My Lunches with Orson (28 page)

HJ:
And while we're talking about this, you're not crazy about Ingrid Bergman.

OW:
No, she's not an actress. Just barely able to get through a scene.

HJ:
But when she and Bogart get together in
Casablanca
—

OW:
I admired
Casablanca
very much. I thought it was a very well put-together piece of
Schwarmerei
, with just the right measure of every ingredient and all that crap, and of course, tremendous luck, because they were making it up as they went along. They were playing it not knowing how it was going to end. They didn't know who she was going to end up with, or why. And all of them wanted out. Bogart used to tell me, “I'm in the worst picture I've ever been in.”

HJ:
You liked him personally?

OW:
Very much. And once he made it in movies, I saw he was a real star. Ingrid Bergman, too. And when you start to dissect a real star, one person will say they can act, another person will say they can't. What is indelible is the quality of stardom. And whether it's acting or not is a useless argument. Because the star thing is a different animal. It breaks all the rules.

HJ:
Are you saying Bogart never took himself seriously as an actor?

OW:
I think Bogart thought he was as good as anybody around.

HJ:
And he was a decent man?

OW:
I wouldn't say decent. He was a brave man. He was amusing and original. Very opinionated, with very dumb opinions and not very well read and pretending to be. You know, a lot of people who aren't interesting on the screen were very bright. Paul Henreid is very bright. He was supposed to be the star of
Casablanca
. The antifascist hero. Bogart was the second guy. The fellow who owned the restaurant, you see. But
Casablanca
ended Henreid's career.

HJ:
Because everybody remembers Bogart, Bergman—and oh yeah, that other guy. After that movie, Henreid played a supporting character for the rest of his life.

OW:
You know the mean joke played on him by Walter Slezak, and a bunch of other actors on a subsequent movie? Henreid is sitting there, in his chair, waiting between takes. And the other actors get into a conversation—that he can hear—saying: “It was Ralph Bellamy in
Casablanca
. “No, no, it was…”

HJ:
Who directed
Casablanca
? Michael Curtiz?

OW:
No idea about dialogue, but a very, very good visual sense. Very Hungarian. You can't imagine how Hungarian he was.

HJ:
Jewish, I'm sure.

OW:
No, Hungarian. Real Hungarian. One of the stories about him was when they had an extra call with some blacks in a group, he says, “All the whites over here and all the niggers over there.” There was a terrible silence and the assistant director says to the director in a low voice, “Mr. Curtiz … you say ‘all the
Negroes
or you say
colored
.' So Curtiz says, “All right, all the colored niggers over there.” Tracy told me that story. He was on the picture.

HJ:
What's handled so well in
Casablanca
are those big scenes in the casino where all the French are milling about and the Germans come in.

OW:
Awfully well done. Curtiz used to be an assistant to Max Reinhardt, so he knew what he was doing.

HJ:
Did Reinhardt deserve the reputation that he enjoyed in Europe?

OW:
He deserved it. I regarded Reinhardt with awe. He was a great, great director. A great master of spectacle as well as intimate comedy. He could do anything. I saw his production of
Merchant of Venice
and
Romeo and Juliet
with Elisabeth Bergner, who was superb.

HJ:
You saw
Romeo and Juliet
with Elisabeth Bergner? Oh, my God!

OW:
My father took me, as a child. I also saw an [Arthur] Schnitzler comedy that Reinhardt did in a small theater in Vienna. Marvelous performances. Wonderful.

HJ:
But was he as great a force as you say?

OW:
You can't imagine. Nobody, before or since, has ever had such a commanding role in the theater in as many countries at once. He had four or five theaters he ran at the same time. Hugely successful,
The Miracle
made a fortune.

HJ:
The Miracle
?

OW:
The Miracle
was a huge piece of pageantry, in which the theater was totally transformed into a cathedral. In Vienna. He collapsed the proscenium long before anybody else did. He had a theater at his castle in Salzburg, and the greatest actors in Europe would come to play there every year. Bill Dieterle was one of his assistants also. And [Ernst] Lubitsch.

Reinhardt came to see my production of
Danton's Death
when he arrived in New York. I was playing a small part, about eight lines—Saint-Just.
Danton's Death
had been one of the biggest successes of his career. He did it in a sports arena with an audience of about five thousand people each night. [Vladimir] Sokoloff played Robespierre for him in Berlin and he also played it with me in New York. I was very nervous because here was a production totally unlike his, you know. Reinhardt came backstage, sat with the director, talked for a while while I waited, and then said to me, “You are the best
Schauspieler
in America. You must do the great parts.” Nothing about the production. So all he could do was tell me what a great actor I was.

HJ:
So he didn't like the production.

OW:
Of course not. Couldn't blame him.

When he got to Hollywood, he couldn't come to terms with the fact that he was a nobody refugee. He was lost. Probably didn't have enough respect for the medium, either, I think. Although he had the sense to know that Mickey Rooney was one of the most talented people in Hollywood and to cast him as Puck. So this man ruling over everything in
Mittel
Europe had no chance in America. None of the refugees did. Only the writers, who could just sit and write. Think, what did Brecht do? What did Kurt Weill do? What did any of them do?

HJ:
Well, Weill had another career. I mean, you may not like it, but it was another career.

OW:
Not much of one until just at the end. He was out of work most of the time. So was Thomas Mann, ruling over everything. You don't know what America was like during the war. It was the pits. The stage died. People flocked to the theaters, but the movies died, too. Because all you had to do was turn the projector on. No movie failed. But they got worse and worse. The war flattened everybody's taste in a very curious way. The best thing they could do in the movies was some delirious piece of fabrication like
Casablanca
. That was
the
great work of art, during the whole period of the war. Nothing else.

HJ:
Why has that picture taken on such a—?

OW:
It has nothing to do with anything except Hollywood's dream of the war. But that's its charm. To me, it's like
The Merry Widow
, which is a great work of its kind. There never was a Vienna like the one in
The Merry Widow
, and there never was a Casablanca like the one in
Casablanca
. But who gives a damn, you know? It was just commercial enough, so everybody was happy. And it had a wonderful cast of actors. But a great film? You can't call it that. It's not a great film. It's just great entertainment. The person who loved it when it opened, who persuaded me to take it more seriously, was Marlene. She's the one who said, “They'll be showing that thirty years from now. You listen to me.” So then I had to think, and say, “I guess you're right.”

 

20. “Jack, it's Orson fucking Welles.”

In which Jack Nicholson finally responds to
The Big Brass Ring
. Orson voices his admiration for Jacobo Timerman, considers the paranoia of Jews, and laments the destruction of Paris by the automobile.

*   *   *

H
ENRY
J
AGLOM
:
I have good news and bad news. I'll tell you the good news first. Jack said yes to
The Big Brass Ring
, but he won't reduce his salary. I said, “Jack, it's Orson fucking Welles. Imagine it's 1968!” He said, “If this were 1968, I would do it for nothing. I really want to do it, but it will totally throw me into the art movie world again and I've been working to get out of that into the big, mainstream things, where they pay me millions and millions of dollars. If I do a picture for half that, how do I explain to the next person that I'm demanding four million?”

O
RSON
W
ELLES
:
I should have known better. They all said no, and each kept me waiting weeks before each “no.” And every “no” hurts me more than I let on. They always want earth-shattering from me. They want
Touch of Evil
from me. And I'm not ready with any
Touch of Evil
. They're thinking, “Orson is old-fashioned. He's lost it. He used to be an innovator.” But I tell you, every script I've ever written, if you read it before I made it into a movie, it would look straight and conservative. I've always felt there are three sexes: men, women, and actors. And actors combine the worst qualities of the other two. I can't go on waiting for stars.

HJ:
I'm afraid you may be right. And it's a shocking thing to think this about my friends, you know?

OW:
But that's the way friends are, if they're stars.

HJ:
You said that from the beginning—and I didn't believe it. I just thought everybody would be so excited at the chance. I'd like to kill the bastards.

HJ:
What about Jack Lemmon?

OW:
He's old-looking.

HJ:
Really? I was just thinking that he looks good. Because he's actually not. What is he? Fifty-five?

OW:
Yeah. He looks good in this restaurant, under these rosy lights. But you see him on TV—he's always giving long interviews, he loves to talk, as we know—and he looks every minute of his age because they blast him with light, so we don't recognize him. Fifteen years ago, Lemmon would have looked credible as a young candidate, but Kennedy changed the image of how a presidential candidate should look.

HJ:
If we don't get the response we want on
Big Brass Ring
, would you sell the script?

OW:
Well, before I went to Europe, I started improving it, and I got a third of the way through. And my improvements were so great that I was sure that I should continue in case it should ever be made. I do still have doubts about it, but I would like to see Jack play the candidate, the guy who throws himself in front of the car running against Reagan. Jack is a great loser character, you know.

HJ:
What about Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman? They are two of the greatest actors of my generation, both highly respected, and excuse me, they're a lot better than Burt Reynolds and a lot of the others on your list.

OW:
Not your friend Dusty Hoffman. No dwarfs. Besides, they're ethnic.

HJ:
They're what?

OW:
They're ethnic.

HJ:
You mean, they're not Irish leading men? Aren't the Irish ethnic?

OW:
You know what I mean. No dark, funny-looking guys. I want an Irish leading man like Jack, or at least an all-American WASP.

HJ:
Why?

OW:
It's the president of the United States. Were you born yesterday?

HJ:
That's all changed. Everyone said a Catholic couldn't get elected president, then Kennedy got elected. Everyone said a divorced guy couldn't get elected, and then Reagan did.

OW:
This will never change. Never. You can't do a story like this and have some Italian play that role: “Cazzo, you gotta respect-a the president, and that's-a me.”

HJ:
That's disgusting.

OW:
Oh, you want Dusty Hoffman? “Oy, vey, don't be such a putz, kill 'em.”

HJ:
You've got a very fifties, fucked-up idea of what looks American.

OW:
You're my bleeding heart. I was more left than you'll ever be.

HJ:
What about Paul Newman?

OW:
Paul Newman would work.

HJ:
Newman's Jewish.

OW:
He's not ethnic. I don't care if they're Jewish; I don't care if they're Italian, but they can't be ethnic. Hoffman is ethnic, Pacino is ethnic.”

HJ:
So no Jews, no Italians …

OW:
No. This has to be a guy from the heartland of America. Or we don't have a movie.

HJ:
The one who was totally willing to do it was De Niro, without even reading the script, and you just—

OW:
Don't try to sell me on De Niro. I don't care how great you think he is.

HJ:
He's too ethnic also?

OW:
Not just ethnic, though that's part of it. More, it's that the great things he does on the screen … none of them look to me like the qualities of a candidate. You're writing off an awful lot of the country with him. My candidate is a fellow who's got to carry Kansas. I really don't see De Niro carrying Kansas.

HJ:
OK. Here's more news. I don't know if it's good or bad. I had a call from
Love Boat
. They want you from May twenty-first until June twelfth, that's twenty-one days. I said to them, “Well, are you going to make an offer?” “No. We want to know his availability.” I said, “Mr. Welles's availability depends on whether you make an offer. I'm not telling him anything, honestly, until you come up with a concrete offer.” I also said, “You know, I'm sorry, I've never watched your program.” Complete silence. They had the main man call me, because I was dismissive of the first person. So the deal is, you fly to London—shoot in London—they then fly you to Paris—shoot in Paris for a few days—then you fly back to London. And then you board a ship to Stockholm! He said, “Have you ever been through the Kiel Canal?” I said, “No.” He said, “It's meant to be fabulous!”