Based on long-lost recordings, a set of riveting and revealing conversations with America’s great cultural provocateur

There have long been rumors of a lost cache of tapes containing private conversations between Orson Welles and his friend the director Henry Jaglom, recorded over regular lunches in the years before Welles died. The tapes, gathering dust in a garage, did indeed exist, and this book reveals for the first time what they contain.

Here is Welles as he has never been seen before: talking intimately, disclosing personal secrets, reflecting on the highs and lows of his astonishing career, the people he knew—FDR, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, David Selznick, Rita Hayworth, and more—and the many disappointments of his last years. This is the great director unplugged, free to be irreverent and worse—sexist, homophobic, racist, or none of the above— because he was nothing if not a fabulator and provocateur. Ranging from politics to literature to the shortcomings of his friends and the many films he was still eager to launch, Welles is at once cynical and romantic, sentimental and raunchy, but never boring and always wickedly funny.

Edited by Peter Biskind, America’s foremost film historian, My Lunches with Orson reveals one of the giants of the twentieth century, a man struggling with reversals, bitter and angry, desperate for one last triumph, but crackling with wit and a restless intelligence. This is as close as we will get to the real Welles—if such a creature ever existed

奥逊·威尔斯 Orson Welles (1915-1985),20世纪最伟大的电影导演之一,集导演、编剧、演员、制片于一身的电影天才。他在26岁时自编自导自演的处女作《公民凯恩》长期被各类权威电影媒体评选为影史十佳之冠,其他代表作有《安倍逊大族》《上海小姐》《奥赛罗》《 历劫佳人》等。

亨利·雅格洛 Henry Jaglom (1941- ),好莱坞独立电影导演、演员、编剧,奥逊·威尔斯晚年挚友,曾参演威尔斯的导演遗作《风的另一边》。而威尔斯则在雅格洛执导的《谁来爱我》中贡献了最后一次银幕演出。

彼得·比斯金德 Peter Biskind,资深记者、专栏作家,其作品曾见诸《纽约时报》《洛杉矶时报》《滚石》等媒体。曾担任《首映》执行主编和《美国电影》主编,目前在《名利场》任特约编辑。著有《逍遥骑士、愤怒公牛》《低俗电影》。

黄渊,毕业于上海外国语大学法语专业,译作有《我生命中的电影》《赫尔佐格谈赫尔佐格》《剥削好莱坞》《在黑暗中醒来：罗杰·伊伯特四十年精选》等。