Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welleswas an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three: in theatre, most notably Caesar, a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar; in radio, the 1938 broadcast "The War of the Worlds", one of the most famous in the history of radio; and in film, Citizen Kane, consistently ranked as one of the all-time greatest films...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth6 May 1915
CityKenosha, WI
CountryUnited States of America
You could write all the IDEAS of all the movies, my own included, on the head of a pin.
If I want to pursue the art of painting - or music or writing or sculpture - it requires only my time and a few dollars for materials. If, however, I want to produce a motion picture I have to go out and raise a million dollars!
My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.
. . . you [film critics] always overstress the value of images. You judge films in the first place by their visual impact instead of looking for content. This is a great disservice to the cinema. It is like judging a novel only by the quality of its prose. I was guilty of the same sin when I first started writing for the cinema. . . . Now I feel that only the literary mind can help the movies out of that cul de sac into which they have been driven by mere technicians and artificers.
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.
I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Computers combine things to make new knowledge at such high speed that we cannot absorb it.
A toast, Jedediah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows - his own.
When television came along, I'd already done more than 10 years of radio work and I thought everyone would want me. I sat around waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't.
The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.
I worry a lot about taking care of my dependents, all those perfectly ordinary middle-class preoccupations.
Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.