Credit: Dangerous Minds / Netflix

There’s an argument to be made that the only true legacy we can leave on this planet is the art we make.

All bloodlines come to an end, all charitable efforts we make become a part of something bigger than ourselves, and any memory someone might have of you will invariably fade long before the person does.

Art, however, can last forever. It lasts in a way that other creations don’t either. A building won’t say the name of its architect on it, ditto a meal or a machine, at least in most cases. A film, book or a piece of music, however, has identity written into its very core.

How often do you say the author of a book alongside its title? The writer of an alongside its name? The vast majority of films have the director’s name come up in big, bold letters, sometimes before the film has even started, and in one memorable case, the legacy of a director was enough to get his passion project made long after he’d passed away. Which makes sense, if you make Citizen Kane and voice Unicron in the same career, you’re going to be remembered.

Orson Welles was a polymath. An actor, writer and director who conquered every medium he worked in, from film to theatre to documentary and radio. However, his career was one that happened in reverse, his greatest successes happening pretty much the moment he stepped into each industry and leading to diminishing returns ever after.

Which, hell, if it means releasing Citizen Kane when you’re 26, I’d take it.

So, which Orson Welles project was made after his death?

This is an easy decision to make when you’re that young, but when you’re over two decades past that peak and doing talk shows to get by the way Orson Welles was by the end of the 1960s, it’s a choice you might regret taking.

He was still taking meetings in Hollywood, though, and had one project he was desperate to get made. A picture called The Other Side of the Wind, which was inspired by an idea that Welles had in 1961 after the suicide of Ernest Hemingway.

However, Welles’ dimmed star meant that he wasn’t going to get the creative control over the picture he wanted, and thus it was up to him to helm production on the picture when production began in earnest in 1970. The picture was a satire on both the Old Hollywood that Welles had come up in and the New Hollywood he’d been left behind by, but as the years passed, the production on the picture began to look cursed. Actors dropped out, scripts had to be rewritten, in one memorable case, Welles was embezzled by one of his investors and by his death in 1985, the film remained half finished.

Despite this, the film was picked up by Netflix of all people, and completion of the project was overseen for release in 2018, 48 whole years after the death of not only its writer and director, but most of its cast too. While it’s a shame that the creatives involved with it didn’t get to see the film, which is apparently a masterpiece, it’s wonderful that anyone did at all. If you asked Welles at the time whether he’d take getting the film released after his death or not at all, I think we all know what his response would be.