Episode 170: Art is Another Word for Truth: On Orson Welles's 'F for Fake'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2024

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Orson Welles made F for Fake in the early seventies, while still bobbing in the wake of a Pauline Kael essay accusing him of being cinema's greatest fraud. Ostensibly a documentary on the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving (a talented faker in his own right), the film blurs the line between fact and fiction in an effort to explore art's weird entanglement with illusion, magic, and ultimately, the search for truth. This is a film unlike any other, and it is arguably Welles's most important contribution to the evolution and theory of film aesthetics. Join the Weirdosphere online learning community by enrolling in Phil and J.F.'s inaugural course, [THE BEAUTY AND THE HORROR](www.weirdosphere.org), starting June 20th. Support us on Patreon. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop Find us on Discord Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau! RERERENCES Orson Welles, F for Fake Gilles Deleuze Cinema 2 Elmyr de Hory, art forger Clifford Irving, American writer Howard Hughes, American aerospace engineer David Thomson, Biographical Dictionary of Film David Thomson, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles Pauline Kael, Raising Kane “War of the Worlds” radio drama The Farm Podcast, “Horror Hosts, Films & Other Strange Realities w/ David Metcalfe, Conspirinormal & Recluse” Orson Welles - Interview with Michael Parkinson (BBC 1974) Geoffrey Cornelius, Cornelius Victoria Nelson, Secret Life of Puppets Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking Sokal affair, hoax Werner Herzog, “Minnesota Declaration” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:02.0	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.0	For more episodes, or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdstud J.F.
0:53.5	Today we're discussing Orson Wells'
0:56.0	1973 docudrama, F for Fake, a film about forgery, illusion, art, and truth.
1:04.0	We do a decent job of describing the film in the conversation you're about to hear,
1:09.0	which is good because I have an announcement
1:11.4	to make. Suffice it to say that F for Fake is a film I'd been itching to do since we launched
1:16.8	the podcast. For me, it's one of those beacon works that illumine the dark heart of the
1:21.5	non-existing field of weird studies. Certainly, charlatanism, fraud, equivocation, all of these ticklish and tricksterish subjects
1:31.2	hold special significance for us, as they should for anyone who wants to discuss the practice
1:36.3	of art and philosophy, neither of which is ever without a hint of the con.
1:41.9	Picasso's quip about art being the lie that makes us realize the truth may even
1:46.9	be too pat, itself an instance of said con, to really capture my meaning here.
1:52.9	Addressing the topic of philosophy rather than art, but are the two so different, I ask,
1:58.1	Kanté May Asu put it as follows. Quote, philosophy is the invention of strange forms of argumentation, necessarily bordering on
2:07.5	sophistry, which remains its dark structural double.
2:12.1	I'm still not sure what this says about art and philosophy's relation to truth.
2:17.0	And as one Roman governor,
2:18.8	memorably put it, quidest veritas, what is truth anyway? In today's episode, we'll get a sense
2:25.9	of Orson Wells' answer to that perennial question. Now for the big news. Back in 2017, when weird studies was still but a mulling, neotenous grubb staring at us pathetically
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