Culture Shock 07.04.13: In 'The Trial' we're all guilty of everything

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning."

So begins Franz Kafka's absurdist novel of bureaucracy, totalitarianism and paranoia, "The Trial."

Orson Welles directed a 1962 film version starring Anthony Perkins, who once told a revealing story about the direction Welles gave him. As I recall, the story went something like this:

Perkins was having difficulty finding an approach to the role of Joseph K. that Welles liked. So he asked Welles how he should play the part.

"Play him as if he's guilty," Welles said.

"Guilty of what?"

"Everything!"

That bit of direction makes all the difference. The Joseph K. described by Kafka's omniscient narrator is, we're led to believe, blameless, a victim of "lies." The Joseph K. played by Perkins, on the other hand, is guilty. He's been found out, but no one will tell him the crime he's accused of committing, and it could be anything — or everything.

It shows in Perkins' brilliant and overlooked performance. His Joseph K. is twitchy, nervous and paranoid. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Nor does it mean you're innocent.

That's the insight Welles brings to the material. There are no innocents; we're all guilty of something. It's no accident that Welles paints his version of "The Trial" in the stark black and white of film noir, a genre he knew well from having made "Touch of Evil" and "The Lady from Shanghai." Everyone in film noir is compromised in some way, and Welles' "The Trial" does Kafka one better.

Welles says we're not only all the potential victims of faceless bureaucrats and politicians, we all have it coming, too.

That isn't to say all crimes are equal. Sometimes all it takes is a small crime, maybe even a crime you didn't know was a crime or that you committed.

In his book "Three Felonies a Day," Boston-based attorney Harvey Silvergate argues that because of the proliferation of complex and vague laws, the average American commits three felonies a day. That's felonies with an F, not merely petty crimes like speeding or jaywalking. That leaves all of us at the mercy and caprice of bureaucrats and prosecutors. So much for the rule of law. In the "Land of the Free," you're free only because no one has thought to lock you up.

So you say to yourself, "That can't be! I haven't committed any crimes. What crimes could I possibly have committed?"

Now you know exactly how Joseph K. feels. Is that a little bit of sweat starting to form on your upper lip, by chance? Is it starting to show? Do you look guilty? You sure look guilty to me.

So does Joseph K., who, under Welles' direction in this neglected and underrated film — I think it's one of his best — becomes a film noir everyman, undone by a deadly combination of the system, femme fatales (Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider and Elsa Martinelli) and his own sins, whatever they might be, because they could be anything.

"The Trial" is gorgeously shot by Edmond Richard, who would go on to shoot Luis Buñuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire" and "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." Taking advantage of location shooting in Croatia, he and Welles create a surreal, off-kilter environment of such immense scale that it threatens to swallow K. even as he attempts to navigate its shadowy corridors.

The system is bigger than any of us.

Welles' "The Trial" is available on DVD and Netflix instant.

Culture Shock 01.20.11: Voice-over announcers are unsung heroes (it's harder than it sounds)

Long after he alienated almost every producer in Hollywood, Orson Welles became even more infamous for taking almost any acting job that came along.

Welles was hoping to funnel some extra cash into his growing list of unfinished movies. He never did. But he did leave behind some interesting artifacts, among them his hammy TV commercials for winemaker Paul Masson. Outtakes from one ad surviving on YouTube feature an obviously inebriated Welles fumbling his lines, when he remembers to say them at all. Had he been sampling the Paul Masson on set? Maybe not. As the story goes, the company later fired Welles, but only after he announced on television that he never drank their product.

Yet Welles could make just as much of an impression without appearing on camera. In his later years, he was an in-demand voice-over performer, lending his authoritative baritone to everything from commercials for frozen peas and documentaries about Nostradamus, to his final role as the planet-sized robot Unicron in 1986's animated "Transformers: The Movie."

Welles, who died before the film's release, described his "Transformers: The Movie" role as "a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys."

Meanwhile, outtakes from Welles' commercials for frozen peas, frozen fish sticks and frozen hamburgers are making the rounds. And if there is one thing I've learned about voice-over artists, it's that they're never happy with the writing.

"This is a very wearying one to read — unrewarding," Welles complains in one outtake after having given his director a long dissertation on the impossibility of beginning an English sentence with the word "in" and emphasizing it.

And later in the same outtake: "But you can't expect me to emphasize the word ‘beef!' That's like wanting me to emphasize ‘in' before ‘July!' Come on, fellas, you're losing your heads!"

Few voice-over announcers, however, have Welles' notoriety. They're unsung heroes whose voices surround us, but their names and faces are anonymous except to a few devoted fans, like the ones who successfully lobbied for Peter Cullen to reprise the role of Optimus Prime, which he originated in the 1980s "Transformers" TV cartoon, in Michael Bay's live-action movies.

And as easy as it may seem to sit in a sound booth and read from a script for a living, the voice-over outtakes you find on the Internet make it seem anything but. It's not all Morgan Freeman calmly discussing the habits of penguins, that's for sure.

Even before there was a YouTube, outtakes from the cartoon series "Thundercats" were causing a minor storm, if for no other reason than it was odd to hear the voices of familiar cartoon characters flubbing their lines and wondering what the bleeping bleep they were talking about.

Which brings me to the outtake that inspired this column in the first place.

The late Ernie Anderson, who died in 1997, was one of the greats. He started out on local TV in Cleveland, where he also was the influential horror-movie host Ghoulardi. But in the late 1960s, he moved to Hollywood, where he eventually became the voice of ABC, including serving as announcer for "America's Funniest Home Videos" and "America's Funniest People."

So it came to pass that "America's Funniest People" gave birth to the greatest voice-over outtake ever.

Apparently confronted with the worst script he has ever read, Anderson struggles to slog through, argues with his director and lets loose the most blistering stream of profanity ever caught on tape.

The YouTube video is titled "Ernie Anderson Out Takes ABC." But be warned: It's not safe for children, pets, small woodland creatures or people who think "The Lawrence Welk Show" is a bit racy.

Doing voice-overs is hard work — something to remember when next an anonymous voice reminds you about that very special episode of "90210."

Orson Welles remains a study in fact vs. fiction

Tim Burton’s 1994 film “Ed Wood” features a scene in which one of the greatest directors who ever lived meets one of the worst.

Frustrated with the progress of his latest project, “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” Edward D. Wood Jr. (Johnny Depp) storms into a Hollywood bar only to meet his hero, Orson Welles (Vincent D’Onofrio). After complaining about his own struggles with financial backers, Welles gives Wood the confidence to return to the set and finish shooting “Plan 9,” making Welles, ironically, responsible for a movie frequently cited as the worst ever made, usually by people who have not seen “Doomsday Machine” (1972).

Of course, like many events depicted in “Ed Wood,” the meeting between Wood and Welles never happened. Oh, yes, Edward D. Wood Jr. was a real director who made some really bad movies, but one must never let truth stand in the way of art. And the meeting between Wood and Welles works beautifully because Wood and Welles had so much in common, except that Welles was a genius and Wood was, to put it charitably, not.

Several years ago, I met Forrest J. Ackerman, the original editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Ackerman was also once a literary agent, representing such renowned authors as Ray Bradbury. He also represented Wood. “I was his illiterary agent,” Ackerman quipped.

Wood struggled to get money to make his schlocky sci-fi and horror movies, and after “Plan 9,” he faded into a more obscure obscurity than he had occupied before, directing sleazy sex films and hitting his friends up for work until his death in 1978 at age 54.

Welles’ problem, however, wasn’t a lack of talent. He had loads of it. Director, screenwriter, producer, actor — Welles did it all. At age 23, he conquered radio. During an Oct. 30, 1938, broadcast of H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds,” he fooled (inadvertently) more than a million listeners into believing the Earth was really being invaded by Martians.

He then moved to Hollywood and seemed primed to conquer it, too. But “Citizen Kane,” the film that would eventually establish Welles as a great filmmaker, was a disappointment at the box office. Afterward, Hollywood studios were reluctant to give Welles the total creative control he enjoyed with “Kane.” RKO, which had released “Citizen Kane,” re-edited and re-shot portions of Welles’ next film, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and Universal took over Welles’ 1958 thriller “Touch of Evil,” which was finally re-released in a form close to Welles’ vision 10 years ago.

Welles turned to financing his films independently. He spent years trying to complete his adaptation of “Don Quixote” without success, just one of many projects he left unfinished, usually because of a lack of money. Only one of those films, “The Other Side of the Wind,” seems likely to ever be released. Director Peter Bogdanovich has been working on editing Welles’ footage into a finished product.

As an actor, Welles often took jobs just to finance his movies. Most famously, he became a TV pitchman. He would “sell no wine before its time.” His legendary voice lent authority to everything from frozen peas to a dubious documentary about Nostradamus. He even had a part — his last, as it turned out — in the animated feature “Transformers: The Movie.” As he put it, “I play a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys.”

But still, Welles carried on, directing films that include an inspired adaptation of Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” and his not-quite-a-documentary “F for Fake,” which was his last completed movie.
Long overlooked, “F for Fake” is one of Welles’ finest films. It’s a meditation on art and fakery, taking as its subjects art forger Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving, who wrote a hoax biography of Howard Hughes and a real biography of de Hory. But more than that, “F for Fake” is a magic trick. Welles was an amateur magician and knew all the tricks, especially the fine art of misdirection.

You never let truth stand in the way of art.