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Spit this off to it's own thread. -admin

The teaser trailer for this year's Marathon entry, the classic THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN. It features that wine spokesman as the narrator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0wzYiIKAsI

i don't mean to complain but how could a man like orson welles be astounded by a movie that uses prop gimmicks with which he is totally familiar. the answer as we all know is that the progression of orson welles was one of child prodigy, to gifted artist who partially sells out, to gifted artist who totally sells out, to total sellout.

Orson was probably just being a good soldier at Universal where he made some films. Plus, it's quite a good film and the effects are top notch for the era and the budget.

kirok wrote on Dec 21^st, 2012 at 1:04pm:

i don't mean to complain but how could a man like orson welles be astounded by a movie that uses prop gimmicks with which he is totally familiar.

Well, Bernie, I (for one) would say that Mr Welles was handed this thing we call a "script," & that he read from that "script" & was paid for his work, because he was a world-famous voice-over professional, & that was one way of selling the movie.

Quote:

the answer as we all know is that the progression of orson welles was one of child prodigy, to gifted artist who partially sells out, to gifted artist who totally sells out, to total sellout.

We "all" do not know that, Bernie. Some of us have read every book on Mr Welles that has ever been written, as well as watching almost every movie he ever made, as well as listening to a vast number of his radio broadcasts, as well as reading his books and articles. That would make one of us well-informed. (Hint: not you.)
Tell you what. When you make something even one-tenth as good as the worst thing Mr Welles made, I'll listen to what you have to say about him. Until that non-existent time, rest assured that long after your DNA will have left this mortal plane, people will still be watching Mr Welles's work, and marvelling at a majority of it.

davey baby: i'll skip the irrelevant stuff and just say that alfred hitchcock would never prostitute himself for a company that sells wine that comes in a cardboard box.

kirok wrote on Dec 21^st, 2012 at 8:23pm:

davey baby: i'll skip the irrelevant stuff and just say that alfred hitchcock would never prostitute himself for a company that sells wine that comes in a cardboard box.

   Bernie, sweetie, youre so right! Hitchcock would never have prostituted himself in any way, shape, or (considerable) form!
   He wouldnt, say, prostitute himself by making the same genre of film -- over & over & over -- repeating many of the same themes & even plots, to the point where a Hitchcock movie became a recognizable, marketable product, because the would be akin to prostitution, right?
   And he wouldnt exploit that market, would he, by, for instance, creating a TV show that dealt with the same type of subject matter, right? Because he would avoid that sort of cheap, marketable ploy.

   And he also wouldnt, let us posit, further prostitute his image & name across an entire line of books he had nothing to do with just for the sake of money, right?

   And theres not a chance in hell that he would, just as a for instance, prostitute himself even further by letting people use his name & likeness in a magazine series he also had nothing to do with, because he kept himself pure & clean & above such mundane considerations, yes?

   And, of course, the very idea that he would prostitute himself, on, oh, I dont know, a record album would be unthinkable! God forbid!

   Nah, that would never happen.
   So, pity poor, whoring Orson Welles, who "prostituted" himself to a wine company, and used that money to finance his movies and make a living.
   What planet do you live on, again?

davey boo boo: television anthologies and pulp fiction are worthwhile ventures and provide employment and are also a venue for budding talent. and when you say "wine company..." you conveniently omit the detail "...that sells wine in a cardboard box"
in the future please keep it reel.

kirok wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2012 at 12:09am:

   Now, you see, folks: this is a perfect example of why you should not only never argue with right-wingers, but also why it's impossible to argue with them! They are pathologically incapable of admitting when they are wrong. You need look no further than the current stance of the loonies at the NRA to see what I mean: no, no, the fact that people have access to assault weapons & high-capacity magazines isnt the problem! Everyone should have own those instead! Contrary information will bounce off them like a superball on asphalt.
   Unable to win an argument with "logic" or "facts" or even "intelligence," the right-winger will resort to strawman responses like the miserable specimen quoted above. Okay, maybe Hitchcock prostituted his name & likeness, but at least when he did so, it employed budding talent, & at least he wasnt hawking wine in cardboard boxes! Never mind the fact that wine companies also employ people, & never mind further that Gallo wasnt sold in cardboard boxes at the time Welles was making those ads. Orson Welles didnt live up to Bernie's expectations, so Orson Welles was a whore. Why, he should have let himself starve in the gutter before demeaning himself like that! How dare he not behave in a manner Bernie proscribes!
   It would never occur to Bernie -- because right-wingers have problems with empathy -- that Welles wasnt thrilled to find that he had fallen so far as to have to make those commercials just to earn a living. He would make jokes about it, of course, that was his way; but being more intelligent than the rest of us, it wouldnt have escaped his notice that what he was reduced to was far beneath his abilities.
   And I think the difference in our attitudes toward these two directors says more about us -- as a country and as a culture -- than the tiny disagreement going on here. Hitchcock had only a slight talent, but he found his niche & exploited it to the hilt (thats not a bad thing, BTW; more power to him). Welles had a more restless creativity: he always wanted to try new & different things, & he couldnt stay in the same place or on the same project for too long; & this restlessness on his part is one of the many things that did him in. He just couldnt see film-making as a business, as a product, the way Hitchcock could & did.
   The result is that there is now a virtual Hitchcock industry: books & papers & articles & movies in an unending torrent. And that makes sense to me, because Hitchcock's films are usually such empty-headed garbage that you can interpret them pretty much any way you please & nothing in the movies will contradict that interpretation. Hitchcock died a very rich man, & his films are now considered great art; which, to me at least, is a cosmic joke.
   Welles, on the other hand, had anything but a slight talent. The man's talents were protean: he could paint, draw, write, act, edit, photograph, and so on & on. His better movies blow Hitchcock's best clean out of the water & onto dry land. (He made his share of turkeys, though; but then, so did Hitch.) And the interesting result is that there is not a Welles industry by any stretch. The only consistent thing are the biographies that bemoan his under-utilized abilities. Welles died a virtual pauper; his estate as messy as his life.
   So, on the one hand, Hitchcock: he made a marketable, exploitable product, & is even now being exploited & marketed. On the other hand, Welles: a true artist, who made a handful of truly great films, but who cannot be so easily marketed or exploited. The conclusion Bernie draws from this comparison? Hitchcock employed budding talent, while Welles prostituted himself selling wine.
   What does it say about us, as a country & as a culture, that someone like Welles was allowed go fallow, being unable, in the end, to get any backing for the projects he wanted to make, after decades of running all over the globe -- acting, narrating, doing voice-overs, dubbing commercials, voicing cartoons, selling wine -- to finance them himself, whereas Hitchcock had a suite of offices at Paramount (and then Universal) & was able to make any movie he liked? And what does it say, further, that given that power, he chose to continue to make the same type of movie -- over & over again? (Psycho, which he self-financed, & which made him incredibly rich, was a slight exception to that.) Well, to me, at least, it says a lot: it explains why almost everything being made these days sucks so much: because if you cant sell it, market it, & exploit it, whats the point?
   In olden days, someone like Welles would have come to the attention of a patron, & that patron would have given him a living so that he could utilize his talents to their fullest. And we, as a species, would have been the wealthier for that -- not, mind you, the wealth that we can put in a bank; I mean culturally wealthier.
   But to people like Bernie, our great loss can be summed up in two words: "boo boo."
   Disgusting.

my question now is: did anyone of us read the above sh!t from start to finish?

I did, and on the whole I would agree with it. A few thoughts of my own. First, whether Orson Welles had to make wine commercials or not,he was a great artist and made some of my favorite films. I wish Hollywood would have been better at recognizing and backing genius. The studios, then as now, are basically accounting firms that happen to make movies, so someone that comes out with great movie that doesn't make a ton of money opening weekend will not get a whole lot of backing.
I like Hitchcock, but I know exactly what I'm getting. With Orson Welles, I'll get something different from the previous movie he made. That makes me want to go back and see some of his movies that I haven't seen because he did interesting movies. I don't care that he had to make stupid wine commercials, I love his movies and that's what I will remember him for.

my buddy hitch had quite a range. he did screwball comedies, psychological thrillers, spy thrillers, crime dramas, gothic romance, murder mysteries, pure drama and horror.
dave-arino's rantings aren't at all necessary. i gave orson welles plenty of cred in my original post. welles' long slide is a shame but indisputable. he was doing card tricks on the merv griffin show and he was botching them.

in other news, the bfi has given alfred hitchcock's "vertigo" the number 1 ranking in it's top 50 films of all time poll. the poll is conducted roughly every 10 years and hundreds of critics and directors are polled. a longstanding number one ranked film by an american director was supplanted by hitchcock.

Orson Welles loved stage magic, spectacle and illusions in a big way. He threw tons of money (or got people to throw tons of money) into a stage version of "Around The World in 80 Days" just so he could ham it up with Rita Hayworth and perform magic in front of a live crowd. I could believe he'd have enjoyed the effects trickery of THE INCREDIBLE-ble-ble SHRINKING-ing-ing MAN-man-man even if he weren't paid to say it.

i just checked the orson welles page and the alfred hitchcock page on Facebook. the news is not good for the orson welles enthusiasts. ahem. it's 460,000 likes for hitch. 46,000 likes for welles. it's a quite unexpected trouncing by a factor of 10 to 1.

thank you.

a highly respected director is doing a remake of rebecca. how many orson welles productions got remakes. also has there been an orson welles homage by brian depalma? cuz depalma has done 2 well received homages: body double and dressed to kill.
hitch's sense of humor far surpasses that of orson welles. he used to say "call me Hitch, hold the cock"

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http://sf.theboard.net/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl Passenger Information >> Advanced Projection Information Appraisal >> Hitchcock vs Orson Welles http://sf.theboard.net/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1356108222 Message started by L.A. Connection on Dec 21^st, 2012 at 11:43am