The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

272 Frank Oz
coffeehouse. That was very dated and funny to me, but nevertheless, it was
B-movie effective. Tamiroff was such a funny bad guy. He wasn’t really evil
like Welles’s character was evil.
One of the things that’s interesting about it is that in the 1998 version,
they move things around a little bit and they make use of Welles’s track
where he overlaps dialogue. It’s not just cutting together shots; it’s also
layering in soundtracks and creating geography.
Oz: Postproduction is a slave of production there. You’ve got to plan that
ahead of time and allow the actors to do that; otherwise there’s nothing to
loop later on. I’m sure he cut the whole movie in his head, and as a result the
overlapping made it much more believable in the B-movie sense because it’s
still a B-movie. It’s a wonderful B-movie.
How did the film change your life?
Oz: Well, I think I learned about all the depth and all the light. It harkens
back to Citizen Kane, no question about it. So it’s not just that. I would probably
have chosen Citizen Kane really as the first thing that changed my life,
but everybody was choosing that so I didn’t choose it.
The techniques, what he did in both of them, just opened it up visually.
The ceilings, the upshots, the dark and light values, use of extraordinary
depth, the overlapping. I think it opened up my view of film—that there’s
so much more that could be done. Actually, by breaking so many rules, he
allowed other people to say, “Hey, I can maybe think of some stuff, too!” He
just opened up the possibilities more for me. That’s what he did.
Did these encounters with Welles make you perceive Touch of Evil
differently?
Oz: I never asked him about Touch of Evil or Citizen Kane, because I know
what it’s like when people talk to me, and people want to ask me about what
I do. It’s usually not as much fun as listening to other people. With Orson,
I didn’t want to start asking him about Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil like a
fan because I was a co-worker at that time and I didn’t want to bug him. So,
no, I don’t think it affected me.