'Touch of Evil'

You're listening to They Shoot Films with Ken Mercer and FT.

Kosempa.

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of They Shoot Films, the podcast where we talk about the movies that matter.

My name is Ken Mercer, and I'm joined here, as always, with the great FT.

Kosempa.

FT., how are you this afternoon, this evening, I guess, here in New York?

Yes, it's evening now.

Swell, but not swollen.

How are you doing, Ken?

I am feeling pensive.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Thoughtful.

Well, I'm, I'm, I'm, yes, thank you.

I'm pondering, I'm pondering a question.

And what is that question?

Well, it's a, it's a deep one.

It's, what does it matter what you say about a film?

Hmm.

Yeah.

This is some kind of film.

Everything.

And of course, I am-

Adios.

Wait, that's what you're going to say.

Adios.

Yes, of course, I was, I was paraphrasing the line spoken by Marlene Dietrich at the, at the end of Touch of Evil, where she asks of Hank Quinlan, played by Orson Welles.

So, turns out Quinlan was right after all.

Isn't somebody going to come and take him away?

Yeah, just a few minutes.

You really liked him, didn't you?

The cop did.

The one who killed him.

He loved him.

Well, Hank was a great detective, all right.

And a lousy cop.

Is that all you have to say for him?

He was some kind of a man.

Adios.

And this episode's film is the 1958 film Touch of Evil, written and directed by Orson Welles.

And I've asked this before, who the hell picks these films for this podcast?

This one is a tough one because, Houston, we have a problem with this podcast.

And I realized it once this film had been picked.

I had purchased this film probably two or three years ago on a streaming platform.

It was known as Voodoo at that time.

Now it's Fandango, but I owned it.

And FT used it to me, which version do you have?

And I said, well, I've got to have the...

Sorry, backing up for a second, folks, if you're not unaware of this.

So the film was released theatrically in 1958 in a version that the studio had taken away from Welles.

They re-edited it.

They had hired another director to shoot some scenes.

And Welles was very unhappy with it, no surprise.

And then in the 90s, a cinematographer named Allen Davio, who at one point I had had the chance to work with, had set out on a mission with Steven Spielberg, a director who he had DP'd multiple pictures for.

And they both went on this mission because there was a memo from Welles that existed, a 58 page memo that he wrote to the studio saying, here's my problems with your edit and please change these things.

And they had the idea, wow, could we do a restored version of this?

It was back in the laser disk days.

They wanted to do a laser disk.

And they could never find the footage they needed.

And then many years later, in the Universal Vaults, they came across a different longer version that was actually used, that they previewed it for audiences.

Who's they there, Ken?

Is that the professor, the UCLA guy?

Yeah, it was somebody at UCLA, yeah.

So they had this footage and then a...

Well, he thinks it's the longer version.

It's like the more closer to the original, right?

Yeah, but they had additional footage and they had...

Sorry, I think the guy's name is Rick Smedlin.

What's the name of the guy who they...

Yeah, Smedlin and...

That was Rosenbaum first and then I think, and then Smedlin and Walter Murch.

Yes, they took on the project with Universal's Blessing to do what they called the restored version of Touch of Evil, which came out, I think, in 1998.

They used the 58-page memo of Welles, and they tried to basically do what Welles was saying in that memo, and that came out as the restored version.

So FT you said to me, which version do you have, Ken?

And I said, I've got to have the restored version.

And I remember seeing the restored version when it came out in theaters, and that was the last one I saw.

And then I started playing it, and I realized immediately that it was not the restored version.

Right.

And I said, and FT you were saying, well, we got to do the restored version.

I was like, okay, well, even though I bought it once, I will just, you know, I'll rent the restored version.

And I went on every streaming platform and lo and behold, the restored version is not available anywhere.

Right.

Even though when it came out, again, they, you know, it was hailed as, you know, the closest realization of Welles' vision.

And it was kind of the definitive thing.

And it was released in theaters, yet it's not out there on any streaming platform.

The only platform, the only one that's out there that you can stream today is the original theatrical version, the one that the studio edited without Welles.

Even when they say, right, even when they say, in one case, I think, this is the restored, you know, they give the timings, right?

Yes, yes.

Of like 120 something or whatever it is.

The restored version is 111 minutes.

And that's what all these streaming services, but when you actually look at it, it is not.

It's the shorter theatrical version.

And you have to ask, what the fuck is Universal doing?

I mean, on the one hand, they gave their blessing to do this version.

And so, I have two theories about...

Remember, I asked, what the fuck is Universal doing?

Do you remember I said that a minute ago, FT.?

No, say it again.

Yeah, so it was a rhetorical question, which I will now answer, as if it is not a rhetorical question.

I have two theories on it.

One, so the only way you can get the restored version is by buying the Blu-ray.

There's a fork.

Or borrowing it from a library, which is what I did.

But it is the actual disks, both DVD and Blu-ray.

Which most people just don't even have the ability to play disks these days.

But yes, so theory one, theory A, is that Universal wants to sell Blu-rays.

And that's why they don't put the restored version out there.

I, however, after, and we talked about this, preparing for the show when we found we had a problem with this, I now have another theory.

What is it?

That the problem is Beatrice Wells.

Oh, please pray tell.

Well, first you have to ask, who is Beatrice Wells?

Who is Beatrice Wells?

She is Wells' daughter and runs the...

No way.

And runs the Wells estate.

And again, not to speak ill, but you can read a lot of stuff online.

Like the people who brought the restored version back, that Beatrice Wells, you know, I'm speaking from what I've read, like some of the people who worked on the restored version, that Beatrice Wells has been a roadblock to certain things being released from the Wells estate.

For instance, there is a book of well essays that Wells wrote.

And some co-author wanted to reissue, bring that out, she put the gabache on that.

I wonder if Beatrice Wells wants the original theatrical version of...

Maybe.

Touch of Evil out there.

Or she's the one that thinks, oh, we'll make more money.

We got to try to sell disks.

Interesting.

I don't know what the reasonings were.

Question for you.

She's the daughter from which marriage?

The first?

Or Rita Hayworth?

No.

Who is after Rita Hayworth?

Did he ever get married again?

Yes, he did.

Yeah, I'm not sure of the answer.

I forget.

Yeah, so it was the third.

I'm not sure about that.

So we figured we had a problem, because I last saw the restored version in the theater, and that was the one I really remembered and wanted to watch.

But we realized that the audience out there, unless they had the Blu-ray, wasn't going to be able to watch that.

So we had a conundrum, and FT had to resolve that conundrum.

You watched the theatrical version, and I watched the restored version.

And so once again, I got the short end of the stick on this partnership.

Couldn't help it.

I mean, you know, but we're going to discuss some salient differences.

Yeah.

So let's get things rolling here.

Let's get into the origin of Touch of Evil.

And again, when we do the origin of Touch of Evil, we're going to try to just kind of hit the high points and also get some of the things in there that maybe haven't been covered before on Touch of Evil.

Okay.

So yeah, our story begins well, well after Orson Welles had directed a little known film called Citizen Kane and then Fallen from from Grace been cast out of Hollywood.

He had become could not get any movies done.

He could not work in the United States, so he exiled himself to Europe and he was basically producing independent films and he'd either be begging for money or he would be trying to raise money by taking whatever acting gig came his way, which were many, I think.

The Welles filmography, I think he acted in 48 films or something like that, which...

So he comes back to the United States to do more acting gigs.

He's hoping to find a way to get...

He's desperate to try to be able to direct again in the United States.

And he took a role with a producer at Universal named Albert Zugsmith.

Are you familiar with Zugsmith, FT.?

No, not at all.

So Albert Zugsmith was producing movies such as Sex Kittens Go to College.

Have you seen that?

Oh, yeah.

Classic.

No.

It's weird, because I actually, on TCM, it was on before we decided to touch the Touch of Evil.

Get out of here, really?

And I watched it.

Yeah.

And so I'd actually watched it before we went down this whole Touch of Evil thing.

And it's as bad as you would think from the title.

And what's really interesting is, I know when we did Sweet Smell of Success, all I can say is, if you think Marty Milner's performance was not good in Sweet Smell of Success, just wait till you see him in Sex Kittens Go to College.

I might be able to send you a clip of that.

I think there's some of the things on YouTube.

I beg your pardon?

But you haven't done anything yet.

Or are you the type that apologizes first and acts later?

You're Dr.

West?

Matilda Gabriel West.

It can't be.

It's not possible.

Dr.

West is a genius.

Just in some things.

And you're a blonde.

Zodge!

Zuck Smith also did such famous films as Confessions of an Opium Eater.

And Welles acted in a film with him before Touch of Evil, and the name escapes me now.

But it went pretty well, and Zuck Smith thought he would cast Welles again.

And he had bought the rights to a pulp novel called The Badge of Evil, which was written by Witt Masterson.

Witt Masterson is interesting because it's a pseudonym, but it's a pseudonym wrapped inside of a pseudonym.

Two guys, right?

So Witt Masterson is the pseudonym for William Miller.

But William Miller is actually two people, Wade Miller and Robert Wade.

Seriously?

Yeah.

So Zugg Smith had Badge of Evil, which was his kind of material.

It was this pulpy novel.

And he had hired a screenwriter named Paul Monash to write a screenplay of it.

And Welles did a good job in this other film.

And Welles, I think was, you know, Welles could be incredibly charming when he sensed there was money or opportunities.

And so he turned on the charm with Zugg Smith and Zugg Smith cast him in this project, Badge of Evil.

Bear in mind that Welles at this point had not directed a film in the United States since 48.

Do you know what film that was, FT.?

Yes, what?

The Lady of Shanghai.

No, no, no, I'm wrong.

The Stranger.

No, let's not talk about The Stranger.

No, 1948.

Yes, it was.

The Stranger.

Macbeth was the last film.

Oh, right, right after two weeks.

The two-week shoot, right?

The Proof You Could Do It.

That was the last time he directed in America.

Right, right.

Rough print.

So rough prints of that exist.

So Zugg Smith needs to get a star for his movie.

And one of the hottest stars, maybe the hottest star in the United States, is Charlton Heston.

And he sends Heston the script.

And Heston reads it and calls him up and says, yeah, you know, but these kinds of pictures, it's really, you know, who's going to direct it?

And Zugg Smith says, I don't know who's going to direct it, but do you want the part or not?

And Heston says, well, oh, and he says, Zugg Smith says, well, I've got Orson Welles is going to play Hank Quinlan.

And Heston says, well, what about having Welles direct it?

I've heard he's a pretty good director.

And nobody considered it at this point because of course Welles was, you know, considered very problematic as a director.

And so Zugg Smith though, being Zugg Smith says, goes to Orson Welles and says, hey, do you want to direct this?

And Welles jumps at the chance and Zugg Smith says, well, you know, one condition, you direct it, you need to rewrite it for no pay.

We're paying you to be an actor.

But if you want to direct it and rewrite it for free, then you can do it.

And Welles, who's desperate to direct again in Hollywood, jumps at the chance.

And Welles always claimed to the end of his life that he had never read the book Badge of Evil, but he worked from the Paul Monash script.

And he did his rewrite of the Monash script.

How long do you think he worked on his rewrite for FT.?

I knew this number.

Was it three weeks or ten days?

Four and a half days.

Seriously?

Yeah.

He worked on it for three days, showed it to Heston after three days, and Heston's like, this is great.

But it wasn't finished, and he took another day and a half and finished it.

So he rewrote it in four and a half days, at which point we've got a picture.

We've got a good picture.

We've got Chuck Heston.

We've got a new script.

We've got Orson Welles.

And they did it as what is referred to as a nervous A picture.

Do you know what a nervous A picture is?

No, I never heard that expression.

Yeah, so a nervous A, so first of all, universal at this point, as you probably noticed from the credits on Touch of Evil, do you know what the logo is for universal at the, on the end?

No, I don't.

It's universal international pictures.

Because universal had just merged with international pictures.

So at that time it was universal dash international pictures.

And they had kind of given up, they had said, okay, well now we're going to give up B movies.

We're not going to do B movies anymore.

So a nervous A picture was a picture that didn't quite, you know, they wouldn't budget as an A picture, but was not quite a B.

It was kind of in the cracks in terms of budget and their intent for it.

Sometimes also called a guilt-edged B.

So I think the budget on this was like a million bucks.

And so not quite a B picture, but not one of their high-profile A pictures.

They should have used a grading of B plus A, just so we could understand.

A nervous A, a sort of squeamish B.

Yeah.

And then the nervous A comes from...

They were all nervous.

They were going to make a big mistake.

They didn't want to lay out the money for an A.

It wasn't quite there for an A.

This is weird because Universal had the reputation of really being a very conservative studio.

Right.

Did Heston make Ben Hur with Universal and all that in his famous films?

Why he was one of the most famous movie stars?

Won an Oscar, right?

Was it Universal or elsewhere?

I don't know the answer to that.

Ben Hur and Ten Commandments, right?

Yeah.

Sandwich the roundness.

Yeah.

So they commenced shooting.

And big problems for the studio on the first day of the shoot.

Because the way these things go at that time when you were shooting on the studio lot, even though this was being shot off the lot in, actually, I think this first day shooting was on the lot.

And it wasn't a set.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so basically the way things went there, and I think to some extent still go today, the assistant director will call in to the production office and log in the time.

The first shot is in the can.

So the production people can keep an eye on, you know, schedules and stuff like that.

And what happened on that first day of the shoot is by the end of the morning, late morning, they had not gotten the first shot done.

And the call went into the production office.

By after lunch, they had not gotten the first shot done.

And at that point, people start showing, the studio people start showing up on the set, gathered around very nervously.

And again, they're already worried because this is Orson Welles.

They don't even have one shot done by after lunch.

Now they get to late afternoon.

He hasn't even made one shot the first day.

And the studio people are, you know, it's high, you know, they're getting hysterical in their corner.

And, but Orson had a plot.

And Orson always felt, you know, after Cain for good reason, that it was the studio was always the enemy.

And he always treated the studio people terribly.

And so he had actually been cooking up a plot.

And the plot was this.

The day before this first day of shooting, he summoned the cast to his house.

And they rehearsed this first day, what they were going to do on the first day.

And the first day, what he had cooked up was to shoot the interrogation in Sanchez's apartment.

Sanchez's apartment, yeah.

And Welles had the idea that he was going to shoot this very long scene, 12 pages of script, in a single shot.

And it's an interior in this apartment, a lot of dialogue, a lot of characters.

And he was like, I'm going to shoot this in a single take.

But it's incredibly complex.

And the award on this scene has to go to the Dolly Grip.

The Dolly work is just phenomenal.

Also, the actors and the grips, the studio.

It's on a studio set, as FT said.

So all the walls break away.

So they got to fly out the walls as the camera moves in.

I think they're moving lights.

Cameras are hitting their marks.

Incredibly hard shot to pull off.

And that's why Welles has not gotten a shot by late afternoon.

And he keeps reshooting.

He still doesn't have a shot.

It's 6 p.m.

He gets the shot.

He says, print it.

And he turns to the studio, walks over to the studio people, shows them the script, rips over the pages, and says, we're now two days ahead.

Because he had shot 12 pages of script in one day.

And the studio people were amazed and never came back.

So they left him alone for the whole shoot after this.

And from all accounts, this was a very, you know, the atmosphere on the shoot was, you know, Welles was in very high spirits.

He was totally experimenting.

He now had this crack crew.

And we're going to talk more about the crew members as we go on.

But he's got this crack Hollywood crew after working, you know, in Europe with these pick up crews.

And he's inventive.

He's got Charlton Heston.

He's got, you know, besides Heston, he's got a cast of excellent actors.

Many, you know, many of whom are people from his Mercury Theater days.

Joseph Cotton's in it.

Joseph Callea's in it.

He's got Akim Tamaroff, who was a good buddy of his.

He's got, he brings in Dietrich, he brings, so.

Zsa Zsa.

And yeah, and his crew is totally, the crew will do anything, you know, anything he can cook up.

So it's happy days on the shoot, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, indeed.

You know, and it was, you know, and they knew what was going on there.

You know, when you do it in one shot, you're, you know, you're doing everything, you're getting your three shots, your two shots because of choreography.

You know, this is the first case where Orson is a theater guy, knows how to do it.

You know, I mean, you know, you get the famous close up of Heston, you know, he walks into the frame when, you know, the whole business about the planting of the finding of the dynamite, you know, it's so brilliant, you know.

And remember, it's the second important, you know, long take in the entire film.

Right.

And we'll get there in a...

Even though it was cut, you know, there was an edit in there.

But, you know, yes.

So, Welles had a famous quote when he was directing Citizen Kane about Hollywood crews and being able to direct a Hollywood movie.

Do you remember what that quote was, FT.?

No.

I never heard it.

He famously said that directing a movie is the greatest electric train set a boy ever had.

And now he's got the train set back.

He's got this great crew and he's doing everything he wants.

But Welles finished the film basically on schedule and on budget.

You know, a couple thousand dollars over budget.

I think a day over.

But basically on schedule and on budget.

So the final day of this very happy shoot, oddly enough, even though he wasn't shooting it in continuity, it's interesting.

They decide the final day of shooting was the end of the movie, the Hank Quinlan walkie talkie scene through the canals of Venice and the shooting of Hank Quinlan.

And they wrap it, they shoot at night, they start at dusk, they wrap at dawn.

And Heston and Orson Welles go back to, I guess, Heston's trailer, start drinking.

And then they have a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator and they decide to take that bottle of champagne and go to a restaurant to eat bacon and eggs.

And they take the champagne with them.

And then Welles being Welles, they have a steak.

And then they go back and watch Lady from Shanghai on TV together.

How about that?

Yeah.

And Heston says, it's good, but not as good as ours, I think.

Characters, Frank, plus George.

That's a great one.

Anyhow, yes.

So happy production, happy last day of shoot.

But then of course, things fall apart in post-production as things always seem to with Welles.

Welles always talked about how when he did a bunch of interviews with Cahiers du Cinem, with Truffaut and Godard, and basically pooh-poohed their auteur theory, even though the auteur theory was based on Welles.

Him, yeah.

Yeah, and Welles was saying, directing Shermekde, you know, the key thing about a film is the editing, how a film is edited, and he always stressed that.

Yet Welles, for whatever reason, had this strange habit of leaving during the edits.

It's just bizarre.

And this famously, you know, this is what kind of ruined his career with Magnificent Emberson, his follow-up to Citizen Kane, where during the edit he left, went to South America, and the picture ended up getting re-edited and re-shot by Robert Wise.

Now he gets to direct another film in the United States, and during the edit, he takes off first to take a gig in New York on a talk show, where he apparently got paid a lot for his performance, and then leaves for Mexico to work on an independent film of Don Quixote with Akim Tamiroff.

And so he leaves the edit, and of course, he's not there, so the studio gets him.

Right, but wait, but it's not as if he didn't do anything, because he worked really hard on the edit.

There was a lot of stuff done.

Oh yeah, no, but it's the same.

I've heard this story, I've heard this story, and it always implies that, oh well, he just did a rough cut.

No, I didn't mean to imply that, but he left before it was approved by the studio, before it was done, and when the studio got in there, they didn't like what they saw, Welles wasn't there, you know, there's a lot of stories about that, that he was out, he wasn't responding.

Well, you know, Welles, he claimed to have sent the 58 page memo months earlier, and then when they finally got the print, you know, the release print ready, he was like, what the hell?

Well, you didn't read my memo, and then he said, what memo?

And then all of a sudden, the memo, so there's a lot of weird shit that went on, but they lock him out of the editing room, so he's locked out of the editing room, they take the picture away from him, they order reshoots, because they feel like there's gaps in the story that need to be done.

They have another director come in, and Welles goes nuts, not surprisingly.

He says, wait, if you want reshoots, have me reshoot them.

And the studio, because even though he came in on budget basically during the shoot, during post-production, he went so far over schedule, the movie is close to 30% over schedule, and they just don't want to deal with them anymore.

And so then Welles starts this campaign with Chuck Heston, where he says, Chuck, you got to get them to have me direct it.

And Heston is very sympathetic to Welles to the point where the first day of reshoots with Harry Keller, the director of the studio brought in, Welles convinced Heston to not show up.

Right.

Then lawyers get involved, and his agent gets it.

He had to then, contractually.

Yeah, he was going to get his ass sued.

So now Heston ends up paying the studio back for the missed day of shooting out of his own pocket and tells Welles, I can't help you here, Orson.

Right.

They reshoot it.

They re-edit it.

The studio does a preview, the long-lost preview print.

They get bad cards.

When they do these previews, the audience fills out cards.

The cards come in bad.

They re-cut it again, which was actually...

But can I insert something here?

One of the things that I think is in Merch's book, one of the cards that came back was...

Sorry, when you say...

Yeah, Walter Merch wrote a book on editing, and there's a chapter in there about the whole reconstruction.

And there's an anecdote in there about the preview version, which had even more footage that Harry Keller shot.

And he also mentioned in passing that he actually yanked some of that footage for other reasons to put in his version, as Orson asked for.

But one of the note cards from the preview was, this woman wrote that, this was the ugliest, dirtiest movie I ever saw in my life.

Shame on you.

And she went up and smacked somebody with her handbag, one of the execs.

And that was the feeling.

It was like, you know, a really, like, you know, ugly, ugly film.

Yes.

And there was a silver lining of that, that as you were saying, that when the preview cards came back, they recut the film again.

And they basically cut out a lot of the stuff that the other director had shot, Harry Keller.

And therefore they got down to the nut.

But they got down to this very truncated, 95 minute version that Welles was not happy with.

So with this finally recut version, they release it only as part, they just dump it into theaters, as part of a B-movie double bill with another Albert Zuck Smith picture, which is called The Female Animal, which I've never seen.

Also directed by Harry Keller, by the way, but it had Hedy Lamarr in it, you know, inventor, the famous inventor with George N.

Tyle.

Yeah.

So the film gets dumped, it disappears, and the epitaph of this is this was the last film Orson Welles ever directed in Hollywood.

I think you could even say in America, but we'll say Hollywood.

Right.

Why don't we jump to the picture, FT., if you got nothing else to say on the origins, which we just plowed through.

Well, one thing I want to say that I think is important, because the movie then goes on, even in this truncated version, to win the first prize at the 1958 Brussels World Fair.

Yes.

And that was Truffaut and Godard and a few other people on that committee, but it got some acclaim in Europe.

Yes.

And a lot of people forget this.

And in Paris, I think it ran for like three years at an art house often to fill full capacity.

Yes.

So, FT., you may remember that a few minutes back when we were talking about that.

Or I may not remember.

The scene in Sanchez's apartment, and I said, you know, it was a long, continuous shot.

You said, not the only one in the film.

That's right.

There is another one which is widely regarded as one of the, maybe the greatest shot in all of cinema history.

And that is the very opening shot of Touch of Evil.

And that, the concept for the shot was to have, you see a time bomb with the timer being set to three minutes and then have a, in real time, a three minute continuous shot until the time bomb goes off and a very ambitious shot because we stay with this moving car, we see all the actors, we cover all these blocks, we go through the Mexican California border.

So, very ambitious idea for a one take shot.

It's interesting, Bees Welles was doing these long one take, introduced kind of these long one take shots in Kane, but there's one shot, I meant to go back and look at Kane again.

There's one very famous shot where it goes over this, I think a movie marquee, but he did it with models in Kane.

Now he's doing it for real.

Right.

It starts on the ground and it does its craning.

Yeah.

Well, it's a Chapman crane, so it's a crane mounted on a truck.

And the truck itself is a dolly crane.

So the Chapman trucks, the wheels, all can turn in the same direction.

Okay.

Even when it starts on the close up of the dial being turned on the kitchen timer, I thought it started on the street.

I mean, you know, down level, and then it's going to drop down.

But again, the crane can go down low.

So I'm assuming it was all on a crane as opposed to, and this is where it gets interesting.

I mean, the other way, some of these things can be done.

If you can't hold a camera, you can start out on the street, walk onto the crane platform, and then be lifted up on the crane.

I don't think that was the way this worked because it was shot with a Mitchell BNC camera.

Big, yeah.

Well, big, but also, they always took, it takes at least two grips to put them on a tripod because without the blimp, you can take off the blimp, the blimp is what...

Muffles the sound.

Muffles the sound.

Without the blimp on it, without the film loaded, without a lens on it, they're 200 pounds.

Fully loaded, they're like 500 pounds.

So I don't see...

Jesus.

I don't see him walking onto the crane.

So I'm assuming they started on this crane, but there were reports that the camera operator did handhold for a lot of this shot, but I assume it's just somehow on the crane to move the camera and don't ask me how the hell he handheld it.

You know it's a Mitchell?

You know it's a Mitchell, not an Eclair?

Oh yeah, no, this shot was done with a Mitchell BNC camera.

And so coming back to this train set, to this great crew, the director of photography is Russell Meddy on this picture.

Welles, Meddy had worked on Citizen Kane, even though Greg Toland was the cinematographer on that.

He was a, either, he was credited as some kind of consultant.

I think he might have been, you know, I've read that he was a contrast consultant, which makes sense, because Meddy's use of contrast in black and white is pretty astounding.

Yeah.

And so Russell Meddy, though, he actually started out in 1929 in the camera department at the studio, so by, you know, so he's now been working for 20 years, and he shot so many pictures.

He was mostly shooting bee pictures, and so he had so much experience.

And what's great is he totally embraced, well, you know, a lot of, you know, sometimes you get very experienced people like that, and they just don't want to hear new ideas.

We can't do it that way.

We don't want to do it.

Yeah, yeah.

And Meddy was just anything Welles wanted, he was going to try to do, and they had a great collaboration.

But the other weird thing about Russell Meddy that's a real head scratcher for me is he had done two pictures.

He's done several pictures with Douglas Serk, but two of the pictures that he had done with Douglas Serk before Touch of Evil, Magnificent Obsession, and All That Heaven Allows, Technicolor Pictures.

Again, this crew was excellent.

So the opening shot, one of the most famous shots, maybe the most famous shot in film history, Welles gave generous credit and gave the credit to Russell Meddy, who he said it was Meddy's idea to do it in one take.

Meddy, in turn, gave credit to his camera operator, Phil Lathrop, and I think that was not false modesty when again, you comprehend the difficulty of doing that shot is just kind of mind-blowing.

Yeah, yeah.

When you consider it, you know, today, it would be a different story.

You know, now they've got remote-operated cranes, there's video playback, but considering it then, if you want to talk about it, well, first of all, there's no zoom lenses at this point.

So it's insane because do you know how the focus system on a Mitchell BNC works, FT.?

I do not.

You had to pull basically the body of the camera off and it was on a rack, so you were looking at the film gate, the spot where the film goes through and gets exposed, and you could put a ground glass there or maybe there was a ground glass there, and you would focus on that ground glass, then you would put the camera body back on and shoot.

Jesus.

You can see how problematic it is.

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

You can't do it.

Yeah, trying to shoot this multi-block long crane shot.

So, you know, Lathrop said, you know, he basically was shooting the thing blind.

He was not looking through a viewfinder.

Well, he had a viewfinder, but all the viewfinder gives you is the framing, but not the focus.

So, he's counting on the 18 mm to keep things in focus, right?

Well, no, he's counting on his focus puller, who also should get an award in somehow, has never gotten mentioned in this whole thing.

And the other award needs to go to the crane grip, who again, he, again, the crane grip doesn't have a video, he doesn't get to see anything.

And so clearly, you know, it's just insane.

They block the whole thing out, you know, and they have to know where they are on timing marks, where they have to be, and then the actors have to be on their marks.

And it's just, it's insane to come to...

And the cars, it's more than the actors, it's the whole bit, extras, you know.

But they did it several times, because the final take, they noticed that the sun was rising.

It was pink in the sky, Heston said, or Janet Leigh said, yeah.

So they, you know, it took them a while to do that.

So that's, that's incredible with the visuals.

Absolutely.

Oh yeah, no, it's insane.

So to your point, FT., the take we see in the movie was the final take.

They start shooting at sundown, they shoot all night and they can't get a take.

Something's always going wrong.

The thing that's the guy at the, the most thing going on is the guy at the end forgetting his line at the border crossing I read.

Right.

Yes.

And Welles said to him, like, say anything, just move your lips.

For God sakes, don't say, I'm sorry, Mr.

Wells.

Yes.

No, Heston said that, I think, and yeah.

No, no.

Well, yeah, right.

But Welles said that, don't just move your lips.

That was the take they used.

And I think they did dub in his his dialogue, because he kept having problems with his lines.

Yeah, which weren't, you know, right.

Yes.

In later years in his interviews, Wells thought the opening shot was too ostentatious.

He said, it's not good to call attention to yourself.

I think he felt like the Sanchez interrogation was his favorite scene.

Well, it was claustrophobic and it was like really tight.

I mean, you know, and it is broken up, you know, it's broken up when Heston goes outside, you know, with the blind woman, but then it comes back in, you know, so it is.

It's not tedious for me.

But yeah, I hear your remarks are noted by the public, by our podcasting public.

And I don't want to leave it at that until you tell me I've convinced you that you hate the scene.

No.

Why don't we jump around?

Since we're talking about claustrophobia, which do you have an issue with claustrophobia at all?

FT., is that one of your phobias?

No.

No, I don't have an issue with that, but I don't like being in cramped spaces for too long.

No, but you made a joke.

But you don't have a problem with claustrophobia, right?

Well, let me put it this way.

I think everybody has a problem with some kinds of claustrophobia.

But you already said, okay, all right, please, I was supposed to break the news.

No, no, no.

We're supposed to talk to you later, but I'll talk to you now.

They're moving you into the smaller office, sorry.

Why don't we jump around, talking about claustrophobia to the elevator scene, which is another famous scene.

And this one, I do feel like Welles' ideas of form pay off in function.

And of course, the elevator scene was another spontaneous idea of Welles, where he was trying to shoot that scene, and sorry, to those who are having a hard time, remembering it's a scene where Charlton Heston brings in the chief of police and the district attorney to show him evidence about Quinlan's corruption.

And they show up at this hotel, and they go up in an elevator.

Welles is having a hard time shooting it.

It's on a practical location, because the elevator is slow.

And then, well, lightbulb...

You know, Heston talks about...

He, like, basically sees this lightbulb go off and Welles' head, and he's like, I know, let's do it this way.

And this way is he has Heston bring the other three to the elevator, opens the door, and says, you know, you guys ride the elevator, I'm gonna take the stairs.

But the camera is already placed inside the elevator.

So the three guys come in, we see Heston leave, the elevator goes up, we see, we hear their conversation, and then the elevator stops and Heston's there.

And it all happens in one take.

So again, we get this incredible experience of real time.

But more than that, it pays off because we get this feeling of claustrophobia big time in this elevator.

Any comments on that shot, which I do?

No, no, no, because it just leads to, you know, that incredible, you know, sequence in there with their pigeon egg and all that.

But the other part of this is, don't forget, there's the return elevator scene.

Yes.

Where Orson gets in it with the DA.

Then it gets really claustrophobic.

Exactly.

But, you know, story wise, that's where he starts hatching the plot, you know, the second frame up, you know.

Now, I guess I can talk.

What do you mean, Hank?

All I wanted to tell you was, I couldn't really say in my own defense.

Go on, Hank.

What do you really know about this Vargas?

Isn't he in charge of some kind of clean up here on this side of the border?

Narcotics, mainly?

Narcotics.

He's a drug addict.

He's got that young wife of his hooked, too.

But could, if I hadn't seen that hypodermic myself.

Hypodermic?

You saw it?

I just said so, didn't I?

Oh, sure.

That's how come he happened to imagine all those crazy things as typical.

You know, you were saying before about, you know, or people have said this, that, you know, the story's complicated.

It's two frame ups, you know.

Yeah, I don't think, I don't think the story, that's my problem with the script.

The two set ups are fantastic.

But the stuff about Sanchez and the dynamite is a MacGuffin.

And so the complication of the sticks of d-

It's kind of a sidebar that's a just, you know, it is a red herring and it gets, you know, it gets hard to follow because it is just this red herring.

Okay, right, to you.

Yeah, it wasn't hard to follow for me.

Which is interesting, you know.

Right.

And that's what takes this movie out of the standard film noir stuff.

You know, the other one, you're either having suspense in either senses, Hitchcock's or the other one.

You know, you either know what's going to happen and you're just waiting to see how it turns out.

Like Columbo, you know, or you know, you don't know what's going to happen.

And oh, it could be any minute something weird is going to happen.

And this, it's complicated.

That's what makes it a flawed masterpiece.

It's not your simple story.

Plus there's jokes in it.

I mean, he's tongue in cheek about the genre in this movie.

You know, let me ask you one question.

And I know we didn't talk.

This is just on me.

Can you imagine a story where a murder is done, you know, that the evidence was dentures?

Yes.

I know I just threw this out on you.

But yes.

OK.

So you answered yes.

And that's my kind of answer.

Well, yes, I can imagine a story, but I'm not going to tell you what it is.

Right.

And again, you're referring to when Heston is in the evidence room and going through Quinlan's old cases about the evidence being planted.

One's an axe, one's a denture.

So my point being tongue in cheek.

But again, that is, again, I've always said, scripts are, you know, thriller scripts, mystery scripts are held together with duct tape.

But that's a good example.

Heston's smoking gun is, well, every case you've had, the defendant says the evidence was planted.

They denied it, yeah.

Yeah, I'm like, well, that's not exactly definitive evidence.

That's what defendants tend to do.

Yes, right, exactly.

Yeah.

Let's see if there's, just on the elevator thing, which is what we were talking about, is, again, it's so easy for us as modern audiences to not really be impressed by that elevator scene, but back then when there weren't battery packs and lights were fucking ginormous hot things, to shoot in an elevator like that was technically very tough to pull off.

And Heston, in his memoir, talks about it.

They had to run all the cables for the sound, for the light, the electricity, for the lights down the elevator.

So it was not easy to pull off.

And again, it would be great that the crew, when Welles came up with these ideas, they're like, yeah, let's figure out how to do it.

Did they use a Mitchell on that?

Have you read?

Or is it when they used the Eclair?

I think they used an Eclair on that, which I can't figure out how they...

So the sound must have been, because, sorry, an Eclair camera is very noisy.

So you don't really use it for shooting sound, and especially in an enclosed space.

So when I looked at it, when it starts out, the people talking are in profile or in shadow.

I'm like, oh yeah, so they hid their lips.

But no, there's a lot where you actually see their lips moving.

But he post-synced it, he was big on post-syncing.

I think they dubbed it.

And they could have mounted the smaller hand held, which is, Welles got that from his work in Europe, I think particularly in Othello, that they could have mounted the camera in the corner without even an operator, just turned it on.

That's what my guess was with the wide angle lens.

And they just dubbed the sound.

They got some wild sound of the area, the elevator operating with blah, blah, blah.

And they layered it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Another famous story about the éclair cameras, which are these small, for the time, small cameras that could be used hand held.

Welles called for four of them to be available on Touch of Evil.

And then when the shoot was over, there were only three.

Oh, no kidding.

So I think his other films in Europe were being shot with the missing éclair.

That's interesting.

Yeah, maybe not.

But speaking of the éclair...

Yeah.

You're not going to make your classic joke about this?

Orson Welles and an éclair?

Yeah.

Where?

Where?

Well, the original line in the Sanchez scene was when he was a guy with a coffee, he goes, didn't you bring me any donuts or sweet rolls or éclairs?

Speaking of the éclair was also used in another famous shot, which was the first time this had ever been done, believe it or not, which is the shot where Heston and Schwartz, the, I guess the assistant district attorney played by Mort Mills, are traveling through the streets of in a convertible car.

And it was not done with rear projection, with a process shot of rear projection, which was basically the way it was done back in the day.

And some directors even just held onto it, like Hitchcock and North by Northwest, the Cary Grant, you know, so much bad rear projection.

Catch a thief, there's so much bad rear projection.

Oh my God.

And Welles said, no, I want to shoot, I want to put the camera on the hood of the car.

And the crew who would do anything balked at that and said, no, that's going to be very difficult to do.

But what we can do is we can get the car, we can saw off the hood and tow it.

You know, have a truck tow the car, we'll put the camera in the bed of the truck and shoot back.

Welles said, no, we can do it.

Let's put the camera on the hood of the car and knock out the windshield and shoot it.

And the crew is like, where are we going to put the sound equipment, the record, we need to put it in a truck and tow the car.

Welles said, no, we got to do it this way.

And then the crew said, well, who's going to operate the camera?

Who's going to operate the sound?

And Welles said, the boys can do it.

The boys being Chuck Heston and Mort Mills.

And so he was like, here's how you do it, guys.

You know, say, you know, Chuck, you can direct, you know, you just say rolling speed and you start the camera.

Here's the switch to start the camera.

Here's the switch to start the sound.

And they would do the shot.

And then at the end, Welles would be waiting and said how to go.

And Heston would say, well, I'd like good, but I want to do another one.

And Heston said it was his first experience of direct.

Did Heston ever get to direct a film?

I don't think so.

I don't know.

That's a good question.

No.

But he basically he basically directed these these shots.

Yeah, it's amazing.

You know, and and the key thing there is that some people claim.

And is this true?

It's the first time in Hollywood.

Oh, yeah.

First time in the history of cinema, you know.

So here you have Welles innovating again, which, you know, just pissed off certain people in the studio.

I mean, how could this guy do this?

How could he pull it off?

You know, a lot of jealousy there.

By the way, in this in a sequence of when Suzy's being taken to the motel that was pulled from the preview version and put in the restored version, there's a second shot.

It's not in the theatrical version.

Not in the theatrical version, right.

Yeah, there's a weird mix and match there because of destroyed negative.

There is processed stuff and the camera is mounted on the trunk this time.

When Menzies is driving Janet Leigh to the motel, so you see the road coming up ahead.

And part of me is going like, is that, am I real?

And I'm like, oh yeah, absolutely.

It was, you could tell, it wasn't processed.

It was live, you know.

And it was pretty smooth.

But you're saying in a shot that's not in the film that you can see.

Theatrical version.

But he does it.

Easily, you can see easily, right.

Okay, so he does it again, but now you're saying the camera, the camera's mounted on the trunk?

Yes.

Yep.

So it's looking at the road coming ahead.

Yep.

And sorry, is it behind the driver and the passenger?

Of course.

It's behind, it's on the trunk, yeah.

So you see the back of the heads and they're talking.

And I don't know if they're, you know, I'm sure the sound was also similarly, you know, they did it once, so do it again, you know.

But maybe this is where they did it first.

I have no idea.

I doubt it.

I think it was from Charlton Heston, you know, but.

So again, he, Welles, this was Welles' innovation.

First time it was ever done, mounting the camera on the front of the car, shooting through the windshield instead of, you know, towing a car on a camera truck.

It's better doing it Welles' way.

Do you know what the, why it's better, FT.?

Can you, can you put your finger on why it's better to do it Welles' way?

Better.

You're emphasizing the word better.

Yes.

Yeah.

No, why, why Welles was right to insist on doing it this way, even though it was so difficult.

What, what's the advantage of doing it this way versus putting the camera in a truck and towing the car?

Well, you get a better, you get a real performance, but that's not the reason.

I mean, Chuck is really driving the car.

Oh no, you would get, you would get the same.

Well, no.

Right.

Okay.

Right.

So, but it's, it's not that the issue is, yes.

Well, you, in terms of the stability, the smooth, and when you watch that shot, it's, it feels great.

It's like you're driving along with them.

Because it's not, it's not bumpy.

Because what happens is you mount a camera to the hood of the car, rigid, you know, not putting any gyros or foam pads.

The camera, every bump, the camera, the camera's moving with the bumps.

But now if the camera's on a truck, towing the car, the car's getting bumped around, and now your truck is separately, your camera's getting, so you've got two types of shakes.

It's in sync.

Exactly.

And plus, it's a good old fashioned American, you know, the gliding boat ride.

You know, I forget what kind of car that is.

But you know, those, my father's Buick, you know, my family's Buick.

That was that kind of car.

It glided over the bumps.

You're right.

Good point.

Yep.

You don't get two different shakes.

They're in sync.

Right.

And it's not a bad road, you know, because it would have been...

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why don't we move to just some of the many actors...

Performances, yeah...

.

to talk to.

Let's start with Janet Leigh, or as her friends called her, Janet.

What do you got to say there?

You didn't like it.

Well...

It's hard.

I mean, it's, you know, there's a little bit of an interesting backstory nugget there where her agent turned down the role for her, because of the money.

And then Welles went to her directly and she was like, called her agent, said, what the fuck are you doing?

I, you know, I work for Orson Welles for free.

So she got cast.

It's obviously a difficult role, as it's conceived and scripted.

So I can't really hold it against her.

You know, it's hard for me to watch because you watch her in her negligee, in a motel room, being terrorized, in black and white, and you just think, psycho, which I guess she did like a year later.

Two.

Okay, two years later.

I think it's worth talking, unless you don't want to do it, FT., about Hitchcock and Welles who are rival, contemporary, basically contemporaries and rivals.

Yes.

The similarities in psycho are a little bit uncomfortable.

Yeah.

They'd be more comfortable for me if Hitchcock was the kind of director, as many directors are, like, oh, you know, I love Welles and so it's an homage.

But it wasn't, yeah.

But Alfred, Hitchcock, or Hitch, as his friends would call him, was not that generous a person, and so it's uncomfortable for me when I look at some of the similarities of psycho and some of the ways I feel like Hitchcock was like trying to one up Welles.

So as you start the opening scene of Psycho is what, FT.?

I forget.

It's an extended tracking shot that is, you go from the cityscape of Phoenix, Arizona, the whole city, and you track in, you track in, you track in to one building, to one window.

Then you go through the window, then you go through the bed, and I just feel like it's Hitchcock saying, okay, Orson, you do the long tracking shot.

I can do that.

Look what I can do.

And it doesn't, it's not, I don't think Hitchcock, it quits himself well because there's dissolves in Hitchcock's shot.

It's not one continuous shot.

Right, right, right.

Just some of the other similarities I've noted between Touch of Evil and Psycho, and I'd like to see if you can add to this list, or how many of them, as I say, you jotted down.

What we already talked about it, Hitchcock's got a movie where a woman's being terrorized in a motel room, so he's like, oh, Janet Leigh, she did that in Touch of Evil, so he casts her.

They both had these wacky motel managers, Tony Perkins in Psycho, Dennis Weaver, of course, in Touch of Evil.

It stinks in here.

It stinks in here.

He used the same art director that Welles used in Touch of Evil.

The motel room, a lot of the scenes, the sets feel a little bit similar to me.

The director of photography on Psycho was one of the camera operators, not Lathrop, but another camera operator on Touch of Evil got hired to do Psycho.

Then what really stands out to me, the shock shot in Touch of Evil, the shock shot where poor Janet Leigh wakes up in the motel and she sees this scary upside down face of-

Bulging eyes.

Yeah, of Joe Grandy upside down, bulging tongue.

Hitchcock has a very similar shock shot in Psycho where Janet Leigh's sister goes to try to find her and sees this nice older woman in the rocking chair of the base motel and so goes to turn her around but she's not answering and of course turns around and there's this skeletal corpse there in the chair.

You know, the big shock moment in Psycho.

I felt that was influenced by Touch of Evil.

Right.

Yeah.

I know there's, you know, my thought here was, when you talk about Psycho, is getting back to the hotel scene where Uncle Joe is being killed, Orson's handling of that with all the cutting, the quick cuts, is so superior to the absolutely fake, you know, the last time I saw Psycho, I couldn't believe the bathroom scene that scared everybody.

It is so bad.

It just, it astonished me.

You know, that Hitchcock, who knows how to cut film, that I almost felt like, you know, he gave up or is doing something just to test, you know, what can an audience take, you know, which doesn't work.

I mean, off angles, slightly moving, you know, but it ends with the famous form cut, you know, of the eyeball, the round eyeball to the rounds, you know, drain, you know, but, you know, but Orson, I actually thought you were going to talk about the shock shot, you know, but you're right, it wasn't, but Orson ends it with the, you know, Uncle Joe upside down.

And you know, the story about that one was, don't you Ken, about the sheep's tongue?

The sheepskin, the condom, the sheepskin.

No, no, the tongue.

No, I don't, I don't, I don't.

Akim Tamiroff apparently, people said, he would do anything Orson said.

Yes.

He would like, you know, and so they had this, this prop of a real sheep tongue that he wanted to stick in it, you know, he stuck it in his mouth to make it so grotesque.

And apparently they shot it that way.

And everybody, when they saw the rushes, the dailies, they went like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's just so bad.

It's so grotesque, you know?

And I'm sure...

So he had his tongue sticking out of his mouth that was exaggerated.

So he had the bulging eyes and the tongue, and his sheep's tongue making it, like, you know, horrifying.

Right.

That his tongue got swollen and insane, you know?

So in the theatrical version, what kind of, that does not look...

His tongue.

No, there's no, the tongue is so small in the theatrical.

It's not, I don't think it's his tongue.

Well, maybe he had a small tongue.

I mean, Mr.

Speedy, my dog, has a really big tongue.

And I know somebody who has called the tongue.

Anyhow.

Let's turn the page to another female actress.

Yes, turning the page.

Marlene, is it Mar, I'm losing it.

Marlene or Marlene?

Lily Marlene.

Okay, so Marlene Dietrich.

Interesting story.

She was not cast to be in the film, but she was in the script, right?

Her character wasn't even in the script.

Her character wasn't in the script.

But Welles comes up with the idea and calls her up and they were friends.

And by the way, in Welles' magic act, he would saw Marlene Dietrich in half.

For the troops.

He calls her up.

He asks her to come in, shoots it.

The studio had no idea she was in it until they see the dailies and they see Dietrich in the film.

She was supposed to do it for scale.

But then the studio wanted to give her credit, at which point they had to pay her more money.

What she said was that if you don't put my credit name in the credits, I do it for scale.

If you do, call my agent.

Right.

And most of her lines were, as I think you've already mentioned, the ending of the script did not have the famous line spoken by Tana, by Marlene Dietrich about...

He was a great detective, says Schwartz, and she goes, and a lousy cop.

And then you quoted the line earlier.

Yeah.

That was supposed to be originally said all by Vargas.

And Welles didn't like it.

He said, no, no, no.

He's not going to have that kind of quote, victory.

It cuts the ambiguity of the whole character, of Welles.

Yeah.

And as I said in the beginning, she says, what does it matter what you say about a man?

And you better lay off the candy bars.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the thing.

She has all the great, she really has the great lines in the film.

You're a mess.

You're a mess.

You better lay off.

You're a mess, honey.

And then, of course, the most haunting line, which she speaks, when Welles shows up towards the end at her brothel.

And he says, You've been reading the cards, haven't you?

I've been doing the accounts.

You haven't got any.

Hmm?

What do you mean?

Your future is all used up.

Why don't you go home?

Which could have been said about Welles, and what Welles was thinking about himself.

Akim Tamiroff, how much do you know about him, FT.?

I like his exaggerated work.

He's an archide and a goofy part.

He's also in The Trial later on, in the Kafka story.

Yeah, he's all over the place.

Welles loved him.

And European Welles, yeah, they were good buddies.

But his goofy, his over-the-top comedic stuff, it's just again, one of these non-compute thing.

And again, you've called me a reduction.

I'm a very simple minded person.

I need to...

No, seriously.

And so...

Where do you need your lollipop?

So again, I can't compute because...

So Tamiroff was a member of the Moscow Art Theater.

And so he was under...

Stanislavski.

Directly under Stanislavski.

Method.

So his work, his goofy work in Touch of Evil is so opposite of Method.

Although I have to say, in the strangling scene that you brought up where Quinlan comes up and is gonna kill him, you watch him there.

It is a Method-y performance that's working.

Oh, yeah.

Which is tough.

And again, why does Welles like Tamiroff so much is weird because Welles is famously anti-Method.

Right.

But he doesn't care when you get the performance.

He's like any director.

You get what you're looking for.

Again, this plays to my whole thing that I think Welles was what people couldn't take about this, was the complications, the double plot, and the fact that he was tongue-in-cheek about it.

With Tamiroff literally, sheep's tongue-in-cheek.

But I think that in the Dennis Weaver performance, which I also know you had problems with when we were talking.

And there's always that part of me that says like, back in those days, when I was a kid, there were just more weird people around.

Now, the oddball cousin, the nephew that would sit in the store are more hidden now.

Things have gotten homogenized.

FT., it's not that people were weirder then, it's just that you're weirder now.

So people seem less weird.

No.

Oh, man.

I've got a trivia question for you, FT.

I love trivia questions.

I knew you do.

So, here we go.

What cartoon character was inspired by Akim Tamiroff?

Yosemite Sam.

Boris, the spy and Rockane Bolinkle.

Oh, right, right, right.

So who's Natasha?

I don't know.

Nobody.

You're the trivialist without the complete trivia.

Partial trivialist.

That's the title of my memoir, The Incomplete Trivialist.

Yes.

Memoir of an incomplete trivialist.

Let's talk about Mercedes McCambridge.

And again, another interesting story there.

Welles had known her.

I forget where he knew her.

I guess they were friends.

Radio.

Radio.

Oh, OK.

Good.

Good one, FT.

That's right.

I forgot about that.

She was not in the Mercury Theatre, was she?

No, but he called her.

I think at one point he even said she's the greatest female radio actor ever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So she gets a call, I guess, late morning.

And it's Welles on the phone calling from the set and says, Do you have black slacks and a black sweater?

And she says, she says, Do you know the story?

No.

He says, Do you have black slacks and a black sweater?

And she said, Yeah, why?

He said, Do you have a black leather jacket?

And she says, I would never wear a black leather jacket.

And he says, That's okay.

I need you to get down here to the set.

No kidding.

And so she goes down to the set.

Welles himself cuts her hair short and rubs black shoe polish in her hair and gets her the black leather jacket, throws her out on set to do her favorite, you know, her famous bit as the, as the I want to watch and talking to Janet Leigh, Janet Leigh through the wall.

And well, Mary Jane is, you know, you have the marijuana main line.

Sorry, man, I can you just read you just reminded me.

So when I'm watching that, I had kept bugging me.

Who does that voice remind me of?

Well, Mercedes McCambridge voice through the wall.

Do it again after you did a good one.

Right.

Do it again.

You did a good one.

You ever hear of like marijuana?

Mary Jane?

Mainlining?

Mainlining.

And I was like, that reminds me of something.

And then I realized she sounds exactly like Triumph, the comic insult dog on Conan O'Brien.

Have you ever seen that?

Just today.

Really?

I hope Anne Marie can plug, because it's uncanny.

Yes.

Quiet, everyone.

The debate is just about to start.

And here in the spin room, there's a palpable dead silence that one can only compare to the sound Melania makes when Donald Trump is inside her.

I don't know if they based it on Mercedes, but they sound so similar.

Honey, you, in the next room, come to the wall.

So, I can whisper.

You know what marijuana is, don't you?

Yes.

You know what a Mary Jane is?

You know what a mainliner is?

I think so.

But what's that got to do with me?

You take it in the vein.

I mean, the other thing, hearing her through the hotel wall like that in that bit, I really kept waiting for it because obviously she played the voice of the devilish Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

I kept waiting for her to say, your mother sucks cocks in hell.

But anyway, coming back to our story, he shoots her in one take and says, she lives in Bel Air, she's back in her house in Bel Air by four o'clock that afternoon.

No shit, wow.

While Orson had no problem cutting women's hair, he did it to Rita Hayworth, freaked out Harry Cohen and dyed it.

She was known, her trademark was her long red hair.

And he cuts it, dyes it blonde, bleaches it.

Yeah, and so he had no problem here with her.

And her playing the classic 50s bull dagger, man, that was just like, I blow my mind.

I remember even when I saw it, again, another Du Bois story.

I knew somebody like that.

You know, and I won't name the person.

Well, I mean, we didn't talk about the motel scene.

I have a lot of problems with the motel scene, but what I will say, now that you're forcing me to think about it, she is realistically scary.

She's a David Lynch-ian, very scary.

You know, I want to stay in what she says.

I want to stay and watch.

But my problem is the guys just seem very fake and, you know, like something out of West Side Story or something.

Yeah.

But she's great.

Yeah.

Well, the one guy with, you know, too much speed ball, you know, his head shaking up and down, you know, but what about, what's the name of the character of the main Mexican kid, the hood man?

The handsome one?

As she says, you know, Pancho.

Yeah.

She calls him Pancho and he's never identified by his real name.

Right.

OK.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Yes.

OK.

Speaking of real names, I'm going to address you by your real name, FT.

Theodore.

And say we need to say good night.

It's been a good one.

But I think we've said what we can shoehorn into a one episode of the podcast.

But again, encourage everybody, if they're interested, to go out and read more, listen more, get the revised version.

And we're universal to give it up, man.

Come on.

Yeah.

And don't spend all your time doing that.

You spend some time at theyshootfilms.com.

Give us a like.

Please make sure you subscribe that we'll get the episodes as soon as they come out.

Tell your friends about They Shoot Films.

And FT have a good one, my friend.

I'm going to have a touch of goodness.

A touch of truth.

You too, buddy.

A touch of sleep.

A touch of sleep, yes.

That's actually a pretty good Chandler novel title.

A touch of sleep.

Yeah, but where was the first touch, yeah, any other touch of something?

A touch of class, I believe is what, yeah.

Yes, a touch of class, which is the name of, I remember when I lived in New York City, you would watch late night TV, they would have like this porn channel on cable with Al Goldstein, and it would just be all ads for escort services.

A touch of class, yes.

A touch of class, being the main one.

Nice.

All right, have a good one, FT.

You too, buddy.

All right, bye-bye.

They Shoot Films is a production of Film Symposium West.

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Studio announcer, Roy Blumenfeld.