Orson Welles‘ career and filmography is essentially split into two categories: the filmmaking master behind “Citizen Kane,” “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and “Touch Of Evil,” and the washout who starred in commercials, and did various less than prestigious jobs for money. And a curio from that latter category has been unearthed.
READ MORE: Retrospective: The Directorial Films Of Orson Welles
In Josh Karp’s new book “Orson Welles’s Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind,” the author brings up the previously not-well-known story of Orson Welles’ brief job editing a lesbian sex scene in the 1975 porno “3 A.M.” The movie was directed by Gary Graver (working under the pseudonym Robert McCallum), who was actually the cinematographer on Welles still unfinished “The Other Side Of The Wind” (for which there’s a current crowd-sourcing campaign). Welles didn’t have the money to pay the crew on ‘Other Side,’ and so Graver turned to erotic movies to help pay the bills at home, and the legendary director pitched in with this skills on a shower scene.
And yes, the result is somewhat Welles-ian, with the filmmaker selecting the kind of arty angles you wouldn’t expect in a porno movie. Still it’s explicit stuff, so be aware this is very NSFW when you watch an excerpt of the seven-minute scene below, with commentary from Bilge Ebiri. [Vulture]