They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018) Reviews

• Fans of Welles Have Something to Celebrate

  nick949652018-10-30

  "The Other Side of The Wind" was Orson Welles last attempt at filmmaking before his death. It is a true testament to the genius of the greatest director of our generation, and is a shame that the movie will never be seen because the only movies that are made now are corporate projects, and art is not optional, and is even disregarded in the name of greed. Orson Welles, as most people know, could not get financing for his movies later on in his life. Why? The reason is because film studios have become corporate machines, making money rather than making art. Since the days of Star Wars and Jaws, film studios have been much more concerned with the idea of box office receipts than with the idea of presenting filmmakers as artisans. These days, news papers are obsessed with the box office of a film even more than the plot. Welles, in his later years, was against all the paper pushers and money launderers that populate the film industry. Unfortunately, he also had to pander to them to get funding. So he went into a depression and made some terrible choices, relegating himself into a characterture of his former self, appearing in ridiculous films, TV commercials, and started on a downhill slide that culminated in making some absolute disasters in order to try to accumulate any kind of investments. At one point, he attempted to communicate this in a film called "The Other Side of the Wind" in which the main character, a Director, coming to terms with his 70th birthday, is confronted by a younger version of himself in the form of another Boy Wonder who makes commercial films which are successful money makers. The two characters are played by the legendary John Huston as the older man and Peter Bogdanovich as the Wunderkind. At the time the film was being shot, Huston was most like the real character of Welles himself, and Bogdanovich was a hybrid of all the successful Lucases and Spielbergs of the world. In addition, the story of "Wind" also includes a playful 70's type of Avant Guarde film, one that would easily have fit in with the "Easy Rider" and "Zabriskie Point" genre of films which represented the alternative film industry. The story then zigzags back and forth between the "real" story of the Director and the "fantasy" story of the trippy film, with Welles' Muse, the gorgeous Oja Kodar as the lead girl, traipsing thru endless psychedelic environments, followed by a mute boy, and culminating in a fantasy sex scene while being driven by another actor in a car in a rainstorm-- a scene as erotic as possible in the era of free love and experimentation. However, the documentary is more complex, and captures the essence of Welles' philosophy of life in which he is constantly at odds with the business of filmmaking throughout his entire life. The saddest part of the story is when Welles, who was dependent on Peter Bogdanovich at one point, betrays his friend by saying negative things about him on a talk show. One wonders what was his motive in doing so -- was Welles being subconsciously self-destructive? Was he jealous of Peter's ability to make financially successful films? There is even a part in the shooting of "Wind" where he casts a 19-year-old girl as the pawn between the two Directors, and one is immediately reminded of Bogdanovich's obsession with Cybil Sheppard, who was also 19 when she was cast as the actress in "Last Picture Show." In fact, so much of "Wind" is a reflection of Welles' life, that it is almost another attempt at telling the story of "8 1/2", which captures Fellini's trials and tribulations while making a film that also would never be released. Welles is subconsciously telling us the story of his life, all the while denying that this was his intention.

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• The Making of a Film About the Making of Itself

  Cineanalyst2018-11-11

  The best film about the making of "The Other Side of the Wind" (2018) is "The Other Side of the Wind," but this companion piece "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead" is an interesting documentary, too, about the making of a film that was already about its own making. Orson Welles's picture concerns a film unfinished at the time of the director's death, leaving behind a slough of footage for his friends and admirers to assemble into a finished product, which is what has been distributed by Netflix after all these decades. Two films in one, the outer one, from the cameras of documentary filmmakers, already contains a considerable amount of analysis of the meaning of the film within and its director, too. In this respect, it's a wonder there's much ground left to cover in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead." Welles's film is so multi-layered, though, and so much footage was left out of the ultimate release (reportedly, cutting near 100 hours down to about two), that even this documentary about it allows for multiple and contradictory interpretations and, yet, doesn't even cover much of what also must be a compelling story of what's happened to the film since the death of Welles. Some of the stuff from the talking heads here is irrelevant (e.g. Welles's reported fondness for Fudgsicals) and armchair psychology, but there's enough information about the production of "The Other Side of the Wind," with clips not used in the release print edited in here, as well as looks at some of Welles's other pictures to make this documentary worthwhile. I think the end clip of Welles wishing that everyone would see his film is especially apt given its final distribution by Netflix, which as the most-popular online movie streaming service offers the best hope of fulfilling that wish. And, Welles's film may be the best thing Netflix has yet distributed. It's a fitting end for a film, too, that is partly about the death of classical Hollywood and the rise of a New Hollywood that admires an auteur of the prior generation and which features then-new forms of motion-picture making and viewing--TV, 16 and 8mm cameras and the drive-in theatre--technologies and platforms that themselves have since been largely or, at least, partially superseded by computers, digital technology, smart phones and streaming.

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• Well, Well, Well -- Embittered Digs at Welles

  Tail_End_Charlie2018-11-04

  Clearly another reviewer and I disagree in our assessment of this film. I did find "The Other Side of the Wind" worthwhile, but I have mixed feelings about this skewed portrayal of this masterful filmmaker. Having said that, some of the old film clips were well-chosen. On a logistical level, this film is not what one would expect... most all of the friends and colleagues become talking heads who are not individually identified, until the rolling credits, where a slew of names are lined up. That said, Peter B is easily recognized, and a few others' identities are inferred by their comments. When Oja speaks, you are left to imagine what she looks like nowadays... I presume that she insisted that her sound bites would not include visuals. What disappointed me the most were the cynical snipes made about the approach and demeanor of Welles, from several people closely associated with him. Some of their barbed comments served to discount the great complexity of this man. I wonder if these folks had enough nerve to frankly state their views in front of his face while he was alive? One celebrity commented on his demanding preference for a particular snack food. On the surface, the remark said more about her. It strikes me as ironic that one clip shows Welles speaking on the essential value of editing, yet this film has chosen to slice things up into brief sound bites. As a result, the tone of the interviewees resemble a bitter pill, as if to say: while we might recognize the genius of this man, the viewer would do well to witness his significant deficiencies. There are cherry-picked clips which try to convince the viewer about Welles impulse to control the details. Newsflash: many great artists fall prey to obsessiveness. We see Welles give a specific note to Norman Foster on his delivery. Foster transformed the line in-a-flash, and it was vastly improved. If this film intended to cast a shadow on the esteemed artful nuances which Welles strove for, then it failed. Each viewer will have a different take on this film. As for me, the approach and tone of this film left me feeling defensive, and a bit sad.

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• If you love Welles...

  BandSAboutMovies2018-11-12

  I don't know for certain if I've ever had the chance to espouse on this site exactly how much Orson Welles means to me. As a child, I was obsessed with his radio work on Mercury Theater and The Shadow, blasts through the nighttime ether via WKST-AM radio (the first station that Alan Freed would work at before he coined the term rock and roll). In the late 1970's, the opportunity to watch classics films wasn't as simple as grabbing a movie off the shelf or streaming it. No, when Citizen Kane aired on broadcast TV, it was a major event. I remember my father sitting me down and telling me that we were about to watch something special. That may have been the birth of my lifelong love for Welles work, but it's only grown as I've read innumerable books and watched so many documentaries that attempt to explain his genius and madness. Now, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead explains even more as it details his legendary lost film, The Other Side of the Wind. Directed by Morgan Neville (Won't You Be My Neighbor?), this work tries to explain exactly the trials and tribulations of this film, which ties together Welles attempted from European exile in the wake of the new Hollywood to the Iran crisis and the dissolution of his friendship with his acolyte, Peter Bogdanovich. This movie had to have been hard to make for many of the people caught in the wake of Welles. For Cybil Shepherd, he was the combative old man who lived in the same wing as her in the home of her lover Bogdanovich, so forgetful that he'd put lit cigars into the pockets of his robe. For Bogdanovich, he went from hero to villain, vilifying him with Burt Reynolds on The Tonight Show and placing a character into the film that was a not-so-thinly veiled assault on his relationship with Shepherd. Nobody was more impacted by Welles than cameraman Gary Graver, who volunteered to work with the artist at a young age and then basically gave his life and sanity over. Welles was the central figure of his life and to supplement the money he lost working for him (he was given the 1941 writing Oscar that Welles won for Citizen Kane, but was sued by his daughter to get it back when he tried to sell it) by working on films like Trick or Treats and Mortuary. This film also sheds a light on the fact that Graver also worked as a writer and director in the adult film industry, often credited as Robert McCallum. He didn't just make one or two films. More like 135 and he was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame for his contributions to the adult film industry. In fact, in order to get Graver back to work on his film faster, Welles himself would personally cut a scene in the film 3 A.M.: The Time of Sexuality. While a hardcore lesbian scene, it totally looks like an Orson Welles movie, complete with low camera angles. How many major directors silently work in the adult industry just to finish a film they'd been trying to complete for a decade? As time moved on, characters would become real people and real people would become the characters in the film, in an extreme magical rite of sorts. Welles was obsessed with the nature of reality, with what is the truth and what is an illusion (see all of his perfect film F for Fake for more). The near decade creation of The Other Side of the Wind both predicted and reacted to the changing story of its creator's life. The strangest thing of all is that They'll Love Me When I'm Dead is a documentary about the last film in Welles life. But so is The Other Side of the Wind, when you get right down to it. Then again, there were over a hundred hours cut together to make the latter, so of course, it needs some further exploration and interpretation. My favorite part of this documentary are all the moments where you wish there was more, such as Welles conversation with Dennis Hopper about the changes in Hollywood. I'm fascinated by Welles, well, fascination with femme fatale Oja Kodar. And amazed that Rich Little would agree to appear in this when he comes off so badly. Anything for Orson, one assumes. If you love Welles at the level that I do (I can totally understand Graver throwing away his life to work with him), you'll love this. And even if you don't know a single thing about him, this is an intriguing meditation on the nature of art and reality.

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• Good content shame about the presentation

  Alpie2018-11-08

  If you are a fan of film making and film makers then this documentary certainly has the right subject matter. There are elements of this which reminded me of Lost In La Mancha, another documentary about a doomed project where the maverick director tried their best to drag the film to life. But if you are looking for insight in to the mind and passion of Orson Wells, then be prepared to wade through over an indulgent stylised presentation. It somehow finds a half-way house between a typical talking heads documentary and a pure voiceover (like Senna), and it doesn't really work, you don't really have an idea of who is talking. The extensive use of footage from different sources is just a distraction to the narrative that is being told by voiceovers The biggest misstep is Alan Cummings, I have no idea what he's purpose was. He did not feature enough to be a narrator, he did not have any kind of associate with anyone involved in The Other Side of The Wind, it was just pointless.

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