The Other Side of the Wind is an unfinished film directed by Orson Welles, shot between 1969 and 1976, and starring John Huston, Bob Random, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg and Oja Kodar.
The story of a legendary director named J.J. "Jake" Hannaford, who returns to Hollywood from years of semi-exile in Europe, with plans to complete work on his own innovative comeback movie, also titled "The Other Side of the Wind".
Cast:John Huston, Bob Random, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg, Oja Kodar, Norman Foster, Bob Random, Lilli Palmer, Edmond O'Brien, Mercedes McCambridge, Cameron Mitchell, Paul Stewart, Gregory Sierra, Tonio Selwart, Dan Tobin, Joseph McBride, Dennis Hopper
In 1970, Welles began shooting The Other Side of the Wind. The film relates the efforts of a film director (played by John Huston) to complete his last Hollywood picture and is largely set at a lavish party. By 1972 the filming was reported by Welles as being "96% complete", though by 1979 Welles had only edited about 40 minutes of the film. In that year, legal complications over the ownership of the film put the negative into a Paris vault. In 2004, director Peter Bogdanovich, who acted in the film, announced his intention to complete the production.
On October 28, 2014, Los Angeles-based production company Royal Road Entertainment announced it had negotiated an agreement, with the assistance of producer Frank Marshall, and would purchase the rights to complete and release The Other Side of the Wind. Bogdanovich and Marshall planned to complete Welles's nearly finished film in Los Angeles, aiming to have it ready for screening on May 6, 2015, the 100th anniversary of Welles's birth. Royal Road Entertainment and German producer Jens Koethner Kaul acquired the rights held by Les Films de l'Astrophore and the late Mehdi Boushehri. They reached an agreement with Oja Kodar, who inherited Welles's ownership of the film, and Beatrice Welles, manager of the Welles estate; but at the end of 2015, efforts to complete the film were at an impasse.
In March 2017, Netflix acquired distribution rights to the film. That month, the original negative, dailies and other footage arrived in Los Angeles for post-production; the film was completed in 2018.
The film premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2018.
On November 2, 2018, the film debuted in select theaters and Netflix, 48 years after principal photography began.
Some footage is included in the documentaries Working with Orson Welles (1993), Orson Welles: One Man Band (1995), and most extensively They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018).
Read about this film
Title: The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
Directed by: Orson Welles
Date of birth: 6 Maj 1915, Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA
Writing credits:
Orson Welles, Oja Kodar
Music by: Michel Legrand
Country: United States | Iran | France
Language: English
Color: Color
Runtime: 122 min.