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Sign up todayOrson Welles’s Last Movie
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Learn moreIn the summer of 1970, legendary but self-destructive director Orson Welles returned to Hollywood from years of self-imposed exile in Europe and decided it was time to make a comeback movie. It was about a legendary self-destructive director who returns to Hollywood from years of self-imposed exile in Europe. Welles swore it wasn’t autobiographical.
The Other Side of the Wind was supposed to take place during a single day, and Welles planned to shoot it in eight weeks. It took twelve years and remains unreleased and largely unseen.
Orson Welles’s Last Movie by Josh Karp is a fast-paced, behind-the-scenes account of the bizarre, hilarious, and remarkable making of what has been called “the greatest home movie that no one has ever seen.” Funded by the shah of Iran’s brother-in-law and based on a script that Welles rewrote every night for years, it was a final attempt to one-up his own best work. It’s almost impossible to tell if art is imitating life or vice versa in the film. It’s a production best encompassed by its star, John Huston, who described the making of the film as “an adventure shared by desperate men that finally came to nothing.”
Josh Karp is a journalist and writer who teaches at Northwestern University. His first book, A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever, won Best Biography of 2006 at both the Independent Publisher Book Awards and the Midwest Book Awards. Karp is also the author of Straight down the Middle: Shivas Irons, Bagger Vance, and How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Golf Swing. His writing has appeared in Salon, Atlantic, and Newsweek, among others.
Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.
Reviews
“In Josh Karp’s excellent new book, you get a sensitively rendered and panoramic depiction of that famous megalomania…There’s no shortage of hilarious anecdotes here. A-.”
“Fascinating…an in-depth account. [A] wonderful book.”
“Josh Karp applies enthusiastic scholarship, with vivid narrative writing and just the right touch of can-you-believe-this-stuff? marvel.”
“Riveting, wildly entertaining.”
“Supremely entertaining…An early contender for this year’s best book about Hollywood.”
“After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the incomplete film—partly financed by the shah of Iran’s brother-in-law—officially entered purgatory. Ever since then, family, heirs and financiers have been fighting for control. Luckily, there’s nothing unfinished in Karp’s retelling. He follows every story, dollar, and last legal battle in full detail.”
“[Karp’s] adoration for Welles is obvious, and readers can only hope Wind will one day reach screens.”
“Karp’s conversational tone yet unerring attention to detail make this an essential book on Welles…An intimate, humorous, and staggering tale.”
“A fascinating story, much more than your typical making-of book.”
“Josh Karp has written a Hollywood epic as grand as any shot by Frank Capra, Preston Sturges or Orson Welles…Funny and profound, too weird and heartbreaking to believe—Karp has added an indelible chapter to the literature of show biz.”
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