The Other Side of The Wind - Released Scenes

Released Scenes

Although the film is unfinished, several scenes have been available to a wider public over the years.

The most commonly seen of these are two edited scenes (in workprint form), which can be seen in the documentary film Orson Welles: One Man Band, which is available as a bonus feature on both the Criterion Collection R1 and Madman Entertainment's Directors Suite R4 DVD release of F for Fake. The scenes included in the documentary are:

1. A scene from the start of the film featuring John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich and Susan Strasberg at Hannaford's 70th birthday party. (2 minutes, 14 seconds, colour)

2. A scene from Hannaford's sensationalist film-within-a-film featuring Oja Kodar and Bob Random having sex in a station wagon driven by actor Robert Aiken. (2 minutes, 41 seconds, colour - the full sex scene runs to around seven minutes, and follows the clearly uncomfortable driver becoming increasingly incensed, and ends in Kodar's character being ejected from the car mid-climax, but the released version only shows the first part of this.)

The scenes were originally cut by Welles to show during his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony in 1975.

However, Welles did not screen the sex scene for the AFI in the end. (He may have been influenced by it being a prime-time broadcast). Instead, he screened the above scene from Hannaford's birthday, combined with one further scene:

3. This involved the screening of a rough cut of Hannaford's film to a clearly unimpressed studio executive, while Norman Foster plays a Hannaford aide ineptly trying to describe what the film is about. (3 minutes, 56 seconds, colour & b/w)

This scene has been less widely seen because it was not originally included in the One Man Band documentary; but the entire AFI ceremony was broadcast in the 1970s as the TV special AFI Salutes Orson Welles, and was subsequently released on VHS. The tape of the ceremony includes the above scenes number (1) and (3).

Nonetheless, when the One Man Band documentary was screened by Turner Classic Movies, it was re-edited by Peter Bogdanovich, with additional material, and so the TCM edit of One Man Band includes all three of these scenes.

A fourth scene is included in Gary Graver's 1993 direct-to-video documentary Working with Orson Welles, and uses footage in Graver's possession:

4. It involves an extensive dream-like sequence from the film-within-the-film, portraying Bob Random's character chasing Oja Kodar. Much use is made of optical illusions with mirrors and reflections in glass skyscrapers and phone booths. (colour)

A fifth scene has been circulated on internet video websites since 2008, in two different edits of the same scene. Both versions are filmed in black and white and consist of Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky arguing together on the nature of film, then asking increasingly personal (and sometimes pretentious) questions to Hannaford.

5a. The shorter version is more tightly edited and runs to five and a half minutes, featuring only Jaglom and Mazursky. (5 minutes, 34 seconds, b/w)

5b. The longer version runs to six and a half minutes, contains the same footage as above, but also has Dennis Hopper joining in, as well as contributions from John Huston's character. At the time this scene was filmed, in 1971, Huston had not yet been cast, so his own lines are unread, and were evidently meant to be dubbed in later. In this version, Welles can occasionally be heard providing off-screen direction between lines of dialogue. Hopper's comments appear to refer to his own film The Last Movie, which he had just completed at the time of filming. (An extra 57 seconds of b/w footage, bringing the scene to 6 minutes, 28 seconds)

Regarding scene (5), Gary Graver wrote that this was all filmed in one night:

"Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky hated each other. They'd had some sort of rivalry going on for some time. Orson knew this, so he pitted them against each other in the movie. It was quite humorous. Orson let them both get stoned! They were drinking and smoking grass, and this became quite a heated exchange. And both of these men were known to talk a lot as it was, and under these circumstances it was even more so. That exchange could be a ninety-minute movie in itself!"

During attempts to attract funding to finish The Other Side of the Wind in the late 1990s, Joseph McBride outlined such plans in a memo. Nine reels (90 minutes) of this black-and-white footage exists, and it may be edited down to as little as one minute of the final film, but McBride suggested that the 90 minutes of rushes would make a fascinating feature in their own right, either as a separate documentary, or as a DVD extra.

In November 2012, Henry Jaglom uploaded 22 minutes of footage of The Other Side of the Wind to his YouTube channel. This included the long version of scene 5, with Dennis Hopper, and the following additional scenes:

6. A brief shot of Paul Stewart wandering through the party, dismissively describing the elaborate festivities to an unidentified man. (17 seconds, colour)

7. A confrontation scene between Huston and Bogdanovich, in which Huston's character admits that he's broke, and is asked by Bogdanovich why the disappearance of his leading man is so upsetting to him. (1 minute, 4 seconds, b/w)

8. An exchange between Dan Tobin's schoolteacher (who is disorientated by the presence of so many cameras) and Norman Foster; numerous arguments between several members of Hannaford's entourage and Foster, who discuss abortive efforts at film funding and the alcoholism Foster's character; Huston meeting Cathy Lucas' character for the first time; and Huston rebuking Foster for blowing several earlier money pitches. (7 minutes, 22 seconds, b/w)

9. After a brief exchange with Lucas, Huston is introduced to Tobin, and gives him an extensive grilling on the topic of homosexuality, while his entourage looks on and makes comments. (7 minutes, 8 seconds, b/w)