WI Touch of Evil released as intended

What if Orson Welles wasn't fired from Touch of Evil in 1957, and got to finish it the way he wanted? I'm guessing it would look pretty much like the 1998 "restored version" based on Welles' lengthy memo. But how would a contemporary success like this affect the legacy of Citizen Kane and its director?
 
It would have been different from the restored version. Said version was missing scenes and assorted things that could not be put in place by simple editing to create a post facto restoration. The 1998 version is closer, and is as close as you will ever get, but it's not exactly what would have been given the rough cut is gone.

The question here is something I always come back to in alternate history, which is before asking what if something happened, asking if it could have happened. How do you get the Studio not to interfere and/or to listen to Welles? One thing I do know is that Charlton Heston, when told they wanted to bring him in to shoot some scenes behind Welles' back for the studio manipulated version, initially refused and said that if Welles wasn't coming back, then neither was he. I believe the reason he relented was because he was legally required to do those by his contract. Didn't Welles also run off at some point after finishing, when staying there would have meant he could have prevented what happened with the studio reedit and new scenes? Maybe I'm misremembering.
 
One point of interest here is that, in the US, Citizen Kane was neglected and forgotten until 1956, when it started getting shown on television and re-released in theaters for the first time since its initial run. So if, right around this time, a Orson Welles directed studio (B-)film comes out...

The question here is something I always come back to in alternate history, which is before asking what if something happened, asking if it could have happened. How do you get the Studio not to interfere and/or to listen to Welles? One thing I do know is that Charlton Heston, when told they wanted to bring him in to shoot some scenes behind Welles' back for the studio manipulated version, initially refused and said that if Welles wasn't coming back, then neither was he. I believe the reason he relented was because he was legally required to do those by his contract. Didn't Welles also run off at some point after finishing, when staying there would have meant he could have prevented what happened with the studio reedit and new scenes? Maybe I'm misremembering.

I actually had been thinking using Heston holding his ground as the PoD. Not sure about the latter part, but it wouldn't surprise me...
 
Emperor Norton I said:
How do you get the Studio not to interfere and/or to listen to Welles?
Is it ASB to hope breaking the studio system would do that? (Seeing the influence of the Suits with Money in the '90s & later, I confess little confidence.)
 
Another question -- would getting a film made his way in 1957, just as the world is rediscovering him, make Welles more likely to get at least some version of his Don Quixote film made?

It would have been different from the restored version. Said version was missing scenes and assorted things that could not be put in place by simple editing to create a post facto restoration. The 1998 version is closer, and is as close as you will ever get, but it's not exactly what would have been given the rough cut is gone.

By the way, does anyone know what these missing scenes were?
Is it ASB to hope breaking the studio system would do that? (Seeing the influence of the Suits with Money in the '90s & later, I confess little confidence.)

If our PoD is around 1957 or so, then it's likely too much too fast -- that said, a studio letting a (particular) director make the movie he wants is well within the system, so long as he does it within budget. Actually, firing the director in the middle of production is still the greater exception (though I suppose it's no surprise otl that when the studio system did make such a negative exception, they made it for Welles).
 
You may not get much from us. Maybe a Dieselpunk or classic film forum would be more fertile ground? Does TCM have a forum?

Checked the top results for "classic film forum", including TCM's -- believe it or not, Orson gets at least as much talk here as I could see in any of them. (He is kind of a TL staple around here, albeit usually to end up directing Batman.)
 

Best thing I found on Touch of Evil here was a copy of this article. Most relevant bit:

Welles' Hollywood exile was a decade along when he was offered the chance to make a movie of a drugstore potboiler called Badge of Evil. Initially contracted only to act – the lifelong means by which Welles' subsidized his filmmaking – he only got the directing gig at Heston's insistence. If the studio was wary of Welles' reputation as a pain-in-the-ass maverick, the fears were assuaged by the production, which ran on schedule and on budget. Then the editing began, and with it the predictable Wellesian struggle for creative autonomy. Universal hated his first cut (which it found confusing and needlessly arty) and insisted on changes. A new editor was imposed on the director, who withdrew to Mexico while Touch of Evil was not only recut and restructured but in some cases reshot – and not by Welles. By the time of the film's release, Welles had all but disavowed it. He would never work in that town again.
 
Well there's the running off bit I was talking about. Was the major reediting and reshooting the result of him going off, or did he go off because that was going to happen and he couldn't bare to be around while it did? The one offers the chance that he could have staved it off, or at least the worst of it off, had he stuck around. The other means he couldn't have done a thing regardless.
 
Well there's the running off bit I was talking about. Was the major reediting and reshooting the result of him going off, or did he go off because that was going to happen and he couldn't bare to be around while it did? The one offers the chance that he could have staved it off, or at least the worst of it off, had he stuck around. The other means he couldn't have done a thing regardless.

I tend to think it's the latter; that's likely ok for our purposes though, because I'd say it could be fixed with a fairly simple PoD, if the studio just decided to give Welles' version a real shot -- not so crazy a thought, considering that his reputation (vis a vis Citizen Kane) OTL was making a real comeback through 1956. Maybe said decision could be egged on by Heston puts his foot down in doing reshoots (like you mentioned earlier). Or maybe they just agree to allow a "director's cut" to be submitted to film festivals, giving it exposure in Europe...
 
There might be another option, if a longshot. (I've heard of this happening IRL, but offhand, I can't say what film, so...:eek:)

WI Orson makes a "director's cut" & sells a copy to a private collector who's a fan of his work? This lone example survives, while the studio cuts the film to the OTL one. The director's cut then surfaces on auction or something, a decade or so later (more?), & prints are made from it for the art houses.

Credible?
 
John Fredrick Parker said:
Not entirely sure -- it kind of depends on whether the studios would allow an alternate "director's cut" to float around in the first place...
Well, if it's just the one copy, & never commercially exhibited (or not until the first run has left screens), nor ever without studio OK... IIRC, this is what happened with "Metropolis" (tho it only turned up long after everybody involved was dead:rolleyes:).
 
Well, if it's just the one copy, & never commercially exhibited (or not until the first run has left screens), nor ever without studio OK... IIRC, this is what happened with "Metropolis" (tho it only turned up long after everybody involved was dead:rolleyes:).

Well, in that case what you have is a hell of a sleeper PoD (with no likely effects until the 1990's); I'm trying for something with a more immediate pop culture impact -- for example, would Welles be more successful in a follow up film, would Citizen Kane win the 1962 Sight and Sound poll*, etc.

*that OTL, established Kane as the official "Greatest Movie Ever Made" until last year, having a profound impact on how film was taught and studied in the following decades
 
John Fredrick Parker said:
Well, in that case what you have is a hell of a sleeper PoD (with no likely effects until the 1990's)
Thx (I think:confused::p). Not quite the effect I was hoping for, tho.:eek:
John Fredrick Parker said:
I'm trying for something with a more immediate pop culture impact
I got that.;) I couldn't think of another way.:eek::)
 
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