My Lunches with Orson Quotes

“Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.”
― Orson Welles, My Lunches with Orson

“I believe that we're much healthier if we think of our selfishness as sin. Which is what it is: a sin. Even if there is nothing out there except a random movement of untold gases and objects, sin still exists. You don't need a devil with horns. It's a social definition of sin. Everything we do that is self-indulgent, and that is selfish, and that turns us away from our dignity as human beings is a sin against what we were born with, the capacities we have, what we could make of this planet. Our whole age has taken the line that if you feel bad about yourself, it's something that you can be relieved of by your goddamn analyst. Psst!—it's gone! And then you'll be happy, you know? But that feeling is not something you should be relieved of. It's something you should deal with. And there's no remission for what I mean by "sin," except doing something useful. The confessional does the same thing as the shrink, rather more quickly and cheaper. Three "Hail Mary"s, and you're out. But I've never been the kind of religious person that thinks saying "Hail Mary" is gonna get me out of it.”
― Orson Welles, My Lunches with Orson

“Roosevelt used to say, "You and I are the two best actors in America.”
― Orson Welles, My Lunches with Orson

“Women are another race. They are always changing, like the moon. You can only win by being the cool center of their being. You have to represent something solid and loving. The anchor. Even if you are not. You can't tell them the truth. You have to lie and play games. I’ve never in my entire life been with someone with whom I didn’t have to play a game. I've never been with anyone with whom I could be exactly who I am.”
― Orson Welles, My Lunches with Orson

“My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn't be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You're a lawbreaker. It's just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society. You see?”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson

“I've always felt there are three sexes: men, women, and actors. And actors combine the worst qualities of the other two.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson

“I cannot, in my old age, live off pieces of my youth.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson

“It's absolutely impossible to have a serious critical discussion about enthusiasms for movie stars. Because a movie star is an animal separate from acting. Sometimes, he or she is a great actor. Sometimes a third-rate one. But the star is something that you fall in love with ...”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson

“I regard posterity as vulgar as success. I don't trust posterity. I don't think what's good is necessarily recognized in the long run. Too many good writers have disappeared.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson

“I have all the equipment to be a politician. Total shamelessness. But it's lucky I never ran. In the years from [Joseph] McCarthy to now, I would have either been destroyed or reduced.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson

“None of the old hustlers did that much harm. If they saw somebody good, they hired him. They tried to screw it up afterwards, but there was still a kind of dialogue between talent and the fellow up there in the front office. They had that old Russian-Jewish respect for the artist. All they did was say what they liked, and what they didn’t like, and argue with you. That’s easy to deal with. And sometimes the talent won. But once you got the educated producer, he has a desk, he’s gotta have a function, he’s gotta do something. He’s not running the studio and counting the money—he’s gotta be creative. That was Thalberg. The director became the fellow whose only job was to say, “Action” and “Cut.” Suddenly, you were “just a director” on a “Thalberg production.” Don’t you see? A role had been created in the world. Just as there used to be no conductor of symphonies.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“I dislike that kind of man. He has the Chaplin Disease; that particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge. Like all people with timid personalities his arrogance is unlimited. Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant. He acts shy, but he loves himself; a very tense situation. It's people like me who have to carry on and pretend to be modest. To me, it's the most embarrassing thing in the world - a man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs, in order to free himself from his hang-ups.”
― Orson Welles, My Lunches with Orson

“imagine what you mean to me; you’ve saved my life; here are some tickets, front row; come backstage afterwards; we’ll go out for drinks, celebrate. I’ve learned my lesson.” The show goes on, this guy is sensational, he’s going to be a big TV star now. All his friends come backstage, knock on the door. He comes out in a velvet robe, says, “Fellas, I’ve got that old shitty feeling coming over me again.” And he slams the door in their faces. That’s Peter.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“That was when Lang knew it was time to leave Germany.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“OW: Sam Fuller. Peter gets furious with me for not expressing enthusiasm for Fuller. Fritz Lang, you know? He thinks is great. Lang, whose mother was Jewish, told me that Goebbels, who was trying to get him to head up the Nazi movie industry, offered to make him an honorary Aryan, of which there were only a handful. Lang said, “But I’m Jewish,” and Goebbels replied, “I decide who is Jewish!”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“There can be nothing more sterile than an extended conversation between two people who basically agree. If we basically disagreed we’d be getting somewhere.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“OW: Well, you see, I’m not like you. I’m not judgmental. With me, it’s, “Here I am, not going to Africa.” I don’t say to myself, “Why don’t you go to Africa?” I don’t discuss it with myself. Because if I did, I would go to Africa. So it is the self-indulgent devil in me that stops the dialogue.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“OW: It doesn’t matter whether you mind it or not—you do it. HJ: Some people do it, and some don’t. OW: Yes. But I’m a terribly guilty-conscience person.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“But I still don’t think your point is right. It’s because of the old tradition of the Whig—of the liberal rich, the old tradition of public service and of liberalism—Roosevelt was a genuine, old-fashioned American Whig. The last and best example of it. And—”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“Oh, no, he didn’t write that. That’s what he said to me. It was on the campaign train, not in the White House. We were talking about mistakes that other people had made—that [Woodrow] Wilson had made, that [Georges] Clemenceau had made. Yes, Spain. The neutrality with Spain was a big mistake. “That comes back to me all the time,” he said. HJ: It always struck me that the fact that some of our more progressive presidents—the Roosevelts and the Kennedys—came from wealthier backgrounds meant that they were less intimidated by other rich people, and therefore, less susceptible to special interests. The poor kids are the more dangerous ones—Reagan is so impressed with rich people—it is such an important part of his life.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“Okay. But, he didn’t do anything to hurt people. OW: Well, he destroyed [Erich] von Stroheim, as a man and as an artist. Literally destroyed him. And von Stroheim at that moment was, I think, demonstrably the most gifted director in Hollywood. Von Stroheim was the greatest argument against the producer. He was so clearly a genius, and so clearly should have been left alone—no matter what crazy thing he did—”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“than these 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.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“He would say, ‘So nice to see you too, but that’s enough.’ He would try to intimidate them.” Jaglom asked him why. Pointing at his pug nose, he would answer, “You have to do something to let them know that you’re not just a little creature. You have to be the ruler of the forest. People want me to be ‘Orson Welles.’ They want the dancing bear show.” “You don’t need that. You’re not so insecure that—” “I’m much more insecure than even you know, Henry.” “I don’t believe that. You’re arrogant and sure of yourself.” “Yes, I’m sure of myself, but I’m not sure of anybody else.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“Under the sway of the French, Jaglom, like many of his contemporaries, wanted to do it all: not just act or write, but edit, direct, and produce as well. They didn’t want to be directors for hire by some baboon in the front office with a big, fat cigar; they wanted to be filmmakers or, as the French would have it, auteurs, a term popularized in America by Andrew Sarris in the sixties. Simply put, an auteur was to a film what a poet was to poetry or a painter was to painting. Sarris argued, controversially, that even studio directors such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Alfred Hitchcock, or bottom-of-the-bill toilers like Sam Fuller, displayed personal styles, were the sole authors of their pictures, and were therefore authentic artists. Welles, of course, was the very avatar of an auteur.”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“Hayworth, the former Margarita Carmen Cansino, was, of course, one of the brightest stars of the forties and early fifties, so much so that the crew of the Enola Gay is rumored to have used her pinup decal as “nose art” for either the bomber or its payload, Little Boy, before dropping it on Hiroshima. Welles”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

“OW: I’ve worked with advertising agencies all my life. In the old days in radio, you worked for them, because they were the boss, not the network. And I have never seen more seedier, about-to-be-fired sad sacks than were responsible for those Paul Masson ads. The agency hated me because I kept trying to improve the copy. HJ: Whoever heard of Paul Masson before you”
― Peter Biskind, My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles