Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1061972
74 CINEMONTAGE / Q4 2018 getting punched out at Hannaford's party, but key shots showing the blocking featured celebrity impersonator Rich Little — cast as Otterlake in an earlier filmed version. In an inspired decision, Murawski used shots of Little, but presented him as a party guest, not Otterlake. "When I put it in, Peter's reaction was, 'Oh, we can't use that — we got rid of all the Rich Little stuff,'" Murawski says. "I said, 'Peter, he can just be another guest. So what if we have a little bit of Rich Little?' There are all these other Hollywood party guests." By contrast, much of the film-within-the-film material — filled with knowing looks and bizarre interactions between Dale and a woman known only as the Actress (Kodar) — was edited, and re-edited, by Welles. "He was able to edit it without sound, which probably made things easier," Murawski comments. "I think originally he intended that it was going to be a parody of these kind of European movies, but that the more he shot, the more he enjoyed shooting it. He probably felt free from having to deal with dialogue and story. It was just images." Amidst all of the footage — and all of the excitement of completing a film that so many have dreamt of seeing — Murawski concedes that it took him a while to engage with the project. "I felt, 'Well, maybe we're going to put this thing together and only end up with an interesting curio,'" he says, but he eventually located the heart of the film: the alternately affectionate and acrimonious relationship between Hannaford and Otterlake — and the passive-aggressive relationship between Hannaford and Dale. "For me, that was finding those scenes between Bogdanovich and Huston — those scenes where they're alone discussing things, and Hannaford is drinking glass after glass of Chivas, completely plastered and talking about how he feels betrayed by John Dale," Murawski observes. "Seeing those scenes, and putting them together, is when I felt like it had become a real movie." SETTLING SCORES Equally important in turning Wind into a real movie was the addition of music; the scenes Welles had left behind featured, at most, temp music. Music editor Segal, who had worked with Murawski on several films, including the original Spider-Man, joined Wind last December. "I had experience with film, which helped a lot, because we started the process in film but ended up with digital," says Segal, who met with Murawski, Rymsza and post-production supervisor Ruth Hasty. "Basically, they said, 'Can you start next week?' And I said, 'Yes.'" Like Murawski, Segal had to interpret Welles' intentions from the scant clues he left behind. "Everything was in Orson's head, basically," she says. "The biggest challenge was that there was no director. You have Orson in the back of your mind at all times, and you want to try to stay as close to what you think he might have wanted, but it was a tough one. The film is really unique — it's not a Citizen Kane-type story." Welles did, however, give a hint of what he wanted the audience to hear during the party set in Ellen Segal in Orson Welles' regular booth at Musso and Frank's Grill. A scene from The Other Side of the Wind.