Gross Behaviour - by Leonard Klady

The Genius

Someone once observed that Genius was the realm of the dead. I’m not sure I wholeheartedly embrace that perspective but the rare exceptions to the rule would be insufficient to fuel the annual list of MacArthur grant recipients.

Orson Welles departed the mortal coil back in 1985, leaving a legacy that included extraordinary achievements in radio, television, theater and the movies. He also left behind an extraordinary number of partially completed films - many that seemingly had all the elements necessary to be finished save for financing and hopelessly entangled legal rights. About a decade ago, Welles’ companion Oja Kodar deposited the “boy wonders” personal film collection with the Munich film archive and that outlet works tirelessly to marry sound and image to his uncatalogued treasure trove. Sometimes missing footage or soundtrack can be located in a mismarked box; other times the sleuthing takes on a global nature.

The Munich archive holds a conference on Welles every three years and from time to time organizes programs for institutions. Last weekend Stefan Droessler of the archive presented a weekend of rarities at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles and will continue on to the Film Forum in New York. Also present for discussions were Kodar, cinematographer Gary Graver and others.

In a program that focused on the famously unfinished, there was 20 minutes of The Deep, a thriller with Welles, Jeanne Moreau and Lawrence Harvey that was shot in the late 1960s off the coast of Yugoslavia. Others subsequently brought its source novel to the screen as Dead Calm. There was also roughly a half hour of The Other Side of the Wind, perhaps the wunderkind's most famous impending movie and snippets from The Dreamers that were made as a sales tool for potential financing. Other programs provided glimpses of Don Quixote and The Merchant of Venice, the film made by others of his 1940s South American excursion It’s All True, snippets from his project The Magic Show and oblique mention of The Cradle Will Rock that was cancelled days before principal photography was to begin in the early 1980s.

Collectively, one can say that there were glimpses of genius to be observed but the prospect of rendering a brilliant or even superior film from the existing material (The Deep and The Other Side of the Wind were completely filmed) is likely impossible now that it is in the hands of others.

Welles, not to make too fine a point, is the physical embodiment of the film maudit. He arrived in Hollywood around 1940 with a dream contract that gave him the ability to do whatever he wanted and final cut. With bluster and pomp he promised the greatest film of all time and served up Citizen Kane. The folks at RKO were probably expecting the film equivalent of his War of the Worlds broadcast and were rather flummoxed when presented a work of art. The film community recognized the achievement with nine Oscar nominations (only the script co-written with Herman Mankiewicz won a statuette) and in countless polls conducted since 1960 it regularly ranks as the best film ever made and innumerable filmmakers have cited it as the film that changed their life … or made them want to make movies.

It was a tough act to follow and it’s here that his fortunes begin to go south. Contract or not, his version of The Magnificent Ambersons was reshaped with new footage shot by others and trimmed by about a half hour from his two hour cut. This occurred while Welles was making It’s All True in Brazil and only The Shadow knows to what extent ego, stamina and tin contributed to his not getting on the next plane to Los Angeles to duke it out with the studio bosses.

When Welles was presented with the D.W. Griffith career award by the Directors Guild in 1984 he was taken aback to learn at the last minute that Robert Wise, his editor on Ambersons, was being honored with the newly created Robert Aldrich award for service to the guild. Whether his feelings toward Wise were warranted or not, he considered his reworking of the movie to be an act of unforgivable treason. I was chatting with Welles in the press area after the presentation when Wise arrived. One sensed his discomfort and he completely froze up when Wise approached, stuck out his hand and said, “it’s been a long time, great to see you.” The two men shook hands, the photographers clicked away and Wise immediately departed. Welles appeared to be on the verge of tears and muttered, “What could I do?”

For about 10 years, he tried to navigate the treacherous waters of Hollywood but around 1950 opted out of that system for the equally precarious world of European entrepreneurs. It was the same conclusion his friend John Huston came to at that time. Huston adapted rather better than his buddy and for two decades worked regularly and only once returned to the U.S. to make The Misfits. Welles’ erratic output rarely found mainstream distribution and his final studio foray, Touch of Evil, was consigned to the bottom half of double bills. The boy genius was aging badly and physically ballooning to grotesque proportions.

One of my last encounters with Welles was in Toronto. I was visiting Huston (the parallels and connections between the two were staggering) at Magdar Studios during the production of Phobia. During a break, Huston said, “let’s go visit Orson.”

Welles was on another stage appearing in the movie Never Trust an Honest Thief and as we slipped in we could see his enormity beached out in a tulip-shaped chair. From my perspective, it seemed like nothing less than a crane was capable of lifting him but at that moment he was being called to the stage for the next scene. With great effort he lifted himself up and trudged up the ramp to the stage and plunked himself down in a chair behind a desk (he plays a Southern sheriff in the film). It was not a pretty sight but when the director shouted “action,” he was transformed. Immediately, he was able to rise, move with the grace of a dancer and say his lines word perfect and with emotion. It lasted until the director yelled “cut” and once again weight and age took over as he returned to his chair just off stage.

He seemed like the loneliest man in the world at that moment. The crew were either too intimidated by the legend or the physical wreck that he had become. His demeanor of colic was quickly replaced by glee at the sight of Huston and the chat by the two men and the interloper was antic but brief.

The film business is dotted with those that showed early promise and died prematurely and others that strived to replicate initial success and fell short of the target. Even today one wonders whether Francis Coppola will make a film that can be spoken of in the same breath as The Godfather or work again at all. However, no one ever started as high or sunk as low as Welles and it’s in these yet to be completed movies that one hopes to find the redemption of talent that eluded him in life. And, yes, the spark of genius that threaded through a career plagued by external and internal demons that thwarted the full flower of his creativity.

Genius in the Making

This time of year one tends to do a lot of traveling with Oscar. The other day I was reminded of the story of Paul Zimmerman receiving a Cesar by the French Film Academy for his script of The King of Comedy. Thrilled by the honor, he rushed to the stage and blurted out in French, “I always dreamed of winning an award from the Academy … just not this Academy.”

The other Academy, the one that gives out the Oscars, is currently tussling with the folks at DreamWorks about an ad promoting the Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, nominated for her performance in House of Sand and Fog. The thrust of the ad was to cite a number of critics that felt she was the best in the category and additionally noted another actress, Renee Zellweger, as the probable Oscar winner. Apart from the political awkwardness of the tact, it was an ill conceived move to promote someone by stating they were worthy but unwinable. The ad failed to note that Aghdashloo won quite a number of awards from critics groups including right here in Los Angeles.

Nonetheless, it’s still nice to be nominated and at least some of the people I’ve encountered recently are enjoying the spotlight, however brief. Several weeks back I had lunch with Eduardo Serra, nominated for his cinematography of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Serra, based in France, was previously short listed by the Academy for his work on Wings of the Dove and without irony noted that in both instances he failed to make the cut at the camera guild’s ASC awards. Serra was also cited by the L.A. critics but couldn’t attend the ceremony because he was completing Beyond the Sea, a biopic of entertainer Bobby Darin directed and starring Kevin Spacey. For budget reasons that film was shot in Berlin and Serra seemed extremely pleased about the way in which soundstages and locations were transformed into New York and Los Angeles of the 1960s and ‘70s.

He was leaving the next day to begin a new film by Claude Chabrol - his sixth with the filmmaker. “I told him that there was the possibility of a nomination and that if it happened he would have to hire another cameraman for three days. So, I will come back for the ceremony and I’m curious who he lined up while I’m gone.”

The recognition is a nice affirmation for Serra but he doesn’t see it radically changing the type of films he’s been doing in Europe. He says his agent understands he will not do big movies with explosions, guns or car chases. He would nonetheless like to do a film in Hollywood at least once and came closest to that when he shot What Dreams May Come in San Francisco.

If Serra had an inkling about Oscar, it came as a complete surprise to Mikael Hafstrom, director of Evil, the Swedish submission in the foreign-language category. Hafstrom expected the section to be dominated by better known international movies and films submitted by established national cinemas such as the European Film Award winner Goodbye Lenin. His film, about a troubled young men set in an exclusive boarding school, has been a phenomenal success in Scandinavia and a film he co-wrote, the comedy Kopps, was also a major European hit and has been acquired as a remake for Adam Sandler.

“It’s really too much,” he says. “Two years ago I could hardly make a living and now I have the opportunity to do films I’d actually like to make.”

One of those projects is an American thriller titled Derailed that Miramax is developing and he hopes to film in New York later this year. He likes the idea of working in America because it was American movies that inspired him and he can point to Lasse Hallstrom as someone who’s managed to make American and European films with equal distinction.

Though he doubts there’s any possibility he will win an Oscar on Sunday, he does feel that it would be nice for his film to acquire American distribution as a conciliation prize. The irony is not lost on him that once the movie received a nomination from the American Academy, sales for the film perked up in Europe and Asia.

There’s a faint sense that given his druthers, Peter Weir would forego the Oscar ceremony and enjoy the show back home in Sydney. He bypassed the Golden Globes and the British Academy Awards where he was a surprise winner for his direction of Master and Commander. The last time we met, he was enthused about coming to Los Angeles for the Directors Guild awards but that had little do with winning and a lot related to comradeship. Sunday his film is up in 10 categories including personal honors for him as director.

It’s his fourth kick at the can but you get the sense he’s considerably more jazzed that his wife Wendy Stites is up for an Oscar for her costume design.

“By rights I shouldn’t be here at all,” he says. “I love the books but I turned down adapting them twice.”

Weir was offered the material more than a decade ago when they were held by Samuel Goldwyn Jr. At the time there was a script that he characterized as a swashbuckling condensation of several of the novels that verged on parody. The second offer occurred about five years ago when he was in Los Angeles looking for a new project.

“I’ve wound up doing movies as a result of every possible combination of finding material,” notes Weir. “Some films begin as blind submissions but what I’ve found to be very useful is to come into town and just go from studio to studio and ask what have you got? The last time I did that, I wound up at Fox and during the meeting Tom Rothman excused himself and returned with a sword and presented it to me. I got it but I’m not sure the other executives understood where the gesture came from. I just looked at him and said I already turned it down when Sam Goldwyn approached me (Rothman had worked for Goldwyn and encouraged him to buy the books).”

Weir says that Rothman was very savvy. He told him to think about what aspect of the books he thought would make a good movie because they were not committed to any of the previously commissioned screenplays. Weir noted that when he completed The Truman Show, Paramount asked him what he would like as a thank you gift and he’d requested a complete collection of the Patrick O’Brian novels. He did think about it and when he later contacted Rothman about how he would do it, the deal was sealed.

“The awards are, of course, a pleasant way to have one’s work affirmed. They’re also a bit of a distraction, especially at a time when you’re thinking about what it is you want to do next.”