Despite having a hard time getting fully invested in this film, I truly can't imagine a more fitting conclusion to Orson Welles' filmography.

Despite having a hard time getting fully invested in this film, I truly can't imagine a more fitting conclusion to Orson Welles' filmography.

“Just like me and God. If it weren’t for the difference in sex, how could you tell them apart?”

The Other Side of the Wind is the most meta movie a movie has ever meta’d. A movie about a director who died before his movie could be completed, itself directed by a man who died before it could be completed? How the hell does that even happen?

I wanted to watch this on Netflix as it was originally released, but as soon as I hit play, the app started badgering me about how my TV “wasn’t in the household the email was connected to” or some bullshit. There were two options: change the household or say I’m traveling. That’s fucking bullshit. I should be able to watch what I damn want when I damn want to, without having to get a second Netflix account just for my dorm. I tried it on my phone, and it worked just fucking fine there. What the fuck’s the difference between a phone and a TV? The email associated with the account is nowhere to be found anywhere on my phone, so why does Netflix work there? Why doesn’t it work on my television? Why is Netflix trying to force me to either pay twenty fucking dollars a month for a streaming service with mostly slop, or watch a visionary director’s final, reconstructed film, made with real love and effort and everything in between, on a 3-by-6-inch screen? That’s fucked. If I want to watch a movie where I am, I should be able to on a television that I own specifically for watching things, not a compressed version on my phone that I would only pull out if I needed in-flight entertainment. Netflix is fucking bullshit, and I hate them for locking some fantastic stuff behind a ridiculous paywall. Fuck you.

Anyway. I like John Huston, and Peter Bogdanovich, too. Dennis Hopper plays kind of the same guy he played back then, who, interestingly, is just straight-up Dennis Hopper. The movie that they’re filming in the movie is a really, really stupid looking movie. It’s like if Andy Warhol was almost exclusively a film director, and had also directed Citizen Kane before making…whatever this is. I think the in-movie movie title is also The Other Side of the Wind. It’s very erotic, and there’s a giant inflatable cock. I don’t think anyone in this movie actually likes the movie except for Huston sycophants.

Overall, I’m not actually confused, and it’s still bizarre to me that the movie is about a guy who did before his movie could be finished and directed by a guy who died before his movie could be completed. You could completely convince me that this was a real thing that happened, which is tantamount to how convincing this “mockumentary” is. 7.5/10

“Just like me and God. If it weren’t for the difference in sex, how could you tell them apart?”

The Other Side of the Wind is the most meta movie a movie has ever meta’d. A movie about a director who died before his movie could be completed, itself directed by a man who died before it could be completed? How the hell does that even happen?

I wanted to watch this on Netflix as it was originally released, but as soon as I hit play, the app started badgering me about how my TV “wasn’t in the household the email was connected to” or some bullshit. There were two options: change the household or say I’m traveling. That’s fucking bullshit. I should be able to watch what I damn want when I damn want to, without having to get a second Netflix account just for my dorm. I tried it on my phone, and it worked just fucking fine there. What the fuck’s the difference between a phone and a TV? The email associated with the account is nowhere to be found anywhere on my phone, so why does Netflix work there? Why doesn’t it work on my television? Why is Netflix trying to force me to either pay twenty fucking dollars a month for a streaming service with mostly slop, or watch a visionary director’s final, reconstructed film, made with real love and effort and everything in between, on a 3-by-6-inch screen? That’s fucked. If I want to watch a movie where I am, I should be able to on a television that I own specifically for watching things, not a compressed version on my phone that I would only pull out if I needed in-flight entertainment. Netflix is fucking bullshit, and I hate them for locking some fantastic stuff behind a ridiculous paywall. Fuck you.

Anyway. I like John Huston, and Peter Bogdanovich, too. Dennis Hopper plays kind of the same guy he played back then, who, interestingly, is just straight-up Dennis Hopper. The movie that they’re filming in the movie is a really, really stupid looking movie. It’s like if Andy Warhol was almost exclusively a film director, and had also directed Citizen Kane before making…whatever this is. I think the in-movie movie title is also The Other Side of the Wind. It’s very erotic, and there’s a giant inflatable cock. I don’t think anyone in this movie actually likes the movie except for Huston sycophants.

Overall, I’m not actually confused, and it’s still bizarre to me that the movie is about a guy who did before his movie could be finished and directed by a guy who died before his movie could be completed. You could completely convince me that this was a real thing that happened, which is tantamount to how convincing this “mockumentary” is. 7.5/10

not in the mood

not in the mood

The Other Side of the Wind is a post-French new wave, post-counterculture memoir from a silver screen Caesar dying of thirst in the desert of Hollywood past. The memoir of a man who’s more at peace living in the mouths of others than he is in his own body. Every creative neuron in his mind screaming some psychedelic swan song like a pre-mortem, Felliniesque flashback, prefacing his meticulous suicide that began the moment he stumbled upon a camera, at once a mirror to death itself and the cradle of some half existence, from which he crawled into the warm, light of his viewfinder, discarding the peripheral world in the cold, now dull and grainy. When he finally runs out of film he’s weary, too bitter to turn around and face the earth, so he dies, choking on the fumes of burnt cellulose in his cave of gold and feathers, scraping at shadows from that holy fire he had set so long ago.

The Other Side of the Wind is a post-French new wave, post-counterculture memoir from a silver screen Caesar dying of thirst in the desert of Hollywood past. The memoir of a man who’s more at peace living in the mouths of others than he is in his own body. Every creative neuron in his mind screaming some psychedelic swan song like a pre-mortem, Felliniesque flashback, prefacing his meticulous suicide that began the moment he stumbled upon a camera, at once a mirror to death itself and the cradle of some half existence, from which he crawled into the warm, light of his viewfinder, discarding the peripheral world in the cold, now dull and grainy. When he finally runs out of film he’s weary, too bitter to turn around and face the earth, so he dies, choking on the fumes of burnt cellulose in his cave of gold and feathers, scraping at shadows from that holy fire he had set so long ago.

This isnt a movie

This isnt a movie