It was during a late August day in Sedona, Arizona, that Orson Welles’ youngest daughter knew she had finally met the right people to bring her father’s final movie to the screen nearly 30 years after his death.
Speaking two months ago with Filip Jan Rymsza of Royal Road Entertainment and acclaimed Hollywood producer Frank Marshall, who had been a line producer on Welles’ uncompleted The Other Side of the Wind in the 1970s, Beatrice Welles was impressed by their sincerity and professionalism.
“When I met with Frank Marshall and Filip Rymzsa they requested it would be just us, no lawyers, this alone made a big difference, it showed they cared about him,” Beatrice Welles told Wellesnet. “We met, we talked and talked and we agreed. It was very clear that they were committed to preserving the integrity of my father’s work, and that’s the most important thing. It wasn’t about them, it was about honoring an artist’s work.”
Rymsza, Marshall and German producer Jens Koethner Kaul have secured the partial ownership rights for The Other Side of the Wind that were held by the Paris film company Les Films de l’Astrophore and the late Mehdi Boushehri, brother-in-law of the Shah of Iran. An agreement was also reached with Welles’ longtime companion Oja Kodar, who inherited the late director’s ownership.
Beatrice Welles, who has been viewed as an obstructionist by some, acknowledged she has been wary of past attempts to complete her father’s work, citing studio re-cuts of some of his finest work.
“My work for my father is – and always has been – to do what he would have wanted. Not what I would have wanted but what he would have wanted,” she said. “His heart was broken numerous times by studios and individuals taking away or changing his films. So how could this be all right after his death? It was the same cycle all over again. Look at what happened with The Magnificent Amberson’s and Touch of Evil. It really broke his heart. We all know he made his movies in the editing room – he said so himself publicly many times. It seemed a travesty to me to allow the same thing to happen with Wind.”
The Other Side of the Wind takes place at the 70th birthday party of maverick movie director Jake Hannaford (John Huston), who is struggling to make a commercial comeback at a time when the studio system has been replaced by the New Hollywood. The party is attended by young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), hangers-on, critics and movies freaks – many of whom are not so subtly patterned after people in Welles’ life. Hannaford dies at the conclusion of the party and his final hours are told in a collage of still photos, and 8mm, 16mm and 35mm color and black-and-white film shot at the party, along with scenes from his unfinished comeback movie.
Welles struggled to complete the film until his death in May 1985, but was stymied by issues ranging from financing to the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
He had edited about 40 minutes of The Other Side of the Wind before his death and a work print exists in Los Angeles. The 1,083 reels of film negative have been stored outside Paris.
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