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BASED ON LONG-LOST RECORDINGS, A SET OF RIVETING AND REVEALING CONVERSATIONS WITH AMERICA'S GREAT CULTURAL PROVOCATEUR There have long been rumors of a lost cache of tapes containing private conversations between Orson Welles and his friend the director Henry Jaglom, recorded over regular lunches in the years before Welles died. The tapes, gathering dust in a garage, did indeed exist, and this book reveals for the first time what they contain. Here is Welles as he has never been seen before: talking intimately, disclosing personal secrets, reflecting on the highs and lows of his astonishing career, the people he knew―FDR, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, David Selznick, Rita Hayworth, and more―and the many disappointments of his last years. This is the great director unplugged, free to be irreverent and worse―sexist, homophobic, racist, or none of the above― because he was nothing if not a fabulator and provocateur. Ranging from politics to literature to the shortcomings of his friends and the many films he was still eager to launch, Welles is at once cynical and romantic, sentimental and raunchy, but never boring and always wickedly funny. Edited by Peter Biskind, America's foremost film historian, *My Lunches with Orson* reveals one of the giants of the twentieth century, a man struggling with reversals, bitter and angry, desperate for one last triumph, but crackling with wit and a restless intelligence. This is as close as we will get to the real Welles―if such a creature ever existed. ** ### From Booklist When his first film, Citizen Kane, was released, Welles had already achieved fame in theater and radio. He followed Kane with several masterpieces, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and Touch of Evil (1958) and was famous as Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949). By the 1980s, his films already classics, he hadn’t made a new film in nearly a decade, making it impossible to get funding for future projects, which led to lending his voice to wine commercials. Dining frequently with filmmaker Henry Jaglom, Welles allowed him to record their conversations. These recordings reveal Welles, the raconteur, as he recalls lovers (Rita Hayworth, Lena Horne); disses actors and directors (John Houseman, Joan Fontaine, Chaplin); tells outlandish stories (Carole Lombard’s plane was shot down by Nazi agents in America); and bemoans lack of respect from his peers. He is unguarded in his comments, revealing a vain, prickly personality, uncompromising and brilliant. Film buffs will find Welles’ commentary endlessly fascinating, though the director’s fans might be saddened to see him as a washed-up has-been. A worthy addition to the Bogdanovich, Leaming, and Callow accounts of Welles. --Ben Segedin ### Review “Addictive and entertaining.” ―*Vanity Fair* “Welles was obviously uninhibited by the invisible tape recorder. The book is a trove of classic-era Hollywood gossip, but if it were only that, it would be, at best, candy. Instead, it's a treasure, both as a portrait of the artist and as a copious record of his ideas--it is, in fact, a key source for understanding Welles, the director and the man.” ―*Richard Brody, The New Yorker* “If it wasn't bad enough that I--and every other director--have to compete historically with Orson as a filmmaker, now we have to compete with him as a pure storyteller and a true raconteur, a man whose breadth of knowledge and experience may never be equaled again in this industry. The good news is that his declamations on every subject are alternatively penetrating, illuminating, shocking, rude, funny, true, or all of the above. I read this in one sitting; I can't imagine anyone doing otherwise.” ―*Steven Soderbergh, director of Side Effects* “*My Lunches with Orson* offers the experience of sitting in on a particular historical-cultural moment. Read with your Netflix on hand, as Welles's wealth of knowledge inspires re-viewings of both his own films and those of his favorite actors like Buster Keaton and Carole Lombard.” ―*The Christian Science Monitor* “A wonderfully fluid peek into Welles' mind. Rich with acerbic observations about cinema, theater, filmmakers, actors, politics and the essence of storytelling, *My Lunches With Orson* might be the elephantine storyteller's last great work.” ―*Indiewire* “It's time to add another line of adjectives to our descriptions of Orson Welles. In this remarkable collection of conversations, we come upon Welles the conversationalist provocateur who can't open his mouth without saying something outrageously funny, fiercely opinionated, and always off-center about the men and women he claims to have known, played with, worked for, slept with, been courted and betrayed by, and admired or detested (often simultaneously) during his half century in show business. I laughed so hard I had an asthma attack.” ―*David Nasaw, author of The Patriarch* “We don't often get close to a legend, but here we have lunch with one week by week, in the last years of his life. Welles's conversations with Henry Jaglom glitter with memory, intelligence, and malice, and above all offer a magnificent act of self-impersonation: Orson Welles playing Orson Welles.” ―*Michael Wood, author of Film: A Very Short Introduction* “When Henry Jaglom sent me the galleys, I was skeptical about their entertainment value. But as soon as I picked them up, I was hooked. Welles was an ornery, sometimes unpleasant genius, but his opinions on just about everything and everyone were unvarnished. You can almost hear the silverware clinking and the waiters delivering lunch as the likes of Richard Burton drop by to pay their respects…For those not fortunate enough to have Hollywood running through their family tree, this book may be the next best thing.” ―*Ralph Gardner Jr., The Wall Street Journal*