The Other Side of the Wind (2018) on Netflix
Jake Hannaford, an aging Hollywood director, marks his seventieth birthday at an Arizona ranch with a screening of his unfinished film. Guests note the absence of his leading man.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb6.6/108,628 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
In the early 1970s, Jake Hannaford, an aging Hollywood director whose career is on the wane, hosts a party at an Arizona ranch for his seventieth birthday and screens parts of his unfinished experimental film in an attempt to attract finishing money from studio boss Max David. Brooks Otterlake, a commercially successful young director who credits his own success to his study of Hannaford, arrives with him, and Billy Boyle, a former child star in the entourage, tries to explain the film to the guests. Journalists carrying cameras ask invasive questions, among them questions about Hannaford's sexuality, and several guests remark on the absence of John Dale, the star of the new film.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Orson Welles smuggled himself onto the MGM back-lot in a darkened van, while the cast and crew posed as visiting film students, to shoot scenes for the film-within-the-film without the studio's permission. The crew filmed everything over one long, amphetamine-fueled weekend in 1970 without sleep, and the dilapidated back-lot was demolished shortly afterwards.
- Rich Little was originally cast as Brooks Otterlake, but he left the production mid-shoot; cinematographer Gary Graver recalled that Little showed up with his suitcase and said he had to go home because he hadn't seen his wife in a long time. Peter Bogdanovich replaced him, and all of Little's scenes had to be reshot.
- Producer Andrés Vicente Gómez allegedly embezzled $250,000 of the film's budget when he left the project in 1974, having also failed to contribute his promised third of the budget. Welles later said, "I got a backer, and we shot a couple of weeks, and then that backer ran away with my money as well as his."
- Welles could not afford to pay cinematographer Gary Graver, so he gave him his 1941 Academy Award statuette for the Citizen Kane script as thanks. Joseph McBride's salary for his supporting role was two boxes of cigars, and Paul Mazursky recalled he was never paid for his one night of acting.
- The Other Side of the Wind needed more complicated editing, so Welles arranged five moviolas in a semi-circle around a table with assistants helping him. On F for Fake, he had used three moviolas side by side.
- Much of the party scene in The Other Side of the Wind was shot in 1974 on Stage 1 at Southwestern Studio in Carefree, Arizona. Welles used the living room set and furniture built for The New Dick Van Dyke Show, which was still standing when that show left for CBS in Hollywood.
- Welles filmed 96 hours of raw footage, including 45 hours for the party scenes and 51 hours for the film-within-a-film, but never recorded the opening narration. Bogdanovich recorded a slightly amended narration in character as Otterlake for the final film.
- Tonio Selwart acted in the film in his late 70s and called it his "swan song". In 1992 he said he would probably never see it, given his age and failing eyesight. He died in 2002, aged 106, before its release.
