My Lunches with Orson ... the life of a mattress ... Ruby Wax, poster child for mental illness ... El Macho, El Insulting? ...
Celebrate Welles' 100th with lunch with Orson and then a 'Touch of Evil'
UPDATE: Wednesday, June 6, 2015, is Welles centennial. To celebrate, the Crest Theater in Westwood is screening his film "Touch of Evil" (1958), in which he stars with Marlene Dietrich, Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
It's a dark, weird film with wonderful Wellesian flourishes, like the unedited opening time-bomb shot, which is Welles saying, "Look here, Hollywood. I can still kick your butt."
In the meantime, check out RH Greene's radio documentary masterpiece, War of the Welles, his minute-by-minute examination of Welles' "The War of the Worlds."
Welles and Jaglom became fast friends. They were an odd couple, to say the least. Their backgrounds, personalities, ages (Jaglom was in his late thirties, Welles in his mid-sixties) -- even their films were discrepant. What they did have in common was a fierce desire to go their own way. (Peter Biskind in the introduction to My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles)
Reading My Lunches with Orson is like one of those afternoons when, dining alone, you happen to sit near two people having a conversation you wish you could join.
Starting in 1978, director Henry Jaglom had lunch with Orson Welles every week at Ma Maison, the late great LA eatery, and at Welles' request, taped their conversations for the final two years. Jaglom told his friend, film writer Peter Biskind (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls), about the tapes, and finally, they've been transcribed and edited.
The result is truly Welles as you've never seen him - human - talking about things he knows - film, and life. He's obscene, gentle, funny, right, wrong, poignant, optimistic, and maudlin. He worked with everybody, and seems to have slept with half of them, and isn't shy with his opinions about them. He thought Gary Cooper was an awful actor, but loved watching him act; thought Irene Dunne was the "non-singing Jeanette MacDonald," and couldn't stand Woody Allen movies.
The bittersweet through-line of the transcripts is Jaglom's attempts to get Welles one last directing job. Jaglom brings many of his friends to lunch with Welles -- powerful men in Hollywood who could have made the movie happen -- and while they all say how excited they were to meet the great man, nothing would come of the meetings. Jaglom says, "Orson said to me one day, 'If you knew how many lunches there have been in the last twenty years...' He knew at some bottom level that nobody would help him."
Listen to my entire interview with Biskind and Jaglom, and hear excerpts from the actual tapes made at Ma Maison between 1983 and 1985, when Welles died at 70.
Jaglom and Biskind will be appearing Thursday, July 25, 7:30pm, at Laemmle's Music Hall Theatre, to talk about My Lunches with Orson. It's a Writers Bloc event. Click here to go. Tickets are $20.
OCMA Triennial: Artist Shaun Gladwell takes dancing, beats outside the box
The last few weeks we've been visiting the the California Pacific Triennial, a new group show at the Orange County Museum of Art. The exhibit focuses on artists who live and work in and around the Pacific Ocean.
You've heard from painters, installation artists and curator Dan Cameron. This week, Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson talked with Australian video artist Shaun Gladwell. His installation, titled Broken Dance, is a two channel video installation that combines music and dance in an unusual way. Here's a video of Shaun talking about the installation:
Ruby Wax: 'Still Out of Her Mind'
If there were a lifetime laugh meter, Ruby Wax would register into the billions by now. She’s a native of Illinois but a star of British comedy – the Royal Shakespeare Company, a BBC comic legend, collaborations with Alan Rickman, and editor of the television series "Absolutely Fabulous."
But she also suffers from severe clinical depression. She’s made even that the subject of her witty one-woman show called "Still Out of Her Mind." The show takes the audience through the ups and downs of mental illness, and the stigmas associated with depression. And finally the freedom that can be found when you share life's darkest moments.
About five years ago Ruby became the poster girl for mental illness. She didn’t actually go for the role, she was "outed" by Comic Relief. They asked to take a photo of her for their Mental Health campaign. She assumed it was going to be a small picture instead there were suddenly enormous posters of her all around London with the words, “This woman has mental illness, please help her.” She was mortified. She tried to cover up the first one she saw but realized they were everywhere. So she wrote a one-woman show about mental illness and turned her image into publicity poster. If you have a disability, why not use it?
She went on to perform the show she created for two years in Mental Health institutions. They loved it — even though they weren’t always facing her direction. She jokingly says, “If you can make a schizophrenic laugh you’re half way to Broadway.”
"Still Out of Her Mind" wraps up this weekend at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, but not before Ruby Wax has a few words with Patt Morrison.