Richard on Orson

Richard Linklater will thankfully never be pigeonholed as a genre director. His body of work ranges from indie films such as the counterculture defining Slacker, to studio projects like School of Rock, to the socially conscious and unapologetic Fast Food Nation.  His latest project, Me and Orson Welles, veers in an utterly new direction.  Adapted from an historical novel based on actual events, the story takes place during a whirlwind week of preparation for Orson Welles’ famed 1937 remix of Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theater in New York City. Seen through the eyes of an ambitious teenager hired for the production (Zac Efron), the film’s narrative thrusters which propel the story at a frenetic pace include a love triangle with a career-minded production assistant (Claire Danes), mishap-riddled rehearsals for opening night, and Welles’ very own famed ego.

AFS will premiere Me and Orson Welles in Austin this winter.  I met with Richard Linklater to discuss the project at the filmmaker’s production office (Warning: this article contains spoilers).

PoV: How did you initially approach the character of Welles as far as the man and the myth? From an audience standpoint, there will be those who’ve never heard of him, and then the crazy film geeks who know or think they know all there is to about him.

Richard Linklater: I had both audiences in mind approaching the movie. I wanted young people to like it and to see how fun it is to put on a theater show and to just be around an artistic group. But most young kids have never heard of Orson Welles by and large, so I was very careful to not be condescending. Through young Richard’s perspective (Zac Efron), when Sonja (Claire Danes) is telling Richard things about Orson, we’re dropping in hints about him that some people will be in on and others won’t, and at the same time we’re getting involved with the characters.

So during the final stages of editing, it must have been a constant dance, from an exposition standpoint, weighing, “is this too much, is this too little?”
Well, I had a lot of pressure and I had final cut on the movie and everything but people have notes . . . especially about cutting. For example, there’s a scene at a bench with Claire, which was talked about being too long.  The question was, do we really need the information about how Orson’s read everything, how he knows everything, and that no one should “ever contradict him.” I said, “that will pay off later.”  While some said portions of the scene wouldn’t be missed,  for me it was essential to the atmosphere of the film, especially for those who know nothing about Welles, and even if for those who think they know Welles. This is young Welles, who not too many people are familiar with.

PoV: Can you talk a bit about the story as far as its roots in non-fiction, as far as being a snapshot of specific real events, and where it departs . . . Is the Richard of the film even a real guy?

RL: Yeah, his name is Arthur Anderson, and in reality—this is where the fiction comes in—he was 15, he didn’t get fired, and he did the whole play.

PoV: But it’s much more dramatic and interesting that he was fired.

RL: Right.  Robert Kaplow (novelist) let his imagination go from the facts. There’s a famous Cecil Beaton picture of Welles on stage, with this young teenager.  Kaplow imagined the story from the teenager’s perspective.  He actually looked him up—this was 10 years ago—and Robert went and hung out with Arthur.  Yes, Arthur’s still alive, and I’ve talked to him on the phone a couple times.  He’s one of two surviving people, as far as we know, from that show.

The other is Norman Lloyd,  who played Cinna the Poet in the original play. He’s like 95 now, and is still playing tennis three times a week. Christian McKay (who played Welles) was in L.A just a couple months ago and had a wonderful three-hour session with Norman Lloyd. They hit it off like gangbusters. Christian said [Norman’s] wife (she’s also 95) saw Christian and had some flashback to the thirties. She started talking to him, “Oh yeah, I saw you in that play.” She thought he was Orson. How’s that for a compliment? She took him for Orson. Isn’t that wild?

PoV: He is uncanny, not only as far as resemblance, but just nailing what you imagine his larger-than-life persona would be like.

RL: Christian (McKay) went to a restaurant in France, with nothing set up in advance, and when he walks in this old maitre d’ goes “Mr. Welles, your table.” He just saw him and said “Mr. Welles.” He told him, “This was Orson’s table, you look a lot like him.” So he sat at this table that was Orson’s table in the 70s and 80s. Isn’t that hilarious? You have these ghostly little moments like that.

PoV: It’s like Welles left this psychic imprint, which Christian as Welles stepped into.

RL: Isn’t that interesting? Christian is compiling all these weird stories that are his life as Orson. But to complete the thought about the facts—it’s my favorite kind of history. It’s like historical fiction, but the history’s all really accurate: the names, the dates, all the people. In the book, that’s all accurate. As far the movie goes, we had the drawings for the stage, the lighting, the music, the pictures, and the costumes. We just tried to recreate it historically specific, but the story is fiction and you’re not held to it. We’re not saying this is what happened word for word, but this is in the spirit of what was going on that week I’m sure.  They had a disastrous preview, they stayed up and it was really a two-or three-day period before they opened, but in our case we condensed it to one day.

PoV: By filtering the story through Richard’s perspective, you’re also inviting the audience into this world through the eyes of a newbie.

RL: Honestly, I think it’s the only way to tell a story about genius—is to bounce it off others.  In Amadeus, Salieri is the perfect narrative voice for Mozart’s genius.  Richard, in this case, young Zac Efron, has the perfect ambitions, and you know, he’s only five years younger than Welles. We’re never really present for anything that Richard isn’t present for.  It’s really all his perspective.

He’s really kind of a mirror image of Orson in many ways. They have the same raw materials.

They’re rivals really.  That’s why the love triangle becomes really interesting.  When Orson finally realizes the situation, he perks up because this kid is pulling a fast one and running off with Sonja (Claire Danes’ character), and completely rigged things.  Orson realizes he needs to step up his game one notch and this kid is a formidable opponent.  Orson thinks “he’s crossing a line that’s a little bit into my territory,” which you don’t do. He makes it clear to everyone that it’s his story, and that if you’re going to have integrity and stand up for yourself and have these theories of what the world should be, you have to bear the brunt of that.  You risk getting fired and end up in a hierarchy of power just because it’s the arts.  I thought it was a fun story about being around this kind of willful genius, and what that must have been like to be around it.

PoV: Can you talk about how the film deals with identity, especially through the literal stage play, and the notion of having actors act “on stage” and “off stage” within the movie?
Who better than actors to take on this subject of identity?  “I am an actor playing an actor who’s both acting and a real person,” so there are three levels there inherently within the film. I loved that concept but actors are like that, which is why they’re actors in the first place.

RL: Welles says basically this in one of the few times in the movie where he’s being truly genuine. Christian and I had this graph, tracking when he’s being himself, and where he’s “b.s.’ing.”  There are a few moments when you get to see into his soul.  One time is at the bench when he’s trying to convince Richard to rejoin the play; Orson talks about “the Look” and how as an actor if he can really be Brutus, then people can’t find him and they can’t criticize him.  That’s what an actor might need psychologically to be a great actor and he’s hiding behind that.  I think this describes so many people . . . They’re either shy or have problems in the real world, but that artificial niche that’s been created, via plays or music, whatever their art is, that’s where they can really be themselves.

John Lahr, Burt Lahr’s son, wrote this wonderful thing about his dad (who played the Cowardly Lion in Wizard of Oz), that I’ll never forget: “I learned what all great performers’ children learn; that the best of my father went to his audience. Anything that was left over, we got.” He saved up the best for himself and I said, “Wow that’s kind of sad.”  But that’s the blessing and the curse.

PoV: Welles was able to connect with audiences across mediums too.  In today’s day and age, a big topic is media and technology convergence.  Welles was a pioneer in this arena way back when, as far as doing radio, theater, film, and the adaptations he did across mediums.

RL: It was a vibrant time for theater, film  was really maturing, and  Welles  as it was really being invented in the sound era.  Theater was being revitalized in the thirties, Clifford Odet’s The New Group, and what they did with the Federal and the Mercury Theater had an urgency.

PoV: Orson also was the master of improv as demonstrated in the scene where he walks onto the Radio show . . .

RL: He had a gift! How many people can just read something then on-the-fly dramatize it in a dramatic context where it works? And he pulls it off. That was his gift he carried through the world. It’s something that came easy to him; he knew he was possessed of that gift, and he flaunted it and had fun with it.  The radio scene is crucial, absolutely crucial to the film, because that’s the medium he’s conquering next. Theater, radio, film, I mean he worked. I remember my daughter asked me “What was so great about Welles?” And I said “Well, before he was 25, he had, in his own way, reinvented all three of those mediums. He took them to some new place they hadn’t been. So that’s pretty amazing.”  Welles, for most people, starts the next year with War of the Worlds. We’re looking at the young Mr. Welles. I always say that because I like Young Mr. Lincoln, the John Ford movie about Lincoln. We all know who he becomes, so we show an early snippet . . . it’s a nice biographical storytelling method, to take someone, who you know what they become, but take an early version of them, because it’s impossible to tell the whole Welles story.

Welles never wrote his memoir. As Robert Capa said, he was a notoriously unreliable narrator of his own life. He would always tell a good story. There’s a lot of contradiction there. I don’t know if it was purposeful myth-making, but you see that a lot.

PoV: Do you think to a degree, and your movie seems to soak this up to a degree, that he fueled his own myth?

RL: Most really famous people do. I think that’s why you don’t write an autobiography, you don’t ever have a permanent record. That’s the Kane theme, the unknowableness of another human. That’s really the ultimate Welles theme. We all run around trying to analyze him and figure him out, but he already told us a long time ago. Rosebud itself didn’t answer it.

PoV: It doesn’t. It just raises more questions in many ways.

RL: It’s all there in his own work. The fool’s errand that we all run on trying to analyze him too much. It’s that kind of life that requires that. What made me think I could perhaps pull this off was just the idea that it was one week in his life, at this early phase. I didn’t need to . . . Vince and Holly (screenwriters) and myself, we didn’t need to steep ourselves in anything beyond that date.

PoV: That structure gives you a lot of freedom to go deeper with a story.

RL: It doesn’t matter what happened with Welles’ career in the later 40s, 50s, and 60s. That’s not our concern.

PoV: Right. Interestingly enough, he really went on and became an independent filmmaker.

RL: Yeah. He’s the prototype.

PoV: And of course, he had trouble with the studios and funding.

RL: It’s really sad. He would’ve done so much better in another era, like the 80s and 90s. (laughs) Some people are just in the wrong era.

PoV: Or the 70s.

RL: He was in the wrong era. I don’t know if he would have ever received funding, I mean who knows? I try not to theorize too much, because I don’t think my opinions are any more astute or valid than anyone elses. We’ve all read all the same stuff. It does seem like he would’ve gotten on better—when the studio era was so good to so many talents.

PoV: In the fifties and sixties, especially.

RL: Well the forties and fifties. And into the early sixties. It was so good to so many talented people – John Ford, John Huston, Howard Hawks, Vicente Minelli, Victor Fleming – that really worked for them. It didn’t work for Welles. I think it was just that his own willful genius is something that’s hard to be in the room with. I think to be a good studio director, you had to sublimate your ego a little bit, tell your story and then act like you’re a company man. I just read this wonderful biography of Vincent Minelli. It was the same thing. He was on the MGM payroll for like twenty-five years, and yet, you’re a company man, but you’re doing what you want within the confines. If Welles could’ve just put a cap on it a little bit, if he could’ve found his way into that system, he might’ve made a lot more films. But that wasn’t his personality, I think he liked being up against it. He couldn’t fit into any system for very long.

PoV: There’s that great scene in Ed Wood, which is fabricated (laughs), where he’s in the bar, and Ed says “I can’t get funding for my movie! I hate dealing with these money people!” And Orson says “I hate that.”

RL: Christian makes the joke, as Welles: The actor’s car’s broken down, he says “I’m having trouble with my distributor!” And Welles does a hammy “I’m having trouble with my distributor.”  You know he could be kind of hammy that way.  It’s like, “what distributor?”  But Americans see Welles much more in tragic terms, where the Europeans really don’t.  It was wonderful to make this.

PoV: Where does the American perspective come from?

RL: It’s like, “What have you done for me lately?” Look at Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Orson Welles…

PoV: Changing gears a bit, what were some of the biggest challenges, in terms of visually capturing the era?

RL: It was a real challenge, because we didn’t have the budget.  All of the interior theatre stuff we did on the Isle of Man, in this beautiful old theater, that actually had about the same dimensions as the Mercury.  It had that understage area that worked so well for the trap door, it was perfect. Creating West 41st Street was the hard part.  We were filming at Pinewood and they don’t even have backlots. We had maybe 200 feet of this little muddy  chunk of land that we turned into the streets, with green screens. So it’s a bit of a visual trick.  When they’re at Bryant Park, that skyline still exists, so you make it work. It was fun.  Fortunately, the technology is really helpful there.  It’s a lot easier now then it used to be.  Ten years ago you couldn’t move the camera on that shot.  Now it’s less of a deal. I enjoy using it to recreate New York and to not feel like you’re emphasizing it. The biggest compliment is when I’m asked, “Where did you shoot in New York?” and I reply “We didn’t”; but there’s New York, the magic of movies.  I was a little jealous because Tim Burton and Johnny Depp had just done Sweeney Todd and they built everything, all those streets and cobblestones.  We didn’t have any money to do anything that elaborate. It’s a down and dirty little story though. You just have to make due and make it happen.

PoV: You have to find creative solution within the confines and structures you have, right?

RL: I’ve never known anything else so I don’t know any other way. But it was fun working with Brits. My production designer didn’t really know New York that well. I showed him around to all the locations and sat in Bryant Park and he got a feel for the size and shape of New York. I took him into some friend’s basement apartments and rooftops.  It’s fun collaborating with people, taking a lot of pictures and then recreating that.  That’s actually more fun for him than recreating London of 1941; it’s more fun to go into another culture.  That was kind of true for much of the crew.  I think they liked the “Americaness.”

PoV: I’m sure many of the actors were relatively local too.

RL: And the talent, some of the best actors like Eddie Marsan who played Houseman He’s so good.  That guy is an amazing actor. And he was just in a supporting part. He liked the script and was just thankful for the job.

PoV: So from an actor standpoint, you may not deal with the egos that may inhabit an American film?

RL: To a degree., over there they do film, they do production for BBC, and they do theatre. A British actor can go between those three without a lot of difficulty.

PoV: They’re happy to do it.

RL: American actors are like “Whose starring in this? Zach Efron?” or “Oh I’m not going to do TV, that’s a death wish.” The woman who played Maria Brauser, Kelley Rientic; she just played the woman in Othello.  She’s a great stage actress, and she does movies too but she came in and did that kind of small part and you’re like wow! We could not have gotten American actors like that.

PoV: Or at least not of that caliber?

RL: Not for what we were paying. We ended up with really great actors and it was just a blessing really; to work with guys like Ben Chaplin.

PoV: Not that in the past on lower budget films, you haven’t gotten some great indieesque actors.

RL: Right.  But they like to work, they like to rehearse.  It was almost like putting on a play.  We had to rehearse the movie, but we had to rehearse the play.  It was intense recreating this.  The actors are like “is the actor I’m playing a good actor?”  It’s almost like Waiting for Guffman.

PoV: Right, you could probably say  “You’re in the Orson Welles play! Come o!”

RL: Right and that’s the first thing I told them at the big rehearsal.  Here’s the bar we’re trying to recreate.  Some of you asked if your actor is good.  I said “Orson Welles cast you and the person you’re playing is either as good or better than you and we’re recreating the best Shakespeare production in North American history.  So there’s the bar.  We got a week on stage to rehearse it, so let’s go.

PoV: Setting the bar at a near impossible high.

RL: I love the high and low.  It’s that kind of history I like…. I saw Atonement right before production and I’m glad I saw it because we’re trying to do 180 degrees opposite.  It works for its own story, but no one can feel like they’re in a period piece. There’s no seriousness here.