Movie Review The Cat's Meow

The Cat's Meow

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich

Written by Steven Peros 

Starring Kirsten Dunst, Cary Elwes, Edward Hermann, Eddie Izzard, Joanna Lumley

Release Date April 12th, 2002

Published April 15th, 2002 

An enduring Hollywood mystery surrounds the death of director Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes). Ince's death occurred during a major Hollywood party. Someone shot Ince and there were many suspects, none the least of which was the host of the party, legendary powerbroker and publishing magnate, William Randolph Hurst (Edward Hermann). The insecure Hearst was a maniacally jealous man who, it is believed, was searching for superstar Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard) with the intent of killing the famed actor. Chaplin was rumored to be sleeping with Hearst's beloved mistress turned wife, Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst). 

Hearst allegedly wanted to solve the problem of Chaplin permanently and when he saw Marion talking to a man that he thought could have been Chaplin, he raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. Essentially, the legend goes that Ince was the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. But this is all rumor and conjecture. Hearst was never questioned about Ince's death in terms of him being the killer. The party was barely interrupted by Ince's death or any subsequent investigation of Ince's death. Though he'd been beloved and respected in the silent film era, Ince's death was swept under the rug. It became an urban legend, one of Hollywood's dirty little secrets. 

The movie The Cat's Meow dramatizes the murder of Thomas Ince with the aid of stellar production design, costuming, and witty dialogue. Director Peter Bogdanovich, working from a screenplay by Steven Peros, creates an elaborate old Hollywood party aboard an old yacht. Bogdanovich's camera sneaks about the boat, a perfect fly on the wall, capturing conversations, deceptions, rumors, and innuendos, it's all very catty and High School like but involving well-heeled millionaire adults, eager to watch each other tear themselves apart over relationships, sex, and perceived betrayals. 

The Cat's Meow is witty, stylish, and quite darkly funny, even as it is weaving its way to becoming a murder mystery. In reality, no one knows what happened to Thomas Ince. In reality, no one even knows if Ince was shot. What we know is that Thomas Ince died, he was quickly cremated, and there was no real investigation into what happened. Guests did report hearing a gunshot during the party but no one saw how Thomas Ince died and as his body was wheeled out of the party, speculation ran wild but it remained speculation  because no one was going to try and out William Randolph Hearst as a killer. Hearst also had the means, via his newspaper empire to cover the whole thing up and bury Ince's death under piles and piles of paper and ink. 

The Cat's Meow takes a catty, nasty, pleasure in exposing William Randolph Hearst as an insecure creep, a man who had everything except the ability to trust the one person he truly he loved. Edward Hermann's performance is pitch perfect, never going for anything sympathetic but finding something pathetic in Hearst that makes him both human and monstrous. Kirsten Dunst is also wonderful in The Cat's Meow, playing Marion as a woman who just wants to have a good time, she just wants to have fun and not worry about things. She chafes under Hearst's controlling nature and her flirtation with Chaplin, wittily played by Eddie Izzard, is part retaliation against Hearst and a genuine connection with Chaplin. 

As captured by Peter Bogdanovich it's all very charming, very witty and quite droll. The cinematography is gorgeous, elegant and a perfect vessel for these witty characters and the dreamy universe of memory that they now inhabit. Bogdanovich and Bruno Delbonnel, his cinematographer, use the boat setting ingeniously, creating a space they can widen and contract as needed for bringing characters together in small groups while creating plenty of thin hallways and alcoves for private conversations and potential betrayals. 

The Cat's Meow was Bogdanovich's first film in 9 years in 2002 and goes on to become his last great film. That's not a grand pronouncement, he only directed one more film after The Cat's Meow, but still. It had been a few decades since Bogdanovich was part of the vanguard of Hollywood's new wave of the late 60s and early 70s. Though he was always respected, his messy personal life derailed Bogdanovich for many years and the death of his beloved Dorothy Stratton, after they'd just made a movie together, They All Laughed, pushed Bogdanovich almost completely out of the mainstream. The Cat's Meow seemed to come out of nowhere. A complete, yet very brief, return to form for a former New Waver. That makes the movie a landmark even as it hasn't exactly lasted in our cultural memory. 

Movie Review: The Other Side of the Wind

The Other Side of the Wind (2018) 

Directed by Orson Welles 

Written by Orson Welles 

Starring John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Oja Kodar, Susan Strasbourg 

Release Date November 2nd, 2018 

Published November 5th, 2018 

Orson Welles is an elusive figure in the film world. He was at once wholly present and missing in action. Welles’ long exile from Hollywood meant that though he worked consistently, his work was mostly ignored in the world of mainstream cinema. If you’re someone like me who lives in the Midwest and doesn’t have unending access to obscure European adaptations of Shakespeare, then there is a large swath of the Welles’ catalog missing from you. 

Naturally, as a film lover, I have seen and loved Welles’ Citizen Kane, the film that though it provides Welles’ legacy with an eternal life, it was a never ending burden to the man. Kane dominated Welles’ career, it created his reputation as a film savant but also demonstrated him as a filmmaker unconcerned by the desires of commercial film-making. He was an artist first and a temperamental one at that, meaning studios didn’t want to work with him. 

These facts inform the making of Welles’ final film, The Other Side of the Wind, a pompously titled art film that was never completed in his lifetime. Like Welles’ Don Quixote, The Other Side of the Wind was a tantalizing artifact of film history. Was it an unfinished masterpiece or some bloated attempt at a comeback by an over the hill blowhard angry at the industry that betrayed him? 

The new documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, streaming now on Netflix and directed by Morgan Neville, director of the hit Mr Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, examines the making of The Other Side of the Wind and gives us, if not Mr. Welles, closure on this seemingly doomed movie. Or does it? Watching the They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead appears to lead you to a resigned and satisfied place with The Other Side of the Wind. 

Then you get to the end and find, or at least I found it this way, that Netflix has gone ahead and bankrolled Welles’ friends, including Peter Bogdanovich, and Welles’ family, to actually finish The Other Side of the Wind which completed principle photography in 1975 only to be taken from Welles by of all things, the fall of the Shah of Iran. Welles had been financed by members of the Iranian government and when the state fell in 1979, the movie was seized as an asset. 

It remained locked away until recently and now with the aid of Welles’ notes and those of his late cinematographer Gary Graver, the film was completed and is now available to stream on Netflix despite the fact that Welles and a majority of the cast and crew, including star John Huston and co-star Susan Strasbourg have passed away. The Other Side of the Wind is something akin to a ghost of a movie, thankfully not a zombie but an ethereal filmic being. 

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead appeared to me to be the only way we would ever have closure on Welles’ final film. It was for me, because I didn’t bother to read anything about it before I sat to watch it, such a complete surprise that I could feel the documentary making the turn toward declaring itself the unofficial completion of The Other Side of the Wind. The documentary is about movie making and Welles is even in the documentary discussing how The Other Side of the Wind and the making of it, could easily be a documentary rather than a narrative feature. 

Actor Alan Cumming plays host to the documentary offering rye asides on the travails of making The Other Side of the Wind via the interviews with Welles’ remaining, living friends and collaborators. It is Cumming who appears to make the turn late in the documentary that seemed to me to indicate that the documentary was, itself, the final form of The Other Side of the Wind. I found this to be a lovely and fitting bit of fakery, well in line with Welles' famed F is For Fake, another odd documentary take on reality versus fiction. 

Imagine my surprise then, when the credits began to roll and suddenly Netflix was starting the next feature, The Other Side of the Wind in its completed form. I was shocked and amused and I remained so I could watch it as the two are components of the same remarkable film-making tale. The Other Side of the Wind suddenly existed outside of the documentary and the Welles’ we get to know in They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead would have loved my shocked reaction. 

As much as The Other Side of the Wind was a product of its lack of a budget and the limitations of those involved to remain available to the whim of Welles’ schedule, the experimental nature of the movie meant that it could be recut and re-imagined in a number of different ways. This includes adding or subtracting footage of Welles himself who appears to be making the first meta-textual film/documentary project of its kind. 

The Other Side of the Wind is the story of an aging and failing film director named Jake 'J.J' Hannaford, played by legendary film director John Huston. Hannaford is in the midst of completing his latest movie, a film of which we see throughout The Other Side of the Wind, as a movie within the movie. Hannaford is hoping that his producer will sell the movie to a film producer, modeled after the legendary Robert Evans. If that doesn't work, he needs to convince his young protege, Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich), to loan him the money. 

Otterlake is successful in a way J.J never really was and this fact has strained their mentor/mentee, teacher and pupil, father and son, dynamic. Sure, J.J has all of the love and respect in the world for his work but next to none of the kind of success that Hollywood celebrates. Orson Welles claimed that this relationship was not modeled on his and Bogdanovich's friendship but that seems impossible to believe, even as Bogdanovich appears to humor him and push that narrative in interviews in the documentary. 

Cameras rolled on the set of The Other Side of the Wind at all times, even when a cut was called. There are characters in The Other Side of the Wind playing film students who’ve been invited to film the lead character’s 70th birthday party and Welles had the extras filming at all times, during and after takes just to make sure he had as much footage as possible to put into a final cut in whatever form that final cut might take. 

The documentary makes remarkable use of the footage especially as the actors playing students were encouraged to engage with Welles between takes and Welles indulged in a one sided conversation with the cameras regarding the nature of cinema, with an extra special focus on mistakes and how mistakes can make a scene seem even more real than even a documentary. 

It’s a remarkable insight into the man, even as it is a strong demonstration of his vast egotism. Welles was unquestionably a blowhard but he was never boring and he is wildly fascinating in They’ll Love Me When I am Dead, a figure of Falstaffian charisma. Like him or not, you can’t take your eyes off of Welles. They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead captures the man and the artist in endlessly fascinating ways. 

I don’t have as much to say about the quality of The Other Side of the Wind. It’s a bloviating, free-flowing art piece that both resembles and appears to satirize the French New Wave and the indie darlings of Hollywood’s post-studio era, many of whom play themselves in cameos including Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky. Welles appears to be placing himself above the young directors and among them, both peer and influencer, sage critic and desperate wannabe. 

The Other Side of the Wind couldn’t be further from the patient, deliberate and gorgeous confines of Citizen Kane. The Other Side of the Wind is pure chaos where the story appears almost non-existent amid the free flowing experiment that is being captured and wrangled by the editing team like an unbroken colt. The film appears to be fighting the idea of being formed into something like a mainstream feature film and is finally corralled only when Bogdanovich and Huston manage to get Welles to pay attention to them for just a moment. 

All of this is to say that I recommend you watch both the documentary, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead and the final cut of the movie, The Other Side of the Wind, back to back for the best experience. That’s a big commitment, nearly four hours, but if you are a crazy film nerd like me, it’s an experience you don’t want to pass up on. Both They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and The Other Side of the Wind are streaming now, back to back, on Netflix.