While Orson Welles made Citizen Kane — generally regarded one of the best American films ever made — he never again was given the opportunity to have total control over one of his studio-funded films. His Kane follow-up, The Magnificent Ambersons, was cut by 50 minutes by the studio and the footage was destroyed. His 1958 film Touch of Evil was similarly chopped, but the footage survived and in 1998 Welles’ intended cut — based on his extensive editing notes — was released. So it’s no surprise that late in Welles’ career he shunned Hollywood studios and tried to fund his films himself, often by taking high paying jobs in commercials and inferior movies in order to finance his personal projects.
Welles never finished one of those projects, a drama about a egomaniac director named The Other Side of the Wind starring John Huston. While Welles shot the entire film, he never finished editing it. Because he had borrowed money from various sources, ownership of the footage was a murky legal matter. Though those issues were apparently cleared up way back in 2011 (we reported on it!), the money wasn’t there to finish The Other Side of the Wind despite Welles’ friend Peter Bogdanovich possessing Welles’ extensive notes about how the film should be completed.
Four years later, Bogdanovich and producers Filp Jan Rymsza and Frank Marshall have turned to crowd funding via IndieGoGo to raise the last $2 million needed to finance the restoration and editing of the film. Many notable directors — including Clint Eastwood, Wes Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, J.J. Abrams, Noah Baumbach, Edgar Wright, and Jason Reitman — have already lent their support to the campaign, and even if the campaign doesn’t hit its $2 million goal it looks like at some point in the near future we’ll finally have a chance to see this lost movie.
There are some really cool perks involved in the campaign, so take a look at the IndieGoGo site and consider donating to finish Welles’ final film! After all, if Spike Lee can fund Da Sweet Blood of Jesus with $1.4 million, Zach Braff can fund Wish I Was Here with $3.1 million, and Broken Lizard can fund Super Troopers 2 with $4.4 million raised through crowdfunding, Welles should have the same opportunity, shouldn’t he?
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