Author, What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career
This week, Ira spoke with Joseph McBride, author of What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career. In this outsider episode of Ira’s Everything Bagel, Joseph talks about his third Welles book, which throws a new light on the famed filmmaker’s approach to Hollywood, budgets, and finishing projects; his reasons for living (and working) abroad; how Welles hired the author to appear in his movie, “The Other Side of the Wind,” and why production was so slow; why, contrary to popular belief, Welles never gave up making films; and the impossible relationship between Welles and the studio system.
Joseph McBride began writing about Orson Welles when he was nineteen. He is the author of the critical studies Orson Welles (1972; revised and expanded edition, 1996) and Orson Welles: Actor and Director (1977), as well as the 2006 book (updated January 2022) What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career. He spent more than five years (1970-76) playing a film critic in Welles’s feature, “The Other Side of the Wind” (completed and released in 2018, with McBride as a consultant). The National Society of Film Critics gave its Film Heritage Award “To the team of producers, editors, restorers, technicians and cineastes who labored for decades to bring Orson Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind” to completion for a new generation of movie lovers.” McBride also appears in Welles’s 1982 documentary Filming, “The Trial” (first shown in 2002). He moderated the “Working with Welles” seminar for the American Film Institute and the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood, 1978-79.
To order: https://tinyurl.com/5busreke
Other books by Joseph McBride:
Billy Wilder: https://tinyurl.com/2kjrk32u
John F. Kennedy: https://tinyurl.com/55w8hwhr
Coen Brothers: https://tinyurl.com/avhkwxey
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