Me and Orson Welles

 

Director Richard Linklater

Linklater on the set with Zac Efron and Richard McKay

Author Robert Kaplow

Arthur Anderson and Orson Welles in Julius Caesar, 1937

ME AND ORSON WELLES                        B+                                                                          USA  Great Britain  (114 mi)  2008  ‘Scope  d: Richard Linklater

“How the hell do I top this?”   —Orson Welles (Christian McKay)

Richard Linklater movies tend to have a modernist bent to them, where you can feel at times as if you’re lost in a minefield of existential drift.  But that is certainly not the case here in what amounts to a charming and thoroughly enjoyable piece of historical nostalgia, set in 1937 when Orson Welles was attempting to open his Mercury Theater production with a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a heavily cut, empty-staged yet daring, politically-charged stage adaptation set in Mussolini’s fascist Italy, with Welles playing the part of Brutus.  Linklater is a sincere admirer of Welles, calling him the patron saint of independent filmmakers.  With wall-to-wall jazz music and a typewriter style opening title sequence, one would swear we are about to witness a Woody Allen movie, but we are soon introduced to a strange new world, all led by the larger-than-life persona of the young 22-year old Welles who has yet to make a single movie and is full of swagger and theatrical bluster.  The brilliant performance by British actor Christian McKay, an alumnus of the Royal Shakespeare Company who was discovered when he played Welles in a one-man play, Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles, on a small stage in London, just nails the all-too-perfect speech intonations and sardonic facial expressions of Welles, a young genius child prodigy who has yet to take the world by storm.  Alongside Richard Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in Bennett Miller’s CAPOTE (2005), this is one of the great biographical film performances, though completely ignored by the Academy, where Welles’ blustery self-assurance and bullying sarcastic wit are on full display, obviously a man on a mission who is just getting his first taste of his own powers, literally browbeating his cast into submission, refusing to accept anyone else’s way except his own, quickly showing them the door if they refuse, so everyone defers to his judgment.  After all, he takes credit for every idea, even Shakespeare’s, calling it an Orson Welles production of Shakespeare, where he gets top billing, deleting characters and scenes on a whim whenever the mood suits him, but also making everyone feel that despite the fact they are receiving no salary, they are just a few days away from being a part of theater history. 

Interesting that this is the very first Shakespeare performance on Broadway, ever, where Welles is like a traveling road show that rolls in and out of town, driven by the breeze of destiny, yet the “Me” of the title concerns a small bit player, a coming-of-age 17-year old New Jersey high school student Richard (teen idol Zac Efron, working outside his comfort zone), who dreams of becoming an actor, skipping school, wandering downtown, and happening by chance to see Welles on the street in front of the theater, playing up to his enormous ego, all lies and pretense, but he wins a role as the charming, lute-strumming (it’s actually a ukulele) Lucius in the modern-dress revival of the play which is opening in a week.  Adapted by a husband and wife team of Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo Jr. based upon a New York Times best-selling, meticulously researched historical novel by Robert Kaplow, a writer and New Jersey high school English teacher who was inspired by an archival photograph of a young 15-year old actor (Arthur Anderson) strumming the lute next to Welles onstage, imagining just what he must have been thinking at the time.  Linklater cleverly mixes fact and fiction in this portrait of the artist as a young man, as the film is limited to this memorable week of rehearsals, providing a window into the world of theater, showing the passionate camaraderie of those weary participants, very attentive to period detail, revealing behind-the-scenes vignettes of the principal players, but especially Welles who dominates every scene, as even when the cast sits around doing nothing, “We’re waiting for Orson,” his aura remains evident at all times.  To learn his part, Richard is referred to Sonja (Claire Danes), the all-purpose, exceedingly ambitious personal assistant who is likely already sleeping with Welles (along with pretty much every other female), who has promised her a chance to meet David O. Selznick and an opportunity to play in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939).  Discovering her last name is Jones, Richard serenades her with a line from Rodgers and Hart, Have You Met Miss Jones?, which might actually have spawned the director’s later interest in making Blue Moon (2025). Thoroughly flirtatious, leading to grownup sex, the two become fast friends, which they remain throughout the film, though she trusts Richard simply because he has no clout, so she can be open and honest with him, guiding him through the egos and everyday disasters that take place each day on the set. 

Recalling the immersive nature of Cameron Crowe’s ALMOST FAMOUS (2000), with an observant young teenage reporter surrounded by a brave new world of rock ‘n’ roll, Efron is not very good in the play, but that hardly matters, as he’s playing a young novice who’s not supposed to be very good, so he fits comfortably into the production, enthralled by the world around him, which features excellent performances all around.  In perhaps the film’s best scene, Welles whisks “the kid” into a cab with him on route to the radio studio where he observes Welles perform a skit on a live radio broadcast, but along the way Welles drops his guard and reads him a passage from Booth Tarkington’s novel The Magnificent Ambersons, where he mourns that “Ambersons is about how everything gets taken away from you,” a stunning personal admission considering the Hollywood brass did exactly that to his career just a few short years later, destroying his original ending on The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and effectively ending his Hollywood career.  When Welles ad-libs an Ambersons passage on the radio, adding a delicious soliloquy for himself, he’s profoundly seeing his career years ahead of himself.  Outside of Welles, James Tupper is absolutely brilliant as the suave and ever cordial James Cotton, the man behind the scenes of so many of Welles’ successes, Ben Chaplin plays an anxiety-ridden leading man George Coulouris, quickly whisking his mistress offstage when his wife arrives, Eddie Marsan plays the constantly perplexed theater manager and old friend, John Houseman, while Zoe Kazan (Elia Kazan’s granddaughter) plays Gretta, an aspiring young writer Richard befriends, helping her get published in The New Yorker.   While Richard is quickly informed by Sonja of his status, “You’re not getting anything except the opportunity to be sprayed by Orson’s spit,” Orson has a habit of initially bolstering each actor’s confidence with flowery praise, such as seeing “images of magnificence” in their eyes before bringing them back down to earth with his rapid fire rounds of terse criticism.  Thankfully, Linklater does show various scenes from the theatrical premiere, all of which feel like a special treat, so the audience is rewarded and never for a moment feels cheated in this film.   

While the film was a box office bomb, premiering in Toronto after select footage was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and not released in the U.S. until a year later, this is something completely different for Linklater, yet it’s essential filmmaking, upbeat and thoroughly enjoyable, like a light at the end of the tunnel following the dark times of the Depression, beautifully extolling the glories and virtues of still being young, filled with idealistic hope and promise, with the film suggesting, “it’s all ahead of us.”  Offering an ambitious, behind-the-scenes glimpse of a theater production in the making, this spirited film always feels balanced, intelligent and amusing, filled with an unbridled wit and humor, along with a select few poor souls who unfortunately feel the ignominious wrath of an undeterred mad hatter in charge, yet the focus doesn’t always swirl around Orson Welles, the man who commands the salacious interest in every scene, where it’s hard to take your eyes off such a brilliant rendering of his overwhelming personality.  Instead, the week’s events are seen and filtered through the somewhat bland eyes (think Tab Hunter) of the young thespian who’s still taking classes in high school (actually found sleeping in class, due to his late night carousing), an idealistic, wide-eyed everyman character, just a few years younger than Welles himself, who instantly falls in love with Sonja, and whose life is forever altered by this experience.  Beautifully shot in London, New York, and the Isle of Man by Mike Leigh’s superb cinematographer Dick Pope, the film benefits from some plot twists, capturing the essence of Welles as a rising star and the beginning of the Welles legend, exhaustively researched, with a very beautiful reconstruction of the post-depression era of the 1930’s, a period where art and culture merged together.  Perhaps not up to the caliber of Cassavetes’ brilliant Opening Night (1977), or Chaplin’s LIMELIGHT (1952), both the ultimate masterworks in revealing the wrenching behind-the-scenes activities of a stage production, or even Desplechin’s delightfully offbeat ESTHER KAHN (2000), this film is nonetheless fueled by the supercharged performance of a young, unheralded actor who perfectly captures the indomitable spirit of Orson Welles, a legendary, larger-than-life figure who is one of America’s greatest and most controversial artists.   

The Paperboy

THE PAPERBOY                    B                     

USA   (107 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  d:  Lee Daniels

The recipient of some of the worst reviews in print, a train wreck alleged to be one of the worst and most forgettable films of the year, this is instead a highly entertaining and juicy film noir, a candidate for a spot on John Waters Top Ten films of the year, with enough repressed sexual dysfunction and lurid southern atmosphere to rival any Tennessee Williams play.  Reportedly offered to Pedro Almodóvar as his first English-speaking feature film, after toying with the screenplay he eventually declined, but certainly the raunchy tone of the material is there, based on a novel by Pete Dexter who along with the director helped adapt the screenplay, which is unashamedly trashy, B-movie material.  Some may find the boundaries of bad taste pushed to the fullest here, yet that is the point of the film, that people require their “news” to be sanitized and cleaned up beyond description so that it is no longer recognizable from its origins, where truth is a virtue that exists only in concept, as there are so many powers in play desperate to spin and alter the news to suit their readers.  While there is no attempt to add sanctimonious morality or a message to this film, but this is ascertained strictly from the title of the film, and as it concerns a family where the patriarchal father (Scott Glenn) runs a newspaper.  Set in a small town in Florida (though filmed in Louisiana) during the late 60’s when New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm can be seen delivering a speech on television, where by the early 70’s she was one of the founding members of the Black Congressional Caucus and even initiated a bid for the Presidency in 1972, surviving several assassination attempts, running as the ideological opposite of race segregationalist candidate from Alabama, Governor George Wallace, whose picture may be seen on the walls of law enforcement officials.  This sets the scene for the existing racism that routinely exists in the region, where Macy Gray steals the thunder from some of the bigger names, playing Anita, the family maid, who takes the place of the missing mother to Jack (Zac Efron), an impressionable teenage kid just out of high school who also happens to be a paperboy.   

Like a modern day MILDRED PIERCE (1945), Anita opens the film awkwardly recounting her personal recollections of a local murder to a journalist, where the film is a flashback of colorful events that she continues to narrate throughout, often with a bewildered amusement.  Jack’s older brother is Ward, Matthew McConaughey, working for a Miami newspaper, returning to his home town accompanied by a fellow black reporter, Yardley (David Oyelowo), supposedly from London, where both are following the information offered to them by Charlotte, Nicole Kidman, who believes the convicted murderer is innocent.  Kidman, channeling Karen Black from FIVE EASY PIECES (1970), who interestingly did all her own hair and make up due to budget restraints, is wonderful throughout as an oversexed Barbie doll who writes letters to convicted criminals, becoming especially infatuated with the letter of the cop murderer, Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), believing she has finally found true love.  When this motley crew visits the prisoner, the over the top sexual explicitness of the visit is unprecedented, where Charlotte literally gives herself to him, though there is no touching.  Her sexual bravado instantly endures her to Jack, who’s never seen anything like her, who thinks of her constantly as the woman of his dreams, where she literally becomes his wish fulfillment fantasy.  But instead she instantly befriends Jack, like a little brother, whose coming-of-age experience may actually be the film’s central narrative.  Early in the film big brother Ward drives the action, where his regional knowledge allows him to understand the backwards gutter mentality of many of the local good ‘ol boys, where sleaziness is something they all seem to have in common, though Yardley finds this particular local attribute somewhat pathetic, where his education has allowed him broader views, but so many residents in small towns only know their own regionalism, as for them, no outside world exists.  Jack interestingly makes the news in amusing fashion, where after a candidly sexual conversation with Charlotte at the beach, he takes a swim and gets repeatedly stung by jelly fish, where the instant cure is urination on the affected areas (similarly expressed in a Friends episode where Joey steps up to the plate and rescues Monica), which Charlotte publicly and heroically performs, making all the editions published by his own father.     

While some of the best scenes exude personal familiarity between Anita and Jack, it’s also clear the murky atmosphere under the surface is seething with a suffocating claustrophobia, often retreating into the swamps for more local color, as every character in the film has been seriously damaged in some deeply affecting way, where Jack follows his brother’s footsteps until Ward gets into a heap of trouble where he barely makes it out alive, the victim of some starkly graphic, criminally inspired, brutally sadistic gay bondage, literally forcing little brother to assert himself more due to his medical circumstances.  Jack is the victim of the prevailing racial attitudes where he stupidly embarrasses himself in front of Anita, but also carries the baggage of abandonment issues due to the loss of his mother, while Ward is on a self-destructive bent driven by his inability to accept the fact he’s gay. Charlotte has such a low degree of self-esteem that she hangs on literally every word of some of the lowest and most depraved men on earth, driven to the point of delusion by her need to be desired by men.  When Jack offers his love, she sees it as little more than child’s play.  Yardley, like a modern day Mr. Tibbs, is forced to take advantage of job opportunities that have routinely been denied blacks, even if it means stepping on the backs of others to get there, losing his moral compass in the process.  Hillary Van Wetter, on the other hand, is a swamp creature that lives with the alligators, snakes, and incessant swarm of bugs, a primeval force of nature that we’ve come to accept in Robert Mitchum’s roles in The Night of the Hunter (1955) or CAPE FEAR (1962).  Brought together by uncommon circumstances, they all seem to bring out the worst in one another, where the insidious nature of man is portrayed as little more than that of lowly animals, where it’s questionable who we are and what we’ve evolved into.  The film is more interested in capturing the right tone and atmosphere, like CHINATOWN (1974) set in the swamps, filled with Mario Grigorov’s original score and a collection of standard R & B hits from the 60’s, where the interplay between characters is interesting and often hilarious, leading to an unvarnished and uncompromisingly thrilling finale, where the unexpected raises its ugly head and proclaims victory, where many of us may be wondering what happened, and how did all this rarely seen material suddenly appear before our eyes?  Daring and devious throughout, where Kidman especially is another force of nature onscreen, credit is due for having the fortitude to approach this material head on without studio imposed concessions.