same qualities

of vitality and imagination that have made him

the most talked-of theatrical director

in America today.

- Good evening, this is Orson Welles,

inviting you to listen now

to one of the strangest stories ever told.

I'd been contributing from my radio salary.

I kept putting $1,000 or so every week,

and we got all our plays on before anybody else

because I was doing radio all day long.

You out there! Look down!

Behold!

- Sound is the...

first stirring of the infant.

Sounds have a romance.

Radio was a medium

which employed that magic.

- Man: I don't like that literature of yours going out

all over the country with my town's postmark on it.

I don't like it to be a return address

for all that anti-Semitic garbage.

- He'd never rehearse.

He'd walk in, and they'd say,

"Chinaman, 85 years old."

- Orson Welles character: I'm sorry, sir, but my identity must be...

I used to go by ambulance from one...

one radio station to another because

I discovered there was no law in New York

that you had to be sick to travel in an ambulance.

- Man: Shadow. Why are you here?

- I anticipated your performance, Mr. Kent.

- Interviewer: How did "The Shadow" originate?

- Was it a... - Orson Welles: I don't know.

- A show before you took over the part?

- No, no, I was the original Lamont Cranston,

as far as I know, but I wouldn't want to...

- But you didn't write that? - Oh, no, my God,

I didn't even know how they came out.

** (ballroom music)

(static)

- Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt

our program of dance music

to bring you a special bulletin from

the Intercontinental Radio News.

At 20 minutes before 8.:00 Central time,

Professor Ferrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory

Chicago, Illinois, reports observing

several explosions of incandescent gas

occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars.

- A lot of people just accidentally tuned in

to "The War of the Worlds" while...

the Jack Benny commercial was on or something,

and it freaked them out.

It was the turning point in Welles' career.

- Male character: Something smacked the ground,

knocked me clear out of my chair.

- Interviewer: Well, were you frightened, Mr. Wilmuth?

- I reckon I was kind of riled.

- Were you aware of the terror that was going on

throughout the nation? - Oh, no, oh, no,

of course not, we did "Dracula,"

and it seemed to me, during "Dracula,"

I had high hopes that people would react

as they do in a movie of that kind,

and I don't know that they did.

- What scared them is very interesting.

It was all done as news reports.

Until that moment

when the guy is describing this horrible monster...

"It's coming out, oh, my God! Aah!"

- Man: Wait a minute, something's happening.

Some shape is rising out of the pit.

Aah!

- And it went dead.

(silence)

The people in the booth were going...

And he just held it.

- Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances

beyond our control, we are unable to continue

the broadcast from Grover's Mill.

- Man: Citizens of the nation,

I shall not try to conceal

the gravity of the situation

that confronts the country,

nor the concern of your government

in protecting the lives and property of its people.

- We will have to sit down and think very carefully

about future broadcasts.

- Reporter: Have you made any specific changes of any programs

that were already scheduled, such as next week's,

for instance? - No.

- Police were already in the control room

during the broadcast, not knowing who to arrest.

- Male voice: Flash, country overrun by men from Mars!

Millions of Martians are landing in our fields!

Strange creatures are dropping from the stratosphere!

- M-m-m-m-m-men from Mars!

- Orson Welles character: Army bombing plane, V-8-43, off Bayonne, New Jersey,

- Don't you think that somebody here would have

been able to gauge the reaction

which in fact has occurred throughout the United States?

- Well, every radio program tries to be more dramatic than life.

- Woman: Oh, my gosh!

- Man on radio: There's another group of spaceships...

of the alien ships, they're coming out of the sky!

- Woody Allen character narrating: Despite his bravado all evening,

Mr. Manulis panicked and bolted out of the car.

He was so frightened by the reports

of interplanetary invasion

that he ran off, leaving Aunt Bea

to contend with the slimy green monsters

he expected to drop from the sky at any moment.

When Mr. Manulis called her for a date the next week,

she told my mother to tell him

she couldn't see him anymore.

She had married a Martian.

- Reporter, as bells ring: I'm speaking from the roof

of the broadcasting building, New York City...

the bells you hear

are ringing to warn the people

to evacuate the city as the Martians approach...

- This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen.

Out of character to assure you

that "The War of the Worlds" has no further significance

than as the holiday offering it was intended to be.

- Reporter: ... crowds like New Year's Eve in the city.

- Orson Welles: In fact, we weren't as innocent as we meant to be

when we did the Martian broadcast.

We were fed up with the way

in which everything that came over this new magic box,

the radio, was being swallowed.

People, you know, do suspect

what they read in the newspapers

and what people tell them, but when the radio came,

and I suppose now, television,

anything that came through that new machine was believed.

I didn't go to jail...

I went to Hollywood.

**

- James Naremore: He had established a celebrity

that made Hollywood have an appetite for him.

He was an extremely successful and ambitious

designer of conceptual theater in New York.

He had been on the cover of Time magazine.

He was an important radio performer,

which had made him a worldwide celebrity

and the studios saw

that they could make a buck from this.

- Peter Bogdanovich: RKO wanted him,

and he kept turning it down,

and so every time he turned it down,

the contract would get better,

'cause he'd ask for something

that they just wouldn't give him,

and then they would give it to him.

- Orson Welles: When you honestly didn't want to go,

then... then the deals got better and better.

In my case, I didn't want money.

I wanted authority.

- Orson Welles: There was this guy with a beard

who was going to do it all by himself, you know?

I represented the terrible future

of what was going to happen to that town.

- James Naremore: His initial project was

an adaptation of "Heart of Darkness,"

which he had done on the radio.

- Orson Welles character: ... a black and incomprehensible frenzy.

- We were a bunch of 22-, 23-year-old kids, really,

and we had... (laughs)...

moved in and taken over this studio,

and all these people were looking around, wondering

who the hell we were and what did we think

we were gonna be doing?

- We were not in a very strong

financial situation at the time.

And we thought this acquisition of Mr. Welles

would have done it, but it didn't.

- Man: He wanted to shoot the whole movie,

more or less, from the perspective

of Marlowe, the central character.

So we didn't get a close-up of Welles

until pretty late in the movie.

There were no big movie stars until then,

and people wanted to see Welles.

And it was a film about blackness,

and RKO tried to convince him

just to hire ordinary extras in blackface in the background.

But he wouldn't go with that.

- Orson Welles: Not knowing anything about it,

there was no basis for fear.

In other words, if you're walking along the edge of a cliff,

and you don't know it's the edge of a cliff,

you have perfect confidence.

- Orson Welles: The first day that I directed a film

was the first day I had ever been on a movie set.

- The Union forever!

- Be careful, Charles!

Pull your muffler around your neck, Charles.

- Mrs. Kane, I think we shall have to tell him now.

- Yes.

I'll sign those papers now, Mr. Thatcher.

- You people seem to forget that I'm the boy's father.

- It's going to be done exactly the way I've told...

- Steven Spielberg: It's about courage and audacity

and "I'm making this my way."

We're gonna see from one inch to infinity in every shot.

We're gonna see ceilings, and...

we're gonna tell a very convoluted

mystery story about a man's life.

It is just...

one of the great movies ever made.

- I didn't know what you couldn't do.

I didn't deliberately set out to invent anything.

It just seemed to me, "Why not?"

- Simon Callow: He grasped the medium

with such brilliance, enthusiasm,

he completely mastered it.

It's the first film of somebody

who had never even acted in a movie.

- I make no campaign promises!

Because, until a few weeks ago,

I had no hope of being elected.

- Orson Welles: It was intended...

consciously as a sort of social document,

as an attack on the acquisitive society,

but I didn't think that up

and then try to find a story to match the idea.

- John Houseman: The picture was about William Randolph Hearst

and two or three other newspaper barons,

but the picture was also about Orson.

- You're a 24-year-old novice director.

This is difficult material,

maybe impossible.

And old man Hearst is gonna come down on us

with all he's got.

- Think of the free publicity.

- Kane: "I'll provide the people of this city

"with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly.

I will also provide..."

- That's the second sentence you've started with "I."

- People are gonna know who's responsible.

- John Houseman: Basic script was

a Herman Mankiewicz script.

A great deal of that picture is,

in every respect, is Orson's picture.

- Orson Welles: One day in the office they said,

"There's a man called Toland waiting to see you."

He was, of course, the leading cameraman.

He said, "I want to make your picture."

And I said, "Well, that's wonderful.

Why? I don't know anything about movies."

He says, "That's why I want to do it."

**

Well, it was pretty much like my...

My beginnings in the theater.

I had the confidence of ignorance.

(woman singing opera)

- William Friedkin: It contains the very best

of cinematography, editing, lighting,

performance, screenwriting.

It's a quarry for filmmakers.

- It was obvious when you saw it, it was a great picture,

but that doesn't always mean

that it's gonna do big money at the box office.

- Peter Bogdanovich: A lot of the theater chains were afraid to book it

because they were afraid

their ads wouldn't run in the Hearst papers.

- I sometimes forget that you're all Jews.

Apparently, quite a number of people forget,

if they ever knew.

See what you can do about this "Citizen Kane" picture,

will you, Louie?

- Peter Bogdanovich: Orson said he wanted to open it in tents

all across the country.

He'd say, "This is the picture you... not...

they won't let you see."

But RKO wouldn't hear about it.

- James Naremore: In the next 70-something years,

it became one of the most admired films ever made.

- You can see a change in films after "Kane."

I said, "Don't you think you had a tremendous influence?"

He said not really. He said they didn't...

They really weren't influenced by anything important.

There were just a lot of ceilings and shadows.

- Many people can agree, it's just one of the great

American experiences in the cinema.

- Welles as Kane: Rosebud.

- Orson Welles: I'm ashamed of Rosebud.

I think it's the...

A rather tawdry device.

It doesn't stand up very well.

- Orson Welles: Well, I've regretted early successes in many fields,

but I don't regret that in "Kane"

because it was the only chance I ever had of that kind.

I'm glad I had it at any time in my life.

I was spoiled in a very strange way.

I didn't know what was ahead of me.

(laughing)

- Man narrating: The magnificence of the Ambersons

began in 1 87 3.

Their splendor lasted throughout all the years

that saw their midland town

spread and darken into a city.

In that town, in those days,

all the women who wore silk or velvet

knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet,

and everybody knew everybody else's

family horse and carriage.

- One of the reasons he liked "Amberson" so much

was 'cause he wasn't in it.

- Too slow for us nowadays.

- Often, he was the... you know, a name

that he used for himself in a movie,

'cause he was a name actor.

As he said to me once, he said,

"I don't enjoy acting as much as I should."

- Orson Welles: The real point of "Ambersons,"

everything that is any good in it

is that part of it

which was really just a preparation

for the decay of the Ambersons.

- Pride of the town.

- Hot and cold running water?

- Woman: Upstairs and down.

- Man: I want to look at that

automobile carriage of yours, Gene.

- Franny, you'll catch cold!

- Man: We're gonna ride in that thing tomorrow.

I want to see if it's safe.

- Good night, Isabella. - Good night, Eugene.

- You be ready at ten minutes after 2:00.

- No, I won't.

- Yes, you will.

Ten minutes after 2:00.

- Yes, I will.

- Get a horse, get a horse!

Get a horse.

- Look out, Lucy!

- Oh!

- Woman: What's happened to them?

- Oh, George...

- Orson Welles: A good film, I think, should not be an illustrated,

all-talking, all-moving version of a printed work

but should be itself, a thing of itself.

- George, you tried to swing underneath me

and break the fall for me when you went over.

I knew you were doing that. It was nice of you.

It wasn't much of a fall to speak of.

How about that kiss?

- (with others) * Can hear them sigh and wish to die *

* And see 'em wink the other eye *

* At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo **

(laughter)

- Orson Welles: About the time Major Amberson dies,

the picture starts to become another picture,

becomes their picture.

An actual plot was changed.

- Robert Wise: Well, I'm sorry about that,

'cause I was involved in all the cuts,

but it was one of those circumstances

that couldn't be helped.

He was in South America

making a film for the government

to help our war effort

in that good neighbor policy we had.

The studio was very... naturally, very upset.

They had a lot of money in this film,

and they wanted to get it out.

Consequently, we did cut

about 25 or 30 minutes of the original film,

and we had to make two or three or four

new bridge scenes to tie it together,

and there was a new ending shot.

- How is Georgie?

- He's going to be all right.

Annie.

I wish you could have seen Georgie's face...

- Orson Welles: There's no scene in a hospital,

nothing like that ever happened.

- I can only say that all of us up here

did the very best job we could with the problem.

- James Naremore: As one important critic has said,

RKO had hired Welles

to make them masterpieces,

and he delivered a masterpiece,

and they didn't like it.

- Orson Welles: The key long scene at the end,

which was Aggie Moorehead

in a third-rate lodging house,

that was the best scene in the picture.

That was what the picture was about.

It's gone.

I was sent to South America

by Nelson Rockefeller and Jock Whitney.

I was told that it was my patriotic duty

to go and spend a million dollars

shooting the Carnival in Rio.

They put it to me that it would be

a real contribution to inter-American affairs,

and so...

Anything that I've done in any medium,

if it's ever been any good,

has been my way, to quote the song.

I was in terrible trouble then.

In the meantime, RKO has now a new government,

and they asked to see the rushes

of what I'm doing in South America,

and they see a lot of people, black people,

and they...

made a great publicity point

of the fact that I had gone to South America

and thrown all this money away.

- RKO said, "Well, maybe we'd better stop this."

- So I was fired from RKO.

And its slogan for that year

printed on every piece of paper

that went out from RKO was

"Showmanship Instead of Genius."

I really wouldn't want to try

to edge my way into an elevator

that's for geniuses only.

- Julie Taymor: Sometimes you get frustrated that

people want to do things to your projects,

in theater or film, 'cause I've had both,

and then you have to fight,

and I'm sure Orson Welles had a lot of struggles,

as we know, and lost battles

and hopefully won a few.

- He was a brilliant man, he had a lot to offer,

he made two wonderful pictures,

but he also...

went bad after the second picture.

- Horrendous. I mean, there are some who've committed suicide.

- An Italian waiter came and said to me in Italian,

"Did you ever make a picture after 'Citizen Kane'?"

I didn't get a job as a director

for years afterwards.

So then I did "Jane Eyre."

Aah!

(dog barking)

- Can I do anything? - Stand out of the way.

- I'm sorry I frightened your horse.

- Apologies won't mend my ankle.

Down, Pilot!

- Orson Welles: I was obsessed

in my hot youth

with the idea that I would not be a star.

I was in a position to promote myself as a star...

- Who's that? ...And I should've.

I should've gone back to New York

and played Hamlet and as long as it was going,

I didn't... I had this idea that

I wanted to be known as a director and that was it.

The next picture I did do was "The Stranger,"

and I did that to show people

that I didn't glow in the dark,

that I could say "action" and "cut"

just like all the other fellas.

- (gasping) - What is it, dear?

- When you grew up in that era, you thought...

you saw movies for the junk that they were,

nobody took them seriously.

- You'll become part of the crime.

- But I'm already a part of it.

'Cause I'm a part of you.

- And I now that people dislike it,

but I just love his love of using the medium

for all of its tricks and playing with them.

This is what a studio movie could be.

- It was supposed to be a hammy performance.

It wasn't unconsciously so.

That's all I can say about that.

- James Naremore: They cut that one up, too.

Welles was an ideological challenge to Hollywood.

He was simply not a Hollywood filmmaker.

- Peter Bogdanovich: None of his pictures

really received wide distribution

except for "The Stranger,"

which was the only picture of his that made any money.

- It's not an accident that it comes in a can.

They welcomed the adventurer

in the 1 9th century much more than they do today.

My kind of fella is the real outsider.

Good evening, everybody, this is Orson Welles,

the Mercury Wonder Show broadcasting tonight from

the Air Service Command Training Center

at Fresno, California.

Last week, an American president

fell in the midst of battle.

- Announcer: Guess who's taking Jack's place

on the program tonight? - Man: Who?

- Orson Welles, that's who!

Orson Welles!

(audience laughter)

- Orson Welles: I did "Around the World in 80 Days,"

and it was, I think,

the best thing I ever did in the theater,

but it was a financial disaster.

Before the opening in Boston,

the costumes were sitting in the railway station,

and there was $55,000 to pay for them.

And I was trying to think who in Hollywood could send me

$55,000...

in the next three hours.

I thought, "Harry Cohn."

Only one with the courage to do it.

I called him up, I said, "I've got the greatest story

you've ever read," and I turned

the paperback around

that the girl in the box office was reading.

It was called "The Man I Killed."

And I says, "It's called 'The Man I Killed, '

written by such and such, a paperback, buy it!"

I said, "You get me $55,000 to Boston."

"And I will make it for you if you'll send me

$47,000 in two hours."

55,000 came.

- Welles always liked to pretend that he had

absolutely no idea that Harry Cohn

had asked him to make a movie with Rita Hayworth.

He had no idea what to do.

The stage door keeper of the theater that he was

working in when he was doing "Around the World"

happened to be reading a book called "The Lady from Shanghai."

- It's called something or other,

it wasn't "Lady from Shanghai" then.

- Sometimes he told the story one way,

and sometimes he'd tell it another way.

- It's all nonsense.

- Maybe that comes from one of those

foreign language interviews

where I pretend I understand the question

and say yes, you know?

(reporter and Welles speaking Italian)

- Host: We are bringing together, for the first time on the air,

one of Hollywood's best-known married couples,

Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles.

- Orson Welles: I had divorced from Rita.

She came to me and said, "I want to make your picture."

- Welles would say anything at any time

if it sounded good at the moment,

and he often admitted to that himself.

- Orson Welles: Harry sent for me and said,

"I want you to do that with Rita, for her sake."

- * Then don't... *

- I was lucky enough to be with her

longer than any of the other men in her life.

She is a dear person,

and she was a wonderful wife

and an extraordinary girl in every way.

- Hayworth character: There've been many women, haven't there...

- Welles character: Yes.

- Orson Welles: I think the first sex biologically

is the female sex,

and there are many creatures

in our world who are women

and only become male as long as is necessary

and then revert to their original

and superior condition.

You know, I think we're a kind of decoration.

I think the basic and essential human

is the woman,

and all that we're doing

is trying to brighten up the place

because we've got to try and justify our existence.

Look how little we do

to keep the race going.

I've had a marvelous sex life.

- Dick Cavett: Is it too personal to ask what age it started at?

- Well, if I tell you, you won't believe it,

so I'd better not answer.

- He was notoriously flirtatious with both sexes.

He used to love to lie in a bath

and do interviews with his associates,

which embarrassed some of them

and perhaps delighted others, I don't know.

I myself have absolutely no evidence

that Welles ever had

any kind of sexual relationship with a man,

but he was very, very conscious

that it was something that he could use.

- Orson Welles: It's the business of the director,

is to carry on a continual courtship

with the people he sticks in front of the lens.

And when you deal with stars,

you know, real stars, you have to...

You have to really make love.

- Orson Welles character: Personally, I don't like

a girlfriend to have a husband.

If she'll fool a husband, I figure she'll fool me.

- Rita Hayworth character: George.

- James Naremore: Even though this is a more conventional thriller

with a movie star at the heart of it,

the film is much more surrealistic,

much more strange, and all the more strange

because, when the studio doctored it,

they put into it these big close-ups

of Rita Hayworth, and they add

to the surreal quality of the film.

- Welles character: I thought it was me that was crazy.

After what I'd been through,

anything crazy at all seemed natural, but now...

I was sane on one subject, her.

I knew about her.

And I was the fall guy.

- Martin Scorsese: He was not afraid of being self-conscious

with the camera.

He did it with such conviction and with such brilliance

that you began to realize, "Ah, I see, the camera moves."

- James Naremore: Bewildering, astonishing things

are happening all the time,

building up to the great mirror maze at the end.

- I knew I'd find you two together.

But you'd be foolish to fire that gun.

With these mirrors, it's difficult to tell.

You are aiming at me, aren't you?

I'm aiming at you, lover.

Of course, killing you is killing myself.

(gunshots)

- Michael...

Come back here.

Michael.

Please!

- Simon Callow: This is one of the great mysteries,

why this extraordinarily smart guy was outwitted

by so much less remarkable

and intelligent people so often.

- Money.

(audience laughter)

(voice) Macbeth!

Beware MacDuff!

Macduff! Beware MacDuff!

- I don't know what I haven't done about this play

except do it as well as I'd like to.

It's a great feeling to be dealing with

material which is better than yourself.

Answer me!

- Witches: Double, double, toil and trouble,

fire burn and cauldron bubble.

- He had nothing. The sets are bad.

But the way that he then had to light them

and choreograph the camera and the actors in those sets...

It had tremendous power.

- Which of you have done this?

- Julie Taymor: Sometimes, when you can do it all, you...

you know, it's like too much ice cream,

too many flavors, you can't even make a decision,

but how you fill the limitation

shows the real artist or not.

- Jonathan Rosenbaum: None of his Shakespeare films

were ever really supported by the critics.

They complained about the Scottish accents.

(banging at the gate)

- Knock, knock. Never at quiet.

The plague of these...

- Rosenbaum: He had to do all these changes

in the soundtrack and cut "Macbeth,"

but he was the one who did the cutting.

- Orson Welles: It was a big critical failure.

It was the biggest critical failure I ever had.

- (screaming)

- What is that noise?

- Orson Welles: I'm very happy in America,

but it happens that America is not as happy with me

as I am with it. - Muchas gracias, senor.

- Julie Taymor: He was different.

He was really doing something

so unique to his own imagination,

and whether that means his films were successful

is a whole different matter.

They are successful.

- Like the fruit pickers, I go where the work is.

I don't think of myself as in exile at all.

In fact, I've spent most of my life

not quite unpacked.

- Henry Jaglom: One of the things that had driven him away

was the McCarthy-ite period.

He was very messed up by what was going on

in America politically,

had been a real progressive, you know,

and he was horrified.

- He was never a communist, but the FBI was following him,

since "Citizen Kane,"

when Hearst was a friend of Hoover.

- Orson Welles: I've been investigated over and over again.

It's one of our favorite indoor and outdoor sports.

(audience laughter)

(car horn honking)

(woman speaking German)

- Harry.

- Rosenbaum: The most successful thing he was ever part of,

commercially, was offered a percentage as part of the deal,

but he couldn't afford it because he needed the money,

so he would have been a wealthy man.

- Look down there.

Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots

stopped moving forever?

If I offered you #20,000 for every dot that stopped,

would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money,

or would you calculate

how many dots you could afford to spare?

Free of income tax, old man.

- Rosenbaum: What's also kind of interesting and ironic

is that Harry Lime, for him,

was the most detestable character he ever played,

but everybody else loves Harry Lime.

- Woman: I have never in my life

seen anything in the same

category of hideousness, but I adore him!

(both screaming)

- Don't be so gloomy.

After all, it's not that awful.

You know what the fella says.

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias,

they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed,

but they produced Michelangelo,

Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.

In Switzerland, they had brotherly love.

They had 500 years of democracy and peace,

and what did that produce?

The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.

- Orson Welles: A great many of us have been

in Europe during these last years.

It's been a kind of frontier for us in films,

and it's a more anarchistic and freer atmosphere.

- Elvis Mitchell: You know, a lot of people, I think, conceptually,

like the idea of change,

but they don't want things to change.

But Welles' impatience was about that change,

and his interest in the Scottsboro Boys case

and in early civil rights.

Speaking out, which you could only do

if you were an independent.

- Orson Welles: My own loyalty is greater

to the idea of myself as a member of the human family

than it is to a... as a member of any profession.

I don't take art as seriously as politics.

- Rosenbaum: One of the great things about Welles as a filmmaker

is him capturing the periods...

of whenever he was making the film,

the paranoia of what was going on in America.

It's really reflected in "Othello."

- Orson Welles: Black Othello, the outsider,

the mercenary, the foreigner,

must feel a certain insecurity

when he contemplates this curious conquest of his:

The senator's daughter who fled from her palace

in the dead of night to marry a black man.

- Man: It's partly a kind of an atmosphere and a mood,

but it's like a horror film.

- (speaking French)

- Has he said anything? - I know not what he...

- What, what?

- Lying.

- Lie with her?

- With her. On her.

What you will.

- Orson Welles: Came to Mogador on the west coast of Africa to shoot.

We got a telegram... Scalera, with whom I had

a contract to make the picture,

had gone bankrupt.

We had no costumes, nothing.

That was the big scene of the murder of Rodrigo.

And what can you shoot without costumes?

That's a Turkish bath.

Nothing was designed, everything had to be found.

We had to do it

with whatever money I could raise

and stop until I raised some more.

Now, that took almost four years.

Now, there are still people today who say,

"I don't want to hire Welles as a director,"

it took him four years to make 'Othello."'

- Peter Bogdanovich: "Othello" was his own production.

However, there are various versions of it.

There's his version, and then there's a version

that Beatrice redid.

- Called some friends who were in the business,

the movie business, and so I said,

"Where do you think one could find, you know,

a negative or whatever is left of 'Othello'?"

And they ended up finding it

in some lab in New Jersey.

It really was in perfect condition.

- They made, I think, a few mistakes.

- In June of 1 955,

he finally got round to nailing "Moby Dick."

Of course, he'd appeared in John Huston's movie of it.

He staged what he called "Moby Dick Rehearsed" here.

It only ran for three-and-a-half weeks,

but I think it's one of the landmarks

in British theater of the 1 950s,

and it's certainly a great landmark

in Welles' own life.

They'd filmed a little bit of it.

The possibility is that it was impounded

by the tax people here,

that it was lost, that somebody stole it.

A very Wellesian episode altogether.

- Hands off, you two are of mankind!

Old Ahab stands alone

among the millions of the peopled Earth,

nor gods nor men his neighbors.

Cut, no good.

- Sir Peter Brook: Television was the medium

for great freedom and experiment.

We started working.

Both of us believed that you don't hang on to any idea,

but the moment that you'd had an idea,

and you begin to try it,

that leads to you think of something else.

And then, as I was doing that, turn around,

"Yes, Peter, but what if, instead of that,

"we started with him here,

and he leapt over to that point?"

- Blow winds...

- Orson suddenly took off with tremendous passion.

- Rage... blow...

You cataracts and hurricanoes!

- One thing one can be sure is that

there wasn't before him an Orson,

and there'll never be a second.

- I think I made, essentially, a mistake in staying in movies,

because I... but it...

It's a mistake I can't regret,

because it's like saying,

"I shouldn't have stayed married to that woman,

but I did because I love her."

- Julie Taymor: In theater, you're in space,

and the lighting can focus

where you want the audience to look,

but, in general, the audience can look anywhere they want.

The actual complete manipulation

of the image is something you can do in film.

- I can't change this condition of love,

but I think I would be better off without it.

- Orson Welles narrating: On December 25th,

an aeroplane was sighted off the coast of Barcelona.

It was flying empty.

This motion picture is a fictionalized reconstruction

of the events leading up

to the appearance of the empty plane.

...was talking to you, what was it?

...it was just a name. He was dying.

- Man: What name was it?

- Arkadin.

- It's a story about a... a high financier,

a man of many countries

and three passports.

In the morning, I think it's splendid,

in the evening, I wonder.

- Woman: How much obligation do you feel to a mass audience?

- I would love to have a mass audience.

- I knew what I wanted.

That's the difference between us.

- Did my poverty help my creativity?

Uh, no.

Ladies and gentlemen, please.

I must beg you

not to make the slightest sound,

as the princess is in a state of trance.

(audience laughter)

- Orson really, it seems to me,

just wants to work.

But at the same time, there is something in him

that drives him to alienate the people with the money.

- Excuse me, sir?

- Yes?

- Well, I'm a young filmmaker and a real big fan.

I... I just wanted to meet you.

- My pleasure, I'm Orson Welles.

- I'm... Edward D. Wood, Jr.

What you working on?

- Well, the financing just fell through

for the third time on "Don Quixote."

I hate when that happens.

- Man: He had just done a picture for Universal as an actor.

They asked him to play the heavy in this thing.

He needed the money, so he said okay.

- I said, "Who's gonna direct it?"

And he says, "Well, we haven't picked a director yet.

We have Orson Welles to do the heavy, though."

This was on the long-distance phone,

and after a static-filled pause,

I said, "Why don't you have him direct it?

He's a pretty good director, you know."

And the reaction at first

was a prolonged silence as though

I had suggested that my mother direct the film.

- Ed...

- Yes?

- Visions are worth fighting for.

Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?

- I said, "I'll direct it,

"but if I also get to write it.

Every word of it, an entirely new script."

They said yes.

- You won't have any trouble with me.

- You bet your sweet life I won't.

- Charlton Heston: "Touch of Evil" is, of course, really

the story of the decline and fall of Captain Quinlan,

Orson's part.

- Orson Welles: He's everything we... we hate.

But he isn't what we hate, it's his method,

and it's that ambiguity

which gives tension to a story.

They loved the rushes.

Then they saw a rough cut of it,

they were so horrified that they...

wouldn't let me in the studio.

I gave a dinner party

not long after I started the picture

for all my old producer friends and big star friends,

the old Hollywood brigade.

I was a little late,

so they were all there having their drinks on.

I came in, in order to arrive in time

in my makeup and costume.

And they all said, "How are you, Orson?

You're looking great."

It was too dark for them, too strange.

- Welles had been fired off the film,

kicked off the lot.

He wrote this 58-page memo

about what should happen to the movie,

um, and pretty much,

Universal at the time took the memo and tossed it.

(ticking)

(woman laughing)

It's not like with "Magnificent Ambersons,"

as if we found the missing last reel,

but the film became more itself.

Orson, above everything else,

was a master filmmaker and knew exactly

how to make a film,

as it turned out, from beyond the grave.

In Welles' memo,

he said two things about the opening shot.

He didn't want titles over it,

and he wanted a montage

of different music tracks.

(opening theme merges with rock-and-roll playing in street)

At that time, this was seen as a B-movie.

It was very rare that somebody

would not have titles

at the beginning of a film in a B-movie.

So there they are, walking through the town,

and oop, there's that music,

and there's a car, and, right now...

boonk! ...that car could've blown up.

Whereas... but if there are titles over that,

you just know it's not gonna blow up.

So by removing the titles

and having this sort of freeform music,

it puts a suspense under this scene

that didn't really exist before.

He'd spent those years in radio doing

exactly this kind of stuff.

We did this in "American Graffiti,"

which was the same kind of thing.

- George Lucas: What we called "worldization" of the sound,

which is to make it sound like it was

in the environment in "American Graffiti,"

and having it pass by in cars and that sort of thing,

which Welles had already thought of in "Touch of Evil."

I think both Walter and I were

very charmed by that... that whole concept.

He's definitely way ahead of all the rest of us.

- Well, Hank was a great detective all right.

- And a lousy cop.

- Is that all you have to say for him?

- He was some kind of a man.

What does it matter what you say about people?

- Quinlan: Goodbye, Tana.

- Adios.

- Adios.

Wow, huh?

You know, Welles didn't even want to do this movie,

but you know, sometimes you do your best work

when you got a gun to your head.

- Orson Welles: I do think working for posterity is vulgar.

(man speaking French)

Because posterity is just as big a whore

as the present.

- Filmmakers of today can do what they do because Orson did it.

Every art form that I know

has somebody who blazed new trails,

and their influence starts being felt

about a generation later.

- Plato told us that we should know ourselves,

and the object of every artist,

good, bad or indifferent,

is a lifelong inquiry into that subject,

and his work is testimony to that effort,

but I'm in no position to sum myself up.

- It's a peculiar thing. When you have an artist

who works so outside the box,

not everybody gets it at the time.

- Do you know that I always liked Hollywood very much?

It just wasn't reciprocated.

(audience laughter)

- Costa-Gavras: He freed the directors

from the kind of static ways

they used to have about the way you light,

about the way you put your camera,

the way you have the setting and so forth,

and it's very clear in "The Trial," the Kafka.

He didn't do really Kafka.

He did Orson Welles' Kafka.

**

- Orson Welles: I was living in a hotel on Tuileries,

pacing up and down in my bedroom,

Iooking out the window.

And I'm not such a fool

as not to take the moon very seriously,

and I saw the moon, very large,

what we in America call a harvest moon, enormous.

And then, miraculously, two of them.

And on each moon, there were numbers,

and I realized they were the clock faces

of the Gare d'Orsay.

And I remembered that the Gare d'Orsay was empty.

And at 5:30 in the morning, I went downstairs,

got in a cab, crossed the Seine,

and entered this empty railway station

where I discovered the world of Kafka.

- Orson Welles narrating: It has been said that the logic of this story

is the logic of a dream.

- Come with me, Mr. K.

- Anthony Perkins: Orson's view of Josef K.

was that, far from being the innocent victim

of bureaucracy that Kafka had written that...

but, in Orson's version,

and I can hear him saying,

I can hear his thundering voice,

"He's guilty as hell."

- Costa-Gavras: He would like to tell a story

to make a metaphor about his vision of the world,

speaking about how we can feel guilty

without being guilty.

- You came to see me about this case, that's good.

- Orson Welles: I saw it as a European story,

full of old European bric-a-brac,

with IBM machines lurking in the background.

- Costa-Gavras: You think it's a major movie,

whatever the critics said about it.

- There really wasn't indie filmmaking

in the '40s, '50s,

you know, when Welles was doing it.

He wasn't happy doing it.

He had no choice.

- Orson Welles: There's a new moment in filmmaking.

It's not that we're better, the filmmakers,

but that the distribution system

has broken down a little,

and the public is more open, more ready

for difficult subjects.

Imagine what it means for me

to have had the chance to make it.

Indeed, to have had the chance to work.

- He was an unbeatable man.

You couldn't, you know, if...

Something didn't work,

he said, "Okay, let's move forward,"

and he would do another thing

and one other thing.

There was no way of stopping him.

I said once to him, "My God, you looked

wonderful in 'Jane Eyre."'

That's the first time I saw him.

And he said, "Yeah,

but you should have seen the corset I had."

We are on the Dalmatian Coast,

on the Adriatic.

Down there is a small place

called Primosten where we shot "Dead Reckoning,"

later entitled "The Deep,"

with Lawrence Harvey, Jeanne Moreau,

Orson Welles, myself.

Jeanne Moreau.

I was pretty girl when I was young.

No woman ever looked at me like this.

He said, "Jeanne, I don't want to...

"I don't want to be rude, but you're not the age

of playing a young bride."

Look, I don't care what these people are

going to think of me.

I'm not in the movie business,

I'm 72 years old, I want to have a farm,

I dream of chickens, literally,

and have a donkey and a dog and so on,

so I'm going to tell anything that comes into my mind.

I was in the elevator, and Polanski stepped in,

and he said to me, "You know,

"I was thinking of using Orson,

"but I hear that

"he's late on the set, that he's difficult.

I'm not very sure."

I said, "If you are not sure,

don't engage him."

He would have been the happiest man in the world

if Geraldine, whatever her name is,

came and said, "Orson,

this is your son," you know?

I hear that the guy is very good-looking

on top of everything, it would be wonderful.

They were showing "Magnificent Ambersons"

in the middle of the night.

I see the light,

I go to the living room,

and, just before I open the door,

I see his reflection in the mirror,

and I see him crying.

And I don't open the door.

What's the use to cry? I do cry enough for Orson.

I cry... Too often.

But I also smile,

because I'm so happy that I have known him.

- Orson Welles: I think man is a crazy animal.

(audience applause)

I think we are also...

I think we're also marvelous people,

divine in our potentialities.

(applause)

You see, there you are.

You can say anything with passion and get a hand.

(audience laughter)

If you're going to try to finance movies and live,

you have to earn your money somehow.

Is there any man with a decent regard for human life

and the slightest bit of heart

who doesn't understand it?

I would have sold my soul to play the Godfather,

but I never get those parts offered to me.

20 million years ago,

an ape-like creature inhabited the Earth.

I'm a king actor, maybe a bad one.

They weren't necessarily the best actor,

they were the actor who played the king.

- Aah! - Aah!

- Mike Nichols knows how to deal with actors.

Orson would turn to Mike,

as, I guess, he did to every director

and say things like,

"You're really gonna do that shot

when you know you're not gonna need it?"

- Knucklehead fool!

You empty-headed yokel!

- Richard Benjamin: You say, "My God, I'm in a scene

"with Orson Welles, there's an actual

"piece of film in my life

that has Orson Welles in it."

- I don't want the men to pay any attention to me,

just carry on as usual.

- Don't pay any attention to Dad,

just carry on as usual.

- Will you clam up?

- Orson Welles character: Money, money, money.

I never concern myself with this madness.

- Elvis Mitchell: There's this complete sort of self-knowledge

and almost the arrogance of an athlete, like,

the ownership of his body on camera

before he got to be, you know, the size of a Buick.

- My salads are... a bit complicated.

- But he would just slice through.

- Dinner, ho, dinner!

Would you take this away, please,

and... and bring me

the steak au poivre, thanks a lot.

- When I watched Orson Welles eat,

it was like...

somebody making love to the food.

He really loved to eat,

and you could see, his eyes lit up.

When he put that forkful in,

and his whole face was like a sunshine.

- You think he'd remember the lunch.

There was a marvelous mousse.

Got any donuts or sweet rolls?

- And he could describe every dish,

the way it tasted.

- Welles: Schwartzwalder torte...

Kugel...

(continues in German)

Cafe creme torte.

- Obviously, when you looked at him and said, you know,

this is not a guy who is on a diet.

- Welles: (continues in German)

...und Sachertorte.

How sweet it was.

- Even when he lost some idea of himself physically...

- Overweight, me?

- The words still had the same kind of precision

that his body once had.

- More...

Are you going to help me?

Have I your support, or have I not?

- No, Your Grace.

I'm not going to help you.

- Then good night, Master More.

- Simon Callow: You have to wait quite a long time

before Welles makes his masterpiece,

which in my view and the view of many other people

is Falstaff, the "Chimes at Midnight,"

which is, to me, one of the great,

great achievements of filmmaking in the 20th century.

- Falstaff! Good night.

- Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night.

And we must dance.

- Joseph McBride: I saw it three times in a row in one night

because I thought I might never see it again,

so you had intellectuals from the University of Chicago

and you had winos off the street,

and they all loved the film.

- This chair shall be the state

and this cushion... my crown.

(laughter)

- Simon Callow: Welles had, by now, mastered the art

of making independent films,

and making them in the way that he wanted to make them

in this kind of improvised way.

Although he had a script, of course, for it,

but he didn't stick very closely to the script.

Unless, of course, it was Shakespeare's words.

- What is honor? Air.

A trim reckoning! Who hath it?

He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No.

'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead.

But will it not live with the living?

No. Why?

Detraction will not suffer it.

Therefore, I'll none of it.

(loud crash)

(screaming, yelling)

- Orson Welles: Violence always has been part of our story.

It is, you know, I've seen it

in my own lifetime long before this period,

and we certainly read about it in history.

That's the way we won the country and stole it away

from the Indians and all the rest of it.

(screaming, yelling)

- Welles: If I wanted to, uh, to get into heaven

on the basis of one movie,

that's the one I would offer up,

because it is, to me, the least flawed.

Let me put it that way.

- I banish thee, on pain of death,

as I have done the rest for my misleaders,

not to come near our person by 10 mile.

- Simon Callow: "Chimes at Midnight" is true,

through and through and through,

and is profound and is moving

and contains an absolute essence of Shakespeare

and an absolute essence of Orson Welles.

- Falstaff?

- Falstaff is dead.

- Simon Callow: It's human to the core.

- Jesus, the days that we have seen.

- Stefan Drossler: The Munich Film Museum

is part of the municipal museum.

We are very much caring

to keep the legacy of Orson Welles.

All the material Orson had

was shipped to Munich.

- Sometimes I try to imagine

Orson having different bedrooms in different motels and hotels,

and the doors to this room, bedroom is locked,

and under the bed are hidden,

you know, boxes and boxes of film.

Who knows?

- Stefan Drossler: Some believe these films look more amateurish

because they are not really Hollywood productions.

Many others see him as a hero

of the independent filmmaker.

The problem is only that, uh,

few of these films were really finished,

that he still was working and working and working on them.

- Pellegrina's dead.

Even the servants think so.

I had no chance to say good-bye.

Will you do that for me?

- Everybody who is an intellectual artist

starts on many things

and sometimes doesn't complete them.

- Since it's my own little picture and I put my own money on it,

I don't know why they don't bug authors

and say, "When are you gonna finish 'Nelly, '

that novel you started 10 years ago?"

- If the wolf is not really at the door,

it's a big temptation to say, "Well, this isn't...

this isn't my best, I'm gonna put it away."

- Orson Welles narrating: A newly-wedded couple

are here on their small yacht

cruising up the west coast of Africa

on their way to the Mediterranean.

Out in these waters,

they might expect to be very much alone,

but there's someone else out there.

- He said once, I'm not going to call Don Quixote "Don Quixote."

I'm going to call it "When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?"

- Stanley Kubrick had projects that he never completed.

The difference is, Welles actually got footage in the can,

as opposed to a number of projects by people

in much better financial position or industry position,

never even getting them off the ground.

- Man: Are you happy when it's all done and cut

and goes out to be printed and into the movie houses?

- No.

No, because you always hope you can make it better.

- James Naremore: I don't think it's a...

at all any failure to want to finish

or be a fear of finishing or whatever.

That sounds like some kind of bizarre sexual malady.

- Eric Sherman: I don't know why he didn't finish it,

and I never asked him.

But we have an unbelievable body of work,

including the greatest film on Shakespeare:

"Falstaff," "Chimes at Midnight,"

the short color film "lmmortal Story,"

one of the most brilliantly shot films ever.

Film after film was phenomenal.

- Henry Jaglom: The studios had lost interest in him,

and he could put together his projects in a more European way,

financially, getting bits of money from here and there.

So it was comfortable for him to be in Europe during that time.

- Orson Welles: The way I figure is that you've only got so much luck,

and it doesn't matter when it happens,

and I was incredibly lucky.

- Salud.

(crowd cheering, music playing)

- So the central figure in this story

is the fellow with, you know,

who can hardly see through

the bush of the hair on his chest.

(laughter)

- Reporters: Mr. Welles! Mr. Welles, please!

(man speaking French)

Thank you!

- Oh, I'm going to go on being faithful to my girl.

I love her.

(woman speaking French)

In school, you should be making movies.

(man translating into French)

Not letting the professor tell you about

Eisenstein and D.W. Griffith.

(man translating into French)

- 'Cause up to that time, it was the seamless film,

in a way, um, the hidden camera.

The obtr... the camera that you couldn't tell was there.

So Welles was the one to really break open,

open up the Pandora's box.

In a funny way, I guess, picking up where silent films left off.

- Every single...

not just every scene,

but every shot has an idea.

There's a concept

and an idea being executed at every second.

- Welles stands kind of above everybody's work.

I think every filmmaker has some relation with Welles,

if nothing else, you know, he created the air we breathe

in that regard, you know?

He's sort of the patron saint of indie filmmakers.

- Elvis Mitchell: So much of what he did

came with quotation marks around it.

Postmodern.

And I think about just the beginning of "F for Fake."

It's just all about saying, "This is what you're seeing

"and this is what I'm doing, and this is what you're seeing,

but this is what I'm doing."

That sort of mirror-on-a-mirror effect.

- Orson Welles: It was a pretty great experience to start making

yet another movie with a storyline

rotten with coincidence.

For instance, that the author of "Fake," a book about a faker,

was himself a faker and the author of a fake

to end all fakes.

During the next hour, everything you'll hear from us

is really true and based on solid facts.

- Walter Murch: Not only are we aware of the edits as they go by,

but he's showing the editing process at the same time.

It's like watching a talented juggler do his job.

- This is a film about trickery.

Fraud.

About lies.

Tell it by the fireside

or in a marketplace or in a movie.

- Walter Murch: Editing is cinema in a certain sense.

Because everything is broken into bits,

you can have a great deal of invention.

- Orson Welles: I did promise that for one hour,

I'd tell you only the truth.

That hour, ladies and gentlemen, is over.

For the past 1 7 minutes, I've been lying my head off.

- Elvis Mitchell: That kind of self-awareness is great for art.

He's part of that movement that includes Picasso

and Duke Ellington, all those artists

who were aware in a way that artists had not been before.

- Orson Welles: Our works are spared,

some of them for a few decades,

or a millennium or two.

The treasures. And the fakes.

Our songs.

Our songs will all be silenced.

But what of it?

Go on singing.

- Wow, how are you?

Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen.

(cheering and applause)

- Thank you.

Thank you very much.

- I... - Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

- I don't believe this, this is...

- Who is that? - That's the, uh,

That's our director, Mr. Welles.

- That... is a director? - Yeah.

(laughter)

- Heh heh. What?

I'm on my mark.

(laughter)

Yes, always.

Move your camera.

(zany music)

(cheering and applause)

- He came back in the late '60s.

Films were beginning to be made in a different kind of a way.

- The money guys didn't trust him,

and they had good reason not to trust him.

It doesn't matter how great the material is.

Ultimately, it has to...

It has to pay off for somebody.

- We will sell no wine before its time.

- Orson Welles: We know a little place in the American far west

where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie-fed beef and takes...

This is a lot of shit, you know this?

Come on, fellas, you're losing your heads.

- Henry Jaglom: They all wanted to meet him,

they all wanted to have lunch with him,

they all celebrated him.

And then somehow, you know,

this man is not gonna be predictable.

Here's a scene from one film

that Orson is just finishing,

called "The Other Side of the Wind."

I must say, it's a fascinating scene.

It's about a celebration

in honor of a famous movie director who is not Orson.

- Paul Mazursky: I get a phone call.

"Orson wants you to do his picture."

I said, "Orson Welles? I don't know Orson Welles.

"He doesn't know me.

"I mean, I know 'Citizen Kane' is the...

"probably the best picture ever made, but why is...

Are you fucking around with me?"

(knocking on table)

I knocked at the door,

and I figure some lackey is gonna open the door.

The door opens and it's...

"Oh ho ho! Oh ho ho ho ho!"

(laughter)

"Oh ho ho! Ah ha ha ha ha.

"Paul Mazursky, come on in!

I'm making a film called 'The Other Side of the Wind."'

- Orson Welles: We're going to shoot it without a script.

- Man: Without a script?

- We're gonna make the picture as though it were a documentary.

The actors are going to be improvising.

- He started in 1 970 and he worked on it through his passing in '85.

I never saw Orson sleep.

- It was a stop-and-start situation.

It seemed to me that every time Orson got a little bit of money,

he would bring the cast back and start shooting again.

- I'm still confused about

the area of the magician, as director.

- This is crap! This is intellectual bullshit!

- Orson Welles: When I tell you that my partner

is the brother-in-law of the late Shah of Iran,

you will understand why we're having

a little legal difficulty.

- He owes me $25.

- Frank Marshall: I sort of felt that we would just

keep making the movie until he died.

(cheering and applause)

- Let us raise our cups, then,

standing as some of us do on opposite ends of the river,

and drink together, to what really matters to us all...

to our crazy and beloved profession.

To the movies, to good movies, to every possible kind.

- Peter Bogdanovich: There is this terrible consolation of being

40 years ahead of your time.

I wish I'd be on time sometimes.

The night he won the Oscar, the special Oscar,

and he had asked John Huston to pick it up for him.

- "Genius" is a word that must be used very sparingly,

especially in this world of films.

- He said, "I'm... I'm not gonna go."

I said, "Why not?" and he said,

"They're not gonna get that out of me."

- On my way back to Ireland,

I'll stop in Spain and give him this.

- We were sitting at the Beverly Hills Hotel,

watching the Oscars, and Orson says,

"Yeah, come on right over, John!"

(applause)

- Merv Griffin: You celebrated a big birthday, didn't you?

- Orson Welles: I didn't celebrate it, I just had it.

(laughter)

I used to pretend it was my birthday

when I took a girl out to dinner,

and then I'd have the waiter bring a cake in

and sing "Happy Birthday,"

and I'd use that as an excuse to extend the evening.

- Aha... - (laughter)

- I have a sentimental inclination toward hope.

I believe in bravery.

Worship it.

- Jeanne Moreau: To me, Orson

is so much like a destitute king.

On this earth,

there's no kingdom that is good enough

for Orson Welles.

- Merv Griffin: But you feel wonderful, don't you?

- Oh, sure!

(laughter)

- As it must to all men, death came to Orson Welles.

That, a paraphrase borrowed from his own film, "Citizen Kane."

- Newscaster: Orson Welles told me about a lunch he had recently

with director-producer Steven Spielberg,

who had just purchased the famous "Rosebud" sled

from "Citizen Kane" for $45,000.

- But I said, "We burnt the sled, Steven." (laughing)

That's why we enjoy life, is that we know it's got to end.

- Newscaster: Orson Welles was 70.

**

- Chris Welles Feder: After my father died,

I got a call from my half-sister Beatrice.

She and her mother Paola

were arranging a funeral in Los Angeles,

and I was really devastated by the place where it was held,

which was like a horrible motel room.

Nothing had been done, I felt, to truly honor my father.

- Oja Kodar: He didn't want to be cremated.

He said, "I took so much from this earth,

I should give it back, at least, something."

And, um, they didn't do it.

- I would like to do something which would leave...

at least...

the art form concerned or the profession

better for my having done it...

...to use this medium for something except entertaining.

I'd like to have been more useful in the world,

and I hope I can be. It's, uh...

You finally get to a point where, uh...

art for art's sake doesn't seem a good enough flag

to be marching under sometimes.

- Interviewer: What's a better flag?

- Well, you've got to believe in something bigger than yourself.

- Interviewer: Oh, we've run out of film.

(laughter)

- You had me... - I must tell you...

- I had me riveted!

(laughter)

I loved every... Don't cut a word out of that!

**

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