The Other Side of the Wind

2018 satirical drama film

The Other Side of the Wind is a 2018 satirical drama film co written, co edited, and directed by Orson Welles, and posthumously released in 2018 after 48 years in development. The film stars John Huston, Bob Random, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg, and Oja Kodar. Intended by Welles to be his directorial comeback amid the incipient New Hollywood era, the film began shooting in 1970 and resumed on and off until 1976. Welles continued to work intermittently on editing the project into the 1980s, but it became embroiled in financial, legal, and political complications which prevented it from being completed. Despite Welles' death in 1985, several attempts were made at reconstructing the unfinished film. In 2014, the rights were acquired by Royal Road and the completed project was overseen by Bogdanovich and producer Frank Marshall. The story utilizes a film within a film narrative which follows the last day in the life of an aging Hollywood film director (Huston) as he hosts a screening party for his unfinished latest project. Using both color and black and white footage, the film was shot on 8 mm and 16 mm in an unconventional documentary style, featuring a rapid cutting approach between the many cameras of the story's numerous journalists and news people. It was intended among other things as a satire of both the passing of Classic Hollywood and of the avant garde film makers of Europe and New Hollywood in the 1970s. The unreleased results would be called "the Holy Grail of cinema". It holds the record for the longest production time in history at 48 years. The Other Side of the Wind had its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2018, and was released on November 2, 2018 by Netflix to critical praise, accompanied by a documentary, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead.

Set some time in the early 1970s, the film opens by describing the final day of Jake Hannaford, an aging Hollywood director who was killed in a car crash on his 70th birthday, with narration from an elderly Brooks Otterlake, who had been a protégé of Hannaford's. Just before his death, Hannaford was trying to revive his waning career by making an experimental film, laden with gratuitous sex scenes and violence, with mixed results. At the time of Hannaford's birthday party, this film (titled The Other Side of the Wind) has been left unfinished after its star stormed off the set, for reasons not immediately apparent to the audience. A screening of some incomprehensible parts of Hannaford's unfinished film takes place, in order to attract "end money" from studio boss Max David. Hannaford himself is absent, and a loyal member of his entourage, the former child star Billy Boyle, makes an inept attempt to describe what the film is about. Intercut during this, we see various groups setting out for Hannaford's party at an Arizona ranch. Hannaford arrives with a young Otterlake, a commercially successful director with a talent for mimicking celebrities, who credits much of his success to his close study of Hannaford. Many journalists attending the party brandish cameras and ask invasive questions, eventually querying Hannaford's sexuality and whether he has long been a closeted homosexual, in spite of his macho public persona. Hannaford has a history of seducing the wife or girlfriend of each of his leading men but maintains a strong attraction to the leading men themselves. Several party guests comment on the conspicuous absence of John Dale, the star of Hannaford's latest film, whom Hannaford first discovered when Dale was attempting suicide by jumping into the Pacific Ocean off the Mexican coast. As the party proceeds, Hannaford finds out that Dale's suicide attempt had been faked and that he had actually set off to Mexico to find Hannaford. Meanwhile, guests are shown more scenes from the film at the ranch's private screening room. One scene makes it clear why Dale left the film—he stormed off the set in the middle of a sex scene in which he was being goaded by Hannaford off screen. As the party continues, Hannaford gets progressively drunker. He is washing his face in the bathroom when he breaks down in front of Otterlake, asking for the young director's help to revive his career. A series of power outages in the middle of the party interrupts the screening. The party continues by lantern light, and eventually reconvenes to an empty drive in cinema, where the last portion of the film is screened. Having realized at the party that Otterlake is not going to financially support Hannaford's new film, the two have a mournful last exchange, realizing that their friendship is at an end. Intrusive journalist Juliette Rich has asked Hannaford the most explicit questions of all about his sexuality. At this moment, Hannaford slaps Rich in drunken outrage, while a drunken Boyle mounts an impassioned defense of the director. As dawn breaks at the ranch, Dale is walking around the mostly empty house, having only just arrived the morning after. He finally arrives at the drive in just as a drunken Hannaford is leaving and asks him to get in the sports car with him, but Dale does not. Hannaford drives away, leading to his fatal car accident. Meanwhile, Hannaford's symbolic film finishes screening to a now almost empty drive in. The only person still watching is the actress who starred in it. She watches the final scene, and drives off as Hannaford's closing narration says:

"Who knows? Maybe you can stare too hard at something, huh? Drain out the virtue, suck out the living juice. You shoot the great places and the pretty people, all those girls and boys – shoot 'em dead."

Hannaford's experimental film within a film, shot as a spoof of European arthouse cinema typified by Antonioni, and performed without any dialogue, is visually striking, but has very little narrative coherence. The following scenes are shown, in this order:
A graphic lesbian steamroom scene, rapidly intercut, featuring Oja Kodar, which Hannaford is in the process of filming at the start. Several expressionistically shot chase scenes between Oja Kodar and Bob Random amid the skyscrapers of Century City, Los Angeles, with various optical illusions, in which it is not immediately apparent whose character is chasing whom. At the end of these scenes, he buys a doll for her, and she rebuffs him, driving off into the night with her boyfriend. The two characters meet again in a nightclub. She steps out into the toilets, where various hippies are engaged in various sex acts, and changes her clothes, before coming back in again. He gives her the doll. She produces a pair of scissors, rapidly cutting the doll's hair, then cutting out its eyes. They step out from the nightclub into her boyfriend's 1968 Ford Mustang fastback. The car takes off in the rainy night, and as the boyfriend drives, the pair have sex in the passenger seat next to him. After a few minutes the boyfriend stops the car, grabs the girl off of Dale, and appears to make an attempt to engage her for himself. She rebukes him and the pair is then tossed out. John Dale, with his pants halfway down, lands in a large puddle. The next morning arrives and Kodar's totally naked character has found shelter in the second story of a house. From there, she climbs carefully out of an open window, drops to the ground, and wanders to an empty railroad car, where she finds Dale asleep on the floor. More chase scenes with optical illusions ensue, around the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studios back lot (including Kodar's character going into Andy Hardy's iconic house). There is then a sex scene on raw bedsprings left on the studio back lot. Off screen you can hear Hannaford giving Dale direction, and after some awkward badgering, a naked Dale decides he's had enough and leaves the set. Hannaford watches him go and calls out through the megaphone "goodbye Johnny Dale." The production is now without a leading man. There is then a scene—which Hannaford's manager 'The Baron' complains is presented out of sequence—in which a now clothed John Dale walks alone around a dusty, windy studio back lot. The final scene features a nude Oja Kodar attacking a giant phallic symbol with a pair of scissors, and it deflating and collapsing in front of her.

The film features an exceptionally large number of film directors in acting roles, besides Huston and Bogdanovich who both occasionally acted. Other directors who performed in The Other Side of the Wind included Claude Chabrol, Norman Foster, Gary Graver, Curtis Harrington, Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky, mostly playing Hannaford's entourage of journalists and young film makers. Other Hollywood celebrities who were friends of Welles were asked to participate, including Jack Nicholson, but either declined or were unavailable. Impressionist Rich Little was originally cast as Brooks Otterlake, but his role was recast during production. There are differing accounts as to the reason for his departure. Welles expressed dissatisfaction with the impressionist's acting ability, and stated that he fired him. Little says that he doesn't know why he lost contact with Welles part of the way through filming. Cinematographer Gary Graver tells a different story: "We shot many, many scenes with him, and he was quite good in each of them. One day, completely out of the blue, Rich showed up with his suitcase in his hand. 'Orson,' he said, 'I haven't seen my wife in a long time. I have to go home.' And like that, he was gone! Orson didn't get angry. He just sat there looking incredulous. He couldn't believe what was happening. The rapport between Orson and Rich had been a good one, so no one had expected Rich's sudden departure." Filming was completed with Bogdanovich playing Otterlake. This necessitated reshooting all of Little's scenes. Little's interpretation of the Otterlake character would have had him using a different accent or impression for every single scene – a device which Joseph McBride thought "uncomfortably labored". By contrast, although Bogdanovich did several impressions in character as Otterlake, he played most of his scenes with his own voice. The characters played by Foster, Selwart, Jessel, McCambridge, O'Brien, Stewart, Wilson, Mitchell, Carroll and Repp form Hannaford's entourage, representing the "Old Hollywood"; while Chabrol, Harrington, Hopper, Jaglom and Mazursky play thinly veiled versions of themselves, representing the "New Hollywood". The "Old Hollywood" characters serve as something of a chorus for Hannaford, providing various commentaries on his life.

When Welles moved back to the United States in the late 1960s, the script's setting changed to Hollywood, and second unit photography started in August 1970. Principal photography in 1970–1971 focused on Hannaford's film within a film. Welles was initially unsure whom to cast as the film director and whether to play the role himself, finally settling in 1974 on his friend the actor director John Huston. The few party scenes shot before 1974 were shot without Huston, and often contained just one side of a conversation, with Huston's side of the conversation filmed several years later and intended to be edited into the earlier footage.

As a member of the cast, film historian Joseph McBride saw the rushes, and later saw a two hour rough cut assembled by Gary Graver in the late 1990s to attract potential investors. McBride wrote that the film "serves as both a time capsule of a pivotal moment in film history – an 'instant' piece of period nostalgia set in the early seventies – and a meditation on changing political, sexual and artistic attitudes in the United States during that period." John Huston described a private screening in which Orson Welles showed the unfinished film to some friends: "I didn't get to see it, but those who did tell me it is a knockout." His argument is that the film was always unlikely to be finished because Welles' "physical condition was delicate. He didn't have the energy to cut it." However, as Gómez was accused by Orson Welles, Dominique Antoine, Peter Bogdanovich, Mehdi Boushehri and others of embezzling $250,000 of the film's budget and absconding with the proceeds, he does have a strong motive for wanting the film to not reach wider public attention. Additionally, Gómez's links to the film were severed in 1974; but filming was not finished until 1976, when most of the editing started. Rian Johnson told Vanity Fair in April 2018 he had seen a 117 minute edit – minus its Michel Legrand score – twice, including a screening in Santa Monica, California, on January 16, 2018, with Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne and other VIPs, who "were all gobsmacked". Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Film critic and author of Orson Welles in Italy Alberto Anile, who watched the film at its premiere during the 75th Venice International Film Festival, called it "one of Welles's major works". Film historian and actor in the film Joseph McBride confessed: "The final result exceeds even my high expectations." The film was included on dozens of Best Films of 2018 lists, including Sight & Sound, Film Comment, The Hollywood Reporter, The Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair. It received awards from the National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, San Francisco Film Critics Circle and others. In 2020, Rymsza and Murawski assembled Hopper / Welles, a 129 minute film composed of largely unseen outtakes from The Other Side of the Wind shot in November 1970 in Los Angeles. The film is a conversation between Welles and Dennis Hopper on politics, religion and film making.

Graver, Gary, Working with Orson Welles, 1993. Sedlar, Dominik and Sedlar, Jakov, Searching for Orson, 2006. Suffern, Ryan, A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making, 2018. Neville, Morgan, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, 2018.