Stinko
Yesterday The Pursuitist posted outtakes of a sloshed Orson Welles attempting to say his lines for one of his Paul Masson Wine commercials, which ran in the ’70s.
I thought immediately of Malcolm Lowry‘s Geoffrey Firmin character in Under The Volcano, a penetrating portrayal of a British consul with an alcohol problem but more profoundly a book about “a constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him,” as one reviewer stated.
In Welles’ case those forces would be those many, many producers, studio chiefs and industry players who refused to take him seriously as a filmmaker, preferring to regard him as a colorful, storied fellow who had been permanently put out to pasture.
Then again it’s impossible to think of the Paul Masson brand without recalling Welles’ famous line, to wit: “We will sell no wine before its time.” Welles was canned as a Paul Masson spokesperson in the early 1980s after admitting on a talk show that he never drank Paul Masson wine.
Watching the other actors ply their way through these takes is just PAINFUL.
The actual commercial in which he doesn’t screw up might be just as funny. Wait till he raises his eyebrow…
Man…reading Orson’s Heart of Darkness script is something else. What a guy. Crazy in a practical way, indeed.
Thanks for the reminder, Gordy. That one just never gets old:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V14PfDDwxlE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3B3C5hR1lk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za3EuqU385k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH1PJTY9AVA&feature=related
The “maaahaaaa” at :56 is the funniest noise I’ve ever heard.
Those animal noises are priceless….The guy was a classic
man of the world….Hollywood did not listen hard enough.
How can a fat dude get THIS drunk?
I drink so much that I either can’t catch a real buzz and just get ANGRY, or I fall asleep trying. Just now I’m on six Jack and Pepsis, fives beers, and six double shots of straight vodka. I’m completely calm, bored, and punctuating and spelling like a regular Shrunk and Wagnalls. About to fall asleep all angry that I couldn’t get hammered enough, even after putting up those kind of numbers. Sitting here listening to ROCK BOX shirtless in my apartment. I can only imagine a FULL CAMERA CREW and other actors waiting on me would snap me out of this tame buzz even further…
He looks 360 easy here… What the fuck was he drinking, six 2-liters of Jager to get this hammered? At some point all human develop a TOLERANCE.
Then again, read Oliver Reed’s Wiki entry and the amount of booze in his system the day he died. It’s MIND BLOWING.
Drinking RULES. FREE LINDSAY.
Well, Lex, we now have something to look forward to: you reaching your tolerance level.
“The ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over these outtakes like the smoke from cheap incense.” – A.O. Scott
That’s pretty tough to watch.
I think Orson is about as close as cinema has gotten to a Mozart-level genius. Not a whole lot of fun to see the guy reduced to this.
Still, he lived better and more fully than I ever will, so I have no business pitying him.
Hard to believe that we still haven’t passed the point where Welles could have still been alive had he been healthy. He’d be younger than Norman Lloyd.
“Just now I’m on six Jack and Pepsis, fives beers, and six double shots of straight vodka. I’m completely calm, bored, and punctuating and spelling like a regular Shrunk and Wagnalls. About to fall asleep all angry that I couldn’t get hammered enough, even after putting up those kind of numbers. Sitting here listening to ROCK BOX shirtless in my apartment.”
Is this LexG persona some guy writing a novel via blog comments? If not, should LexG be considering it? Discuss.
Yeah, I actually posted a link to these same Welles-flubs last week or the week before, over in the Benicio Ice Cream Ad thread:
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/05/cash_em_in.php
Mr. Gittes-
Do you have the screenplay and could you send it?
Thanks!
Norman Lloyd did not speak to Welles much after leaving California when Heart of Darkness crumbled, and thus passed up being in Citizen Kane. He was a Houseman guy, and Houseman even let him stay for free in his house for a time. You had to choose one side or the other, Houseman or Welles.
I met and spoke with Lloyd a couple of weeks ago at a film nerd event in the “barn”, or the original Hollywood studio that used to be at Selma and Vine, where Goldwyn-Lasky-DeMille-Zukor set up shop in 1913. It’s now a museum across from the Hollywood Bowl, any true film geek should check it out. Talk about feeling history; how about speaking with 95-year-old Lloyd about Welles, Chaplin and Hitchcock, all while inside the first studio in Hollywood? He was mentally sharp as a tack, though he couldn’t hear very well. They also showed the documentary “Who is Norman Lloyd?” which was pretty decent.
Sounds very cool, John.
These clips have been around forever. People have done parodies of them even…some of them, like this one, are even pretty funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6P1ifGjvEE
Orson must’ve been sampling the crappy wine he was shilling.
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