DGA members and guests recently gathered at the Guild’s Los Angeles Theater complex for a weeklong celebration of the birth of legendary director Orson Welles (May 6, 1915). Presented by the DGA Special Projects Committee, the Orson Welles Centenary Celebration kicked off with a week of screenings of Welles films — Citizen Kane (1941), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Othello (1952), Touch of Evil (1958), and F for Fake (1973) — each evening from Monday, May 25 to Friday, May 29, and culminated on Saturday, May 30 with a reception celebrating the life and work of the iconic artist, a discussion about his art and life with a panel of noted filmmakers, and a screening of a documentary about the acclaimed director.
On the heels of his successful 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds on radio, Welles came to Hollywood to pursue a film career. His first feature was the renowned masterpiece Citizen Kane, which is cited by many as one of the greatest films of all time. Other directing credits include The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, Macbeth, The Trial, Chimes at Midnight, and the unfinished The Other Side of the Wind. Welles joined the DGA in 1956 and was presented with the Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984. He died in 1985 at the age of 70.
Following the reception on May 30, the attendees gathered in the Guild’s Los Angeles Theater where DGA Special Projects Committee Chair Jeremy Kagan welcomed everyone and joked, “It’s nice to see this large crowd show up for this new, young filmmaker,” before listing Welles many accomplishments.
Then Directors Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show), Henry Jaglom (Déjà Vu), and John Landis (The Blues Brothers) took the stage for a discussion about Welles’ career obstacles and achievements in a conversation moderated by Director Chuck Workman (Precious Images).
Long-time Welles confidantes Bogdanovich and Jaglom also offered a series of personal anecdotes such as Bogdanovich’s revelation that his inspiration to film The Last Picture Show in black and white derived from Welles’ reasoning that “every performance looks better in black and white.” Bogdanovich is currently preparing the final cut of Orson Welles’ last film The Other Side of the Wind, which completed shooting in the late 1970s.
Jaglom, whose book, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, was released by Metropolitan Books in 2013, recalled Welles’ advice to “Tell them it’s a dream sequence,” in order to inspire Jaglom’s crew to go off-script while filming A Safe Place. “He said, ‘You know these are hardworking people … they have rules to everything in their lives. The one place they’re free is in their dreams…. If you give them that freedom, they will work like crazy for you.’”
“Welles from the beginning of his career he was the young genius,” said Landis, an avowed cineaste and dedicated fan of Welles’ work. “So his whole persona is hard to separate from the brilliance of some of those movies. When you see Citizen Kane it’s still so fresh and funny and dazzling.”
At the conclusion of the panel discussion, there was a screening of Workman’s documentary Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, an exploration of the enigma of Welles' career. The film features close to 50 years of Welles interviews, covering both his finished films and several of his unfinished films.
There was also an Orson Welles Centenary Celebration in New York on Saturday, May 2 that featured another screening of Workman’s documentary, a conversation about Welles’ art and life with Workman and DGA Eastern Region Special Projects Committee Chair Raymond De Felitta (Rob the Mob), and a screening of Welles’ noir classic Touch of Evil.