This is Orson Welles

This Is Orson Welles is a 1992 book by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich. Comprising conversations between the two filmmakers that were recorded between 1969 and 1977,^[1] the interview book was transcribed by Bogdanovich after Welles's death in October 1985. Welles considered the book his autobiography.

The book also includes an annotated chronology of Welles's career; a summary of the alterations made in Welles's 1942 masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons; and notes on each chapter by film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, who edited the volume.

Origin of the book

Peter Bogdanovich and Orson Welles met near the end of 1968. Bogdanovich was then a writer of monographs on Welles, Howard Hawks, and Alfred Hitchcock, and had directed Boris Karloff in the low-budget film Targets. They hit it off and eventually decided to do a book of interviews together, which began in Welles bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and resumed as Bogdanovich joined Welles on location for Mike Nichols' film Catch-22 in Guaymas, Mexico. Interviews continued sporadically at various places in Europe and the United States.

In 1974, Orson Welles cast Bogdanovich next to John Huston in the role of Brooks Otterlake, a successful director, in the as yet unreleased film The Other Side of the Wind. Welles filmed partly in Bogdanovich's home, which he shared with actress Oja Kodar. In the second half of the 1970s both directors "drifted apart a bit."^[2]

For a time the book was on hold indefinitely; although Bogdanovich and Welles had taken advances for their joint book from two publishers, Welles had accepted a separate offer of $250,000 to write his memoirs.^[3] Then, Bogdanovich writes in the introduction, the book was literally lost for five years:

Orson never did write his memoirs. Eventually, when he asked what had become of our book, it was lost somewhere in the depths of a storage facility while I was going through a personal and financial crisis (leading to bankruptcy and a kind of general breakdown in the summer of 1985, just a few months before Orson died). During one phone conversation he had said he hoped I wouldn't "just publish" the book after he was dead — implying that I knew where it was and was just hanging on to it. That upset me and so when we finally could get back into storage, and the boxes turned up, I sent all of them over to Orson — not keeping copies of anything — with a note saying, in effect, it was his life, and here it was for him to do as he saw fit. Orson called me as soon as he got it —he was very touched, he said, and thanked me profusely. He went on to explain that there wasn't much he could leave to Oja, and if anything happened to him, he was planning to will the book to her."^[4]

After Welles died in October 1985, Oja Kodar asked Bogdanovich to help prepare the book for publication. He transcribed the materials, resulting in 1,400 pages that were then edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum into the 300 pages of interviews in the book. Some of the taped conversations were later released on audiocassettes, including some material not in the book.

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