My Lunches with Orson (31 page)

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 or 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.

*   *   *

H
ENRY
J
AGLOM
:
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.

O
RSON
W
ELLES
:
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.

Making a picture is always a tremendous strain on a director, who is supposed to be the source of energy. And being the source of energy, he must also be a monument of patience. But I'm so impatient on a set, I always announce at the beginning, so that it's clear, that no assistant director is allowed to ask for silence, or to talk to sound, and sound is not allowed to say anything except, “Rolling,” after I say, “Camera.” Not another word. So then, after you get through with that, you have to wait for Joe with the hammer, or Jill with the curl—or whatever it is.

Then, after you're done with the shooting, you go into the cutting room. And that's a tremendous nervous strain, too. Editing is the other great pain of being a director, how much of your life is spent in a dark room, not creating, but waiting for someone to do something. Waiting, not for yourself to think of an idea in front of a typewriter or behind a camera, but for other people who do dumb things. And the dumber the thing is, the longer it takes. You advance the film to the place you want, then make the note and hope the cutter understands, and wait till he executes it. Because he has to roll back the film, or he puts it in backwards, or it's upside down, or there's a break in the film, and he has to go and find it.

I hate those great huge rolls of film in stacks of cans. And I have a system, which is, I always make what I call a source, for every scene. Which is another reel that includes every fragment of what I've picked out that
might
be good. Because in a bad take, there may be something I like, so I put all of them on one reel. And before I'm finished with a scene, I always run the source, to be sure I've squeezed everything I can out of it. But I have to run through the whole reel to find that one bit, so it takes forever. I spend all my time handling film. The new editing machine, which I've seen now, is the greatest step forward since I don't know what.

HJ:
The flatbed?

OW:
It means that three months' work can be done in ten days.

HJ:
Why do I fear that something about the creative process will get lost by that expedition? I like to go back and forth, looking over everything again and again.

OW:
I don't look over everything again and again. You know that I never wait until after I've looked at the rushes to begin the editing. I cut them as I'm looking at them. But I suffered agonies spending twelve hours a day on the old machines. Why not spend six? Before, my ratio was, I figure, three days cutting to one day of shooting. Now, at most I would spend a fraction of that on the cutting. What that means is that I no longer have to be the great organist at the console, which drove me nuts. Now I can behave as if I were painting a picture or writing a script or a book. If I want to think, I just stop and think. It liberates you. Frees you from taking months out of your life, just sitting around. Now, I don't wait for the tool. The tool waits for me.

(Zsa Zsa Gabor enters.)

Z
SA
Z
SA
G
ABOR
:
How are you, darling? How wonderful to see you.

K
IKI
:
Arf! Arf!

ZG:
Whose dog is that?

OW:
That's my dog, who bites.

ZG:
No, no.
(To Kiki)
You bite?

OW:
Yes. Especially Hungarians. How are you?

ZG:
Fine, darling.

(Zsa Zsa Gabor exits.)

HJ:
I see your point. I'd love to speed up my editing process, especially if I gained more time to think.

OW:
But of course, it's going to be the end of the director controlling the cutting. Because the cutting will all be done by the time he gets off the set, by the editor. Who will have worked very hard for an hour and a half every day. Then the cutter really will get a credit with a card for himself for great editing. But how will anyone know who edited what? Who made what cut? It's hard enough to know what's directing, what's acting. You really don't know, in any single instance, whether it's the actor or the director. But you never can tell that to a critic.

HJ:
I need help with the script of my new movie, which I'm calling
Always
. I'm going to act and direct, and I always have trouble with that. The first day is insane, every time, because I'm sitting there, in the scene, trying not to be there, so I can see what is going on.

OW:
You have to be able to press a button and become the director for a certain length of time, and then become the actor. Say, “Fuck all the rest of it; now I'm gonna act.”

HJ:
Let me tell you the story line, which is based on my real relationship with my ex, Patrice, who's going to act in it. Prior to when the movie starts, she has come back from Santa Fe, where she's been for six months. I've called her up and asked her to come back to the house that was our house—now my house—to sign the divorce agreement. In honor of the occasion, I've decided to cook her dinner. I don't know how to cook, and I do something wrong, which results in her getting food poisoning. Either I pick mushrooms from my garden, stupidly, or I leave the fish out too long, or—

OW:
May I stop you right on that point, with food poisoning?

HJ:
Sure.

OW:
Mushrooms are too dangerous. Mushrooms—that's like life or death. Don't call it “food poisoning.” She's told you, over and over again, that she's terribly allergic to something, and you forgot it, and put it in the stew, where it's unrecognizable. It could, in a Freudian way, be interpreted as deliberate.

HJ:
So, I surprise her with this lovely dinner that I've made myself. She's pleased, touched. And in the course of our two-person dinner, with elaborate silverware—

OW:
Beautiful napery—it's obviously not only more than you'd ever do, but more than you could ever
conceive
of doing. It looks like a page out of “Home” in the
Los Angeles Times
.

HJ:
With flowers on the table—everything.

OW:
Comme il faut.

HJ:
She's stunned, and touched and everything. In the course of the dinner, the audience learns a little bit of the background, which is that she left me two years ago, that I was devastated because I thought this marriage would last for the rest of my life. We didn't break up because of fights or arguments or incompatibility, like most people. It had more to do with today's world, where women are told, “It's not enough to be happy, it's not enough to love somebody. You've gotta find out who you are,” and all of that. The point is we really love each other, despite her having done this thing. In the course of the dinner the bell rings. It's the notary who has to witness the signing of the divorce papers.

OW:
Now, why did you do that? Because that's essentially gross.

HJ:
Is it poor taste? I wondered. I can prepare her by saying, during dinner, “Listen. We have to sign in front of a witness who is a notary.”

OW:
If you say that right away, it's all right. As long as it isn't a surprise. As a surprise, it's gross. You can't really have cooked her this marvelous dinner, and then say, “And now we have the man with the notary stamp.”

HJ:
This is exactly what I'm asking you for, so this is marvelous. Thank you, Orson. I hope you don't mind doing this.

OW:
No, I love it!

HJ:
I own an old Wurlitzer jukebox. I put on a Fred Astaire tune from the thirties, and we dance. And it is during the dance that she starts feeling ill. She has to stop. I take her upstairs to bed—my bed, which was our bed—and put her to sleep there. I quietly tiptoe out and into the cutting room, which is a room around the corner in the upstairs of the house. I am a man who makes documentary films on science and science-allied fields for public broadcasting. And I'm working on a film either on time and memory, or on the relationship between men and women. Or on the chemistry of love, that pseudo-science that tries to investigate the emotional condition.

OW:
What worries me about everything you've said just now about the three subjects, is they all sound like they might turn into allegories for your story. And that's bad. Bad, bad, bad.