Trivia / The Other Side of the Wind

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• Fake Nationality: Croatian Oja Kodar plays the apparently Native American lead actress of Hannaford's movie.
• The Other Marty: Rich Little was originally cast as Brooks Otterlake, and filmed a number of scenes. Once his schedule prevented him from returning to film reshoots and newly written-scenes, Orson Welles recast the part with Bogdanovich, who had some experience doing impressions and would always be available.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: One of the most noteworthy examples. Orson Welles made Peter Bogdanovich promise to finish the movie for him should he die before it was finished, and after his death legal and financial complications caused various parties to claim ownership of the movie over the years. As a result, it spent decades languishing and at times almost being finished before Filip Jan Rymsza and Netflix were able to untangle the rights issues and complete the movie. It was finally released worldwide on November 2, 2018, a whopping forty-two years after the end of its period of production.
• Troubled Production: The film took over 40 years to finally see the light of day. It was quite the rollercoaster ride:
  • Welles first got the idea in 1961 when his friend Ernest Hemingway committed suicide. He originally envisioned the film as a tale of an aging bullfighting fan with an interest for a young bullfighter, but the project didn't progress for five years. As Welles kept working on the script, with a working title of Sacred Beasts, he changed the bullfight fan into an aging filmmaker resembling Hemingway as he navigates the changing Hollywood landscape. Welles was unable to get full financial support from investors and like most of his projects, he ultimately funded the film with his own money.
  • Production officially began in 1970, with Welles and his second unit crew filming at the MGM backlot without the studio's consent. To protect their cover, the crew posed as film students visiting the lot while Welles had to sneak in through a darkened van. Everything was shot in a single weekend without sleep and the crew intoxicated with amphetamine, as it was clear they could not visit the lot again and it was already in deep decay. The backlot would officially be demolished a few years later.
  • Filming was disrupted in 1971 when Welles' production company in Europe was deemed a holding company by the US government and fined him with a huge tax bill. Welles had to accept whatever job was offered to him to pay the debt off in full, though he used some of the money from his various acting gigs to keep the film's financing alive. During this time, he stated that The Other Side of the Wind was "96% complete", though that was most likely referencing the film-within-the-film sequences that were finished before he had to halt production.
  • In the meantime, Welles made the documentary F for Fake with the Iranian-French owned Les Films de l'Astrophore. Seeing an opportunity to finish his pet project, Welles struck a three-way deal with the company. He would raise a third of the funds himself while Iranian producer Mehdi Bushehri would supply another third and the remaining funds would come from Spanish producer Andrés Vicente Gómez.
  • With some financial support in place, Welles managed to film new scenes in 1973 whenever cast members were available. For instance, all of Lilli Palmer's scenes were shot in Spain with her being the only cast member present. While in Madrid though, Welles and collaborator Oja Kodar (who co-wrote and co-starred in the film) got trapped in a flood for three months and had to relocate to Paris. It wasn't until a year later when filming officially resumed. Prior to this, Welles was unsure if he would play the director character himself, but by that time he settled on fellow filmmaker John Huston for the part.
  • The most crucial element of the film was a party scene, which was shot at Southwestern Studio in Arizona, utilizing leftover furniture made for The New Dick Van Dyke Show. Joining Huston were Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg, Norman Foster, and more. Welles also shot more scenes in a private mansion he rented not far from his studios. Just when things were going well, emerging financial mishaps threatened to stop production again.
  • As it turned out, Gómez fled the United States while embezzling most of the film's budget and Bushehri had to put up most of the outstanding budget, which would lead to an ownership dispute. The messy financial meltdown meant that Welles could no longer use the studio and the mansion, so the remainder of the party scenes were shot at Bogdanovich's own house in Beverly Hills. In addition, both Welles and Bogdanovich had to put their own money to continue production due to a lack of new financial deals. One producer did make what Welles called "a wonderful offer", but investor Dominique Antoine shot it down thinking a better deal would come. One never did.
  • Further complicating matters was the timeframe Welles needed to edit the film, due to its unconventional and experimental feel. It would require a single year of full-time work, with Welles using the same editing techniques as F for Fake where he used three separate moviolas to simultaneously edit the film. The Other Side of the Wind required two extra moviolas, all circulating a table with a team of assistants to help him. To make matters worse, Les Films de l'Astrophore was under new management who refused to pay for the editing job. As Welles was considered a liability, they threatened to reduce his share of the profits and take creative control away from him for the final cut. This prompted Welles to find more investors that ended up completely fruitless.
  • In spite of the film's growing financial instability, Welles managed to complete principal photography in early 1976, albeit with a few elements unfinished. However, Welles could only edit the film whenever he had time and by 1979, 40% of the editing was done. Things only got worse from there.
  • The film's primary financer Mehdi Bushehri was the brother-in-law of the Shah of Iran, who got overthrown that year. This made his funds problematic with Ayatollah Khomeini's government having the film seized due to its association with the Shah's reign, escalating the aforementioned ownership dispute. The original negative was consequently confiscated to a Paris vault, and Welles was only able to get a workprint of the raw footage out of the country. With Welles' passing in 1985, the copy went to Kodar along with his other unfinished projects as part of his will. Another workprint copy was held by the film's cinematographer Gary Graver. Both Graver and Kodar, along with Bogdanovich, critic Joseph McBride (who had a supporting role), and producer Frank Marshall (who was the film's production manager) began a rousing effort to complete the film by trying to get the necessary funds to do so and potentially fix the legal mess. There were more hurdles in store for them.
  • When Kodar screened Graver's rough cut of the film to various A-list directors in the late 1980's and early 1990's for help with the completion, they all declined for one reason or another. Among the ones who turned down the offer, Huston was in very poor health while George Lucas was confused by the footage he saw, finding it too avant-garde for audiences to handle. Another legal headache arose when Welles' daughter Beatrice Welles claimed that she was the true owner of all of Welles' incomplete projects by California law and effectively blocked any attempts to complete the film. This is despite the fact that she only inherited the assets from the death of his widow Paola Mori in 1986 and those did not include his unfinished films.
  • Back in Iran, Khomeini's government later found the negative worthless and the tangled ownership came under litigation. Mehdi Bushehri held tight to his claims that he owned two-thirds of The Other Side of the Wind, but after hearing about the remaining crew's efforts to finish the film, which got to a point where Frank Marshall was showing the rough cut to major studios in the late 1990's but couldn't reach a deal due to the legal troubles, he decided that the best way to recoup his investment was to get the film released. So in 1998, he arbitrated his claims and reduce his shares, resolving some of the legal issues. With a deal in place, Showtime pitched in to help finance the film's completion. These plans were undermined when Beatrice Welles filed a lawsuit later that year. Making matters worse was that Kodar could not enforce the late Orson Welles' clause in his will that gives disinheritance to anyone that questions the ownership of Kodar's inheritance, which Beatrice was doing, due to her lack of legal fees.
  • Just when you thought things couldn't get more complicated, Paul Hunt came to the picture. As he was one of the film's original crew members, serving as line producer, assistant editor, assistant camera operator, and gaffer, Kodar approached him to help with an acceptable deal and filled him in with rights holders. Hunt and his producing partner Sanford Horowitz soon formed "Horowitz Hunt LLC" and reached a deal with Bushehri to potentially acquire his rights to the film. Even though their contributions were not as burdensome as the aforementioned issues, they would create another obstacle in the completion process.
  • While the case was going on, Bogdanovich announced in 2004 that plans to finish the film were still in place, but replicating Welles' experimental editing would be a challenge. Two years later, Beatrice Welles made a proposal with Showtime to turn The Other Side of the Wind into a semi-documentary and not releasing it as a completed film. Kodar was not fond of this idea and it undermined Bushehri's desires, which his widow kept alive following his death that year. In 2007, a deal was reached where the parties would pay Beatrice Welles either an undisclosed amount, shares in the film's profits or both. Bogdanovich later claimed that the deal to finish the film was "99.9% finished" and the completed project would come out in 2008.
  • Horowitz Hunt LLC soon obtained Bushehri's rights to the film and planned to release two versions: a completed theatrical cut and Welles' initial 42-minute cut. As the original negative was still locked-up in France, Bogdanovich decided to work with the workprint cut and other positive film materials that Kodar kept in a Los Angeles vault. Showtime created an editing suite in the summer of 2008 so the material could potentially be logged in with Bogdanovich supervising the project. Horowitz Hunt LLC then made negotiations with Kodar to obtain her rights to the film, but they could not reach a deal. Beatrice Welles caught wind of this and slapped the parties with an injunction, claiming an inheritance on the negative residing at the LTC Film Vault in Paris and refusing to open it up. As it turned out, Bushehri's attorney failed to formally rebuke Beatrice's claim and Showtime was forced to halt production and close the editing suite. The network later made it clear that they would only pay to complete the film if all the material was available, which included the negative that required permission from all the estates before it could be obtained.
  • With Bogdanovich still contemplating the project and a legal settlement looking murky, Horowitz and financier John Nicholas renamed the former's venture "Project Welles The Other Side LLC" as Hunt died in 2011. The plan was to finish their negotiations with Kodar and Beatrice Welles so they could access the original stored negative while also providing a chain of title and a clear account of events. In addition, they launched www.projectwelles.com to gain more funds. While they were able to resolve the copyright issues, Showtime failed to reveal a projected budget. This alarmed Kodar as she wanted the completion process done in a professional manner and not have a repeat of what happened with another unfinished Welles film Don Quixote. By the time Showtime executive Matthew Duda retired in 2012, the network's involvement with The Other Side of the Wind was over.
  • Enter Filip Jan Rymsza, a producer who was aware of the film for quite some time. He partnered with German producer Jens Koethner Kaul and Frank Marshall in an attempt to salvage the project and by October 2014, Rymsza's Royal Road Entertainment announced plans to acquire the rights to the film so the completion process could resume. They successfully pulled it off by obtaining rights held by Les Films de l'Astrophore and Bushehri and reaching an agreement with Kodar and Beatrice Welles. The plan was to release it by May 6, 2015, which marks the 100th anniversary of Welles' birth, with Bogdanovich and Marshall overseeing the completion process.
  • These plans were thwarted when it was revealed around that time that the film was not even close to being completed. Royal Road tried to fund post-production by pre-selling distribution rights, but potential distributors wanted to view edited footage rather than the workprint. Undeterred by this request, they launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $2 million so the original negative could be flown from Paris to LA for a 4K scan and it could be edited by Affonso Gonçalves. The goal was lowered by $1 million when potential investors offered to match the amount and Marshall clarified that the objective was to edit the first 20 minutes of the film so they could attract a distributor that would help with the rest of post-production. In the end, the campaign only raised $406,405 and the project once again came to a halt.
  • The final hope to complete the film came in the form of Netflix, who were negotiating a deal with Royal Road in 2016 to finish The Other Side of the Wind and make a companion documentary. Once they got Kodar's approval, the original negative finally came to LA and the completion process resumed with a new post-production team in place. Even Michel Legrand, the composer for Welles' F for Fake, was brought on to compose the score.
  • To make a long story short, the film was finally finished in 2018 and premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival that August with Netflix releasing it to the public in November. By that time, most of the cast had passed away with Welles.
• What Could Have Been: Lilli Palmer's role was intended by Welles to be played by Marlene Dietrich but she proved unavailable. It's still obvious in the final film since Hannaford's rapport with her is clearly inspired by Touch of Evil.
• Written by Cast Member: Oja Kodar co-wrote the screenplay with Orson Welles.

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