Text | Zazie
Today I'm going to tell a story, an epic story from a movie that's never been shown before, and no one's ever seen it.
The protagonist of this story is Orson Wells, who is hailed by many as the greatest director in the history of cinema, who made the ancient "Citizen Kane" at the age of twenty-six, and lived a life of displacement for the rest of his life. He had every chance to make a bigger movie than Citizen Kane, but God didn't give him a chance.
Those films were either destroyed by the studio, or not made for various reasons, or half of them could not be released. That includes "The Other Side of the Wind, which we're going to cover today."
Wells struggled with lack of money all his life, most of his works did not sell well, and for a long time he had to rely on himself to be an actor everywhere, write scripts, act in advertisements, and make money, subsidizing the movies he wanted to make.
Orson Wells
In the first few years of his debut, or the monopoly period of Hollywood studios, the rich production company did not care so much about a small loss, so it did not mind investing money in an avant-garde director like Wells, which led to the famous "Citizen Kane".
Citizen Kane (1941)
Unfortunately, as the monopoly system declined and studios moved towards a more competitive phase, it became increasingly difficult for Wells to obtain investment. Although many producers appreciate his talent, they no longer dare to invest in films that are not popular.
So Wells embarked on a long financial journey, either by the producers giving him enough budget but not enough shooting autonomy, or by giving enough autonomy, but with an extremely limited budget.
Truffaut once said, "David Lane could spend 10 months making Doctor Zhivago, while Wells could only take 5 weeks to make The Adventures."
The Lady of the Past (1958)
It was for various complex reasons that Wells left a large number of unfinished works during his lifetime. He had been preparing for Heart of Darkness as a film since 1940, and he planned that the film would consist of a subjective long shot, an idea that was quite bold at the time. As a result, it was shelved because there was not enough money, and the novel was later made by Coppola into the famous "Apocalypse Now".
There is also the famous Don Quixote, Wells's favorite novel, who finally completed pre-production of the film from 1955 to 1959, but until his death, the post-production of the film was not completed. In 1992, the Spanish B-movie director Jesús Franco cut a new version based on Wells's negatives and released it under the name Ofon Wells Don Quixote, with mixed reviews.
Don Quixote of Orson Wells (1992)
Of all the unfinished works of Wells so far, the most mysterious is "The Other Side of the Wind," which will be introduced today. The film's own experience has constituted a great adventure story.
The film was shot in 1970-1976, and wells spent a lot of time on the film in his later years. He had hoped that this work would be his return to the United States for a quarter of a century, but it backfired, and in 1985, he died for a long time, and finally could not wait for the release of the film.
This film would have been like most of Wells's works, fading into the dust of history. But during the filming of the film, he said a word to a person that changed the fate of the film.
One day, Wells suddenly asked Peter Bogdanovich, who plays a young director in the film, to say that if there is any accident, you must promise me to help complete the film!
Bogdanovich agreed, and he did not expect that he would work hard for the fate of the film for more than forty years.
Maybe Bogdanovich's name makes you feel a little strange, he is a famous young director in the 70s of the last century, once with Coppola, Scorsese's generation of "movie boys", once worked as a film critic, and Wells and other old directors have a very iron relationship, and will be the late Wells as a god, which is the reason why Wells asked him.
Starring John Houston (left), Orson Wells (center), Peter Bogdanovich (right)
Before going through the long history of the film's ticket jump, let's talk about what it says.
The film's protagonist is a director named Jake Hannaford, who was inspired by Hemingway. After Hemingway committed suicide in 1961, Wells began preparations for the film.
Hemingway
In 1937, Wells and Hemingway met while recording a narration from Julius Evans' documentary Land of Spain. He criticizes Hemingway's poorly written narration, Hemingway mocks him as "the girly in the movie", and the two wrestle with each other, and finally they toast each other, ending the farce, and later the two become good friends, and the relationship is good and bad.
Spanish Land (1937)
The protagonists of the film have a very similar life to Hemingway, their fathers died by suicide, the date of their deaths is the same day, both of them love Spain, and even the name of the protagonist of the film, "Jack", is taken from the protagonist in "The Sun Also Rises".
In fact, wells's original vision was that the film was called Sacred Beast, and the protagonist was an avid bullfighter (closer to Hemingway) who fell in love with a young bullfighter. Later, Wells changed the bullfighting enthusiast to an elderly director, or a deep closet gay who fell in love with his male number one. It's just that he didn't sleep with his sweetheart, but instead got into trouble with his sweetheart's girlfriend very strangely.
Although he is gay, he is homophobic and critical of open homosexuality, which shows that this is a very complex and typical character in terms of gender temperament and sexual psychology, and Wells said that the film is a criticism of the so-called "manhood" and a psychoanalysis of the arrogant and arrogant male personality.
The main plot of the story is set at Director Jack's 70th birthday party, where many Hollywood celebrities and TV reporters come to celebrate their birthday, and Jack also screens his own film at the party, a low-budget violent film that he hopes to win back with a downturn in his career. Wells also used this to satirize the Hollywood filming ethos at that time.
John Houston, who plays Jack, said that the filming of the film was full of improvisation, and people did not strictly follow the script, and Wells asked them to directly say what they wanted to say, just remember the connotation.
John Houston plays Director Jack
Interestingly, The Other Side of the Wind is a "film within a movie", a film about cinema, and Wells deliberately used this form to parody Antonioni of that year. Wells' film is very complex in form, looking like a pseudo-documentary, or home video, and some even say it will be "the greatest family movie ever made".
Wells, Bogdanovic, Houston
Specifically, the film is interspersed with various clips shots by directors and reporters who come to celebrate their birthdays, chasing Jack everywhere to ask personal questions, and even to the toilet. They shot a lot of still shots, as well as some footage shots with 16mm, Super 8 or TV cameras, which were combined into the final film. The film is often interspersed with several clips shot by different people in parallel, looking avant-garde.
What's more interesting is that the camera also shows the crew filmed by Wales in reality, which is filmed by the people in the film. Wells played this kind of virtual and real trick in this movie, and many of the characters in the film can make some people in reality sit in the right seat.
For example, there's a guy who alludes to John Hausman, wells' early partner and the two later parted ways; Pauline Kyle, a famous twentieth-century viper film critic who offended Wells for several articles in Citizen Kane.
Pauline Kyle
There's also Brooks Otterlake, played by Bogdanovich, who is very similar to Bo himself, both directors and both are good at imitating celebrities. Many people even think that this role is based on Bo, in fact, this role was originally played by Rich Little, who had a nickname called "The Man of a Thousand Voices", and was a famous voice actor at the time.
His sudden departure caused a lot of trouble at the time. Originally, he used a lot of voices to play Brooks in the film, but then had to delete them all, and although Bogdanovich was very good at imitation, he only used one voice from beginning to end, perhaps a small regret. And the part played by Bo Ben had to be deleted and replaced by another actor.
Rich Little, who had a good relationship with Wells, said he didn't know why he had lost contact with Wells while filming. Photographer Gary Grave said that Rich Little acted great, but one day he suddenly carried his suitcase and told Wells that he had not seen his wife for a long time and was going home, and suddenly he left, and Wells was dumbfounded. Wells, on the other hand, said simply and rudely, he didn't act well, and I fired him.
Gary Grave (right) and Wells
This little incident was just one of the dog-blood incidents that happened around Wells. In fact, such incidents often happened to him, and they more or less delayed the shooting and production of many films, which was not unrelated to his arrogant personality.
British writer, director, and actor Simon Carlo, who has published biographies of Wells, believes that many of Wells' film failures are related to his arrogant and self-destructive personality. He often did as he pleased, and many actors had to leave because of the delay in the film, and sometimes Wells even left the investors and left.
After filming "The Great Ambason", he handed over the negatives to his assistant and went to Brazil to shoot the documentary "All is the Truth". Later, the negatives of "Ann" were badly edited, and he did not rush back to stop it, but because the documentary was not going well, he spent his days drunk in a tavern in Rio de Janeiro. Carlo believes that it was the failure of The Great Ambason that caused Wells to go downhill.
The Great Ambason (1942)
Wells's films are always so troubled, not only his personal problems, but also the environment is quite unfavorable, and the years of ticket jumping in "The Other Side of the Wind" are an example.
At the end of the film' filming, Wells again ran into financial problems, and in order to raise funds to complete the film, he screened two clips of the film in 1975 when he was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the American Film Institute, hoping to get investment.
He did get a sponsorship from an investor, but was vetoed by the film's producer, Dominic Anthony, who said there would be better investments later. Wells regrettably gave up, but unfortunately they didn't get a better investment. Wells regretted it before his death that if he had accepted the investment, he would have seen it released by now.
In 1976, Wells received an investment from Mehdi Bushehri, who had a background in the Iranian royal family, but unfortunately, the 1978 Iranian Revolution broke out and the royal family was overthrown, which brought very complicated copyright and legal issues to the film, and the negatives have been preserved in Paris ever since.
In 1998, more than a decade after Wells's death, legal issues were finally resolved, and Showtime offered to invest money to complete the film. But then Wells's daughter Beatrice Wells filed a copyright lawsuit.
Beatrice Wells
After Wells's death in 1985, much of the inheritance was left to his then-estranged wife, Paula Morrie, who passed on to his daughter after her wife's death in 1986. But there are still parts, including his unfinished films, left to his lover and partner Oga Kodak, and "The Other Side of the Wind" was actually written by the two of them.
At this time, his daughter said that under California law, the copyright of these works should belong to her. As a result, the film was delayed again.
In 2004, Bogdanovich, who had promised Wells to finish the film, declared that he would let the film be released as soon as possible. In 2006, Oga Kodak, the heirs of the Iranian side, and Showtime decided to give Beatrice a lump sum of money to continue making the film.
Oga Kodak (right) with Wells
At the 2007 Florida Film Festival, Bogdanovich said the quartet had reached an agreement that the film was expected to be released in 2008. In 2008, Bo said the film would take at least a year of post-production. Showtime said some of the negatives were still in Paris and had not been retrieved. In 2009, Bo said they were preparing for Cannes in 2010. Who knows, at this time, the copyright dispute is back, and the film is again obstructed.
In 2011, Project Welles The Other Side LLC was founded, as was the www.projectwelles.com website, designed to attract more money to complete the film and help reconcile interests and copyright disputes. At this time, Matthew Duda, the showtime executive who encouraged the investment in the film, retired, and the budget provided by Showtime had some problems.
In 2014, Royal Road Entertainment claimed that they had reached a consensus on the purchase of the rights. The producers said they would screen the film on Wells' centenary birthday in 2015. Unfortunately, this goal has not been achieved.
In 2015, Bogdanovich and other filmmakers launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo in the hope of getting $400,000 to complete the film's production. The crowdfunding miraculously succeeded, but they still didn't finish the project at the end of the year.
Finally, in March of this year, Netflix announced that they had bought the production and distribution rights to the film, and the negatives had arrived in Los Angeles to continue post-production.
The continuous ticket jumping of this film has made its expectations continue to soar, and many fans are looking forward to the fact that Nexflix can end all the past bad things and finally bring this film to us. Wells left a large number of notes for editing reference, but it was still very difficult to edit the film according to his original intentions.
But, no matter what, we're looking forward to its arrival.
It almost doesn't matter how well the film is made, and all the people who have been running for this matter, from Bogdanovich who has worked for half his life to the netizen fans who participated in the crowdfunding, are fulfilling a promise to help the greatest director in film history's legacy be released.
The world has been waiting for forty years, and if we really want to wait, then we will wait.