Who owns this movie?
A few clips shown to the American Film Institute 30 years ago, nothing since?
Its probably Oja Kodar. So many ppl care about this movie, i'm so surprised someone hasn't done for this what they did for Its All True and Don Quixote.
Otto - They call em fingers, but i never see em fing. Oh, there they go.
It seems Welles left this movie to Oja Kodar but it is his daughter Beatrice who has prevented it from being finished. For those unaware, she has no legal right to any of Welles films except Othello, yet that hasn't stopped her lawyers from interfering with numerous films.
As for TOSOTW, it was to have been edited by Peter Bogdanovich and released by Showtime in August of 2002. But Beatrice was able to stop that. Since then however, she has experienced a number of monetary setbacks, most notably being unable to sell Welles' Oscar for Citizen Kane. It has been strongly rumored since then that TOSOTW may yet be finished by Bogdanovich and Showtime in the near future.
There are also three released clips from the film. The two that were shown at the AFI ceremony (Huston at a party and a film executive viewing rushes). The third was included in the recently released doc, One Man Band; it shows Oja Kodar having sex in a moving car.
The online articles here: http://www.wellesnet.com/wind_index.htm and here: http://www.moviemaker.com/issues/45/welles.html mention that the film is controlled by its Iranian backers. These articles are a year old. Does anyone know if this issue was resolved?
shareHi there.
AiCN had an article about this film stating that Peter Bogdanovich is working on the rights problem and is optimistic.
Here's the article:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=17194
Never any new news! Must maintain hope!
Take myself, subtract movies, and the result is zero - Akira Kurosawa.
my Cinema teacher at San Francisco State University is Joseph McBride who acted in this movie, he says it's likely never to be released because Welle's daughter threatened to sue if Bogdanovich went ahead with his work.
shareAs to this matter: I just came back from the Locarno Film Festival where an extensive Orosn Welles retrospective was held. Of this title it was still maintained that the holding of the rights by the brother-in-law of the former shah of Persia (and if he died in the meantime: the family) is the only cause the film could not be finished.
The festival did show the accessible material with text added between the scenes
to give a rough idea what the complete film would have been (a project of the Munich Filmmuseum
Anyway: regarding this matter the name of Beatrice Welles was never mentioned as the source of obstruction. Please note that the Locarno film festival published a book containing a version of the script; this book contains an essay in which a curious argument is raised: Welles would never have had the intention to finish the film.
Beatrice isn't the only guilty person.
The movie producer, Dominique Antoine, stated that Peter Bogdanovich prevented several times the movie from being completed, pretending he had funded the end of the shooting. Every time somebody wants to buy the shares of Irani Mehdi Bousheri, he makes the transaction fail and he keeps several tapes that were destined for the soundtrack.
According to her, Bogdanovich's aim is to be responsible for the final cut and some co-director or presenter credits.
Whether she's right or wrong, it's at least another conflict of interests.
Dominique Antoine is the S.O.B. responsible for this mess in the first place. His siphoning off of funds from the Iranians and causing Welles to sign away more and more ownership of the film to them so that he could get money that Dominique would then continue to siphon off was one of the key contributors in this. So anything he says would be highly suspect.
The revolution in Iran was the other.
Beatrice Welles seems to think she owns all things Wellesian, his movies, his awards, his unproduced scripts, etc. She wants to own them all and she wants no one else to have access to them. Are the other two daughters still alive? I'd like to know if they're involved in this one way or the other.
As for Bogdanovich, sure maybe he does want to have ownership of it, but I'd expect him to do a far better job of it than Beatrice or anyone else and do you think he'd make a profit off of it? It would be to make sure it is treated fairly and properly, unlike the unfinished Don Quxotie and the unfinished works of other Directors, Authors, etc.
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I worked with Gary Graver a few years ago and he said that he had the footage for "The Other Side of the Wind" and was working on finishing it (editing it I guess). I asked him about the story of the Iranian financial backers and he said it was just a myth. But he died just recently, so I don't know where that leaves things.
sharethanks for the info. hopefully it will get released eventually.
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