Inspirational Text for the Day #2

[collisionwork]

Just finished reading the second volume - Hello Americans - of Simon Callow's ongoing biography of Orson Welles a few days ago. Like the first volume - The Road to Xanadu - it's quite well-written, fair, detailed, and perceptive, with only a few errors of fact that I caught (for all the perception Callow, a working actor, brings to understanding Welles through his acting, he doesn't completely understand the mechanics of filmmaking and makes some blunders in that arena). Welles comes off as both a far greater and lesser person than I had believed him to be (both more honestly generous, loyal, and heroic some of the time, and monstrous, cruel, and selfish at others). Unlike all other bios of Welles I have read, it is neither a hagiography nor an assault, which is refreshing.

Callow apparently originally contracted to do a one-volume bio, which just kept growing. The first volume, covering the years 1915-1941, is 688 pages long. The second - which, again, was intended to cover the rest of Welles' life, winds up taking 440 pages to cover the years 1941-1947! In the afterword, Callow assures us he will cover 1948-1985 in a third and final volume.

This may seem unlikely, given how few years are dealt with in Hello Americans, but these six years are probably the most active and diverse of Welles' life - he completed four movies as director, shot many months on another, unfinished one, produced another two films for other directors, acted in another handful of movies, created two large theatrical productions, did 200 radio shows, wrote a regular newspaper column, and made pro-Roosevelt and anti-racism speeches all over the country. And for every project he completed (or mostly completed before it was taken away from him), he worked extensively on several others.

He was aided by his youth, energy, and immense interest in many subjects, as well as vast quantities of food, liquor, and amphetamines, but as he reached thirty, these didn't seem to be helping him so much anymore, and his success/failure ratio was tipping more and more to the latter.

Callow prints excerpts from a grumpy, yet honest and revealing, interview Welles did with Hedda Hopper in 1945, on the set of The Stranger, then lets loose with an analysis that has bounced around my head the rest of this week - today's "inspirational text," so to speak:

. . . Bringing the interview to an end, he puts his finger precisely on his problem. "The truth is, I'm a sweat guy. I hear that Noël Coward can write a play a week. Not me. If I can write a play at all, or a radio script, or a scenario, a newspaper column or anything, it's only by virtue of sweating it out. I will fight to the last drop of sweat - but believe me, I do everything the hard way." It was true enough. All the early work was achieved by audacity and adrenalin, sheer exuberance and delight in the work of his colleagues. Now, at the age of thirty, adrenalin was harder to command, and audacity not enough. The magic touch that had so sustained Welles in his twenties had disappeared: now it was just hard, hard work, and he was no longer sure that he enjoyed the job. But what to do instead? It is a question that many a performer has asked himself or herself when the honeymoon of their early career is over - can it really only be this, over and over again? Actors and directors are not, generally speaking, well qualified for any other job; most hit on their vocations precisely because they seemed no good for anything else. This is the moment at which character and power of endurance - what the Victorians used to call "bottom" - becomes almost as important as talent, and much more important than luck.

Comments

[silverplate88.livejournal.com]

Anything you're finding in Callow's work that you might use in your own?

[collisionwork]

Not so much in my work, no, but in my life, yes. Callow's presentation of all aspects of Welles' life, both professional and private, is both an inspirational and a cautionary tale -- Welles' honor, integrity, and heroism is something to aspire to, in life and work, and his selfishness, cruelty, and self-destructive arrogance and carelessness stands as a warning.