| This is Orson Welles | |
| Author: | Orson Welles Peter Bogdanovich |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Biography Filmmaking |
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Release Date: | September 1992 |
| Media Type: | Print (Hardcover), Audiobook |
| Pages: | 533 pp. (first edition) |
| Isbn: | 0-06-016616-9 |
| Editor: | Jonathan Rosenbaum |
This Is Orson Welles is a 1992 book by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich that comprises conversations between the two filmmakers recorded over several years, beginning in 1969.[1] The wide-ranging volume encompasses Welles's life and his own stage, radio, and film work as well as his insights on the work of others. The book was edited after Welles's death, at the request of Welles's longtime companion and professional collaborator, Oja Kodar. Jonathan Rosenbaum drew from several incomplete drafts of the manuscript and many reel-to-reel tapes, most of which had already been transcribed. Much of the dialogue, however, had been rewritten by Welles, often in several drafts.
In addition to more than 300 pages of interviews, the book includes an annotated chronology of Welles's career, a summary of the alterations made to Welles's 1942 masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons and notes on each chapter by Rosenbaum.
A second edition of This Is Orson Welles was published in paperback in 1998, with a new introduction by Bogdanovich and excerpts of a 58-page memo Welles wrote Universal Pictures about the editing of his 1958 film Touch of Evil, in which he made close to fifty practical suggestions.[2] The studio disregarded Welles's memo, but in 1998 editor Walter Murch reedited the film according to Welles's specifications.
The 1992 audiobook version of This Is Orson Welles was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.[3]
In 1961 Peter Bogdanovich organized a retrospective of Orson Welles's films, the first in the United States, for the Museum of Modern Art. Welles was not able to attend — he was in Europe, preparing a film — but he did read the monograph Bogdanovich had written to accompany the screening and was favorably impressed by it. In 1968 Welles phoned Bogdanovich to invite him for coffee at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Over the space of two hours the two filmmakers found themselves completely at ease with each other. As they left the restaurant, Welles flipped through the pages of a book Bogdanovich had just written about John Ford, Welles's favorite director; Bogdanovich had brought a copy as a gift, since Welles was quoted in its pages. "Isn't it too bad," Welles said, "that you can't do a nice little book like this about me." They decided to do a book of interviews together.[1]
"Of course it was Welles who suggested the shape of 'the book,' as we called it — we never did arrive at a title we both liked," Bogdanovich wrote. Recorded at intervals in the United States, Mexico and Europe, the interviews were not to be forced into the chronological order of Welles's life. Welles felt they should be more loosely organized, like their conversations. Bogdanovich transcribed the reel-to-reel tapes, organized the interviews into a chapter, and mailed the typed copy to Welles. Months later, Bogdanovich would get the chapter back from Welles, revised and sometimes rewritten.[1] Some chapters were revised two or three times in this manner.[1]
In 1974, Orson Welles cast Bogdanovich in the role of Brooks Otterlake, a successful director, in the unreleased film The Other Side of the Wind. Welles filmed partly in Bogdanovich's Bel Air home, where Welles and actress Oja Kodar lived off and on for two years. Work on the book continued intermittently through 1975;[1] later in the 1970s the two directors "drifted apart a bit," Bogdanovich later wrote.[1]
For a time, the book was put on hold by Welles when he received a separate offer of $250,000 to write his memoirs. "He had no choice but to agree," Bogdanovich wrote. "This was OK with me; it was his life and one of the few ways he had of getting money to pay not only for his family's expenses, but also for the real work he was doing — his many directing projects."[4] Then, Bogdanovich wrote, the book was literally lost for five years:
Orson never did write his memoirs. Eventually, when he asked what had become of our book, it was lost somewhere in the depths of a storage facility while I was going through a personal and financial crisis (leading to bankruptcy and a kind of general breakdown in the summer of 1985, just a few months before Orson died). During one phone conversation he had said he hoped I wouldn't "just publish" the book after he was dead — implying that I knew where it was and was just hanging on to it. That upset me and so when we finally could get back into storage, and the boxes turned up, I sent all of them over to Orson — not keeping copies of anything — with a note saying, in effect, it was his life, and here it was for him to do as he saw fit. Orson called me as soon as he got it —he was very touched, he said, and thanked me profusely. He went on to explain that there wasn't much he could leave to Oja, and if anything happened to him, he was planning to will the book to her."[1]
After Welles died in October 1985, Oja Kodar asked Bogdanovich to help prepare the book for publication. He transcribed the materials, resulting in 1,400 pages that were then edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum into the 300 pages of interviews in the book. The revised edition contains a new introduction by Bogdanovich ("My Orson") and excerpts from Welles's memo to Universal about the editing of Touch of Evil.
Welles opines on a number of topics. He says "There are only a few artists in all the arts who can be called the best without any argument. I can only think of two—Mozart and Shakespeare. . . . Velazquez, for my money, but there you can get arguments. "[5] Among directors, Welles says his favorites are John Ford and Jean Renoir.[6] He also praises Buster Keaton ("a very great artist, and one of the most beautiful men I ever saw on the screen")[7] and Kenji Mizoguchi, who "can't be praised enough, really."[8]