The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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and carried the torch for the unfinished film long after the director died. "Welles and Bogdanovich had a strained relationship that made no sense to me at the time," said Larry, "but is understandable in retrospect. Bogdanovich was the current Golden Boy of Hol- lywood and when we met him, he was at the apex of his career. One night, Peter asked someone to call him a limo to take him to the airport. Welles seemed particularly annoyed with this and said, 'You mean a limousine? This is not a Hollywood production with a limousine budget, Peter!'" Most of the filming of The Other Side of the Wind took place be- tween 1970 and 1976. Forty-five years after the fact, stories from cast and crew play out like scenes from Rashomon, with some- times little agreement on when, where and who did what. For example: "There was a cigar-store Indian," remembered Larry, "and Orson put it in the shot. When Bogdanovich asked about the significance of the statue, Orson said, 'It's for the critics. They'll carry on about the symbology of it. And, in fact, it means nothing.' He then turned to Peter for emphasis and used his fa- mous voice: 'Nothing!'" Others recall a different prop and differ- ent target of Welles's sarcasm, but the story remains the same. It was Orson being Orson Welles. "He held court," said Ferris, who went onto become a camera operator for director John Cassavetes and a slew of franchises like Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible and Die Hard. "We would sit there and listen to one of the greatest voices in history, grin- ning from ear to ear. He never paused, he never hesitated except for effect. It just flowed out of him. He had a great kind of laugh and giggle that made him very human." Due to the lengthy shooting schedule, actors came and went and sometimes never came back, and Larry found himself as a stand-in one night by the pool. His job was to fall face-first into the water. "Remember," he was told, "we don't want to see your face. If we do, we'll have to shoot it again." Larry executed a perfect death spiral, but after drying off, "They asked me to do it again for good measure. I was fairly sure they did a sec- ond take as payback for me yelling at them from the driveway, but how often does a 15-year-old kid get punished by Orson Welles? It was well worth it." Much of the cutting-edge imagery in Wind was choreographed by Welles while wrapped in a terry cloth robe, firmly planted in a lounge chair. Ferris recalled, "It was organized chaos, but the chain of command began and ended with Orson. He was every- thing, and he had enormous visual capacity. He knew how to place people and practically cut the film within the camera—all without leaving that chair." Eventually, the good times had to come to an end, for us, and Welles. The problem was money, or the lack of it. Waiting for a check from Europe that never came, Graver announced that that was the end of the shoot. "And when we left that night, we never went back," said Larry. In a few years, Larry would make the pilgrimage out west, and—from a metaphorical driveway called Hollywood—yell at Ralph Bakshi to give him a job. It worked. But money wasn't the only complication for Welles. After four months, everybody in Carefree knew that he was making a mov- ie. All they had to do was look at the roof, where actors Cameron Mitchell, Paul Stewart and Mercedes McCambridge were cavort- ing while Welles instructed them to act as if "invisible midgets" were grabbing their ankles. And watching the house from his vantage point on Stagecoach Pass Road was Gerry Jones, who relayed the bad news to Ross Slingman. The homeowner pro- ceeded to evict Welles for violating the lease, and after regaining possession, "we walked through it together," said Jones. "A car had smashed through the front wall of the guest house. Family heirlooms were floating in the swimming pool. Scraps of ham and eggs were lying in the beds and [there were] obvi- ous signs of pornographic film production." The latter might have been inferred from the blacked-out windows and, guessed Josh Karp, and the comings and goings of endless cameras and scantily clad young people. "As Ross and I continued through the house, I even found several pairs of Orson's oversize under- wear," which he ventured were a size "68-inch waist." Soon enough, the Slingmans got the house back into "pristine shape," and allowed themselves a modicum of for- giveness. The Slingman house of Carefree, Arizona, was now enshrined forever in the director's final fea- ture film, to be finished and released 45 years later by the efforts of Gary Graver, Peter Bogdanovich, Netflix and a laundry list of devoted Wellesian aficionados. "We never forgot Mr. Welles," said Gerry Jones, now in his nineties. "Each year on the anniversary of the eviction, Ross ran up a pair of Orson's drawers up the flagpole while we enjoyed a bottle of wine." If you're up for the mind-boggling story of just how "post" post-production can get, read Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind by Josh Karp. See the official Netflix trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_ continue=100&v=nMWHBUTHmf0 Photo courtesy of Netflix