“Let’s take a little break from the theatre world and take a look at one of the most famous shots in all of cinema, Welles’ opening shot from the classic 1958 film, Touch of Evil. He shot the whole thing from a crane in one tracking shot – unheard of at the time… “

“Orson and his Mercury Theatre cohorts took some pretty daring liberties with the text, cutting whole pages and whole characters, setting it in fascist Italy, and focusing on making sure the show clocked in at under two hours. Here’s an actual page from the Mercury’s show script. Thanks go out to the University of Indiana for letting us see a lot of this amazing Orson stuff…”

“In the film it’s pretty easy to forget that Orson was only 22 years old during the production of Caesar, since he always carries himself like a seasoned veteran. And though he married socialite Virginia Nicholson when he was only 19, it didn’t stop him from spending “quality time” with most of the other women on his sets. In our film, Zac’s character figures this out pretty quickly…”

“Orson Welles at his desk, backstage at the Mercury Theater. Hopefully Orson himself would’ve been comfortable sitting down at the office on our set and going to work. Everyone in the art department did an amazing job getting the details exactly right.”

“It’s hard to believe that this is what movie trailers used to be, but it’s pretty fun to see so many of the actual faces that are in the film. Wonder what would’ve happened if I’d made Jack Black do something like this for School Of Rock…”

“Published when Welles was only 17 years old, The Mercury Shakespeare is the definitive book on Welles and his company’s methods. This is one of the first items I came across when I started thinking about doing the movie and it’s beautifully written. The kid was only 17 and already knew exactly how he wanted to produce Shakespeare! Amazing. There’s loads of great stuff in here I might put up later…”

“Welles and his partner John Houseman wrote this “statement of intent” for the cover of the NY Times Drama section in 1937. In it, they announce their reasoning behind the founding of the Mercury Theatre and the kind of stuff they’re going to put on. Pretty ambitious guy, that Orson…CLICK HERE for a closer look.