[Music] magician is just an idea just an actor playing the part of a musician [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know one sunny morning in Kenosha chubby little one you know the world's his family background was complex his parents broke up when he was about seven and his mother and he moved to Chicago she was a 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 that street corner and say to a man will you hold this please and then go around the other side of the street front and find something else it would do all this police then leave the two men holding her that was her idea it's a fun thing to do Hansen she was a great beauty my father lived in Peking for quite a long time and I spent five or six years there are 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 he spent it and in the meantime his mother had taken up with this Hungarian dr. Maurice Bernstein is sort of very slippery character controlling wheedling more emotionally blackmailing kind of a person mr. Carter this is mr. Bernstein when his mother died he was forced to make in his legal guardian he was from the earliest age formed on identified as being a remarkable and charming and 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 and Welles was not about to spend any time in the nursery 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 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 phones but I would like to have the one that I don't Tess posits Woodstock Illinois if it's anywhere I went to school there for four years and if I try to think of the whole mix bad I think the most exciting thing that ever happened in skippers life was the arrival of Orson Welles in 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 it's a kid skipper said okay what we'll do is have him do what he wants was just a theater I played Mary the mother of Jesus at the age of 13 yes very good and drag he could talk about China I think he'd been to China he could talk about Shakespeare with my father's favorite author and he could talk about the Bible at 11:00 he could do all this it's like Mozart playing music it's 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 when I thought about him he looked at me Joanne everybody has their little idiosyncrasies this was a very unusual boy [Music] as truly where whoresons started his theatrical career he was putting on Twelfth Night he was putting on the variety of Shakespeare plays when he was it was a child and he was Orson there's a warmth that the thing I think a much of the world never experienced so it is a pleasure that we here the city of Woodstock dedicate this stage to an individual who got it all started even though he was a humble person [Music] he made his American debut as a professional theatre director upon the stage and now named in his honor the Orson Welles stage [Applause] felis hand on my shoulder [Music] he did a sort of deal with dr. Bannister and 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 did I'd come to Ireland and found myself in Dublin without what a technically referred to as financial resources and why I had a few shillings but I blew those on a good dinner and a ticket to the theatre the theatre was the gate I was 16 years old my career as he might say was at the crossroads I saw this brilliant not necessarily an actor with a brilliant creature of 16 telling us he was 19 and telling us he'd had lots of experience which was obvious to us he'd had none at all and just just for the fun of it I'd like to stay with her 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 heart I began as a star I've been working my way down slowly everything parts got smaller and smaller and smaller and eventually Wells after about nine months left and Vere 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 he came to the theatre festal 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 arson would tell him what he went first he'd say we don't want it right here we want you to sew it up so they'd go the silly way up and down the stairs it's not a film at all it was a little joke one Sunday afternoon we'd all seen either been well or cocked or somebody's surrealist movie we said let's make one and from two o'clock in the afternoon till 5:00 we shot some dumb stuff [Music] 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 Paula 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 Wells 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 his audience you had an experience you had with no other director I was six months old of the north and I met him in his office with John Houseman who was Wilson's partner at that time John Houseman had great elegance spoke beautifully they had the one gray flannel suit at the time because nobody had any money the federal theater was a theater created by the government putting people to work throughout the country awesome and Couchman used it to their advantage to create a theater a Negro theater unit of the federal theater project produced a highly successful version of Shakespeare's immortal tragedy Macbeth [Music] my name there was so many curtain calls that finally they left this curtain opener the audience came up on the stage [Music] there was thunderous reaction to it in the audience thunderous except for one critic very fine critic Percy Hammond there were two voodoo companies and they were going first see a man boom boom boom first she Hammond died three days later no sorry well that was rude I beg your pardon we all left the federal theater at a given point Houseman and Welles left because they weren't allowed to do credible rock they formed the Mercury Theatre in a single year the first in the life of a Mercury Theatre Orson Welles has come to be the most famous name of our time in American drama my magazine declares brightest moon if it's written over Broadway in years he was ruthless tough discipline we just worked all the time we worked until two and three o'clock in the morning 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 that the crazy thing is it might be fine for him but if they're dragged out of bed and are exhausted eyed their slaves then you don't happy Robert Benchley writes in The New Yorker production of the mercury is I should say just above purpose well should feel at home in the sky the only limit which is ambitions recognized [Music] the play made absolutely no sense without the film the film could not be shown in the fear because there was no real projection booth he is an arrogant and every single one of you stands here as an adjunct to my vision you want a career in the Mercury Theatre and in everything else I plan to do they remember one simple rule I own the store 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 place on before anybody else because I was doing radio all day long sound is first final stirring gathered of the infinitely sounds have a romance radio was a medium which employee I don't like that literature yours going out all over the country with my towns postmark on it I don't like it to be a return address for all that and a Semitic Garvey never rehearse he'd walk in they say Chinamen 85 years old all right but my identity 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 shadow why are you here I anticipated your performance mr. Kent how did the shadow originate was it a I don't know before you to know I was the original Lamont Kratz as far as I know but I wouldn't well I didn't write that oh no my god I didn't even know how that came out 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 Farrell of the Mount Kenya Torrey Chicago Illinois reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars a lot of people just accidentally tuned into the War of the Worlds while dejac many commercial was on or something and it freaked them out it was the turning point in in Welles his career clear out of my chair Rick and I was kind of riled well you wear the Terran was going on throughout the nation 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 rising out of the bed and it went dead the people in the booth were going he just held it ladies and gentlemen due to circumstances beyond our control we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grover's mill 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 it we will have to sit down and and think very carefully about future broadcast how'd you make any specific changes or any permanent schedules on your next week's briefing no police were already in the control room during the broadcast not knowing who to arrest flash a country overrun by men from Mars millions of Martians are landing in our fields strange creatures are dropping from the stratosphere [Music] reaction which in fact has occurred throughout the United States well every radio program tries to be more dramatic than life despite his bravado all evening mr. Manuel is 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. Manuel was called her for date the next week she told my mother to tell him she couldn't see him anymore she had married a Martian New York City don't you hear a ringing warned people to evacuate the city as Martians approach this is Orson Welles ladies and gentlemen out of character to assure you that the War of the world has no further significance and as the holiday offering it was intended to be in fact we weren't as innocent as we meant to be 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 not do is suspect what they read in the newspapers and what people tell him but when the radio came and I suppose no television anything that came through that new machine was believed I didn't go to jail I went to Hollywood he had established a celebrity that made Hollywood have an appetite for it 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 studio's saw that they can make a buck from this Archaea wanted him and he kept turning it down and so every time he turned it down the contract would get better because he'd asked for something that this just wouldn't give him and then they would give it to him 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 a thority [Music] there was this guy with a beard who was gonna do it all by himself you know I represented the terrible future of what was going to happen to that town from this initial project was an adaptation of heart of darkness which he had done on the radiator 20 to 23 year old kids really and we had moved in and taken over this studio you know all these people were looking around wondering hell we were and what do we think we were gonna be doing we were not in a big strong financial situation at the time we thought this acquisition of mr. wells would have done it but it didn't 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 they people wanted to see Welles and it was a film about blackness the RKO tried to convince him just to hire ordinary extras in blackface in the background but he wouldn't go with that 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 that I directed a film was the first day I had ever been on a movie set be careful around your neck Jane 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 got courage not - Lee 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 we're gonna tell a very convoluted mystery story about a man's life [Music] 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 he grasped the medium with such brilliance enthusiasm he completely mastered it it's the first film of somebody who had never even acted because until a few weeks ago I had no hope being elected 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 picture was about William Randolph Hearst and two or three other newspaper barons but the picture was also about us you're a 24 year old Marvis director this is difficult material maybe impossible and only an Hearst is going to come down on us with all he's got think of the free publicity I'll provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly I will also provide I can sentence you've started with I people are gonna know who's responsible basic script was Herman mankiewicz script a great deal of that picture is in every respect is Austin's picture one day and the office they said there's a man called Tolan waiting to see you it was across the leading cameraman he said I want to make your picture and I said well that's wonderful why I don't know think about movies he says that's why I want to do it well it was it pretty much like my my beginnings in the theatre I had the confidence of ignorance [Music] [Applause] [Music] it contains the very best of cinematography editing lighting performance screenwriting it's a quarry for filmmakers it was obvious when you saw it was a great picture but that doesn't always mean it's gonna do big money at the box office a lot of the theater chains were afraid to book it because they're afraid their ads wouldn't run into his papers I sometimes forget that you're old Jews apparently quite a number of people forget and stay ever-new see what you can do about this Citizen Kane picture well you Louie Orson said he wanted to open in tents all across the country say this is the picture you not they won't let you see but RKO wouldn't hear about it in the next 70 something years that 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 are gonna agree it's just one of the great American experiences in the cinema I'm ashamed of rose but I think it's the rather tawdry devices it doesn't stand up very well I've regretted early successes in many fields but I don't regret that in Cain because it was the only chance I ever had of that kind and 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 baking [Music] the magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873 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 o velvet knew all the other women who wore silk o velvet and everybody knew everybody else's family horse and carriage the only one of the reasons he liked Ambersons so much was because he wasn't in it often he was the you know the name that he used for himself in a movie because he was in a name actor as he said to me one since I don't enjoy acting as much as I should the real point of Anderson's everything that is any good in it is that part of it which was really just a preparation for the decay of the abbasids right of the Tau hot and cool running water upstairs and down he'll carry to your team Danny you'll get a ride nothing tomorrow I wanna say you'll be ready ten minutes after - no I won't yes you will ten minutes after two [Music] a good film I think should not be an illustrated all talking or moving in version of a printed work but should be itself a thing of itself I wasn't much of a follow speaker how about that kiss [Music] about the time major a person dies the picture starts to become another picture becomes their picture an actual plot was changed well I'm sorry about that cuz I was involved in all the cuts but one of those circumstances that couldn't be helped he was in South America of making a film for the government to help our war effort to make good neighbor policy we had the studio was very naturally very upset they had a lot of money in this film when they went to get it out consequently we did cut about 25 or 30 minutes the original film and we had to make two or three or four new bridge scenes side together and there was a new ending shot all right Annie I wish you could have faded there's no scene in a hospital and nothing like that had ever happened I can only say that all of us appear did the very best job we could with the problem as one important critic that said RKO had hired Wells to make them masterpieces and he delivered a masterpiece and they didn't like it the Keelung scene at the end which was Aggie Moorhead in a third-rate lodging house that was the best scene in the picture I was what the picture was about it's gone I was sent to South America by Nelson Rockefeller Jacque quit me I was told that it was my patriotic duty to go and spend a million dollars shooting the carnival and real they put it to me that it would be a real contribution to inter-american Affairs or so anything that I've done in any medium if it's ever been any good has been my way quote the song is in terrible trouble in in the meantime RKO is 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 of the point of the fact that I had gone to South America and thrown all this money away our Cal said well maybe we better stop this so I was fired from RKO [Music] and it's slogan for that here printed on every piece of paper that went out from our CEO was showmanship instead of genius I really wouldn't want to try to edge my way into an elevator that Virginia's is only sometimes you get frustrated that people want to do things to your projects in theater or film because 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 was some who 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 director for years afterwards so then I did Jane Eyre [Music] 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 stomach and I should have I should have 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 that was it thanks picture I did do was the stranger and I did that to show people and I didn't go in the dark that I could say action had cut just like all the other fellows [Music] what is it there when you grew up in that area you thought you saw movies with the junk that they were nobody took them seriously I'm already a part of it because I'm a part of you and I know that people dislike it but I just love his love of using the medium for and for all of its tricks and playing with him this is what a studio movie could be it was supposed to be a hammy performance it was unconsciously so that's all I could say about that they cut that one up too Welles was an ideological challenge to Hollywood he was simply not a Hollywood filmmaker [Music] none of his pictures really received wide distribution except for the stranger which was the only picture that his dad made any money it's not an accident that it comes in a can they welcomed the adventure in the 19th century much more than they do today my kind of fellows the real outsider the mercury wonder show broadcasting tonight from the air service to man training centers Fresno California last week an American president fell in the midst of battle who's making that place on the program tonight I did around the world in 80 days and was I think the best thing I ever did in the theater but it was a financial disaster before the opening in Boston the costumers 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 a courage to do it I called him up I said I've got the greatest story you've ever read and I turned the paper back around that the girl and the box office was reading it was called the man I killed Isis it's called the man I killed written by such-and-such a paperback by it I said you get me $55,000 to Boston and I won't make it for you if you'll send me $47,000 in two hours 55,000 came welds always liked to pretend that he had absolutely no idea that Carrie Cohen had asked him to make a movie with Rita Hayworth he had no idea what to do the stage doorkeeper of the theater that he was working in when he was doing around the world happens to be reading a book called the lady from Shanghai something or other wasn't lady from Shanghai then sometimes he told the story one way and sometimes she 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 intervie a Sabra toot oh no no no no need a better response to a question problem we're bringing together for the first time on the air one of Hollywood's best-known married couples Rita Hayworth and 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 Harry sent for me and said I want you to do that with Rita very sake 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 there have been many women had it ever yeah I think the first sex biologically is the female sex in it there are many creatures in our world who are women and only become male as long as it's 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 is trying to brighten up the place because it we've got to try and justify our existence look how little we do to keep the race boy at a marvelous sex talk it's a good personal ask what age it started at well if I tell you you won't believe it he was notorious 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 wells ever had any kind of sexual relationship with a man but he was very very conscious that it was something that he could use 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 personally I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband if she'll fool a husband I figure she'll fool me 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 the surreal quality of the film [Music] I thought it was me that was crazy after what I've been through anything crazy it's all seem natural but now I was saying on one subject her I knew about her and I was the father 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 I see the camera moves the wildering astonishing things are happening all the time building up to the great mirror maze at the end I know I'd find you two together though you would be foolish to fire that gun these mirrors it's difficult to tell you are aiming at me aren't you I'm aiming at you lover cost killing you is killing myself [Music] like come back Michael please this is one of the great mysteries why this extraordinary smart guy was outwitted by so much less remarkable and intelligent people so often and on 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 [Music] viable how to call him Baba 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 [Applause] [Music] sometimes when you can do it all you know it's like too much ice cream too many flavors you can't even make a decision but how you feel the limitation chose the real artist or not none of his Shakespeare films were ever really supported by the critics they complained about the Scottish accents he had to do all these changes in the soundtrack and cut Macbeth but he was the one who did the cutting [Music] it was a they critical failure its biggest critical failure and right now [Music] what is that noise [Music] I'm very happy in America but it happens that America is not as happy with me as I am with it 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 [Music] like the fruit pickers I go where the work is I don't think of myself as an exile at all in fact I've spent most of my life not quite unpacked [Music] one of the things that had driven him away where was the McCarthyite period and 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 Citizen Kane where Hurst was a friend of Hoover I've been investigated over and over again it's one of our favorite indoor and outdoor sports was poisoning in Rakhine Santee peppered yeah see - alert and pharyngitis no strychnine I'm not wearing a visor hey the most successful thing he was ever part of commercially was offered of a percentage as part of the deal but he couldn't afford it because he needed the money so he would have been a very wealthy man down there would you really feel any pity if one of those ducks stop loading forever if I offered you 20,000 pounds 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 spend free of income tax it's also kind of interesting and ironic is that Harry Lime for him was the most detestable charactery of a play but everybody else loves her gloomy after all it's not that awful about the fella said Natalie for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare terror murder bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance in Switzerland they had brotherly love at 500 years of democracy and peace and what did that produce the cuckoo clock it's a long holiday a great many of us have been in Europe during his last year's it's been a kind of frontier for us in films when it's more an acoustic and freer atmosphere a lot of people I think conceptually liked the idea of change but they don't want things to change but Wells's in patience was about that change and his interest in the Scottsboro Boys case and in early Civil Rights speaking out which you can only do if you weren't independent my own loyalty is greater the idea of myself as a member of the human family than it is to as a member of any profession I don't take art as seriously as politics one of the great things about Wells as a filmmaker is in capturing the periods of whatever he was making the film the paranoia what was going on in America it's really reflected on a fellow black Othello the outside 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 it's partly a kind of an atmosphere mood but nods like a horror film cynical to Heather only city has exit alphas conserve a confusion caused to tough except severe they all do common they said anything I know the spot mark why lie by with her weight her honor what you win came to Mogador on the west coast of Africa to shoot got a telegram scelera 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 we said I don't want to hire wells as the director took him four years to make Othello Othello was his own production however there are various versions of it there's his version and then there's a version that Beatrice and we did call some friends who in the in the business the movie business and said I said where do you think one could find a you know what- or whatever whatever is left of a fellow and they ended up finding it in some lab in New Jersey it really was in perfect condition they may not think of houmous takes [Music] in June of 1955 he finally got round to nailing Moby Dick of course he appeared in John Huston's movie of it he staged what he called moby dick rehearsed yet it only ran for three and a half weeks but I think it's one of the landmarks in British theatre of the 1950s and it's certainly a great landmark in Welles his own life they'd filmed a little bit the possibility is that it was impounded by the tax people here that it was lost that somebody stole it a very well Xion episode all together millions of the gods various neighbors felt good television was the medium for great freedom and experiment we started working both of us believed that you didn't hang on to any idea but the moment you've had idea and you begin to draw head that leads to think of something else and then as I was doing bad turn around yes Peter but what if instead of that we started with him here and he left over but to that point Orson suddenly took off with tremendous passion [Music] one thing one can be sure is that there wasn't before him and also then I'll never be a second I think I made it essentially a mistake and staying in movies because I but it it's the mistake I can't regret because it's like saying I shouldn't have stayed married to that one but I did because I love her 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 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 [Applause] [Music] it's a story about a high financier man of many countries and three passports in the morning I think it's splendid in the evening I wondered I would love to have a mass audience I knew what I wanted that's the difference between did my poverty help my creativity No [Music] thank you not to make the slightest sound as the princess is in a state of trance this person 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 Matt Edward II Wood jr. what you working on well the financing just fell through for the third time on Don Quixote I hate when that happens 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 he said 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 static-filled pause I said why don't you have him directed 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 and visions are worth fighting for bye Spencer 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 he'll bet your sweet life I won't touch of evil is of course really the story of the decline and fall of captain Quinlan Orson's part is 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 love 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 Friday not long after I started the picture for all my old producer friends and big star frenzy old Hollywood Brigade I was a little late so they were all there having their drinks on I came in in order to derive in time in my makeup and costume and they all said how are yours and you're looking great just too dark for them too strange [Music] wells had been fired off the film kicked off the lot he wrote this 58 page memo about what should happen to the movie and pretty much Universal at the time took the memo and tossed it 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 Wells as 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 at that time this was a scene as a b-movie it was very rare that somebody would not have titles at the beginning of a film in a b-movie oh there they are walking through the town and ooh there is that music and there's a car and right now that car could have 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 free-form music it puts a suspense under this scene that didn't really exist before she'd spent those years in radio doing exactly this kind of stuff we did this in American Graffiti which is the same kind of thing what we call world ization of the sound which is to make us sound like it was in the environment in American Graffiti and having to pass by on cars and that sort of things Wells had already thought of in Touch of Evil I think both Walter and I were very charmed by that that whole concept thing he's definitely a way ahead of all the rest of it Hank was a great detective all right and a lousy cop if that all you have to say for him he was some kind of a man what does it matter what you say about [Music] right yo patios Wow you know who else didn't want to do this movie but you know sometimes you do your best work when you got a gun in your head I do think working for posterity is vulgar as a suppose my mo khatallah evilly posterity sevilla Gail because posterity is just as big a [ __ ] 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 some 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 [Music] he freed the directors throw the kind of static ways they used to have about the way you light and by the way you put your camera the way you have the resetting and so forth and is very clear in trial the Kafka he didn't do really Kafka he did Orson Welles Kafka [Music] I was living in the hotel on Twitter is pacing up and down in my bedroom looking out the window and I'm not such a fool is not to take the moon very seriously and I saw the moon very large but we in America go up are visible enormous then miraculously totally and on each moon there were numbers and I realized they were the clock faces the guard or see I remember that the guard or say was empty and the try 30 the morning went downstairs got in a cab crossed the sick and entered this empty railway station where I discovered the world Catholic it has been said that the logic of this story the logic of the tree what may mr. K [Music] Orson's view of Joseph cave 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 she would like to restore it to make a metaphor about his vision of the order speak about how who can feel guilty without being guilty I saw it as a European story full of old European bric-a-brac where the IBM machines lurking in the background to think it's a major movie whatever the critic said about it there really wasn't indie filmmaking in the 40s 50s yo when Welles was doing it he wasn't happy doing it he had no choice it'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 need to had the chance to work [Music] he was an unbeatable man you couldn't you know if it did 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 wants to him my god you looked wonderful in Jenay that first time I saw him and he said yeah but you you should see in a course that I felt beyond the Dalmatian coast on the Adriatic down there is a small place called promotion where we shot dead reckoning later entitled the deep with Laurence Irish John Moore Orson Welles myself John Merrow I was pretty girl when I was young no woman ever looked at me like this he said John 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 is people are going to think of me I am NOT in a movie business I'm 72 years old I want to have a farm I dream of chickens literally and have a donkey and the dogs 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 is 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 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 opened the door I see his reflection in a mirror and I see him crying and I don't open the door what's the use to cry I do cry enough for ocean I cried too often but I also smile because I am so happy that I have known him I think man is a crazy animal I think we're all so I think we're all so marvelous people divine in our potentialities you see there you are you can say anything with passion and get a hand if you're going to try to finance movies and live you have to earn your money somehow I would have sold my soul to play The Godfather but I never get those pots offered to me [Music] 20 million years ago an ape-like creature inhabited dear I'm a king actor maybe a bad one they weren't necessarily the best actor they were the actor who played the King Mike Nichols knows how to deal with actors Orson would turn to Mike us 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 you said 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 never considered myself in these matters 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 right Sahra a bit complicated but he would just slice through would you take this away pleasing and bring me the steak of France thanks a lot when I watched awesome 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 a portfolio net his whole face was like it's sunshine particular member the lunch Marvis mousse sweet rolls and he could describe every - the way it tasted bad spell to torture Google who worked the Italian top functioning cafe creme torta obviously when you looked at him and said you know this is not a guy who is on a diet right faithful to care would socket how sweet it worth even when he lost some idea of himself physically or venerates me the words still have the same kind of precision that his body ones had oh you're going to help me have I your support ever not no your grace I'm not going to help you then good night master MA you have to wait quite a long time before Welles makes his masterpiece which in my view in the view of many other people is for stuff that chimes midnight which is to me one of the great great achievements of filmmaking in the 20th century oh stop good night now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night I saw three times in a row in one night because I thought I might never see it again so you had intellectuals from University of Chicago and you had winos off the street and they all loved the film sure my god [Music] well by now mastered the art of making independent films of making them in the way that he wanted to make them in this kind of improvised way though he had a script of course for him but he didn't strict very mystic very close in to the script except that let's go some Shakespeare's words what is honor yeah trim reckoning who acid either died a Wednesday does he feel it no to see insensible and yay to the dead but will it not live with a living no why detraction will not suffer it therefore I'll none of it [Music] [Music] [Applause] 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 [Applause] [Music] if I wanted to 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 flaunt let me put it that way I banish thee on pain of death as I have done the rest of my misleaders not to come near our person by ten mile 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 [Music] it's human to the core adage that we have seen the Munich venereum is part of Municipal Museum oh yes very much caring to keeps a legacy of Orson Welles all the material awesome had was shipped to Munich sometimes I tried to imagine Orson having different bedrooms in different motels and hotels and the doors to this room bedroom is locked and under the bed or in you know boxes and boxes of film who knows some believes 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 a few of these films were really finished that he still was working and working and working on 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 I don't know why they don't bug authors and say when are you going to finish nelli that novel you started ten 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 a newly wedded couple were here on their small yacht cruising up the west coast of Africa on their way to the Mediterranean out of these waters they might expect to be very much alone but there's someone else out there he said what I'm not going to call Don Quijote donkey cut I'm going to call it when you are going to finish Don Quixote Stanley Kubrick had projects that he never completed the differences Welles actually got footage in the can as opposed to a number of projects by people in a much better financial position or industry position never even getting them off the ground are you happy when it's all done and cut and goes out to be printed into the movie houses no no because you always hope you can make it better I don't think it's a at all any failure to want to finish or be a fear of finishing her but that sounds like some kind of bizarre sexual malady I don't know why he didn't finished it and I never asked him but we have an unbelievable body of work including the greatest film on Shakespeare Falstaff times at midnight the short color film immortal story one of the most brilliantly shot films ever film after film was phenomenal [Music] the studio's 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 there was comfortable for him to be in Europe during that time 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 so the central figure in this story is a fellow with you know it can hardly see through the bush of the hair on his chest [Music] oh I've got to go on being faithful to my girl I love her team citizen can't believe as if jon-christopher fellow in school you should be making movies Alucard with the real fair they feel not not letting the professor tell you about Eisenstein and DW Griffith in the final [Laughter] [Music] it's up to that time it was the seamless film in a way the hidden camera yep the camera that you couldn't tell was there so well just want to really break open open up the Pandora's box but a funny way I guess picking up with silent films left off [Music] every single not just every scene but every shot has an idea there's a concept and an idea of being executed at every second [Music] well Stan's kind of above everybody's work I think every filmmaker has some relation with Wells 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 oh so much what he did came with quotation marks around it postmodern I think about this the beginning of every fake which is 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 that sort of mirror on a mirror effect there's pretty clear experience to start making yet another move in with a storyline rotten with coincidence for instance that the author of fake a book about a faker was himself a faker the author of a fake to end all fakes during the next hour everything you'll hear from us is really true based on solid facts 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 prove it about lies tell it by the fireside er in the marketplace or in a movie [Music] editing is cinema in a certain sense because everything is broken into bits you can have a great deal of invention I did promise that for one hour I tell you only the truth that our ladies and gentlemen is over for the past 17 minutes I've been lying my head over that kind of self-awareness is great for our 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 our works I spared some for a few decades or a millennium there to the treasures and the fakes [Music] our songs our songs will all be silenced but what of it go on singing [Music] [Applause] thank you thank you all very much I don't believe this this is who is that that's the s art director mr. well that is a director yeah [Music] what I'm on my mark yes always move your camera 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 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 we know a little place in the American Far West where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie fed beef and face this is a lot of [ __ ] you know come on fellas you're losing your head they all wanted to meet him they all wanted to have lunch with them they celebrated him and then somehow they know this man is not gonna be predictable here's a scene from one film that Orson is just finishing call 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 forcible I get a phone call or sir wants you to do his picture I don't know well he doesn't know me I knocked at the door and I figure some Lackey is gonna open the door the door opens and a film from the other side of the winner we're gonna shoot it without a script we're gonna make the picture as though it were a documentary the actors are gonna be improvising he started in 1970 and he worked on through his passing in 85 I never saw horse and 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 directed when I tell you that my partner is the brother-in-law of the late Shah of Iran you will understand why we were having a little legal difficult he owes me $25 I sort of felt that we would just keep making movie until he died let us raise our cups then standing as some of us do on opposite ends of the river and drink together - what really matters to us all to our crazy and beloved profession to the movies to good movies to every possible kind there is this terrible consolation of being 40 years ahead of your time as I wish I'd be on time sometimes the 91 the Oscar the special Oscar and he had asked John Huston to pick it up for him genius says a word this must be used very sparingly especially in this world of films he said I'm there I'm not gonna go I said why not they're not gonna get that out of me on my way back to Ireland I'll stop in Spain gonna miss we were sitting at the Beverly Hills Hotel watching the Oscars and Orson says yeah come on right over John we celebrated a big birthday didn't you I didn't celebrate it I just had it I used to pretend it was my birthday when I took a girl out to dinner and then I'd have the waiter bring up cake in and sing happy birthday and I'd use that as an excuse to extend the evening I have a sentimental inclination toward hope I believe in bravery worship it to me Orson is so much like a destitute King on this earth there's no Kingdom that is good enough for us and roots would you feel wonderful don't you oh sure as it must to all men death came to Orson Welles that a paraphrase borrowed from his own film Citizen Kane 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 forty five thousand dollars but I said we burnt the Celeste it's why we enjoy life is that we know it's got Dan Orson Welles was 70 after my father died I got a call from my half-sister Beatrice she and her mother Paula 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 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 they didn't do it [Music] 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 its you finally get to a point where art for art's sake doesn't seem it good enough flag to be marching under sentence what's a better friend you've got to believe in something bigger than yourself are we run out of film [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you
