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‘When Orson Welles died yesterday he was as he was for most of his life, in the midst of several film projects’
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, available on Netflix is a documentary about the making of Orson Welles unfinished film,
The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed in 2018 and also available on Netflix.
Infused with a Wellesian flare
the documentary seeks to make some sense out of the confused story of the film that Welles hoped would cement his legacy.
‘It would become the last big effort of his lifetime’
and perhaps bury that other film,
‘No other director has ever been held up to such an impossible standard’
and I don’t think it’s any accident that The Other Side of the Wind has a similar story to Citizen Kane,
but told in a wildly different fashion.
A thinly veiled piece of autobiography
‘Everyone’ll think its autobiographical but its not’
whatever its director said
‘Yeah. Bullshit’
its making was unveiled chaos,
‘And he said ‘We’re going to put the midgets in later, in Spain’.’
not entirely unintentionally.
‘Aren’t you afraid the end result won’t have any control at all’
‘Not a bit, no I really am not’
Whatever your opinion of the finished film, its making is ripe for documentary treatment
for the same reason that films like Lost in La Mancha make great behind the scenes documentaries;
and indeed the same reason that a car crash is irresistible viewing.
‘I have replaced actors on the second week of shooting, but after 7 weeks? It’s impossible’
What makes this different is that even by the standards set by Terry Gilliam,
Welles has a level of exacting tenacity that is almost frightening.
‘Orson shot fragments of the film and would continues to do so for the next 5 years’
The narration doesn’t always land.
Welles worked around his own commercial projects,
'Ahhh, the French Champagne...'
made room for his star John Huston to do other films
‘I said where is John, he hasn't been around for a while.'
'Oh, he’s off making some little film somewhere’
and even edited an adult film to get his cameraman back sooner.
The adult scene in his own film incidentally was shot over a period of 3 years.
But, perhaps inevitably, the documentary is most interesting for the light it casts on an artist
– a genius – in his latter years,
‘I think I’m much more of a renegade than I was then’
all the more so as the story itself seemed to shift to accommodate what was happening to Welles.
‘The story was now being rewritten in real time’
This was far from Welles’ only unfinished project
and as too often happened it was the money that brought him down.
‘Oh, this story I can’t tell’
aided, somewhat improbably, by the Iranian revolution.
‘You see, the Shah himself was the brother-in-law of our producer’
The fact that it has now been completed at all is testament to the work of Welles cameraman Gary Graver.
‘There was a workprint amongst Gary’s belongings’
who worked on it for years with his wife Jillian Kessner,
'Would mind telling me what this is all about.'
who, subscribers will know, met on Roger Corman’s Firecracker,
which had reviewed for regular Dark Corners
– because film history is one big family tree.
‘He said ‘it’s all in the editing’
Sadly Graver died in 2006, long before Peter Bogdanovich, who essentially plays himself in the movie
fulfilled his promise to Welles
‘Absolutely out of the blue, Orson said to me, ‘If anything happens to me, I want you to finish the picture’.’
But the documentary is about the making not the remaking,
and it’s morbidly fascinating to see the director of some of the greatest films ever made,
forced to operate like an independent
‘In fact, Orson was sneaking into studio backlots under assumed names and filming an eleborate critique of Hollywood itself.
but still utterly passionate about film.
‘He was somewhere between zen master and God’
It is a bit unfocused and confusing but, given its subject, it’s hard to see how it could have been anything else.
Thanks for watching. Have you see The reconstructed The Other Side of the Wind and if so, what did you think?
Let us know in the comments below.