Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part8

v.o.
Welles' delight in subverting the classic scene of melodrama runs right through Lady from Shanghai. And in one of his most stunning set pieces he turns inside-out the traditional B-picture finale, the shootout.

(The shootout scene's playing)

v.o.
And this, by the way, was the film that Hollywood, the studios, and even Welles' friends, was probably the worst thing that he'd ever done. His reputation as a rebel, as a kind of uncontrolable anarchist who didn't fit within the system had grown so big that seem no one would ever touch Welles' project again, and that reputation never left him.

LM
I've never heard you or read you being bitter about Hollywood.

OW
No, I'm not. It's ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. Anybody who goes to Hollywood can see right away what the set-up is, in my early days it was much more fun to outwit the 'dinosaurs'. But Hollywood is Hollywood. There's nothing you can say about that isn't true, good or bad. And if you get into it, you have no right to be bitter. You're the one who sat down and join the game. But the people who've done well with the system are the people whose instinct, whose desire, who want to make the kind of movie which the producers want to produce. Not what the public wants but what the producers want to produce. People who don't succeed, the people who've had long bad-times, such as Renoir for example who I think the best director ever, are people who didn't want to make the kind of movies that the producers want to make. Producers didn't want to make a Renoir pictures even if it was a success. People don't realize that nobody in Hollywood is interested in money. Everybody thinks Hollywood is interested in money because they talk about money all the time. Well they talk about sex all the time but they don't do much of that. It's all an ego trick. They are interested in having produced this picture and power, status, all sort of things. Money is only the counters of the game. Nobody is interested in money. Nobody would really go into movies if they are really interested in money. If you are interested in money you go to industry where you get bigger sums easier. So that's the trouble with Hollywood. It isn't money, you speak of the clash of temperament, not at all. The pictures I like to make are not the pictures Hollywood producers and particularly modern Hollywood producers want to make.

(end of part8)