Re: What Documentaries Influenced You Most and Why?

OK I'm gonna step in for Orson as his stunt double and say just a few words, if not in his defense, at least, to get a little coverage for the other side of the opinion.

First we'll stipulate for the sake of expediency that the guy had an enormous ego, had a spendthrift nature and appetites for women that created numerous problems for him. If you've read some of the biographies, you find yourself applauding him and cursing him in the same breath, often. Guy lived three lifetimes in one.

Some of that excess and bad behavior was just something of his time; most all the Great Men of that era were collossal drinkers, smokers, wife-cheaters, etc. And it is of note Orson kept up with the best of them, with men much more handsome than himself. Stealing actresses from Sinatra? Dude was a playa!

I think the only reason he was able to do many of the great things he did was because that epic ego was able to carry the force of his true genius thru barriers that would stop mere mortals. You have to have a high opinion of yourself to have the courage to achieve some great things in the face of a lot of obstacles and adversaries. He managed to do some remarkable things nobody would have imagined, just because he believed he could. Did he step on a lot of people along the way, take credit that wasn't rightfully all his? You bet he did. Name three people in Hollywood that haven't.

I think Orson shares with Terry Gilliam the worst case of cursed, bad luck in film making you could ask for. The two have a lot of similarities in their film making back-stories. They are repeatedly hired by studios for their specific genius and point of view, then the studios invariably get cold feet somewhere in the middle of production and take away all the money, the control, and re-edit or cancel projects or perform other nastiness upon it. Then, they blame the artist. Orson apparently really loved that old parable about the scorpion and the frog crossing the river. He saw a lot of parellels to his reationships with studio heads and the studio system. When they left him alone to do his thing, they prospered. Every time they stepped in to take control, the project was damaged or ruined. If people fracked around with your master edited cut behind your back, while they sent you away on a "working vacation", don't you think YOU would return witha bit of attitude? That's why Ambersons was less than magnificent. Same with the re-cut of Mr. Arkadin, Touch of Evil, MacBeth, etc etc etc.

It is a hard business to be in if you're a visionary and if you are very proprietary of your product.

Orson, like Gilliam, got a rap as a hard to work with, eccentric, difficult director/producer/writer/actor. Not all of that was deserved. A lot of what happened to him was collateral damage from Hearst after the fight to release "Kane".

Funding dried up. Inter-studio deals were messed up. Hearst's PR machine ran on even after Hearst's death, like a robot army of assasins. Orson had to become one of the original "Indies", digging up his own small-time investors to fund film projects, and raising money any way he could. When one famous director was given a big award, he used part of his speech to castigate the entire film community for having Orson alive but idle in their midst and making big speeches about how great "Kane" was, but starving him for lack of money to make movies with, while we still had him around.

O in his latter days had bills to pay for paternity and alimony but also for film productions that were never finished. That's why he did the TV spots, commercials, roasts, etc. To raise money for making more films, to keep up public interst in him to also attract investors, all to raise production money and to get rid of his debts.

You want to call that being a sell-out or something, well, what else could the guy do? Orson didn't do anything less than Trump does now.

He used to go to lunch meetings with anybody that flashed a little bit of cash that might go towards his next production. Orson called these sessions "the dancing bear routine", where he would have to "perform" as the character people expected him to be from his public persona, so thye could go home and write in their fdiaryabout their great lunch with the famous Orson Welles. In exchange for the chance to mooch some production money. Incredibly sad, but he tried to keep his spirits up.

Orson was just ngetting into doing multicam production in the then-new betacam format when he died. He was excited that he could afford to own and control his own means of production, finally, using tape over film. The same dream of "indie" producers today.

You guys might be a little too hard on him. A real documentary about the man would be an epic piece of film.