Orson Welles - FishbowlLA

Joaquin Phoenix’s Monumental Montgomery Clift Mash-Up

Richard Horgan — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:30:30 +0000

When Quentin Tarantino was doing press for Inglorious Basterds, he was asked by a reporter what films or filmmaker would inspire him today if he was just starting out in the business. He answered Paul Thomas Anderson, writer-director of The Master, opening Friday in LA and New York:

“We’re really good friends and we have a very kind of artist romantic relationship. I feel I’m Marlon Brando to his Montgomery Clift. But there is a reality. Brando was better because Clift was out there. Same thing, Clift was better because he knew f*ckin’ Brando was already there, all right?”

In Anderson’s The Master, Joaquin Phoenix is one part Brando and four parts Clift. The actor’s colossal portrayal of Freddie Quell, a man who quite literally is fighting at every moment to quell his personal demons, ranks as the first performance in a very long time to recall the on-screen syncopated beats and off-screen tortured genius of an actor who had his own fair share of namesake films (The Search, The Heiress, The Defector).

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Paying Tribute to Errol Flynn’s Controversial Biographer

Richard Horgan — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:45:03 +0000

There have been several memorable remembrances of journalist and biographer Charles Higham, who passed away in LA late last month at the age 80. Most notably, locally, was Joel Bellman’s guest post on LA Observed about the time he interviewed Higham for an Orson Welles radio documentary.

Another worthy piece comes from the country where the British-born Higham began his transcontinental journalism career, Australia, in the form of a Sydney Morning Herald obit written by Philippe Mora, a French-Australian writer-director who occasionally contributes to the paper. There is much about Higham’s most famous work, the 1980 Errol Flynn biography The Untold Story, as well as this funny anecdote:

Higham had a delight in the macabre and the absurd, exemplified by his invitation to the English widow of Hermann Erben for dinner in Los Angeles with a Flynn double, Chuck Pilleau. Higham coaxed from her a bizarre revelation: SS agent Erben was circumcised.

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Citizen Kane Finally Cracks the Hearst Castle

Richard Horgan — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:00:54 +0000

When San Luis Obispo International Film Festival director Wendy Eidson originally floated the idea of a first-ever screening of Citizen Kane at the Hearst Castle, she was actually joking. But as she told LA Times reporter Steve Chawkins, after she made the historic suggestion to the keepers of the state park, the reaction was anything but what she expected:

“They didn’t laugh,” Eidson said. “I was sort of floored.”

Steve Hearst, the mogul’s great-grandson, said the event will present the film as a work of fiction rather than as a documentary about the life of the patriarch known to family members as W.R.

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Terry Gilliam Still Chasing After Windmills

Richard Horgan — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:00:50 +0000

During a recent visit to Los Angeles, director Terry Gilliam took the time to chat with LA Times “Hero Complex” main man Geoff Boucher. The beleaguered filmmaker (who turned 71 last week) was in town for an American Cinematheque sponsored screening of Brazil and his latest project, the Italian-made short The Wholly Family.

Much like Orson Welles, Gilliam has spent a large portion of his career battling Hollywood execs and chasing after film financing. That remains the case today, with his decade-old project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote still languishing and likely never to be finished. But it is all by choice, thanks to a decision made decades ago in the San Fernando Valley:

“Look, the last proper job I had was [in the 1960s] at the Chevrolet assembly plant in Van Nuys. It was the night shift, and when I quit I said I would never work for money again. I believe in the things I make. The fact that God doesn’t want me to make them is beside the point.”

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UCLA Prof Comments on Pauline Kael’s Research Theft

Richard Horgan — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:00:17 +0000

If UCLA professor emeritus Howard Suber one day finds himself sitting in a chair in his dying old age, muttering about a traumatic, formative turning point, his golden whispered word could well be “research.”

As detailed in Brian Kellow‘s October 27 biography of revered film critic Pauline Kael, the famed journalist was guilty of stealing Suber’s groundbreaking Orson Welles research for a two-part 1971 New Yorker article “Raising Kane.” Suber cooperated with the author and is now commenting in the media for the first time about this resurrected scandal, via a Brent Lang bylined article today on TheWrap:

“I take no satisfaction in the story coming out,” Suber said. “I was depressed over the weekend, despite getting included in the New York Times and New Yorker reviews, because it did stir up a lot of painful memories…”

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KPCC to Broadcast Orson Welles Radio Biography

Marcus Vanderberg — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:11:48 +0000

89.3 KPCC will air a radio biography on the legendary Orson Welles featuring rare broadcast recordings during the 73rd anniversary of “The War of the Worlds” hoax.

Airborne: A Life in Radio With Orson Welles will run twice as a special full-length edition of KPCC’s Off-Ramp on Oct 29 at noon and Oct. 30 at 7 p.m.

“The War of the Worlds was fantastic radio, which is why it’s still revived on dozens of stations every Halloween,” documentarian R. H.Greene said in a statement. “But few people know that Welles also pursued careers as a radio comedian, a wartime propagandist, and a serious political commentator over the air, or that his American radio career ended with a heroic act of great personal sacrifice.”

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LA Times Reporter Continues to Blow Lid Off Area 51

Richard Horgan — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:30:18 +0000

Tavis Smiley‘s June 24 interview with Annie Jacobsen (pictured), LA Times Magazine contributing editor and author of the New York Times best-seller Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, is currently one of the “Most Viewed” videos on the talk show host’s website.

In case you missed the conversation, and-or have not yet had a chance to catch up with Jacobsen’s book, the claims made by the author are nothing short of astounding. For example, per the Smiley interview, here’s what a nuclear weapons engineer told Jacobsen about all that supposed UFO and alien business in the Nevada desert:

“The source told me that something really did crash in the desert in New Mexico in 1947… Stalin had sent this prototype of a flying disc here to serve as a kind of a war of the world hoax, the same way that Americans had been moved to mass hysteria in 1938 when they believed Martians were attacking earth…

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Unseen 1972 Orson Welles Film Finally Poised For Release

Matthew Fleischer — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:06:15 +0000

The Other Side of the Wind, an Orson Welles‘ film, which he shot and directed in 1972 but never finished, may finally be set to be released after decades of legal wrangling.

The Guardian reports:

Rumours of its release have surfaced repeatedly since it was shot in 1972, but an ownership dispute has always scuppered any plans. However, a Los Angeles lawyer told the Observer last week that the film will finally be seen.

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Media Events 1.17.08

Greg — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:51:58 +0000

THURSDAY 1.17.08
WHAT: Book reading and signing
WHO: Author Beth Lisick, Helping Me Help Myself
WHEN: 7 p.m.
WHERE: Book Soup
WHY: As the tagline reads: One skeptic. Ten self-help gurus. Don’t miss it!

TUESDAY 1.22.08
WHAT: Screening of F for Fake
WHO: Orson Welles
WHEN: 7 p.m.
WHERE: Hammer Museum
WHY: According to the press materials: “Master trickster and self-described charlatan Orson Welles directs this duplicitious documentary, rife with movie-making sleight of hand, about the life of renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer Clifford Irving. By the time the film is over, it is unclear who is fooling who and if there can ever be a single truth.” Ticket info here.

THURSDAY 1.24.08
WHAT: Screening of The Silence After
WHO: Actress/writer/producer Kelly DeSarla will do a Q&A following the screening of her pic at the L.A. Film Festival
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. (cocktails start at 6:15 p.m.)
WHERE: The A+D Architecture and Design Museum
WHY: It’s an award-winning film, and we’re betting you’ll like it. Tickets: $5.

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FBLA 20 Questions: Alex Ben Block

Kate — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:31:40 +0000

Entertainment journalist and author Alex Ben Block writes a column for Hollywood Today but still gave in to our pestering and answered those “so vapid they must be insightful” questions.

1. What newspapers do you read? L.A. Times, NY Times, Wall St. Journal, Variety, Hollywood Reporter and online gossip columns at NY Post, NY Daily News, Washington Post and where ever else tea leaves are being read.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? The LA Time-waster and WS Jerk when the articles are longer than the wars in Iraq, Vietnam and the Civil War combined.

3. Which Web sites are on your favorites–besides FBLA? Hollywood Today.net, of course; LA Observed, Defamer, Drudge, HuffPo, Roger Friedman (Fox News), Poynter, TV Newsday, CNN, LAPressClub.org, TCM, and for pure intellectual stimulation, The Sun from London.

4. Where do you get your car washed? If only it would rain in SoCal I wouldn’t have to do this at all but instead I go where ever they accept discount coupons.

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? Bella. She’s from Russia.

6. Do you believe newspapers are going to die? If so, when? No, newspapers will be around until the end of time. There will be fewer but print remains the easiest, most efficient, portable way to rapidly scan and receive masses of info. However, they will look different, have shorter articles, be more analysis oriented, more opinionated, more oriented toward service, and serve as the central element of a range of distribution platforms online, wireless and stuffed into intellectual multi-vitamins for your brain. Of course they will be delivered online as a pdf file.

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