It
is hard to call this a “making of” documentary, considering Orson Welles’ final
film, The Other Side of the Wind, remained
unfinished and unseen for over forty years. Blame the Islamist extremists in
Iran. Welles received bridge financing from a film company owned by the Shah’s
brother-in-law, so when the new regime came to power, they bottled up Welles’
unedited footage in a legal quagmire. They also launched a reign of terror against
secular, tolerant modernity, but that is for another documentary. Morgan
Neville and the surviving cast and crew chronicle the film’s making and
unmaking in They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead
(trailer
here),
which is now playing in New York and streaming on Netflix.
There
is even disagreement among Welles’ close contemporaries whether he truly
uttered the title phrase. Regardless, it does sum up his career rather aptly.
Like Jake Hannaford, the central character of Wind, Welles had just returned to Hollywood after a long period of
European scuffling when he commenced work on Wind. In many ways, it would satirize both Hollywood and European
art cinema. Not coincidentally, Hannaford’s homecoming birthday party takes
place in the fab desert pad next door to the house from Zabriskie Point. There are a number of intriguing little details
like that in TLMWID that might counter-intuitively
make this the film you should start with, before watching Wind, so you know what to keep an eye out for.
Rather
awkwardly, Wind probably isn’t as
interesting as the story behind it. As usual, Welles shot whenever he could, proceeding
for months without nailing down his lead actor. Eventually, John Huston would
play Hannaford, which was a truly brilliant bit of casting. In fact, some of
the best parts of Dead address the
friendship between the two larger than life movie legends. It rather boggles
the mind, but both Rich Little and Peter Bogdanovich were cast as Hannford’s’
more successful protégé, with Bogdanovich replacing the impressionist when he
was forced to leave to fulfill prior obligations.
Neville
got on-camera just about everyone we would want to hear from, including
Bogdanovoch, Little, Danny Huston (the accomplished actor-son of John), Cybil
Shepard (who was involved with Bogdanovich at the time and appears briefly in Wind), Frank Marshall (the future super-producer,
who worked on the film as a production aide), filmmaker friend Harry Jaglom, Beatrice
Welles (his daughter), and actor-biographer Simon Callow. It would be nice to
have had Oja Kodar on-camera too, but at least Neville has some audio
reminiscences from her. However, Alan Cumming’s shticky introductions are completely
unnecessary.
There
is some fascinating cinema history in TLMWID,
but it also sets the record straight on some points. Most crucially, it gives
Gary Graver credit for his under-heralded work as Welles’ final cinematographer.
In addition, Neville and company decisively dispel the myth Welles never really
wanted to finish his pictures, but the notion he was often his own worst enemy
remains in full force. It briskly but comprehensively chronicles an intriguing
but frustrating episode in Welles’ intriguing but frustrating career. Highly
recommended for Welles fans, They’ll Love
Me When I’m Dead is now playing in New York, at the IFC Center and also
streams on Netflix.
