ORSON THE EXHAUSTED
Above I've posted two minutes of excerpts of an interview Orson Welles gave in 1958 after ostensibly seeing "Touch Of Evil" for the first time (at the Belgian World Film Festival no less) since the studio took the film away from him. This is Welles in his pre ''Oja Kodar/swinging 70s/move back to Hollywood to sit at the lunch table at Ma Maison and appear on the Muppets and Merv Griffin' phase, a period which I always preferred to his middle-period 'outcast/Euro-based/hotel-hopping/Don Quixote-making/Countess-marrying/'I don't have the vocation for martyrdom but look at how I'm acting like a martyr anyway' period (above). The later Welles, in spite of all of the same old problems he always suffered (weight, disrespect, lack of completion funds) is somehow lighter in spirit with a twinkle in his eye that is entirely missing in the middle period. Indeed, in the 50s and early 60s Welles was remorseful, proud, touchy and filled with a tiresom...