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Dan Siegel (/dan-siegel/) Become a fan(/users/becomeFan.php?of=hp_blogger_Dan Siegel) Writer, Social Entrepreneur and Speaker on Politics, Film andCivil Society

Posted: 08/22/2013 2:33 pm EDT Updated: 10/22/2013 5:12 am EDT

Orson Welles' Timeless Take onAmerican Politics

Hearing Orson Welles' rich-timber voice in my ear as he dishes on his life, work andtimes near the end of his life is a belly-pleasing feast of summer reading.

In My Lunches with Orson (http://www.amazon.com/My-Lunches-Orson-Conversations-between/dp/0805097252), readers have a rare tableside seat at MaMaison, Welles' LA restaurant hangout with his younger friend and filmmaker HenryJaglom. Welles gave Jaglom permission to tape record their wide-rangingconversations -- on movies, theater, religion and politics -- between 1983-85 (Wellesdied that March). The tapes gathered dust in Jaglom's home for three nearly threedecades until film writer Peter Biskind edited them into a book released in June.

My Lunches With Orson is full of juicy gossip on Hollywood royalty (KatherineHepburn "laid around town like nobody's business" and Carol Lombard "behaved likea waitress in a hash house"). However, I was intrigued by the cinema masters' view ofAmerican politics, presidencies and foreign affairs.

Welles was a progressive idealist shaped by the events of the 1930s. He was a closeally of Franklin Roosevelt, and even wrote speeches for him. "FDR used to say, 'Youand I are the two best actors in America'."

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Others have written about(http://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/may/20/biography.film) and commented(http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xh570d_the-politics-of-orson-welles_tech) onWelles' politics and worldview. His masterwork Citizen Kane is the greatest film onpolitical power and hubris in America. In The Third Man, Welles wrote his ownmemorable "cuckoo clock" speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydkTy6GmFA) on the ironies of political/cultural history.

Orson Welles' observations on American and world politics, even thirty years later,are relevant for our times. Here are a few highlights:

On the corruption of politics:"I have all the equipment to be a politician. Total shamelessness."

"Well, a senator can be a poor person, but it's true, eventually he'll become a puppet ofthe rich. A senator used to be a tremendous office. Now it's really, more than it's everbeen, what the money buys."

"Politics is always corrupting. Even saints in politics. The political world, in itself, iscorrupt. You're not going to satisfy that urge to spiritual perfection in any politicalmovement without being betrayed and without betraying others. Only service, directservice, say, helping a lot of starving kids in the Third World country, is impeccable."

On CIA murder plots"Every president lies. What I couldn't believe was the CIA stuff, the plot againstCastro. In my innocence, I didn't think that America, as a nation, was capable ofplanning murder as an instrument of policy. I didn't think that was in our character."

On America's image in the world:"America has missed absolutely no opportunity, not only during the Reaganadministration, but in my lifetime, to render it impossible for us to be anything butthe deathly enemy of all Arabs, and, of course, all Latin Americans. We can neverpolish that image. I don't care how much money we pour into it."

On marijuana legalization:"My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a lawnobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at thatmoment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn't be illegal, butis. 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 thelaw as normal, something happens to the whole society, you see?"

On the FDR years:"They were glorious. Because you had a president who had made a hundred mistakesand never pretended that he didn't, and who was ready to try anything. And you had afascinating cabinet--everybody around him. And it was a happy time, even with all themisery. People were starving, but he pulled the country together."

On Eisenhower:"All Nixon and Reagan do is make me revise my judgment of the Eisenhower years.The economy was great. Eisenhower made the right decision on Suez. And Korea. Gotus out. And at the end said, 'Beware of the military-industrial complex.' And he turnedover the country, at peace, in 1960. Despite that, we were all groaning, 'Get us rid ofthis terrible president!' We've just got to admit that was a great eight years, youknow?"

On LBJ:"I just read Robert Caro's new biography of [Lyndon] Johnson, which will destroy himbecause it tells everything. There isn't one good word about him in the book. Hecomes out as a total monster. But I think LBJ was a great tragic figure. That's whatinterests me. A very tragic figure, with his monstrosity, and his energy, and his desireto be a president who counted. He gets almost no credit for the things he diddomestically because of his gross behavior. After the Kennedy's, everybody was soused to Casals scratching the cello that Johnson's act didn't go over."

On Henry Kissinger:"You know Kissinger also believed that America was on the brink of civil war duringthe Vietnam years. Who was gonna make a civil war? How can an educated manpermit himself to put that down on paper? I hate Kissinger even more than I hateNixon, because I just can't get over the feeling that he knows better, somehow. Hemust have talked himself into it. But he's a selfish, self-serving shit."

On how his films were received in Soviet Russia:Welles: You know, not one movie of mine has ever been shown in any theater in theSoviet Union.

Jaglom: You would think they would love Kane, because they could interpret it as abig attack on capitalism.

Welles: But they don't have enough sense to understand it. The critics frothed at themouth, because it shows the good side of the oppressor.

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Jaglom: They thought you admired Kane, and his opulence?

Welles: The truth is, if any of them got to be the premier of Russia, they would beliving in Xanadu themselves. The one they really couldn't stand was Touch of Evil,because that showed the final decadence of capitalism."

Jaglom: That's why they should love it!

Welles: But they thought it was my decadence. The Russians are a people of genius,you know, in every department. But instead of flowering under this great revolution, itall withered.

On Egypt:"The great story is that Egypt was an incredibly closed society, which lasted longerthan any society in the Mediterranean world, in a state of total rigidity. Egypt is likethe Japan of the Mediterranean, elegant, cruel, inexplicable, and then suddenlyopened up. Who by? Napoleon."

Follow Dan Siegel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dansiegel61(http://www.twitter.com/dansiegel61)

Robert Caro, Lbj, Dwight Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Marijuana,Orson Welles, The Third Man, Henry Jaglom, Fdr, Touch of Evil, My Lunches With Orson Welles, CitizenKane, Peter Biskind

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