Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34213 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780306808340
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
In 1992, the first publication of This Is Orson Welles brought a priceless document to light. In the late '60s and early '70s, filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich had conducted extensive interviews with Welles, but a number of circumstances--including the director's decision to compose an autobiography that he never got around to writing--kept the interviews out of the public eye. Edited and annotated by Jonathan Rosenbaum, these conversations give wonderful insights into Welles's craft and personality. He discusses his forays into acting, producing, and writing as well as directing, his confidences and insecurities, and his plans for film projects that were either never made or only partially completed. He also offers insights into the triumph of Citizen Kane and later masterpieces like The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight. His defense of his controversial adaptation of Kafka's The Trial is so fascinating that readers might want to rush out and rent the film.

While the book is worth owning just for this 322-page interview, it is also full of other material that is equally revealing. Rosenbaum presents a meticulous chronology of Welles's life, closely following his day-to-day activities from his birth in 1915 to his death in 1985. Anyone who thinks that Welles was an essentially lazy and profligate artist will be astonished at how hard he worked and how much he accomplished, even after the completion of Citizen Kane. Another treat found in the book is a detailed description--complete with rare photographic stills--of the original Magnificent Ambersons, Welles's impressive follow-up to Kane, which can now be seen only in a tragically truncated version.

This 1998 reissue of the volume contains a fond new introduction by Bogdanovich and another crucial piece of Welles minutia, excerpts from his 58-page memo to Universal Pictures about the editing of Touch of Evil. Forty years after its composition, the material in this memo has been used to create a restored "director's cut" of the film. With such grand material between two covers, This Is Orson Welles is the most informative and entertaining book available on one of the 20th century's greatest artists. --Raphael Shargel

From Publishers Weekly
This title is a potpourri of material by and about Welles (1915-1985), who wrote, directed and starred in the classic Citizen Kane , played a masterful Harry Lime in The Third Man and wrote, directed and acted in other films that have garnered a devoted if relatively small following. The bulk of the book consists of a series of interviews conducted by director/author Bogdanovich with Welles (interspersed with letters, memos and telegrams), as well as a chronology of Welles's life and career, a description of the scenes and dialogue cut by studio bosses from Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons and notes by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum (which often correct Welles's entertaining but sometimes inaccurate stories). Welles and Bogdanovich's conversation develops interestingly--like the conversation in Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre --and is sprinkled with discussions of Welles's radio career, movies and observations on film and other directors. For example, about Alfred Hitchcock, Welles says: "There's a certain icy calculation in a lot of Hitch's work that puts me off. He says he doesn't like actors, and sometimes it looks as though he doesn't like people ." Photos .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This is the transcript of interviews with Welles that filmmaker Bogdanovich conducted over a ten-year period. Throughout, Welles reminisces about his remarkable career. But along with his memories of the entertainment world, he offers his thoughts on everything from writers and literature to comic strips, bullfighting, and gangsters. The book also contains over 500 black-and-white photos, a year-by-year chronology of Welles's life, and a lengthy excerpt from the original script of The Magnificent Ambersons that was deleted from the film. With his revolutionary work in radio and film, Welles proved himself to be one of the greatest creative and visionary talents of his time, but these conversations also reveal him to be a true Renaissance man. Bogdanovich and editor Rosenbaum have done a great service by making this material available after years in storage. It was worth the wait. Absolutely essential for all film collections, and biography collections should strongly consider.
- Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Orson Welles: The Man and his Movies, Larger Than Life
I commend to the book above, an interview with Peter Bogdanovich.
Although I'm not a huge fan of the latter's movies (with the exception of "Paper Moon," which I loved ever since it came out when I was eight, and fell in love with tomboy Tatum O'Neill forthrightly), I have begun reading about half of this book over the past few days, and find it better than my previous favourite, the Hitchcock/Truffaut book. Of course, much favoured above Wilder/Crowe, namely because of Crowe's incessant name dropping of "Jerry Maguire" and "Tom Cruise" every other irritating sentence, which prevented the reader from finding out what
Wilder had on *his* mind.

What impresses me about the Welles/Bogdanovich volume is the raucous sense of humour Welles brings to the conversation, always as lively and as larger-than-life as Welles was. Also, Bogdanovich has laced the book with pertinent interviews, articles, anecdotes that elucidate certain points of the text, as well as Welles' lines cut from "Magnificent Ambersons" and the long memorandum he wrote to Universal studio chiefs and cc'd to Chuck Heston, trying to save what I consider his masterwork,
"Touch of Evil" from falling prey to overzealous editing by indifferent studio hacks.

But most of all, I am touched that when all the world was dumping on Welles, when he was being derided as a has-been and a spendthrift, that up-and-coming director Bogdanovich gave him his friendship and accorded him the respect he was so shamefully denied. Even Pauline Kael couldn't resist savaging Welles, and she wrote a particularly nasty and libelous article that Welles didn't write any of the screenplay to "Citizen Kane."

Of all Hollywood's sins (and I retain in memory a cross-indexed catalogue of them), the fact that even when Welles started getting "lifetime achievement" accolades, he still couldn't get any financing for his movie projects, on which he worked until his last days, leaves the bitterest taste in my mouth. There must be certain people destined to the lowest rungs of hell -- or at least purgatory -- for creating a world in which Orson Welles' last paid acting role was as the voice of the evil planet in a "Transformers" movie.

Definitive Word On An American Filmmaker
Some have criticized this book, which Welles felt was the definitive word on his films, by stating that it never deals with Orson's children or his failed marriages. That has nothing to do with what this book is about. If you are looking for a biography then look elsewhere. This is Orson Welles talking about his films and his life in film and what he was trying to do and say. When I finished reading I knew that for once Welles was getting the final word on his films and that what he said was honest. If you want to really know him as an artist I would strongly recommend reading this book. It's a very fast read even though it's crammed full of insights. As a bonus it also contains the shooting script for Magnificent Ambersons which would have exceeded Citizen Kane in its beauty if RKO hadn't cut it to shreds. I strongly recommend this book.

Excellent, lots of information and source material
The first good thing about this book is that the interviews are by Peter Bogdanovich who is also a movie maker. He knows as much about movies as Orson and is not afraid to challenge him. There is a lot of source material, e.g. notes/letters/memos written by Orson and other people he worked with which give a very personal feeling to the overall book. Also the fact that the interviews were conducted over a number of years (we are lucky the book ever got published) lends a sense of intimacy.

The full version of the Magnificent Ambersons and a very extensive listing of all of Orson's works make this a must for any Orson fan and indeed for any serious fan of the movies.