As I was watching your film a thing kept popping in my head. Here was a brilliant artists that kept making these unfinished films, like “Dreamers,” “The Deep” and “The Other Side of the Wind,” however did he ever intend to finish these films or were they more like these risky endeavors that he was shooting and, hopefully if everything comes together, be able to mold into a movie?
I think he believed that he was going to finish these movies. A thing I learned about Orson, he believed in different things on different days and that, you know when you spend years making movies, there are times when filmmaking feels urgent and other times when it feels unnecessary. And I think Orson was constantly riding these waves of feeling. I know he loved them all but I’m not sure he thought every single one of them was supposed to be finished. I don’t think he ever started a film thinking he wouldn’t finish it, I think he always started a film thinking it would be the greatest film ever made.
It’s the creative process any artist undertakes, trying to find something through trial and error.
It is, but the thing with Orson was that he was playing with the world’s most expensive paint box. To make movies, particularly then, it was such an expensive undertaking. Virtually everybody who knew Orson told me the same thing, “If Orson were alive today with the technology that we have today he would absolutely love it.” The idea that you could shoot a movie on a phone, edit it on the laptop and then post it tomorrow would be Orson’s dream.
Not just that, movies are now more accessible to a general audience than ever before, thanks to streaming services which are so invested in docs, non-fiction is also booming.
The genre has never been better. I’m a living testament to that. When people talk about the death of the theatrical documentary, I think this year has proven otherwise. I believe the last 12 months documentaries have only gotten bigger and better. That is certainly in part because of Netflix and the availability of docs to the general audience. I think people are realizing that documentaries are some of the best films being made and that is very exciting. Netflix feeds the theatrical docs which feed back to Netflix and the other services. I’ve been doing this for 25 years and there has never been a better time for documentaries.
“They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” and “The Other Side of the Wind” are available on Netflix now.