Don't ever meet your heroes, Part one

1. When Joe was reading the Churchill trilogy, he kept a running tab on Winston's adventures via texts to me.  I enjoyed most of the stories relayed, and quotes quoted, but at some point, it hit me that anybody who worked with or close to Churchill would eventually have to hit a point where the snarky, vicious wit and constant "my way or there's the door" attitude became too much, and it would be harder and harder to work with "The Last Lion" without wanting to bury a sharp object inside his bald head. When this was relayed, Joe's response was basically "Yeah, he had a shelf life. Nobody liked him for very long".

2. This does not diminish how much the purveyors of this blog love Winston, you see, because all we can do is read about him second-or-third hand. When he says awful things about Neville Chamberlain, we have the benefit of never having to make that decision. We know Chamberlain was wrong. Unbelievably, stupidly wrong. There is no worry of Nazis invading my home anytime soon, so I can scoff at "Peace in our time" without fear. I'm not there to listen to Winston sputter like a crazed infant as Neville gives his speech to thunderous applause.  I'm not trying to decide who is right, history has taken care of that for me.


3. When I found out that there was a book involving taped conversations with an older, defeated Orson Welles and director Harry Jaglom (yeah, I don't know either), well, I had to read that. Orson Welles is amazing. Not was, is. Citizen Kane is the best movie of all time, The Third Man, Touch of Evil, The Stranger, the man IS amazing. And now there's a book where I can listen to Orson's thoughts on Hollywood, Acting, and life in general? It was almost like I was yelling at my nook....

4. Before we go on, I know all about Welles's propensity to burn bridges like Detroit on Devil's Night. This is not a post about "OMG I never realized Orson could be such a jerk :( " Yes, movie studios fucked with him for the rest of his career after Kane, but part of that was because Orson earned a lifetime achievement award out of abandoning projects and pissing off the higher ups.  Like Bill Parcells said, at some point, you are what your record says you are.

5. For the first half of the book, I loved Orson's take on everything. And he dished, and I tittered like a schoolgirl. And even with what I know about Orson, most of his opinions on Hollywood, especially old Hollywood, seem pretty valid, even when I disagreed with him. When he says that Charlie Chaplin was a hack compared to Buster Keaton, or when he says that Hitchcock ruined his artistic career by coming to America, I don't believe either of those, but Orson makes his point well, not with total bitterness so much as an clear vision of what cinematic art should be. That vision is very, very old school, tinged by a love of the theater, and clearly doesn't vibe with modern movies. He rails on multiple occasions against Spielberg, and at those moments, there's a clear sense that motion pictures have left him behind. (The interviews take place in the early 80's) But he has an opinion on everything, and it's usually very quotable, and egotistical, and fun to read.

6. Example: all the interviews are at one specific restaurant, where Wolfgang Puck got his start (but had since moved on), and when Orson is asked about Wolfgang, his reponse is that Wolfgang is "a little shit....Shitty, shitty. A self-promoting little shit. And I'm very sorry he has all this success...." And apparently when asked what makes him so shitty, Orson says "I don't need to explain that. It's a free country. Anybody who sits down at my table without being invited is a shit."

7. But as I kept reading, the second half dragged on and on. I still liked it, but I wasn't getting the same sense of excitement as before. And I think that, after a while, you listen to the stories, and absorb the opinions, and you hit a limit. It's unavoidable. And it's not necessarily that I thought he was unfair, or too negative, though I would't argue that if confronted. But there is a reason that I can't watch reality shows, and that's because you eventually will just listen to one person smash the same points through your ear canal over and over, and I will eventually just want to scream "I GET IT...YOU'RE NOT HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS....STOP!". And it eventually turned into that with Orson's interviews. I just imagined being there with him, constantly talking about what's wrong with the industry, and what's always been wrong with the industry, and if I had to actually sit through that, at some point, I would have shut down. The conversations were surely cut, so as to contain just the most revealing parts, but what it revealed was a man who wasted so many opportunities, and saw those same opportunities taken, and made more of, by people who he considered to be unworthy. And there's an argument to be made that he's right, but I can only read so much of that.  At some point, you are what your record says you are.

8. The second half of the book also deals with a handful of movie projects that Orson is trying to get made, and constantly fighting with different studios on budgets and shooting locations. These projects are talked about over several years in the book. And there is always something holding Orson up, be it not finding the right funding, or not wanting share credit with producers, or only wanting to shoot at certain locations, usually in Europe. Take note that these projects are, over the 4 years that the interviews take place, constantly in motion but never moving forward, and not one of them ever got made. That is not coincidental.

9. I still love Orson Welles, and his body of work.

10. I will never have the chance to talk to, or try to work with, Orson Welles.

11. Those are not mutually exclusive.