My Lunches with Orson

by Peter Biskind

  HJ: I love the older New York skyscrapers.

  OW: I don’t think that most of them are any good, either. I think they were only good at the very start, with [Louis] Sullivan. And those buildings weren’t skyscrapers.

  HJ: You don’t think that the Chrysler Building—

  OW: I like the Chrysler Building, but it’s a little kitschy. A little Art Deco.

  HJ: I love Art Deco.

  OW: I hate it, you see? I deeply hate it.

  HJ: So does my mother. She always said it was the maid’s furniture.

  OW: The maid’s furniture is what it is. I knew that Deco was bad—let me be modest—when I was as young as fourteen! And I was so happy after the World War, when people started building other things. I said, “Oh, thank God! You know, there goes another one of those awful things down!” Deco was what I had against all the great ocean liners. I loved going on those ships, but I used to say, “What a shame that they aren’t like the ones they made in 1890,” you know? The older ships were wonderful to look at.

  HJ: But you like Lubitsch. And he uses the Deco look.

  OW: All the time. But I don’t think Lubitsch has a strong visual sense. He wasn’t interested in the sets. I watched him shooting, and it was all about the actors and what they’re saying.

  21. “Once in our lives, we had a national theater.”

  In which Orson is offered a job directing a feature about the contretemps over The Cradle Will Rock. But the script, by Ring Lardner, Jr., is awash in Old Left pieties, and he wonders if he will be able to control the film.

  * * *

  HENRY JAGLOM: So what’s new?

  ORSON WELLES: There is a young man, thirty-three years old, handsome, tremendously intelligent, and rich as hell, who financed a terrible picture called Wide Blood.

  HJ: Not Wise Blood?

  OW: Wise Blood, I guess, whatever it is.

  HJ: Huston’s film. I know who you’re talking about, Michael Fitzgerald.

  OW: Yeah, for $900,000. So he tells me, “We have a script written by Ring Lardner, Jr.” And I read it. Not because I really wanted to, but because I’m in it—there’s a leading character named Orson Welles. It’s about the night we moved The Cradle Will Rock from the Maxine Elliott to the Venice Theatre. It’s got a very simple MGM plot. The kind with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, you know: What are you gonna do when the bad guys close the theater? If you knuckle under to the bad guys, aren’t you gonna throw everybody out of work? The hell with that—the show is gonna go on. Rent a theater, find a piano. Open the show. That’s all the movie is. But I am shown in the worst light of any character, because the guy’s source is Houseman. Offensive. I said, “This is terrible.” My problem is, should I direct it?

  HJ: Was Lardner’s script true to what happened, aside from the fact that you’re presented in a bad light?

  OW: Yes, it’s accurate, in fact. And they propose to start as soon as they can. I said yes, because in the last analysis, I am the hero, and a glamorous one. I sat them down at this table, and I said, “Would you sit still for my beginning the movie as I am now, saying, ‘There was a young man called Orson Welles, age twenty-four, and I don’t know him at all. I know his memories—the ones that have survived—but I really don’t know this guy. He may have been the biggest pain in the butt, and I know what the other people who were in this story are going to tell you about him, or I think I do, but I’m going to show you what I think happened. The basic facts.’” So they agree to everything, which is a great problem for me, because I’m having second thoughts. I’m saying to myself, “This is terrible. I cannot, in my old age, live off pieces of my youth.”

  HJ: What budget are we talking about?

  OW: Four million.

  HJ: Four million! Wow! You should do it.

  OW: My other problem is Ring Lardner. I don’t know if I can cope with him as the author. Because I have to have a free hand, including rehearsals and everything else. I like the way the story is constructed, because it’s such a clear-cut heroic story. But not the way it’s written. As the movie stands now, it has a great fault. Very easy to fix. Ring Lardner’s membership in the Communist Party is leaking all over the pages. People are talking about what defying the government means for the revolution of the world, and so on. And I think all that needs saying is that once in our lives, in America, we had a national theater, and that padlocking the doors was the end of it, and the end of the Depression as a subject for the American theater.

  HJ: Who’s the cast?

  OW: Amy Irving, David Steinberg, and Rupert Everett.

  HJ: Of course! Amy is married to Spielberg. What’s his first name?

  OW: You need Reagan cards.

  HJ: David Spielberg? No.

  OW: Steinberg—yes.

  HJ: Spielberg, not Steinberg.

  OW: Spielberg!… It’s David Spiel—Steven! It’s Steven!

  HJ: Amy is playing Virginia Nicholson, whom you were still married to then. And Steinberg as Blitzstein, and Rupert as the young you.

  OW: The starting date will be the first week in February, next year. I have no problem with Amy’s pregnancy. Because I suddenly remembered that Virginia was pregnant. So if she starts to show, I’ll put a line in about it. I could easily fall in love with her. But as you know, I don’t believe in directors falling in love with their leading ladies. And I’m glad that I’m at an age when it would be indecent.

  HJ: So you don’t need any other casting for The Cradle Will Rock? You’ll shoot at Cinecittà? And do exteriors in New York?

  OW: Yes.

  HJ: And what about the march?

  OW: If I come back to America, I’m going to do only their feet. Because I began thinking of how these extras are going to react, and how one bad face, out of the hundreds, could be—I’m just scared that I cannot control the expressions of so many people. So I thought I’d make a little Eisenstein montage.

  HJ: Are you going to be able to get the contract you want?

  OW: I’m assured of it, but I haven’t gotten it yet. I talked to Fitzgerald and said, “You know, your letter says I have absolute artistic control. But your two other producers are not friendly to me.”

  HJ: Who?

  OW: You know, the asshole from Animal House, a real shit.

  HJ: John Landis. Well, let me be of some help here. He’s a person I can influence.

  OW: Kill him.

  HJ: No, no, I don’t want to. He’s a really decent guy. What’s he done?

  OW: Won’t leave me alone. Keeps phoning me and giving me advice on how to make the movie. In a very patronizing way. Everything he says is dumb!

  HJ: And who’s the other? Not Folsey, George Folsey. His father shot a lot of Minnelli musicals—Meet Me in St. Louis. They’re not coming to Rome, are they?

  OW: Oh, yes, they’re coming with their wives. To shop and all that. Unless they’re in jail.

  HJ: Oh, right, that Twilight Zone thing. The Vic Morrow thing, killed by a helicopter blade.

  OW: You know that both of them phoned me to give me advice on the script the day they were indicted? On the day they were indicted!

  HJ: You would think they would have better things to do than to call—

  OW: Exactly. Well, anyway, I said to Michael Fitzgerald, “Pretty soon I’m going to have to have a contract, because you’re making your deal. And artistic control in a note from you is not the same as a contract. I must have final cut.” And he says, “No argument. I’ve told them.” Apparently, when he told Paramount, they said, “This is a collaborative art form.” And Michael said, “Not with Orson Welles. Final cut or nothing.” He claims we’re set. But there may be a question about his authority. I have to have a commitment from everybody. I will not make the movie without it, and I know that I’ve got them by the balls, because of all the money they’ve put into it already. But unless it’s in the contract, they have tricks.

  HJ: I’m telling you, Landis is a good guy.

  OW: I already know I’m gonna have Mi
chael on the set from early morning till late at night every day. There was already a moment when he got mad at me. He asked me a useless question, and I said to him, “Why do you ask me that question?” So I got a letter from him saying, “I am not John Houseman. I can ask any question I want.”

  HJ: If he’s turning it all over to you, why does he want to be on the set?

  OW: Because he has nothing to do. It’s fine, just as long as he doesn’t sidle up to me and say, “Wouldn’t it be better if you did it this way? Walk that way? Emphasize that a little more? We don’t quite feel—” The answer to that always is, “That’s very interesting. Yes, I’ll have to think about that.” Nobody has told him that the real producers, in the old days, never came on the set. Ever. Because on the set, the director is the boss. It would make the producer look like nothing. You went to their office. That was their way of showing they were somebody.

  HJ: What’s the status of it now?

  OW: Ring Lardner is sending me, on Monday, a rewrite of his first twenty pages, based on what I’ve said. I, in the meantime, have knocked myself out writing the first twenty pages. And I hope my twenty pages crosses his twenty pages in the mail, so mine don’t seem to be an answer to his. I cannot get the producer to understand the delicacy of a situation in which I am not the coauthor.

  HJ: But why can’t you be the coauthor?

  OW: In a sense, I have to be. Having been witness to these events, and never in my life having made somebody else’s script. But I can’t get that through to him. And Ring with me would be like … you know.

  HJ: So you don’t want him at all. Well, what does Fitzgerald say when you talk to him about it?

  OW: “Anything you want. And Ring will be there with you, and so on.” What am I gonna say to him?

  HJ: You have to persuade the producers that Ring is superfluous, without hurting his feelings.

  OW: No way I can do it without hurting his feelings. I shouldn’t be put in that situation. I really shouldn’t.

  HJ: Did you say that to Fitzgerald?

  OW: I sat with him the other night, alone, and he just wouldn’t listen. All he wanted to do was beg me to have Ring there. As though, just having the screenwriter and the director together, somehow—

  HJ: The movie would magically come into being?

  OW: Yeah, ’cause that’s the way John Huston did it. In Under the Volcano, which Fitzgerald also produced. And I said to him, “You must understand that John and I are two different kinds of directors. He has been gainfully employed, without interruption, for all these years. Because if he doesn’t get what he wants, he goes ahead with the picture anyway.”

  HJ: And gets what he wants on the next one.

  OW: Yes. But I can’t, you know?

  HJ: Because there may not be a next one.

  OW: The only thing I can say for myself is that I do not have on my record a single clear-cut artistic failure. And that can’t be said of many people. This situation is so unfair to me! They didn’t ask me who should write the script. Ring is ready to do anything I say, but, really, he ought to be paid off and leave. And they want to start now, you see. They’re pushing me: “Where are your pages?” So my alternative is to have three weeks’ rehearsal and improvise an awful lot of things. But it’s the kind of story that I think is better planned, even if you then depart from the plan.

  HJ: Can’t you get them to use your twenty pages?

  OW: Well, I’ll see what he’s done. But the first twenty pages have to be my twenty pages, unchanged. I think there’s little question that mine are going to be better than his. It must be my picture. I cannot allow a piece of my own life to be told by somebody else. I don’t even approve of using a piece of my life, because of my own peculiar prejudices in that regard. And here I am, being frankly autobiographical, and depending on my memory, which may be unreliable.

  HJ: Why are they averse to a cowriting credit?

  OW: That’s been suggested. That he should come and work with me—in the traditional way of the writer with the director, you see. And I’ve got a great way to counter that, because I can say, “These things concern my memory of a real event.” I mean, Ring Lardner? An ex-Communist, who still has his heart in the party, and a WASP. This film should be filled with Jewish-Italian ambiance. It’s New York. Let’s have a latinity in it, a little salsa.

  HJ: They ought to be giving you a contract, because you’re now actually writing without one.

  OW: Or any explicit agreement on my part I want the picture made. Because if I can’t correct the script and casting, I don’t think the picture should be made. I started to say, “Well, to save money we should get rid of Lardner.” And they said, “You mustn’t think about money.” And I said, “You want me to make a picture under four million. I have to think about it. No matter how smart the producers are.” “You just be the artist, and direct, and Ring’ll write the script.” Of course, I have no idea what Ring is gonna say about my pages.

  HJ: What if he says, “No, I don’t like them?” Now they’re confronted with the writer they’ve hired saying, “Orson’s pages are too, uh, subjective. You need an outside—”

  OW: Or he’ll say, “Orson is trying to make himself look more sympathetic.” I’d say, “You’re goddamn right I am!”

  HJ: You told me a very good thing, which you should emphasize with them, that you’ll make yourself unsympathetic in those areas where it will be good theatrically.

  OW: My crime, you see, according to this script, is that I was willing to risk these people, who’d been out of work for all this time, put ’em on the street, for the sake of my principles.

  HJ: It’s economic immorality, an artist’s self-absorption.

  OW: You know, at the time, everyone involved with the production expressed the automatic knee-jerk reaction of the progressive: “Free speech cannot be stopped,” and so on. Marc [Blitzstein], my wife, and myself were biting our fingernails. I was saying, “We’re all for moving it but are we being cruel? Nobody’s stopping to think that all these people are gonna be out of work.” I kept thinking we could save the situation, somehow. I said, “We don’t have to make a big drama out of this. Remember, I can go to Harry Hopkins, and we can arrange something, I’m sure. The administration doesn’t want this to happen. This is the Justice Department and the Congress. They’re out to kill the Federal Theatre, and they’re going to do it.” But they padlocked the theater. And we decided.

  HJ: So padlocking the theater was the last straw. You figured they were going to kill it one way or another anyway, so why not blow the whole thing up by moving the play.

  OW: I have to explain, in the script, why Houseman agreed to all of this.

  HJ: You mean moving the play to the Venice Theatre and—

  OW: Without telling the truth, that he saw this move would make him a Broadway producer. And the hell with everybody. Because that would be really cruel. But I have very interesting proof of his thinking, because some fans have been sending me old programs of my plays. Just recently, I got one for the Voodoo Macbeth, in which you can only find Houseman’s name on the back page, with the man who turns on the lights. All Houseman did on the original production was take care of the box office.

  HJ: You mean he thought that the publicity would make his reputation.

  OW: Recently, some producers who wanted me to do something or other, wrote me a letter. They planned to do a handful of plays for Home Box Office. And they said, “One of our plays for the year is the Houseman-Welles Cradle Will Rock.” And I can’t bring myself to answer them. It stops me, every time. Because I want to read them a little lecture. And I can’t do that, you know. After we had moved Cradle to a commercial theater, we were making a fortune—we financed the Mercury Theatre with that money—you suddenly had on the first page: “Mr. John Houseman.”

  HJ: So his goal was really what you were accused of, exploiting the situation to forward your career, making you seem like a ruthless person.

  Getting back to your contract o
r lack of contract, it is inevitable that what they will try to do—it’s just the nature of the beast—is get you to work as long as possible without signing you. Orson, you’re going to have to be a little hard-nosed now.

  OW: We’re talking. Fitzgerald says, “Well, I want to do what I’ve done on my other two pictures. Everybody who’s important to the picture—sound, and executives, and the art director—will get a piece of the picture proportionate to his effort, and so on.” And I said, “That’s a beautiful idea. But I make a lot of money doing other things, and I have to give them up to do your picture. And I don’t have any money, I don’t have any assets at all. And I have an enormous amount of tension, obligations, human beings who depend on me. So I have to ask for my money up front. I’ll happily lose the five million dollars that I could have made on the back end.” I think he’s bought that, agonized his way through it, even though it spoils his beautiful symmetry.

  22. “I smell director.”

  In which Orson complains about the onerous demands made on directors, and helps Henry with his movie Always, understanding that his approach requires the illusion of transparency.

  * * *

  HENRY JAGLOM: I’ve just come from a three-hour meeting that totally drained me. The worst kind of boring—trailers and ads and teasers and posters. Having to pretend to listen to a lot of people’s opinions. That’s the thing I hate. Having to try to not get a reputation right off for being an impossible dictator. Even though I’m in the position, fortunately, where I can say no.

  ORSON WELLES: In my dealings with Hollywood, I was always in charge of the trailer. I made it myself. In fact, in Kane, I wrote the outline of the trailer and shot stuff for it while we were still shooting the movie. Because you see something that you’re doing, and you say, “That would be good for the trailer, you know?” Even if it wouldn’t work for the film.