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> By 3 p.m. he’d been seated, and he delivered the lines perfectly. We were done by five, getting everything we needed without overtime. I remember him grinning
by karaterobot 2y ago
> By 3 p.m. he’d been seated, and he delivered the lines perfectly. We were done by five, getting everything we needed without overtime. I remember him grinning at the furious agency guys as he walked away from the set. Later on, after a few more commercials, they’d fire him, but I wasn’t around for that.
Sounds like he combined alcohol with a sleeping pill—never a great idea—and needed to take a nap. Unprofessional, but hardly the worst thing a star has ever done on set.
My favorite Orson Welles thing is this anecdote from Kenneth Tynan:
> Arriving, some years ago, to deliver a lecture in a small mid-western town, he [Welles] was faced with a tiny audience of listeners and no one to introduce him. He decided to introduce himself.
> “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I will tell you of the highlights of my life. I am a director of plays. I am a producer of plays. I am an actor on the legitimate stage. I am a writer of motion pictures. I am a motion-picture actor. I write, direct, and act on the radio. I am a magician. I also paint and sketch, and I am a book-publisher. I am a violinist and a pianist.” Here he paused, and rested his chin on his hands, surveying the sparse congregation. “Isn’t it strange,” he said, quizzically but with clinching emphasis, “that there are so many of me—and so few of you?”
- robertlagrant 2y ago> “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I will tell you of the highlights of my life. I am a director of plays. I am a producer of plays. I am an actor on the legitimate stage. I am a writer of motion pictures. I am a motion-picture actor. I write, direct, and act on the radio. I am a magician. I also paint and sketch, and I am a book-publisher. I am a violinist and a pianist.” I.... am Unicron.
- drewolbrich 2y agoTIL, Orson Welles' last movie role was playing the voice of an entire planet.
- ethbr1 2y agoThe things you learn on HN... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transformers:_The_Movie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transformers:_The_Movie Dialog: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0DPW44-I3n4&t=30s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0DPW44-I3n4&t=30s (Also, RIP days when Transformers had Gundam levels of animation budget)
- inanutshellus 2y agoThat movie legit traumatized a generation of little boys. The GI Joe movie was changed to un-kill Duke because of it.
- HideousKojima 2y agoCan't sell the new characters' toys if you don't kill off half a dozen old favorites in the first ten minutes of the movie!
- thwarted 2y agoOptimus Prime has been resurrected and come back more times than Jesus.
- JasonFruit 2y agoThat's generally agreed to be once so far, so maybe not the highest bar in resurrections? Even JR Ewing matches it.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoWhich was defeated by a character named "Rodimus Prime".
- rikthevik 2y agoThe Transformers: The Movie soundtrack got me through this morning's workout. Highly recommended.
- Tao3300 2y agoYour bargaining posture is highly dubious!
- sandworm101 2y ago>> Unprofessional, but hardly the worst thing a star has ever done on set. I think he did pretty well. Other drunk/high actors get angry to grab people they should not. This appears to be tipsy-drowsy drunk, not shouty-punchy drunk. He still came to set. He was dressed. They got the shot in the end. All those extras (paid by the hour) were probably perfectly happy that it took longer than expected. >> I told him that I had to put him on camera for insurance reasons, so that we could show that he was all over the place and that we couldn’t do the job — that way we’d have insurance coverage for the day because of the actor malfunctioning. He understood, so I helped him out of the vehicle; he held onto my arm and we walked in. Being drunk is certainly unprofessional, but few modern celebs would push though, embarrassing themselves on camera, to satisfy the needs of the shoot. A drunk yes, but still a pro imho.
- peterclary 2y agoGiven that Welles agreed to do the outtakes to prove incapacity for insurance purposes, I wonder whether he'd hammed it up a bit to be sure that they met the necessary bar.
- gwbas1c 2y ago> Sounds like he combined alcohol with a sleeping pill—never a great idea No, the sleeping pill just took too long to hit him. He probably took it on a full stomach or some other random gastro think slowed it down.
- baobabKoodaa 2y agoThe article does imply that he was drunk off alcohol, in addition to the sleeping pill.
- edelsohn 2y agoThe article implies that he was drunk, but every eyewitness refers to sleeping pills. It seems that the alcohol claim is solely from his demeaner in the infamous outtakes without knowing the cause of the slurred speech. People assume that he was drunk, so the few articles written about this event duly report that he was drunk.
- deanresin 2y agoIt is obvious he partied all night after a late shoot. "I took a sleeping pill and it didn't kick in until now" is just a polite way of saying partying was more important to me than this commercial. The man was a known alcoholic.
- gwbas1c 2y agoI once drank a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and then fell asleep about 2-3 hours later. A few hours later, (about 6 after drinking all of the Mountain Dew,) I pooped. As everything moved in my insides, the caffeine finally hit me all at once. So it's completely possible for a sleeping pill to sit in Well's stomach for a few hours before he finally absorbed it. I wouldn't attribute any malintent on his part here.
- js2 2y agoMy favorite anecdote is this one from Edward Zwick: > ZWICK: You know, I have a story that I actually recalled after I wrote the book, but it's one of the most important stories in my life, and I'll tell it to you and see if you're interested. But it's - after the show, I was put on news programs, and I was asked to go on a local news program with Orson Welles. And you have to understand that Orson Welles was, of course, the spiritual father to this with his "War Of The Worlds." And I was in the green room with Welles, and he was in his wheelchair and not very communicative and actually rather cold. And I thought, oh, here's this opportunity to be with my idol. And he was not really forthcoming, and I just accepted it. > And we went on with the show. And on the air, this news person begins to attack me and saying, well, how dare you do something like this and confuse people with actors acting as if they're news people? And Welles rises from his chair and says, you're an actor. You're just reading the news. How dare you attack this young man. And it was just one of those, you know, wonderful moments when things come full circle. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1236539789/a-hollywood-filmmaker-talks-about-making-movies-and-sometimes-throwing-chairs https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1236539789/a-hollywood-filmma...
- hinkley 2y agoSounds a bit like siblings who hit each other but will destroy anyone else who hits their little brother.
- bozhark 2y agoSo, siblings
- masfuerte 2y agoThe context is Zwick's show "Special Bulletin", which was a TV film done in the style of a breaking news story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Bulletin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Bulletin
- kragen 2y agolawyers, priests, and physicians are professionals. they answer, in theory, to a higher code of ethics than whoever they're getting paid by at the moment, partly because they are in a better situation than their client to judge whether they've done their work well or poorly. their respective professional colleges judge that, largely to protect the clients from incompetent or corrupt professionals. partly as a consequence, it is often considered questionably ethical for them to become too dependent on a single client. they have duties to their profession such as education and the advancement of the profession itself—raising the level at which their successors can work (those are not the only professions, but they are central examples of the professions) this strikingly contrasts with the relationship in capitalism between employers and employees; like professionals, employees assume an ethical duty to act in the interests of those who pay them; but, unlike professionals, employees must defer to their employer's judgment on what that means. as a consequence, it is often considered questionably ethical for them to not be entirely dependent on a single employer freelance artists, such as freelance actors and freelance photographers, do not fit either of these categories very well. it's not clear that they have a duty to act in the interests of their clients at all, but their clients often may not be able to tell how well they've done their work. moreover, both professionals and employees usually have a duty to suppress their own feelings in service of their work, whereas artists' work is their feelings to a significant extent. certainly there is no professional college of actors needed to protect clients from incompetent or unethical actors; such a thing would be absurd. the sag, as its name indicates, exists to protect actors from their clients, not vice versa. it is a cartel (look the word up before arguing with me about this), not a professional college so to me it seems like a category error to describe welles's behavior as 'unprofessional', like trying to assess the electrical conductivity of a social movement, or the color of television
- selimthegrim 2y agoYou better let William Gibson know about the color of television bit
- kragen 2y agoheh!