The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF HOLLYWOOD "Sometimes," chuckled Welles, "that is a good thing. There are certain figures like Lear, Othello and Oedipus who should inspire terror." "In the audience, perhaps," I said, "but surely not in the cast." "Well," parried Welles, "how on earth can you rehearse an epileptic fit?" Shakespeare would have approved of the epileptic fit as well as of Las Vegas, Welles intimated. I said I frankly did not care how Shakespeare would have felt. Perhaps he would have been delighted at the idea of being a floor show at Las Vegas. But had he, Welles, nothing better to do? When he first came to Hollywood he had not bothered to deny the allegations that he was a genius. He made films like Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons in defiance of box-office dictums, and they were brilliant, original works — not conjuring tricks like his most recent film Confidential Report. What had happened to his plans for making a film about a modern Noah? "That's off," said Welles. " It was just a modest little film about the end of the world. Very difficult to obtain finance for such a venture." He continued with Alice in Wonderland logic: "So I shall make a very expensive film about Spain in CinemaScope. It is very difficult to raise thousands. Much easier to raise millions." He was working on that matter right now. I asked him why he assumed the burden of financing his own films. Was it not enough to act in them, write them, direct them, and produce them? He said, "That is the only way I can get a job as a director. I act in films just for the money. I don't like doing it — it bores me. For the actor it is a dead medium. I act in my own films because that is a way of getting a free star. " I got £7,000 for one day's work on Moby Dick. That's 134