This is a short story in progress. I am offering it here for you to comment or to dismiss, whatever the flavor of the day is.
Orson Welles is dead, and Steven Spielberg did him in. Always trying to finance another film, Welles is invited by Spielberg to dinner. Spielberg has purchased one of the extant three papier-mache Rosebud sleds from Citizen Kane. After larding Welles with kudos, so the story goes, of how much he has influenced the younger generation of filmmakers, Welles thinks he might have a shot at being financed by Spielberg. After all, Spielberg can help Welles make 10 films for the price of one of his, indeed, in his Othello Welles was so hard pressed for money that he used Turkish towels in a bath scene and the critics thought it brilliant. But all Spielberg does is talk about Kane and Rosebud.
“Orson, why a sled of all things”? If Steven has the answer to that his own films might grow immeasurably as art. (Hadn’t Welles screened John Ford’s Stagecoach countless times?)
“Why not a sled, Steven? Orson’s busy eyebrows that supported that high foreheard arch, flicker, for it is now no longer a generation of vipers but one of fools; kids raised on camcorders, a spume of non-readers.
“Well, the glass paperweight might have been used symbolically?” (It is, muses Welles.)
“Yes, it might have.” Orson finds this intolerable if not inane but he endures out of strength as an artist — he is not panhandling, never did. Movie-making is a world of “happy lunacy” as he termed it at a Hollywood fete in his honor.
“So.” Steven says.
“So!” Orson says. He does not suffer fools, this mountainous man with the compassionate heart.
“Well, the sled does work.” Welles gives him that just to get on with it. He has lost again and he knows it.
“You mean because of the snow?” Steven replies.
“Yeah, the snow. Snow symbolizes death, Steven. Did you ever read Joyce’s ‘The Dead’?”
“No.”
If Orson had Lived
He’d direct himself in the definitive performance of Lear.
He’d restore or re-shoot the missing footage from The Magnificent Ambersons.
And he never would make a sequel to any of his films.
And he would have continued working out the labyrinth which was central to all his films.
He’d be slain by Steven Spielberg.
If financed, Welles would make three or more greater films than Kane.
He’d have chosen not to lose weight. He is so wounded, it is his buffer.
He’d co-direct with Clint eastwood — Welles admires his The Ballad of Josey Wales. In fact, it has John Ford written all over it and is composed as if Welles had shot a western which, come to think of it, he had — Macbeth.
Rosebud sleds enter the market, named after the in-joke that it is William Randolph Hearst’s name for Marion Davies’ genitalia. (And to have that on your lips when one comes to die.)
Steven Spielberg might be induced to retire and read more.
Orson is missed dearly and we don’t know we miss his civilizing presence.
Orson in Heaven
The most American of directors is an expatriate. Even in heaven.
Orson, there is no need for a film to be made here.
“I’ll do it any way you want but I have to have final cut.”
Dear Orson, I have the final cut.
“I give you that. But all film is death on celluloid; even poor Georgie Raft refused to see his films because he didn’t want to see himself grow old.”
I love you dearly, Orson. In you abides a noble spirit, and like your childhood hero, Shakespeare, you contain both desert and oasis and great expanses of largesse and much good will. Always free of racism, you gave many people work. You were misused and abused. Is it not so that you continued to write and create up to the very end regardless of how you were perceived, with all those Carson jokes about your weight, as if you did not have feelings?
“I have no response except that I be allowed to create and imagine; that I never be re-
incarnated as Steven Spielberg.”
Welles delivers that insouciantly with an arched eyebrow and they both have a grand laugh.
Welles is given a studio. He is now working on a great Lear. Opening with a magnificent crane shot that goes beyond the great one that begins Touch of Evil, this time the credits don’t spoil it; Universal’s gift to editing. While Welles is finishing his Lear, he has released The Other Side of the Wind to his heavenly confreres. Huston is fine and well, and Welles is pleased that he is doing so much better now free of emphysema. How Welles iis applauded in heaven and given honors by those of his generation who understand and admire a master at work. More good news. Welles is doing Hamlet, and he feels the young Errol Flynn, with sufficient coaching, might do very well in the role. And Flynn has accepted — recognition at last. The last we hear of Welles he is scouting locations above with the great cinemaphotographers, Griffith’s Billy Bitzer and his own Gregg Toland and Stanley Cortez.
And Rita has returned, Alzheimer free, for she cherishes the boy genius. She and Everett Sloane are waiting for a recoupling; The Lady from Shanghai is one of Rita’s favorite roles. And no one can say “lover” better than Sloane — he will be forever “Bernstein.” Privately Welles has caringly, compassionately chided him for taking his own life.
The End
Imagine the finest Carrera marble of Italy, liquefied and cooling, imagine it flowing, like lava, into an artifice of great design and one might hear again the voice that was Welles. (Poor Joe Cotten, just had a laryngectomy; poor Leland.)
Imagine Cotten and Welles entwined and fused into one spoken language and one hears the harmonics by which the planets do their rounds.
And who now attends to the octogenarian, Joe Cotten, who now would play Leland masterfully — and at the right age — as he did as young man in Kane, gussied up in a wheelchair, cap, and cadging the shadow-shrouded reporter for stogies. And how Welles would fill up Charles Foster Kane with character whereas he was just a marionette, as Welles later confided to his biographer.
And who now will embrace Welles’ memory lovingly? Oh tragic and insupportable loss, his childhood friend might exclaim.
And when Spielberg comes to die, what will issue from his lips?
Originally written in August 1990 and last revised in July 1992, this story is still with me and the above rendition has been improved. What saith thou, reader?
