Saturday, May 13, 2017

F FOR FAKE - Orson Welles - "Truth And Lies" (1973)

Tonight's Super Saturday Night Special is Orson Welle's "F For Fake!" It's the best documentary made since Fellini's "Clowns!"..and possibly the best documentary ever made!

You will have to wonder, is this movie even real? And you might be right and you might be wrong, because the man behind the curtain pulling all the strings is the notorious.....

..................Orson Welles, the Joker, the Jester, and one of the best Prestidigitationers of all time!

"F For Fake" is a movie about fakes, forgers, hoaxes, and more, and because he's a freakin' genius, Orson ties all the stories together almost seamlessly!

World famous forger Elmyr de Hory explains that if you see a beautiful painting in a museum, why does it matter if Matisse painted it or if Elmyr painted it posing as Matisse, because the end result is the same, the viewer gets to see a great piece of art! Elmyr has a cool way of legitimizing everything he has ever done!

Elmyr is being interviewed for a book by the writer Clifford Irving, who is also known as a world famous faker because he was the author of a biography about Howard Hughes. The only problem was he never spoke to Howard Hughes once. Howard Hughes was such a recluse, Irving thought he'd never find out or notice!
So Orson is filming the faker and the forger, and mixing it all up with other freakin' fantastic phony stuff! Why is there a monkey in Clifford Irving's shoulder? Because the whole thing is happening on the island of Ibiza off the coast of Spain! (Although the IMDB says it was shot in France! Why would you expect anything to be what it is supposed to be?)

Elmyr quickly whips out a fake Matisse, claims it would be worth thousands of dollars, and then burns it!

There are so many great shots of Orson, I thought about just using the pictures of him, but this movie is too picturesque to do that!

I'm pretty sure it was Orson himself who drew this portrait of Howard Hughes!

Every night at some oddball hour in the dead of night, a courier leaves a small but perfectly wrapped package in a designated tree outside the Los Angeles home of Howard Hughes! What was in the bag? A ham sandwich that very rarely got consumed! That's right, WTF!?

I just love these shots of vintage Las Vegas!

While incinerating, I  mean iterating his own hoax on the world, Orson used footage from the movie "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers" instead of "War Of The Worlds," contractual problems, or just more deliberate confusion? The latter I'm sure!

"F For Fake" is credited as Orson Welle's last full length film, but he continued to act etc. until his death in 1985! Orson was looking good! Compare this picture to the way he looked in "Touch Of Evil" some 15 years earlier! It doesn't even look like the same guy!

Clifford Irving ended up spending 17 months behind bars for his little escapade into deceit!

"F For Fake" has more than it's share of eye candy footage, you might get a sugar spike watching it, like here's one sample, and......

........Here's another!

And then there's the story about the trombone player...........

.....................Oja Kodar, The mysterious girl.......................

.................and Picasso!

Orson Welles is, was, and will always simply be one of the best!
Fake, real, or just tomfoolery?  It doesn't really matter because Orson is entertaining, no matter what!
"F For Fake" is a Fabulist, Faburden, Facinorous, Factious, Fadoodle, Fain, Falsidical Farrago! Fuckin' A!

1 comment:

Grant said...

It's a little surprising that it took till THE HOAX in about ' 07 for someone to make a film entirely about the Clifford Irving story. It's pretty entertaining (it embellishes things of course, but not incredibly).

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