Me and Orson Welles (2008)

Christian McKay: Orson Welles

Photos 

Quotes 

• Orson Welles : You really are a god created actor Richard. Those weren't just words you see. I recognize 'The Look'.

  Richard Samuels : The Look?

  Orson Welles : The bone deep understanding that your life is so utterly without meaning that simply to survive you have to reinvent yourself. Because if people can't find you, they can't dislike you. You see if I can be Brutus for 90 minutes tonight; I mean really be him, from the inside out; then for 90 minutes I get this miraculous reprieve from being myself. That's what you see in every great actor's eyes.

• Orson Welles : [to standing ovation]  How the hell do I top this?

• Orson Welles : Do you know Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons?" Tarkington was a family friend. The character of Eugene, the inventor, is based on my father who died when I was fifteen. My mother when I was nine. "Ambersons" is about how everything gets taken away from you.

• Orson Welles : Look at us, Runyon. Me without my story and you without your girl. We can't ever tell what will happen at all, can we? Once I stood in Grand Central Station to say goodbye to a pretty girl. I was wild about her. In fact, we decided we couldn't live without each other, and we were to be married. When we came to say goodbye we knew we wouldn't see each other for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it - and she stood there crying. Well, I don't even know where she lives now, or if she is living. If she ever thinks of me at all, she probably imagines I'm still dancing in some ballroom somewhere... Life and money both behave like quicksilver in a nest of cracks. And when they're gone we can't tell where - or what the devil we did with 'em...

• John Houseman : This is an infinitely rewarding partnership, Orson. You go around smashing everything, you disenfranchise every friend, every supporter we have. And then I'm left desperately trying to clean up your mess. Because I am the one who ends up making the apologies, making the corrections, and making the ten thousand phone calls...

  Orson Welles : And I'm out acting in "The Shadow" and "The March of Time" and every other piece-of-shit radio show in this city, just to pour my money into this son-of-a-bitch theater that you're supposed to be running.

  John Houseman : That I'm 'supposed to be running?' I am killing myself trying to run it!

• Orson Welles : Where is thou ukulele?

  Richard Samuels : I think some asshole... doth... stole it

• Orson Welles : Cinna is Shakespeare's indictment of the intelligentsia. He's a lofty, Byronic figure.

• Orson Welles : [seeing new handbill]  This is completely inadequate. Very possibly the worst looking thing I've ever seen in my life.

  John Houseman : We've just had 50,000 of them printed.

  Orson Welles : They're not entirely bad.