It's remarkable - I think I've enjoyed every single book I've read about Orson Welles: Simon Callow's, Peter Bogdanovich's, Barbara Leaming's, Joseph McBride's, Henry Jaglom's... even the now lamented Charles Higham's and Pauline Kael's. Three reasons - he attracts good writers, he was an amazing figure, and his life lends itself to narrative.
Welles' cinematic life is full of "if only"s... if only he'd been around the supervise the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons/Touch of Evil; if only he'd had a big hit; if only Chimes at Midnight had been given a decent release; if only a star had agreed to do The Big Brass Ring, etc. Now can be added "if only he'd finished The Other Side of the Wind.
We still don't know how good a film Wind is - fragments are easily available, there's copies out there, we are constantly promised to see a copy, but even in 2016 the film is hard to see - which actually makes this book a bit frustrating because there's no happy ending, not even a bittersweet one. But it remains a touching yarn.
The project stars off well enough, with Welles enjoying an early 70s renaissance of sorts... he found financing hard to get but he had support of Peter Bogdanovich and the admiration of new Hollywood, and had a lucrative career on talk shows and doing ads. He used his spare money to finance his own film, had the admiration and love of cameraman Gary Graver, and rallied a great collection of cast and crew - John Huston agreed to play the lead, Bogdanovich had a key role. Working with Welles was clearly an exhilarating experience, the man was a genius. I'm not sure Wind had the greatest plot of all time, being cobbled from Welles' old life and earlier movies, but it would've been directed like a dream.
Even though Welles kind of finished the film in 1971 it seems he couldn't stop - which led him fatally to constantly seek more money, resulting in an investment from the Shah of Iran's brother in law which ultimately led to the film being held up forever. Not that it was the poor dude's fault entirely - Welles' own personality played a large part, and did squabbling among his heirs and collaborators after he died. The project seemed dogged by bad luck - Welles falling out with former collaborators, being paranoid about executives, a seeming inability to finish the film. At first this is entertainingly exasperating but as the years go on and Welles' health problems pile up it gets more and more frustrating and sad.
Karp has written a moving, entertaining, insightful book, which can't help being a tragedy (a small scale cinematic tragedy but one nonetheless... especially for poor old Graver who dedicated his life to Welle). He's done heroic work in particular trudging through financial details of the film. A cracking read.
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