Orson Welles and "The Fountain of Youth"
Since I was a teenager, delivering an English class report on the making of Citizen Kane, I've been obsessed with Orson Welles. Putting together a screening series of his career in television proved to be a challenge in that most of his work for the medium was either missing and presumed lost, or undistributed and thus tied up in legal limbo. I spent more than a year working out, with Paramount and the Welles estate, the exhibition rights to this failed pilot—arguably one of the most inventive creations produced by this maverick filmmaker. In his replacement of dialogue with sardonic voiceover, his forward-reverse flash-editing, and his overall air of post-modern irony, Welles purveys a wry, knowing tone more in keeping with the sensibility of a show like Arrested Development than anything produced for television at the time. Filmed in 1955, just as he was emerging from exile in Europe, and finally aired in 1958, in the dumping ground of a late-night slot in August, "The Fountain of Youth" is an under-heralded treasure—the only unsold pilot in television history to have won a Peabody Award.
Since I was a teenager, delivering an English class report on the making of Citizen Kane, I've been obsessed with Orson Welles. Putting together a screening series of his career in television proved to be a challenge in that most of his work for the medium was either missing and presumed lost, or undistributed and thus tied up in legal limbo. I spent more than a year working out, with Paramount and the Welles estate, the exhibition rights to this failed pilot—arguably one of the most inventive creations produced by this maverick filmmaker. In his replacement of dialogue with sardonic voiceover, his forward-reverse flash-editing, and his overall air of post-modern irony, Welles purveys a wry, knowing tone more in keeping with the sensibility of a show like Arrested Development than anything produced for television at the time. Filmed in 1955, just as he was emerging from exile in Europe, and finally aired in 1958, in the dumping ground of a late-night slot in August, "The Fountain of Youth" is an under-heralded treasure—the only unsold pilot in television history to have won a Peabody Award.
Exhibition Brochure
Press
Los Angeles Times
Village Voice
|
New York Times
|