They'll Love Me When I'm Dead

An American documentary; A story about the making of Orson Welles's film 'The Other Side of the Wind'. The film provides a good insight into an artist's mindset and a window into the creative process of a film auteur. It fascinates because it mirrors Welles's own life and how he struggled to make good on his swan song. The interviews bring to the fore the genius of Welles and what was described about his mind as "a hall of mirrors."

The best film about the making of "The Other Side of the Wind" (2018) is "The Other Side of the Wind," but this companion piece "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead" is an interesting documentary, too, about the making of a film that was already about its own making. Orson Welles's picture concerns a film unfinished at the time of the director's death, leaving behind a slough of footage for his friends and admirers to assemble into a finished product, which is what has been distributed by Netflix after all these decades. Two films in one, the outer one, from the cameras of documentary filmmakers, already contains a considerable amount of analysis of the meaning of the film within and its director, too. In this respect, it's a wonder there's much ground left to cover in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead." Welles's film is so multi-layered, though, and so much footage was left out of the ultimate release (reportedly, cutting near 100 hours down to about two), that even this documentary about it allows for multiple and contradictory interpretations and, yet, doesn't even cover much of what also must be a compelling story of what's happened to the film since the death of Welles.

Some of the stuff from the talking heads here is irrelevant (e.g. Welles's reported fondness for Fudgsicals) and armchair psychology, but there's enough information about the production of "The Other Side of the Wind," with clips not used in the release print edited in here, as well as looks at some of Welles's other pictures to make this documentary worthwhile. I think the end clip of Welles wishing that everyone would see his film is especially apt given its final distribution by Netflix, which as the most-popular online movie streaming service offers the best hope of fulfilling that wish. And, Welles's film may be the best thing Netflix has yet distributed. It's a fitting end for a film, too, that is partly about the death of classical Hollywood and the rise of a New Hollywood that admires an auteur of the prior generation and which features then-new forms of motion-picture making and viewing--TV, 16 and 8mm cameras and the drive-in theatre--technologies and platforms that themselves have since been largely or, at least, partially superseded by computers, digital technology, smart phones and streaming.

The "cute" usage of available feature and personal film scenes, often totally out of context, is inexcusable in a documentary. If the director wanted a spoken word by Welles in this thing, it was grabbed from whatever decade is available. In addition, much "general stock footage" is seen for "atmosphere." Sometimes almost randomly. Just awful. I watched this after "The Other Side of the Wind," which makes it really irritating. There are some amazing docs out there.

And Alan Cumming is just too precious.

Orson Welles's final movie, The Other Side of the Wind, started filming in 1970 but by the time of his death in 1985 had not been released. It was finally released by Netflix in 2018. This documentary details the making of the movie and the problems Welles had in completing and releasing it.

Good documentary. Details well the making of The Other Side of the Wind, and the difficulties and controversies surrounding it. Also shows, albeit too briefly, Welles's career to that point and, in more detail, why his star had fallen.

However, like the movie, it is a bit muddled. The narrative isn't very smooth and there is concentration on immaterial details at the expense of the bigger picture.

The title obviously makes the point that some artists only get recognized after they die. And it is true that many artists had issues. Welles on the other hand was highly regarded. Actually this documentary makes the point that he and his masterpiece Citizen Kane were loved - so much that he could never live up to it. Or rather none of the movies he did after that.

Now that are issues that some people would love to have. On the other hand, someone like Hitchcock made many good movies and he never fell into that trap. But back to this: Many of his peers talk about him and there is a big amount of the time dedicated to the last movie Welles never actually finished. He shot it for so many years, but never seemed satisfied. From what I have seen so far, it might have been ahead of its time back then - obviously the cut of The other side of the wind that is now available to watch via stream is not the one Welles would have released. Still it is the footage he shot, so more on that on the other page. This documentary is quite revealing when it comes to Welles character - with enough footage of him, but also a lot of people who were close to him, talking about their experience ... Essential in a way