I'm putting my hand up. I don't watch it. Game of Thrones. After several years, apparently, of riveting viewing, the last season is going down in Middle Earth, or Westworld, or wherever it's set. For three days in a row this week, I've heard people discussing it at the office. When I flick open a news site on the web, I'll see a link to an article about the show. Event television, water-cooler television.
I have only ever seen ONE episode of GOT (see, I know the fan acronym) and that was six years ago, but through sheer force of osmosis of the press and social media, I know more about that TV show (who's in it, plot lines, plot twists, plot holes, spoilers, surprises, murders, deaths, trivia, controversy, and Starbucks' coffee cups) than I know about I Love Lucy, which I did watch.
Will I ever watch GOT? I have no idea. I might, I've come late to a lot of TV things. Breaking Bad, for example, which I binge-watched over the course of a couple of months a year ago, long after everyone else had seen it. The Wire is another example, and I think it's an excellent show, but I've so far only binged the first season; I'm due to watch the second in 2030. The Wire is now so old it's not even in wide-screen – it's in that old boxy TV 4x3 format. And then there's a bunch of recent shows I want to watch, but haven't even made the effort, like The Knick, Peaky Blinders, The Alienist.
And then there are movies, and a couple by Orson Welles flicks I've never seen.
I like Welles' movies and have watched many more than once – Citizen Kane maybe thirty times (I was a nerdy, film-crazy kid). I think Touch of Evil (1958) is his best. I recently rewatched it when I discovered Netflix had the HD version, and I still came to the same conclusion the next day about why it's not one of the greatest movies ever made: Charlton Heston – one of the least convincing actors in history (in my opinion). Wood. Grade-A certification. Heston's impersonation of a Mexican man in Touch of Evil is about as good as my impersonation of a New York bagel.
Oh, why couldn't they have cast someone like Ramón Novarro, or Ricardo Montalbán to play the Mexican drug enforcement agent, you know, a real actor (and Mexican)? Oh, yeah. Charlton Heston, that's right. He was the primary reason the picture got made, and the only reason Orson Welles did the writing, directing, and took the lead role. The studio really didn't want Welles anywhere near the thing. Heston probably laid down one of his you'll have to pry this movie out of my cold dead hands speeches to the studio bosses; such is the clout of a Grade-A certified movie star. I'll give Heston this, he believed in Welles, and Welles gave him his best picture (Welles' best picture, that is).
One Welles' movies I've never seen is Chimes at Midnight (1965). I've seen several clips, I know it draws upon two Shakespeare plays, I've heard it has one of best medieval battle scenes ever put to film, and Welles thought of it as his best film.
And that's all I know. Why haven't I seen it? Well, chance would be a fine thing. It's simply has never come my way. Citizen Kane was always rerunning on TV when I was a kid. Same too with TOE, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, Journey into Fear, Lady from Shanghai, and so on. I suppose I could simply buy it.
Another of Welles' movies I have never seen is The Other Side of the Wind. I've known about this one for years. And I've never seen it, because (until recently) almost no one had, because Welles never finished it; he died in 1985. I can now watch this one, and I plan to soon, as it's on Netflix. Somebody finished it; and I believe one of those people was Peter Bogdanovich – who knows a thing or two about movies, was a friend of Welles, and, also, was in the movie. So, there is some authenticity in the completion. I firmly expect the movie will be a strange experiment in filmmaking / mess. But it'll be great to see John Huston, one of my other favourite directors, playing a role in it. Huston was no slouch as an actor – hell, even he would have made for a convincing Mexican drug enforcement agent.
I've seen almost all of John Huston's films (and a couple I wish I hadn't: The List of Adrian Messenger). And one, The Man Who Would be King, I really wished he'd made earlier, as he had planned, because then it would have starred Humphrey Bogart, and not Sean Connery (another piece of lumber in the acting yard). Yes, I know it was Kipling and the characters were British Empire, but even Bogart would have made for a convincing Mexican drug enforcement agent. And sergeant in her majesty's army.
I'll shut up now. Forgive my loose ramble. It's the weather. Winter is coming and I have a head cold.
Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich in a brief scene from Touch of Evil that probably sums up noir in every way. Filmmaking, acting, writing. It don't get much better than this.
First published: Sleuthsayers.org (May 11, 2019)
©2019 Stephen Ross