If one is an admirer of Orson Welles and his accomplishments, or a promoter of his films and films about him, reviewing Richard Linklater's ME & ORSON WELLES becomes an ambivalent task.  The picture appears a decent, fairly faithful adaptation of a Young Adult Novel, "Me and Orson Welles," by New Jersey English teacher Robert Kaplow. [Which in one sense is as it should be, but in another way, is a wasted opportunity.]  The "what if tale" tells of a young man who is plunged into the center of Welles' greatest Shakespearean theatrical triumph, his  1937 "Modern Dress" Production of Julius Caesar. The play depicted Caesar as a  scarcely disguised, obviously worn-out  Benito Mussolini --  Brutus, Cassius, and Anthony  as ambitious Fascist henchmen. It alerted New York audiences to the "Rise of Fascism"  in a way hard to imagine today (wandering as we are in "democratic centralism), and electrified all of America through the Press, and later by way of  a popular National Company Tour.  Though Welles had produced an imaginative "Black Macbeth" and a populist Labor triumph in The Cradle Will Rock, both  for the New Deal WPA Theater,  and would later stage a landmark dramatization of Richard Wright's Native Son,  his Modern Dress Julius Caesar  got him the Mercury Theater on the Air, which led to "The War of the Worlds," which opened the way to Hollywood and CITIZEN KANE.  Critics of the novel point out, not surprisingly, that the character of Orson Welles is much more interesting than the rather directionless teenage hero, Richard Samuels, who comes across as a bit pompous and preoccupied. The CineManx Productions' "let's make a movie for Wellsians" no doubt presents  a Plus for a few of us, but if a general audience wants a  compelling romantic coming-of-age drama in the theater, or might be edified by a re-creation of a high point in America's realization of Pre-War Fascism, ME AND ORSON WELLES spells, "not so good as it might have been." 

   Let me personalize this first point  a little, so you see where I'm coming from.  "Richard Samuels" is based on a real person, Michael Anderson, who got his "big break" in Julius Caesar, though his respectable  career was not nearly so meteoric as that of Orson Welles.  However, Samuels  was, in 1937,  the stuff dreams might be made of, at least my Mother's dreams.
 
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 In the early winter of 1937, I used to trudge home from my first year in Grade School, maybe have some hot cocoa with Ma, and turn on our magnificent new mahogany Philco console radio, the pride of our living room, reaching up to adjust the dial to make the set's  pharaonic green eye wink at me slowly (and have its orange optic nerve glow brighter with demonic power) as it honed in on WTAM-Cleveland, Ohio:

@ -- TER-R-Y . . . AND THE PIRATES!  [What was the Dragon Lady up to this wintry, dark afternoon? Perhaps spying on me,  hiding beyond our front window, behind a snowdrift, out by the dying Mulberry tree.] 

@ -- TOM MIX! "When it's roundup time in Texas . . . Well, buckeroos, as we learned yesterday,  Tom's in trouble up that box canyon," says The Old Wrangler. [Tom and his horse Tony smile down on me from their silver frame on the piano, a picture product of I know-not-how-many boxes of Rawlston Cereal.]

@ -- THE LONE RANGER:  "Return with us now . . ." [I'm  still up that box canyon with Tom.]

@-- and finally, about 5 p.m., as dark was coming on, and Pa in his spurs was being dropped off from the "line truck" outside our little home at the edge of town -- jack armstrong . . . Jack Armstrong . . . JACK ARMSTRONG, THE AL-L-L AMERICAN BOY!  "Have you-u-u tried Wheaties? Have you tr-i-ied Wheaties? The Best Breakfast Food in the Land!" [I had my Jack Armstrong Decoder Ring -- ivory with a little green eye; it, too,  glowed in the dark -- to prove my faith.  I was a secret ring-wearing, card-carrying Wheaties-eater!]

   On the weekends, when I was not out playing,  I would have  been listening to the Cleveland Indians with Pa, the New York Philharmonic with both Ma and Pa, rather surprisingly the Opera with Pa.   On Sundays, there was The Columbia Radio Workshop (which employed many of the  actors and directors -- Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, Everett Sloane --  I later heard  in the Mercury Theater on the Air, or would come to recognize in the Movies), --  and sometimes,  on the Mutual Radio  Network:  The Shadow, starring Orson Welles. (At the time, frankly,  I often got him mixed up with Frank Readick, who did "The Laugh.")

  But, as had been registered in worrisome fashion for a couple of years on my young mind, one or another  of my absorbing fantasies could be shattered by a voice:  "We interrupt this program to bring you a special short-wave news bulletin from our Berlin Correspondent William L. Shirer." There often followed harsh shouting rising and falling in the static-filled background while a deep radio voice intoned something like, "Fuhrer Adolph Hitler  told the  Reichstag that Nazi Germany welcomed the entry of Il Duce Benito Mussolini's Italy  today  into his new German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Agreement!"  

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  Had I been a ten years older [soon potential Draft material, which is beyond the scope of ME & ORSON WELLES], more adventurous  than most middle class lads of the time, and in New York City,  I might have played hookey from what would become known as "bor-r-ring lectures in the History of  the Shakespearean Theater," and might have wandered down West 41st Street. What if? What if? Robert Kaplow's novel, drawn no doubt from guidance by Writer's Digest, uses such a "hook" to tell its little romance. That's what 17 year-old Senior  Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) does.  He stops at  his favorite record store, meets a shy young would-be writer, Gretta Adler (Zoe Kazan), afterward  continues his stroll toward the old Comedy Theater, where watched by a group of impatient, idle actors in overcoats and fedoras, workmen  are hoisting a new neon sign above the marquee: THE MERCURY THEATER [Get ready to cue the lights].

   Presently, the frustrated  Producer/Director/Star  of the budding Mercury Theater, 22 year-old Orson Welles (Christian McKay) arrives to confront his theatrical partner, the practical John Houseman (Eddie Marsan).  Having failed in his search for a boy to play Lucius in the Mercury's  imminent production, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Welles is desperate to complete his cast so  he can herd them  into run-throughs, preparatory to a dress  rehearsal.  Brash, observant  young Rick Samuels auditions for the part right there on the street, rap-tapping on a tin drum he has seized, and singing "Have You Tried Wheaties?" that most euphonious of  children's radio serial jingles.  Samuels is hired at the very portal of the theater, and Welles immediately places him under the wing of his current Girl Friday, Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), in order that he learn the ways of the theater group along with  his lines, and so final rehearsals are able to begin.

  The older, more experienced Sonja knows not only a lot about  the Mercury Theater, but  where Welles'  "bodies are buried" because she is sleeping with her boss. [Welles is having a casual affair with her, with several other young women he meets,  and is bedding his tempermental leading lady, Muriel Brassler (Kelly Reilly), seemingly to help calm her nerves about her makeup, while he conceals his perfidious way of life  from his bride,  Virginia Nicolson Welles, over four months pregnant with his first daughter, Christopher.]  And when Sonja is not advancing her career,  Rick's innocence  clicks as a sexual diversion for  her modern woman's ambition.  He is soon wearing, no matter how briefly, Orson's pajamas. But when Sonja not only returns to Welles, but  leverages her advantage with him  to meet  important show biz figures, such as GONE WITH THE WIND Producer David O. Selznick, young Rick is disillusioned, and he shows his jealousy in a fashion which is all but fatal to his budding career.


  Rick's coming of age crush on Sonja and teen romance with Gretta are woven through the  rest of ME & ORSON WELLES as it traces, in rather sketchy fashion, the growth of what, however critics may  quibble, was one of the most revolutionary productions in the History of the American Theater. Welles' staging, which he called "Caesar: Death of a Dictator," was responsible for a renaissance in the study and  popularity of Shakespearean Drama in the United States. [Welles, encouraged by his shrewdly, toughly  brilliant teacher, Roger "Skipper" Hill, had begun to edit, illustrate and publish the plays as EVERYBODY'S SHAKESPEARE when he was 14.] More importantly, Welles' script stripped his stage and the drama down to its essential point, reducing it to under a 100 minutes, combining two acts, putting his cast in Gestapo and Italian Black Shirt uniforms, using the "Nuremberg Lights" Leni Riefenstahl had just  immortalized in her TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1935) and OLYMPIA (1936).


   THE POINT TO BE MADE?  In order for ME AND ORSON WELLES  to be a truly important film?  --  Shakespearean Tyrants still stalked the Earth in 1937 as they had in Roman Days (and by extension, as they do now).

   Most of what might have been affecting romantic drama in the plot of ME & ORSON WELLES,  and the historical relevance of  Orson Welles' Modern Dress Julius Caesar, both in  darkening Pre-World War II America, and in "war on terror" America of today, is lost.  The theatrical scenes (photographed beautifully in the old Gaiety Theater on the Isle of Man) never seem quite  immediate enough.  

   What remains is a nice little, slightly head-scratching  romance between teen heartthrob Zac Efron and theatrical royalty, Zoe Kazan, with Orson Welles (Christian McKay) playing  an overbearing, unfair father-figure.

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   The mis-en-scene, the performances (Efron, Danes, James Tupper as Joseph Cotten, especially Christian McKay's as Orson Welles), the Kodachrome-toned photography (by THE ILLUSIONIST's Dick Pope), and the pop-classic music score are all great. 

The problem is the script:

  As written by fledgling screenwriters (and producers) Holly Gent Palmo  and Vince Palmo, the Zac Efron character, Richard Samuels, is not strong enough to hold the center of the film. And despite a few efforts to anchor the picture in the cultural milieu of the late 1930's, no attempt is evident to establish the political audacity that it took for Welles, in the "America First" Isolationism of the time, to present Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as a modern drama, presenting a  theme of alarm, as the nation began to awake to the threat of Hitler and Mussolini. That theme, all but missing in the film,  would have illuminated the significance of Welles' triumph -- a clarion warning against Fascism as the World careened toward catastrophe -- and a transformation of the American Theater, according to many critics, then and now. Such an emphasis might have made ME AND ORSON WELLES a compelling, entertaining, reasonably significant film, vivifying pre-War America, with relevance to where we are heading today.

Instead, we have a fitfully endearing Late Depression Period "let's put on a show," full of inside theatrical jokes and mystique, which no doubt will appeal to anyone who has ever taken part in community theater, but will puzzle Zac Efron's teenage fans, and may cloy or confuse more mature viewers. The uncertainties, the minor disasters, the preening egos, and that often magical coalescing on Opening Night are all there. The joy of theatrical triumph, all credit to Director Linklater, is palpable (as it was in the measurably more courageous CRADLE WILL ROCK). But even those good feelings are undercut by the script's positioning of a quite vicious act of revenge directed at Efron's character, attributed to Welles, at the moment of that triumph.

To be fair to the often highhanded Orson Welles,  Arthur Anderson, presumably a  basis for Efron's stage-struck high school senior, Richard Samuels, and the supposed victim of Welles' act of revenge, in fact, contrary to the film,  had not only a minor career in Radio prior to Julius Caesar, but acted afterward for Welles' Mercury Theater on the Air and other shows (most notably the long running youth program, Let's Pretend), and has enjoyed a long career in "voice over," recently passing his 87th birthday. All that potential back story is ignored, cut away for an anonymous, bucolic teenage romance between Samuels and an aspiring author (Zoe Kazan -- grand daughter of Elia). If Efron's teen fans can get beyond arcane name-dropping references to Brooks Atkinson, Harold Ross, and John Gielgud (but none to Welles' EVERYBODY'S SHAKESPEARE), all will be well for the picture's major American draw. Efron's is a solid performance in a sometimes underwritten part.

The big news, when the film is regarded later, may be Christian McKay as Orson Welles. He is Mercurial, indeed -- often the equal of Vince D'Onofrio's portrayal in "Five Minutes Please, Mr. Welles."  McKay is, by turns, managerial, kind, egotistical, self -examining, magical, oblivious, sexy, fickle, charming, a philanderer, commanding, uncertain, noble, petty, every ounce a genius, and "a dirty dog." He captures much of Welles' essence, before it escapes through the cracks in the script. McKay's Welles is a star-making performance, at least for those not entirely ga-ga about the lupine Zac Efron.

   One sequence, where McKay's Welles goes to a radio studio by ambulance,  and  subtly, then imperiously,  alters the direction, script,  and atmosphere of  a top-rated  "First Nighter Theater" network program, shows how the film's more important theatrical sequences might have been handled.  It is one of the more effective bits in the film, but has little to do with the main development of the plot. 

 
For all of ME AND ORSON WELLES' charms and excellences, especially Christian McKay's performance and the production design, Mr. Linklater and his writers  should have labored harder, if not to give Welles' Julius Caesar some real significance, at least to make the romance(s) work. When you see the picture, you may agree with me that both the "profane" and "pure" love affairs don't really click; they slide along in parallel with out ever quite fusing the main plot , remaining either cynical or klunky in nostalgia's golden haze. On the one hand, because Efron's part is so thin, in the stronger of the two romances,  Claire Dane's performance as a liberated young woman of the 1930's blows him away whenever they are together. [She has most of the best lines -- i.e, "“You’re not getting paid,” Sonja says. “You’re getting the opportunity of being sprayed by Orson Welles’ spit!” Efron is left with reactions, which he does pretty well.]  Even the camera placement favors Ms. Danes. In the weaker romance, when Efron's Richard Samuels runs into Zoe Kazan's Gretta Adler again later, their romance is really non-existent. They have no chemistry whatever, and anyone who has ever tried to submit a story to The New Yorker (or not) will sense that the binding glue of what he is able to do for her through Sonja's influence at the magazine is pretty much a pipe dream made of flour and water paste. On the basis of the feckless story synopsis she gives him, Gretta's  story would never have been published in the New Yorker, a class  magazine, then and now.

Frankly, the lovingly careful recreation of the Mercury's Julius Caesar (based on Cecil Beaton photographs) did not impress me so much either because even for someone who knows the text very well, as I do, the editing of the opening night performance was confusing. You don't feel any of the urge to stand up and applaud at the end as the audience does (or as you feel justified, when the audience rises in the much better handled joyfully climactic scene of CRADLE WILL ROCK). Just as Welles' cruelty toward young Samuels kills our vicarious joy for the Mercury's premiere triumph, the erratic editing and inside views of the play's staging undercut whatever excitement and emotion the audience is supposed to be experiencing. 

Anyone with some knowledge of Wellsiana will notice, I'm sure, that several real anecdotes about the production's history become "throw-aways." For instance, during dress rehearsal, Welles actually fell through one of the  trap doors he'd had drilled in the stage, was knocked out, was revived and continued. For some reason, this incident, which would have bolstered the impression of Welles' determination to present a revolutionary production of Shakespeare, is visited upon another actor in the troupe for a pratfall and a quick laugh. [Not that it registers much.] For another, one night, Welles as Brutus got the prop knives mixed up with a real one. He actually stabbed Joe Holland, playing Caesar, severing an artery,  sending him to hospital for  a month. In ME AND ORSON WELLES, when he stabs Holland (Simon Nehan), the camera switches to their feet, and we see what appears to be rather copious amounts of blood dripping there. But nothing is made of the shot. We are left puzzled by the lack of follow up because the audience beyond the footlights surely would not have been able to appreciate such an "effect." Or when the brilliantly sinister improvisation of the Assassination of Cinna the Poet (Leo Bill) takes place, the agreed moment of supreme  genius in the Mercury production, despite of our knowing how it will be done, the mob in black simply pouncing on "the wrong man," obliterating him, the editing leaves us as uncertain about what has happened as the audience seems to be. In the actual first night performance, they were so shocked and exhilarated that they stood and applauded for three minutes, unique up to that time in Broadway dramatic history.

 Those are only three examples. Lack of continuity, chopped up speeches, and some not very convincing deliveries ruined for me the technically beautiful recreation of the play's setting.

Wellsians will want to see ME AND ORSON WELLES, if only to lament what might have been.  Others may find it an evening's diversion at the Movies.


  The big news, as I say, is the arrival of Christian McKay (whose wife, he tells us, plays Virginia Welles,  barely credited).  McKay, in his first important film role, better known as a pianist than an actor to this point, announces in his performance as Orson Welles a potentially memorable career, perhaps  as a character star!

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UPDATE:  December 6, 2009:  ME AND ORSON WELLES opens across the country on December 11, 2009. Christian McKay has already been nominated for an Independent "Spirit Award" as Best Supporting Actor, and the film has been hailed by the National Board of Review, one of the "Ten Best Independent Films of 2009."

  More reason to see ME AND ORSON WELLES!

Recommended: Yes

Movie Mood: Date Movie
Viewing Method: Press Screening
Film Completeness: A few glitches, but mostly complete.
Worst Part of this Film: Script