👽ORSON WELLES: What REALLY Happened in War of the Worlds!

The sky is falling! No, really. The true story of the War of the Worlds broadcast is much more mundane. Most of the post-broadcast hype was invented by Welles, aided and abetted by the media and even the radio station, who knew good ratings when they saw them. Yes, there WAS some public response and alarm from people who had tuned in late and hadn't heard Welles' explanation that it was just a drama. But it was nowhere near the scale that has passed into legend. For the most part, you  NEVER hear this correction anywhere - I stumbled on it on a public access radio broadcast heard by very few people. As for Welles, he never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

"Ah, the French" - Orson Welles REMIX

I just rediscovered this work of GENIUS while putting together some crude animations with Orson Welles doing commercial outtakes. I seem to be doing an Orson Welles series now, though I never intended to and now wonder if I should stop. BUT NOT BEFORE THIS. It is genius. 

"Ah, the French" - Orson Welles REMIX

Part Two of the Orson Welles wine ad that made me laugh for the first time in YEARS.

Orson Welles Drunk Outtakes for Paul Masson Wine Commercial

"AHHHH! The French. . ." I found this gem late at night, and COULD NOT stop laughing, until tears rolled down my face. Then it struck me with a certain shock that I had not laughed like that in . . . years. I could not tell how many. And yet, I cry almost weekly. I don't know what that means, but I am grateful to the spirit of Orson Welles for giving me a good laugh, AT LAST.

Cockatoo scene from Citizen Kane

I've always wondered about that cockatoo. But maybe THAT is why people call it "the best movie ever made".

One man clapping

Rainbow Release: more creepy logos!

To find the really creepy logos, you've got to go off-road. These aren't film companies that anyone has ever heard of (Hikon??). And perhaps it's just as well. Though their logos are cheesy and look sort of low-budget, they have a very high freak-out factor.

I couldn't believe this WAS Orson Welles, thought it was maybe a Welles impersonator, but yes, that's him. I don't know anything about a Rainbow Release. His career did sort of slide downhill at the end. Note how the zoom-in stops at a certain point. That's kind of like MY zoom-ins, where the camera suddenly goes "bzzzzzzzzt".

This whole thing is so weird! Who's that guy, that face that appears in the militant-looking ABC logo, the one with the eagle catching a lightning-bolt in its beak? This looks like the emblem for a white supremacist group. The Super Circus thing is just bizarre. It has a fall of Rome flavour to it. Pre-Howdy Doody, I think.

Again. "An Apple Film". Not sure about this one at all. Reminds me, for some reason, of Dodo, the Kid from Outer Space - maybe the very basic animation. 

Red blobs in space? Yes, it's exactly the same.

There's a whole sub-genre of logos from Indian movies. These are quite spectacular, but in most of them nothing moves very much. It's a sort of tableau, with alarming or even freaky-sounding music and sound effects. This one actually has a form of animation in it, though it's strange. A white blob turns into a woman. By the way, if you ever watch any of those "scary logo" compilations with the sound off (late at night, when you really should be in bed), they are suddenly a whole lot less scary. Sound is about 60%.

This one  shows up in EVERY scary logo compilation, and do you know what? IT ISN'T A LOGO. At all. It's just a shot at the start of a very old Wizard of Oz  movie from 1914. I don't know how they can call it a logo, but it is very strange. So I'll include it. And I've run out of them anyway.

LUNO.