My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

by Henry Jaglom

I believe that intelligence is a handicap in an actor. Because it means that you’re not naturally emotive, but rather cerebral.

people now who want to be directors, who have done nothing but look at movies since they were eight years old, who have never had an experience in their lives. Or experienced any culture beyond movie culture.

There are things you can do in movies that require the absence of live actors. Therefore, it’s a more versatile medium. But theater, which requires live actors, can achieve things that films can never reach, because what’s up on the screen is dead. It’s only an image—there are no people there.

There never was a Vienna like the one in The Merry Widow, and there never was a Casablanca like the one in Casablanca. But who gives a damn, you know? It was just commercial enough, so everybody was happy. And it had a wonderful cast of actors. But a great film? You can’t call it that. It’s not a great film. It’s just great entertainment.

The great thing about what’s happening with these laser discs and video things, is that it gives film permanence. As opposed to when you started working, when you could easily expect that film would be gone twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years from now. Now you know that they’re gonna last.

Absolutely essential change in the cinema consumption today as opposed to 60s-90s.