"Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one!"
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ORSON WELLES!
As most of you know, I've been obsessed with Orson Welles for some months, now. Today, he would have been 94 years old. And while I doubt he'd have lived this long under most circumstances, it's unfortunate that he died at 70, still working fruitlessly in post-golden boy "decline," ignored by the industry who came out in droves to shower his memory as soon as they could not longer materially help. At least he died at his typewriter. But he also died before the critical tide turned fully in his favor--though maybe that's how these things work.
Even now, Welles maintains a strange position in film studies and biography. The sensationalists in us like to hold him up as a self-destructive contradiction, a selfish genius who never fulfilled his promise and "ate himself to death," a man who caused all his own difficulties--or, on the other side, was eternally the victim. Of course neither, I think, is true: Welles had his share of faults, but he wasn't treated very well by those he relied upon when he chose a field so dependent on money and cooperation as filmmaking. He made compromises, and they weren't Hollywood's, and maybe that was a mistake. We'll never know. What I do know is that I can't read most of the biographies about him when so many of them seem to have nothing nice to say--Simon Callow has a very thorough several-volume set, but I've never heard him be anything but coyly dismissive of Welles in interviews. I also know, through my google alert (set so as not to miss any new films uncovered, etc), that fully 1/3 of references to Welles on a daily basis are reposts of that Paul Masson commercial outtake where he's blotto and ridiculous. Which, yes, is funny. But it pains me to see it as his "legacy" for the internet crowd.
Welles is one of those artists whose work I enjoy more for knowing more about him. As an ouvre. Which is not to say that I sit around making explicit connections between them, because I don't think he worked that way. But I enjoy enjoying him as a person, as an actor/writer/director in total, and it makes even the minor stuff entertaining because I'm bringing his body of work to it. As one does with any figure in whom one's interest transcends the single work. Their imperfections become interesting, or meaningful, or perhaps just proof of their humanity.
This is one reason it's hard for me to post, in tribute, a clip, or mention my favorite Welles film. I don't know that I have one. I think I'm more interested in the canon, the combination, and the artistic flexibility/tenacity of the man than any one film.
I started out hoping I'd end up saying something, when really, I don't know that I have anything to say that's not been said better, elsewhere. Perhaps by me. But Happy Birthday, Mr. Welles. I'd have liked to have known you. But not dated you.
"Gluttony is not a secret vice."
"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."
"I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act."
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."
"I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose."
"The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents."
"When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends."
"I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could."
"The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful."
"Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation."
"At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable."
These are all available at those quote sites online. If I was less lazy, or had written them out at the time, I'd include some from This is Orson Welles, which I love.
As most of you know, I've been obsessed with Orson Welles for some months, now. Today, he would have been 94 years old. And while I doubt he'd have lived this long under most circumstances, it's unfortunate that he died at 70, still working fruitlessly in post-golden boy "decline," ignored by the industry who came out in droves to shower his memory as soon as they could not longer materially help. At least he died at his typewriter. But he also died before the critical tide turned fully in his favor--though maybe that's how these things work.
Even now, Welles maintains a strange position in film studies and biography. The sensationalists in us like to hold him up as a self-destructive contradiction, a selfish genius who never fulfilled his promise and "ate himself to death," a man who caused all his own difficulties--or, on the other side, was eternally the victim. Of course neither, I think, is true: Welles had his share of faults, but he wasn't treated very well by those he relied upon when he chose a field so dependent on money and cooperation as filmmaking. He made compromises, and they weren't Hollywood's, and maybe that was a mistake. We'll never know. What I do know is that I can't read most of the biographies about him when so many of them seem to have nothing nice to say--Simon Callow has a very thorough several-volume set, but I've never heard him be anything but coyly dismissive of Welles in interviews. I also know, through my google alert (set so as not to miss any new films uncovered, etc), that fully 1/3 of references to Welles on a daily basis are reposts of that Paul Masson commercial outtake where he's blotto and ridiculous. Which, yes, is funny. But it pains me to see it as his "legacy" for the internet crowd.
Welles is one of those artists whose work I enjoy more for knowing more about him. As an ouvre. Which is not to say that I sit around making explicit connections between them, because I don't think he worked that way. But I enjoy enjoying him as a person, as an actor/writer/director in total, and it makes even the minor stuff entertaining because I'm bringing his body of work to it. As one does with any figure in whom one's interest transcends the single work. Their imperfections become interesting, or meaningful, or perhaps just proof of their humanity.
This is one reason it's hard for me to post, in tribute, a clip, or mention my favorite Welles film. I don't know that I have one. I think I'm more interested in the canon, the combination, and the artistic flexibility/tenacity of the man than any one film.
I started out hoping I'd end up saying something, when really, I don't know that I have anything to say that's not been said better, elsewhere. Perhaps by me. But Happy Birthday, Mr. Welles. I'd have liked to have known you. But not dated you.
"Gluttony is not a secret vice."
"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."
"I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act."
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."
"I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose."
"The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents."
"When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends."
"I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could."
"The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful."
"Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation."
"At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable."
These are all available at those quote sites online. If I was less lazy, or had written them out at the time, I'd include some from This is Orson Welles, which I love.