They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018) Review

 

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018)

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is the documentary that followed the tumultuous shoot of Orson Welles’ previously unreleased film ‘The Other Side of the Wind’. 

As some revealed to me, watching this certainly casts The Other Side of the Wind in a better light, though it also confirms many of my theories and suspicions I had about this odd picture. Orson was a guy who was simply never satisfied with his work, a reason behind a number of his films never having been released. Likely, even if he had retained the rights to ‘Wind’, it never would’ve seen the light of day because at his core, he just liked making movies. A piece of him died when a movie was completed, a finality he was never really comfortable with, especially as he grew older. The documentary does an excellent job of portraying this and more, exploring his motives, fears, and his process as a whole. What was most peculiar was just how loved he was among his friends and those he worked with, while also being viewed as that crazy old man who never lived up to his first film, a film he came to despise for it’s insurmountable legacy.

While he never admitted it, the piece being an autobiographical lens into his relationship with mentee Peter Bogdanovich (who starred in the same role coincidentally) was very much evident to everyone attached. It is a story of broken friendships and on a deeper level, a ginormous middle finger to Hollywood and the movie industry, of which shut him out amid the changes in the 60s and never looked back. For a man with an aversion to mirrors, ‘Wind’ was a mirror for himself to look at, a way to face a hard truth that he would likely never accept, even in death. 

The documentary boasts an impressive amount of original cast, crew, and friends of Orson, including Peter Bogdanovich, Oja Kodar, Danny Huston, Beatrice Welles, Steve Ecclesine, Rich Little, and old recordings from Orson himself, with narration from Alan Cumming. It was really neat seeing those closest to the production reveal just how weird and unorthodox the six year shooting process was, often times replacing and bringing in new actors mid-shoot, as well as outright stopping production to go shoot other movies and make enough money to continually sustain shooting such a film. 

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, directed by Morgan Neville, really shines a light on not just The Other Side of the Wind but also just what kind of man Orson Welles was, behind all of the vaguery and mysticism and really humanizes a legendary figure who has always shrouded himself in secrecy. 

9/10