Influence & homage

This scene was much talked about as some kind of technical innovation. Actually, it isn't one, although it's better used than most. It was one sequence that Welles wrote himself. Yeah, right. What we're going to have is time passing with little vignettes and what they called flash pans that take us to a later stage in the marriage. And he drew a lot of the inspiration for it from a one-act play by Thornton Wilder with a family seated around a dinner table, I believe.

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Yeah, but I don't think he wrote that song. No, I don't think he wrote it. I can't remember. He was inspired by something that Welles saw. One of the things I really regret is that I at one time had the names of all these black musicians that are in the film. They aren't credited. And I've looked everywhere for it and I can't find it. But I'm not sure anybody has it. Where did you get that from? Ron Gottesman dug it up and found it for me. Ron Gottesman was a Welles scholar.

1:42:06 · jump to transcript →

This is sort of like was inspired by him throwing the sterno in the direction of House. I suspect it was already written, yeah. Welles himself, I gather, said after the shot of him destroying the room was over, he said, I really felt that. I think it's a scene in Hollywood that's not like Hollywood at all because of its intensity. It makes you feel uncomfortable. In the same way as Agnes Moorehead's...

1:45:01 · jump to transcript →