A Wellesian Do-Over

From FilmStew.com
April 27, 2006
By Pam Grady

Dissatisfied with his performance as Orson Welles in Ed Wood, Vincent D'Onofrio takes another crack at it in his directing debut, Five Minutes, Mr. Welles.

Excerpts -

....."I was never really happy with my performance in Ed Wood, so I always wanted to try it again."

That he has with Five Minutes, Mr. Welles, a half-hour film that screens Wednesday, May 3rd, at the San Francisco International Film Festival as part of the "Domestic Dramas" shorts program. It is the actor's impressive directing debut, with Will Conroy's screenplay based on D'Onofrio's original idea.

...Any research into Welles turns up stories of plans that went awry, films that didn't get made at all, or those - such as The Magnificent Ambersons and Mr. Arkadin - that were taken from his control and mangled. It is a side of the movie industry that still exists. "There's always times when you feel that people have turned their backs on you in this business," D'Onofrio notes. "People make promises; people are fickle, and sometimes they just blatantly turn their backs on you.”

“I've been lucky not to have to burn any bridges, but I've been around long enough to see that actual stuff like that happens,” he continues. “I handle things different. I'm much lower level than Orson Welles. I keep things very close to home, very personal. I usually don't end up somewhere where I don't want to be."

Full article.