Director Morgan Neville Talks His New Orson Welles Doc & Welles’ Final Film ‘The Other Side Of The Wind’ [Interview]

“The Other Side of the Wind” has obvious autobiographical notes splattered throughout its running time, but Orson never wanted to admit that it was taken from his own personal life. Why do you think he was hesitant in admitting that?
Because he just hated film writers that would read every detail of his films as some rosebud into his psychology. [laughs] There’s actually a great story that the producers told us. When they were shooting ‘Other Side of the Wind’ they went out to the Arizona desert and came across a very strange sign for an armadillo crossing and then Orson asked to abruptly stop the car to get a shot of that. They stopped the vehicle, the crew loaded everything, they set up the camera for the shot and somebody from the crew had the nerve to ask him, “What are we doing?” and Welles answered, “I don’t know but critics will spend years trying to figure it out.” [laughs]

It’s part of the “happy accidents” that he seems so keen in including in his films.
Exactly.

Something that he thought European filmmakers like Antonioni and Bergman lacked. I know your film slightly tackles his distaste for the high-brow European cinema movement that was happening in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but is there any particular reason why those films irked him to no end?
I think Orson loved great storytelling and, you know, it’s something he didn’t like about the European filmmakers. They made beautiful films but he thought they lacked a strong story. He had all the visual sense that those directors had and with ‘Other Side’ he wanted to show that he could do it too. Those directors were in vogue but he wasn’t and that frustrated him greatly. He had a hard time understanding why those filmmakers were having so much success doing films that he thought were slight.

Even 1970s Hollywood took a beating in Orson’s hands. He was rather cynical about the industry at the time he was making ‘Wind.’
Orson moved back to Hollywood making a film that satirizes Hollywood and then he’s surprised that Hollywood wouldn’t give him money to make his movies. [laughs]

Back to rosebud and “Citizen Kane,” it loomed over Welles his entire career, like a nasty shadow he couldn’t get rid of. He had to deal with that with every movie he’d end up releasing post-‘Kane.’ That was, in essence, his commercial downfall. I’ve always found that detail of his career. He managed to make great movies after “Citizen Kane” and if he hadn’t made ‘Kane’ we might be talking about how “Touch of Evil” redefined cinema, and even “F For Fake.”
I think the world decided they already had a narrative for Orson, that is the ‘fall from grace.’ Nobody was willing to let him break free of that. ‘Kane’ is an amazing film but he made many amazing films. But whatever he did he could never escape the weight that ‘Kane’ had on him and I do feel that at times he was kind of shadowboxing with his own legend and his own place in film history. And if you feel like every film you do has to be the greatest film ever made then you could end up in a hall of mirrors full of insecurity.

It was a narrative that the media wanted because how else can you describe a career that also had “The Stranger,” “Lady From Shanghai,” Othello,” “Touch of Evil,” Chimes at Midnight,” “F For Fake,” these are more than just great movies, these are defining movies. And yet, even today, every writer mentions ‘Kane,’ but fails to mention these great movies and I find that to be so disheartening.
It is. Again, what I feel this documentary is trying to do is to rectify that and I think Orson is actually a heroic character in the film because he was somebody that didn’t care one iota about what the world thought was “good” or commercial. He cared about his films and he was willing to do anything to make his films his own way. And here was the man that did “Citizen Kane” sneaking on the sets under a sheet in the back seat, pretending he was a film student. He would do anything if he thought he would make his movie the way he thought it should be made and that was the problem with his acting career also. As an actor, he was willing to, as he said, “prostitute” himself for money but as a director, he remained virginal, that was his line. [laughs] This idea that he didn’t care about acting, he didn’t see that as an art form, but he saw directing as the pinnacle of art forms but people didn’t end up seeing some of those films.