ME AND ORSON WELLES (Richard Linklater 2009)

[Chris Knipp]

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/4227/meandorsonwellesphoto.jpg
ZAC EFRON AND CLAIRE DANES IN ME AND ORSON WELLES

Published on Cinescene (http://www.cinescene.com/knipp/me&orson.htm).

Good luck, bad luck

Everybody is full of promise and hope in Me and Orson Welles, a movie about a teenager who gets involved in Orson Welles' epochal 1937 Mercury Theater production of Julius Caesar with what was to become his company of players, managed by John Housman. The 22-year old Zac Efron, of the High School Musical series and the movie version of John Waters' Harispray, gets more of a real dramatic role this time and acquits himself admirably as a highschooler from New Jersey who gets lucky and is hired to play Lucius and sing a song sitting next to Welles in the play, a revolutionary production.

Zac is too pretty to be true and so is the movie; it's a rollicking fantasy that's fun to watch, having a good time, and sure of itself, like Zac, but doesn't leave a very strong impression. The emotions in it are either jejune or theatrical, and soon pass. This was however an important moment in American Theater. Welles, only 22 himself at the time, already bestrode the worlds of the stage and the radio like a colossus. His spectacular, hysteria-inducing "War of the Worlds" broadcast was to come the next year, and Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons in four and five years, all while he was in his mid-twenties. The English actor Christian McKay, who had already put on a one-person production recreating Orson Welles, dominates every scene he's in here, uncannily evoking Welles, with the pudgy face and, when needed, producing the pout, the smirk, the twinkle and the roar. Though the laid-back Linklater, delving into history for the second time on screen, has achieved a buoyant production full of vivid scenes, none of it would have much point if this wasn't about a famous man at a seminal early moment. The movie establishes its reason for being toward the end with a series of vivid excerpts from a restaging of the Mercury production, headlined simply as "Caesar" and using stark, angular sets, bold lighting, and costumes to evoke ancient Rome as a modern fascist dictatorship. This production is something like Ian McKellan's film Richard III (actually directed by Richard Loncraine) but it's bolder, more succinct and elegant. It looks stunning and original, and when the audience rises and roars at the end it seems justified (and is true: applause reportedly lasted for three minutes).

The screenplay by Holly and Vince Palmo, adapted from a novel by Robert Kaplow, depicts Welles as an undisputed genius, a womanizer, an egomaniac, and an asshole, lording it over the company like a Roman emperor (though in his stagy, radical production he chose to play Brutus) and threatening (not without followup) to destroy anyone who does not obey. When the talented and cocky young Richard Samuels (Efron) bucks the great man over a girl called Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), a stage manager, the youth's fate is sealed. The story is bittersweet: Richard gets to appear in one of the most famous productions in American stage history, but only for opening night. Richard's experience is a dream come true, but it all ends. Luckily he has high school in New Jersey to go back to, a shoe box of souvenirs, and his future ahead of him. Orson Welles is going to go on being a genius -- and an asshole; the latter quality may have something to do with his lifelong difficulties getting his films produced after his first brilliant studio pictures.

Welles has already successfully if ruthlessly cut Hamlet into only two half-hour radio segments. He takes Richard briefly under his wing (after all, he's only four years older) and gets him into a broadcast studio, telling the boy "you can learn all there is to know about radio in an hour." Watching through Richard, we get to see Welles interpolate a passage from what will be one of his adaptations from Booth Tarkington's Magnificent Ambersons into another drama show. He's a showoff, but his boldness and creativity are awe-inspiring. It's clear why everybody caters to his whims. and the multi-faceted dynamo can also be a charmer when he tries; else how could this married man whose wife is visibly pregnant sleep with all the women? When his wife comes to the theater, there's a code word the company uses to warn Welles to straighten out and be cool.

Zac romances Claire Danes even though his character's only 17, but he's relentlessly put down as "Junior' or "Kid" by Welles and the rest of the company. Joseph Cotton (James Tupper) is an ally. The theatrical world is full of superstition as well as ego, and all await one big stroke of bad luck that must come before opening night so that the opening isn't the bad luck thing. Zac unintentionally obliges. And then comes his moment of glory, singing and playing the lute on a step above Welles in the play, followed by his big bad luck thing. We may feel jerked around a bit, but it's all light fun; in fact the movie feels rather old fashioned. It was shot in England, which may have contributed to some of the lightness and the cuteness. The beauty of this film is how much of theatrical life it evokes. It has time for many individual crises and details of the Mercury production -- or at least the ones Kaplow and the Palmos dreamed up. It is also further lightened and made pleasurable by a lot of song recordings, mostly swing hits from the period.

Despite its focus on a monomaniac and a preternaturally self-possessed teenager Me and Orson Welles is an ensemble piece, and there are many good performances, including those of Ben Chaplin as George Coulouri; Eddie Marsan as John Housman; the up-and-coming Zoe Kazan as fellow literary ingenue Greta Adler, whose meetings with Richard bookend the piece; and Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd, whose performance as Cinna the Poet is a running squabble, one of many. Lots of the actors in the movie are prima donnas; Welles is just the most prima of all.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Though the laid-back Linklater, delving into history for the first time on screen, has achieved a buoyant production full of vivid scenes, none of it would have much point if this wasn't about a famous man at a seminal early moment.

You probably don't remember Linklater's 1998 film about the "most successful bank robbers in American history". They operated between 1919 to 1924 and they were known as The Newton Boys.

[Chris Knipp]

I see what you mean; he delved into history before. I guess I saw that somewhere, that this was his first. I'll have to change it. I in fact wrote a comment on The Newton Boys on IMDb after watching it on DVD this past June (2009). I may not have posted it on Filmleaf though. I'll print it below. By the way I saw Wiseman's LA DANSE today.
Linklater's surprising but not altogether successful step into genre

I watched this on DVD because it was recommended by Jonathan Rosenbaum on his ten-best list for the year, and the cast interested me, especially D'Onofrio and Skeet Ulrich. This confirms my admiration of the under-seen Ulrich, who's the doubting, conscience-stricken brother. His uneasiness stands out against the tedious good-old-boy jollity of the others. That shtick is a little too easy to do, and I don't think it gets the Twenties quite right, really. Rosenbaum is a great film critic but his end of the year recommendations are not always to be trusted, which makes you wonder about how written-in-stone his 1000 films list is. He also said that since the expansive images were a big part of the pleasure of the movie he didn't know how good it would be on DVD.

Gosh, was it really so easy to rob a bank in those days? The way some of the robberies go makes it look like it was all a cinch, but surely they'd be scared sometimes because you still stood to go to jail for it, maybe for a good long time. Actually it was easy to robe banks with square-doored safes, and it isn't so hard to hold up a little bank today.

This is surprising from Linklater not only because of the step into genre, but because of his willingness to glorify and simplify his good-boy/bad-boy crew. Where are the tormented and confused guys of his stoner movies? Matthew McConaughey certainly does rise to the challenge with a spirited and enthusiastic performance, but all his moments are still clichés. Hawke similarly grins and giggles in a quite shallow way. His character is not well defined and D'Onofiro, arguably the best actor of the bunch, is wasted. Statistically the Newton bank robbers were remarkable, but Ebert may be right that they are less famous than Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde because they were too "respectable," i.e., dull. The screenplay lacks an angle, other than the glib one of boys on a lark, which fails to convince, and even when things go wrong, lacks a tragic dimension.

The action is desultory, lacking a strong focus on character or action or any guiding principle. Hence comparison with 'Bonnie and Clyde,' or more dashing adventures in the same vein like 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' or 'The Sting,' simply isn't really possible. This isn't in the same league. It utterly pales in comparison to European robbery films like 'Rififi' or the recent 'Mesrine' gangster epic starring Vincent Cassel. Only the few moments with Dwight Yoakam as Brentwood Glasscock, the brothers' explosives expert, provide a welcome 'Rififi'-like hint of bank-robbing as a challenging activity requiring certain skills and techniques.

This is not to say you can't have fun watching. These young actors are in their physical prime, and that includes the ladies, notably the handsome-looking Julianna Margulies as McConaughey's girlfriend. The period flavor is sometimes ripe and tasty. The production is very good-looking, and there is some nice cinematography: a silhouetted image of the mail train the Newton brothers are about to rob is particularly cool. The whole cadre things are set in, including the jaunty music, is conventional, but it's undeniably fun. The movie's a little long, but the climactic later scenes are involving. But still, this is very far from Linklater at his best, and Rosenbaum ought to admit he erred in ranking it so high.

[oscar jubis]

Rosenbaum is a great film critic but his end of the year recommendations are not always to be trusted, which makes you wonder about how written-in-stone his 1000 films list is.(Chris Knipp)

Not a single person is "to be trusted" as far as expecting agreement between what he/she considers worth listing and what one considers worth listing among the best films (or books, or records,...) of a given year. This is the realm of art, not science. Appreciation is a highly subjective process.

this is very far from Linklater at his best, and Rosenbaum ought to admit he erred in ranking it so high.

There is no wrong or right when it comes to art criticism. There is no "erring" involved. There are different levels of congruence between what one enjoys or values and what any other person enjoys or values. That is what makes art criticism so much fun for me. One has an opinions/interpretations and one attempts to use language to describe and explain those in the best way possible. If art critcism was more like science then I would invest my time doing something else.

[Chris Knipp]

Well of course non one is to be trusted on lists, precisely my point, but Rosenbaum should be more to be trusted than others, given his reputation. I think it's a good idea to go back and reexamine how your list stands up over time. What looked important one year may not later.

Rosenbaum not only has a high reputation -- you were talking about reputations -- but calls his big list a "canon." (see definitions (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/canon) ).Studying the meanings of the word canon, one finds that it does presume a set of or body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art: the neoclassical canon. The word also presumes the existence of a standard; criterion: the canons of taste. This word and Rosenbaum's calling his 1000-film list "essential" imply fixed standards and authoritative lists. All the more reason why we should question them, which I do.

Rosenbaum has been taken at his word by at least one film buff and filmmaker who's prominent online, Kevin B. Lee, who'se made an effort to watch the "essential" or "canonical" Rosenbaum list of 1000 films and build up a body of commentary on it on his website also like life (http://www.alsolikelife.com/FilmDiary/rosenbaum.html). Lee also lists Rosenbaum's "100 Essential Films of the 1990s" in which THE NEWTON BOYS remains for 1998, one of the "essential films" of that decade.

Not one of the "movies I loved."

Essential.

That's not scientific. It's dogmatic. Unless you're willing to revise it all the time. And some are interested in doing that, as Iain Scott's Beyond the Canon project (http://beyondthecanon.blogspot.com/) indicates.

[oscar jubis]

Rosenbaum's Introduction to his "Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons" explains the title and all its ramifications. Basically, he provides evidence that academic film criticism has been, for decades, disinclined to offer canons that serve as an alternative to the Western-based, box-office driven canons of the Industry. He sees himself as one of a number of critics who must engage their readership in the consideration of films excluded from industry canons. Someone needs to get the word out that Kenji Mizoguchi's Story of the Late Chrysanthemums is just as worthy of consideration by the film lover as The Wizard of Oz (both films are included in Rosenbaum's 1939 list) because you will not learn this from the American Film Institute or from academia. Rosenbaum's book is organized around different strategies to recanonize cinema "in order to combat the reductive canons of studio publicists".

His, and I quote, "1,000 Favorites (A Personal Canon)" is "a stab at proposing a particular film canon of my own_that is to say, reflecting my own tastes and preferences that can be regarded either as a possible viewing list or as a critical manifesto that can be debated." It is "designed to be used in launching a new discussion, not in concluding an old one." (Precisely what seems to be happening in the sites to which you so kindly provide links).

The list is an "Appendix" to the book. He writes: "Broadly speaking, these are the films I'd want to have with me on a desert island."

By the way, all of this applies to my own canon which I have posted here at Filmleaf. A personal canon of 266 films (so far).

[Chris Knipp]

Nonetheless, the implications of the word canon applied to a list made by a prominent critic remain. Likewise "essential."

[oscar jubis]

This Way, Myth
A new Richard Linklater film mines the Orson Welles legend

by Jonathan Rosenbaum
(posted October 9, 2008)

"A writer's reputation," Lionel Trilling once wrote, "often reaches a point in its career where what he actually said is falsified even when he is correctly quoted. Such falsification—we might more charitably call it mythopoeia—is very likely the result of some single aspect of a man’s work serving as a convenient symbol of what other people want to think. Thus it is a commonplace of misconception that Rousseau wanted us to act like virtuous savages or that Milton held naive, retrograde views of human nature."

Although Orson Welles is rightly regarded as someone whose creative work partially consisted of his own persona, he remains unusually susceptible to mythmaking of this sort. This is because he often figures as someone who both licenses and then becomes the scapegoat for vanity that isn't entirely_or even necessarily_his own. Quite simply, many of those (especially males) who obsess on the "meaning" of "Orson" are actually looking for ways to negotiate their own narcissism and fantasies of omnipotence.

It's part of the special insight of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, which premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival, to perceive and run with this aspect of the Welles myth, which is already implied in its title. This energetic and entertaining movie, which still lacks a U.S. distributor, was scripted by the couple Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo, closely adapting a 2003 novel by Robert Kaplow about a teenage boy in 1937 who joins Welles's legendary Mercury Theatre stage production of Caesar in the minor part of Lucius. This was a modern-dress, bare-stage presentation celebrated for the conceit of making Shakespeare's characters contemporary Italian fascists, and for employing "Nuremberg" lighting.

The film is greatly assisted by much research into the original stage production and a very adroit impersonation of the young Welles by English actor Christian McKay. And even though it is limited both as history and as Welles portraiture, it remains wholly on target in suggesting some of the motives for Welles mythopoeia. Thus one of the key scenes depicts the liberated vanity of the Mercury Theatre players that immediately follows the triumph of the opening night performance, as reflected in their idle chatter while they bask onstage in their victory. Indeed, the same euphoric self-regard can be found in virtually all of the film's young characters, including a writer (Zoe Kazan) befriended by the hero who isn't part of the Mercury troupe; in every case but hers, Welles is basically the magical force that unleashes and validates everyone's egotism.

Despite the fact that the movie celebrates collective effort, and benefits a great deal from its own version of it, self-regard is the main dish on display, and Welles is credited as both the chef and the narcissistic role model. In fact, the "me" that appears first in Me and Orson Welles also appears last in the story, long after the Welles character has evaporated into legend.

Kaplow's novel is also clearly attuned to this particular aspect of Welles-fixation; on the book's second page, Richard Samuels, the teenage hero, is already gazing into a mirror and comparing himself to Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and Fred Astaire (a conceit that the film’s casting of teenage heartthrob Zac Efron in the part makes halfway plausible). But Kaplow complicates and muddles matters somewhat with some of his ethnic details—most notably, by making his Richard Jewish and then having Welles improbably call his Jewish set designer Samuel Leve a "credit-stealing, son-of-a-bitch Jew" after the latter complains about not getting credit for his work in Caesar’s program, which leads Richard to leap to Leve's defense.

The screenwriters, however, omit virtually all of the novel's Jewish details (including even the character of Marc Blitzstein, who composed Caesar's incidental music), and given the particular story Linklater has in mind, this simplification actually clarifies the proceedings. The credit dispute remains in the story, but without the intervention of either anti-Semitism or Richard—whose own battle with Welles crops up later.

Welles mythopoeia may help to explain why the least researched of all Welles biographies, David Thomson's Rosebud—that is to say, the one most invented out of whole cloth—is commonly regarded by nonspecialists as the best, presumably meaning the most apt and insightful even while it imputes various failings to the man (including racism, classism, and declining productivity) that have no demonstrable basis in fact. Two characteristically unsupported sentences in Rosebud: "There is sometimes a perilous proximity of old-fashioned racial stereotype and yearning sympathy" (posited in Welles's affection for some black people and black music) and "Welles...always liked his revolutionaries to be sophisticated and well-heeled" (an assertion refuted by the Brazilian fishermen and communists he insisted on hanging out with in 1942, to the consternation of some "well-heeled" government officials and studio spies).

But because Thomson is clever enough to know what some people want to believe about Welles as well as what they prefer to ignore, the falsity of his portrait "rings true" according to the myth, and for many people it continues to hold water. To some extent, Kaplow seems to be banking on a similar trait in his own readers.

By his own account, Kaplow's hero, Richard Samuels, grew out of his efforts to imagine Arthur Anderson, the young lute player who appeared in a famous photograph of the Welles stage production, increasing his age by about three years so that his fictional counterpart could become Welles's romantic rival. Correspondingly, Kaplow's curiosity about what gave Welles's fascist Caesar its political resonance and impact in 1937 is minimal, so that one may be left wondering, in spite of his and Linklater's meticulous recreations, why the production proved to be such a smash success. (John Houseman's memoir Run-through, clearly used as a major resource, conveys this period flavor much better.) And the film also sometimes reverts to standard-issue shorthand in establishing late-Depression atmosphere—such as employing a pastiche of Benny Goodman's famous January 16, 1938, Carnegie Hall performance of "Sing, Sing, Sing," perhaps the single most overused emblem of swing music employed in American movies. (The second most overused emblem, Duke Ellington’s "Solitude," is also used.) More generally, it gives us the attributes of a young Welles that might inspire a teenager's envy and imagination while omitting many of the other traits that would complicate this scenario.

There's general agreement that Welles was self-absorbed. But one way of distinguishing mythopoeia from biography is whether or not his other distinguishing traits—such as his compulsive self-criticism (which could sometimes be even more severe than the charges of his detractors) and his desire to compensate for his self-absorption with certain forms of charm and generosity—are factored into the portrayal.

Me and Orson Welles (film and novel) is intermittently attentive to the latter but completely oblivious to the former, offering a Welles who insists on being called a genius and refuses any form of self-criticism. It also depicts him as a man who could nurse serious grudges over minor challenges to his authority—something my own research has failed to turn up. But insofar as Welles continues to be a shining beacon for the self-regard of others, the portrait hits a mythological bull's-eye.

[cinemabon]

They shot this film nearly two years ago (Feb 2008) and screened it at the Toronto Film Festival in fall of 2008. Distributors held up wide release of this film until just a month or so ago. Do you know the story behind why? Just wondered.

[Chris Knipp]

This is very interesting, of course, and more learned than my humble screed with its comparisons with the Kaplow book (which unfortunately i haven't read) and its reference to mythologizing in Lionel Trilling and theories about narcissism and fantasies of omnipotence. I think they're a bit pushed (if meant to refer to Linklater's and Zac Efron's Richard), though they might be stimulating to students discussing the film. What I strongly agree with and hope I brought out myself is that the film's raison d'etre is the historic staging of Julius Caesar, nicely recreated toward the end. I hope I made that clear.
The film is greatly assisted by much research into the original stage production I didn't specifically know that but it seemed likely.
[Welles[ often figures as someone who both licenses and then becomes the scapegoat for vanity that isn't entirely_or even necessarily_his own. Quite simply, many of those (especially males) who obsess on the "meaning" of "Orson" are actually looking for ways to negotiate their own narcissism and fantasies of omnipotence. This is a rather elaborate conceit, which is interesting and doubtless somehow relevant to the subject of Orson Welles, but whose relevance to ME AND ORSON WELLES I'm not so sure of. Note that the movie's Richard doesn't look into the mirror and compare himself to all the matinee idols and is rather more marked by confidence and enthusaism than narcism and fantasies of omnipotence.


The screenwriters, however, omit virtually all of the novel's Jewish details (including even the character of Marc Blitzstein, who composed Caesar's incidental music) I noticed that too; for instance Zac's character's name is Samuels -- but I did not mention it in my review not being aware of the novel's greater Jewish emphasis. Actually the girl Richard connects with before and after the events of the movie, played by Ms. Kazan, is obviously Jewish though.
Correspondingly, Kaplow's curiosity about what gave Welles's fascist Caesar its political resonance and impact in 1937 is minimal, so that one may be left wondering, in spite of his and Linklater's meticulous recreations, why the production proved to be such a smash success.This is true. However it's obvious just looking at the restaging that the production was very striking and stylish. It's success doesn't feel mysterious. Nor at that moment is it surprising that references to fascism would seem timely.
There's general agreement that Welles was self-absorbed. But one way of distinguishing mythopoeia from biography is whether or not his other distinguishing traits—such as his compulsive self-criticism (which could sometimes be even more severe than the charges of his detractors) and his desire to compensate for his self-absorption with certain forms of charm and generosity—are factored into the portrayal.Yeah, but here as in his discussion of Thomson's Rosebud book, Rosenbaum wanders rather far afield, seemingly forgetting that the film is focused on the collective effort and on the young man as much as on Welles. Focusing so much on Richard and on Welles as a romantic rival and a director, it can't deal with Welles' relentless self-criticism, which I suspect is something that became much more evident later in his career anyway than at this early stage. His charm and gestures of generosity are shown.

I have no idea why the release of the film was delayed two years. At least it got released.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
here as in his discussion of Thomson's Rosebud book, Rosenbaum wanders rather far afield, seemingly forgetting that the film is focused on the collective effort and on the young man as much as on Welles.
Rosenbaum might answer along these lines:
" Film is an integral part of life and the world, not an alternative to life or the world, and therefore is relevant to all sorts of things--the kinds of things I like to discuss in addition to film as film." (JR)

I think the essay is reflective of this approach.

[Chris Knipp]

No doubt, and it is a review too. I'm just jealous!