WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Our last show highlighted the “lost” Orson Welles film It’s All True with filming taking place in 1942; and today we offer a bookend. Netflix has just released a version of another Welles project that was never completed, though this one was not so much lost as held hostage. It’s called The Other Side of the Wind and it’s another version of what some might refer to as the confessions of Orson Welles. For here, as at the beginning, it’s Rosebud that haunts this house…But in seeking Welles, in our grappling with hints and sleights and symbols, our searches only reflect us back to ourselves.
Welles introduced us to mirrors in 1941 in Citizen Kane and we are caught within them again here in 2018 via filming that ended in 1976.
The Other Side of the Wind stars John Huston as aging director Jake Hannaford and an ensemble cast that resembles Welles’s Mercury Theater, and much of the script seems to directly reference Welles’s own life. And so once again, we search for a key.
Here’s Welles on naming his protagonist “Jake,” and doing his usual best to muddy the waters of meaning:
Jake is the character John Huston plays and he is called Jake because ever since Frank Sinatra and I became friends, he has always called me “Jake.” He’s the only one who calls me Jake, it’s a private joke, and for that reason, this director, who isn’t me, is called Jake.
GUEST
Returning to Interchange to help us think about The Other Side of the Wind is Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic and scholar, and author of many books, including Discovering Orson Welles, and he has two new books about to come out — both collections — a two-volume work called Cinematic Encounters, volume one which will consist of interviews and dialogues is scheduled to be out in December and volume two, subtitled Portraits and Polemics is slated for June 2019. Both are being published by the University of Illinois Press.
We begin with Orson Welles in a 1960 interview talking about the most overrated job in filmmaking–the director. Then in each of our four segments we’ll hear a clip from the film.
SEGMENT ONE – How Not to Sell A Film
SEGMENT TWO – Who Is Jake Hannaford?
SEGMENT THREE – Oja Did What?
SEGMENT FOUR – Slapping Proxy Pauline Kael
RELATED
An Interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum by Lawrence French
Jonathan Rosenbaum Interview with Oja Kodar (2015)
An Insider’s Look at the Saga of ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ by Joseph McBride
Pauline Kael Rides Again!: The Authorship of ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ by Joseph McBride
Welles on Interchange:
Ears to Hear: Orson Welles in Brazil
Welles Before Glass: Intimacy and Propaganda in Radio
Orson Undiminished, Or How Kane Was Raised
Orson Around: In Conversation with Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore
MUSIC – Buddy Rich
“Group Shot” – The New One (1967)
“Billie’s Bounce” – Very Live at Buddy’s Place (1974)
“Young Blood” – Blues Caravan (1962)
“Kilimanjaro Cookout” – The Roar of ‘74 (1973)
“Critic’s Choice” – Swingin’ New Big Band (1966)
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Wes Martin
