Synopsis
Watch Me and Orson Welles (2008) online on iFILM — Richard Linklater's period comedy-drama set in November 1937 New York. Zac Efron plays Richard, a seventeen-year-old who bluffs his way into a small part in Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar. Christian McKay plays Welles — young, monstrous, magnetic, impossible — and he is the reason to see this film.
The Julius Caesar in question is the famous modern-dress Broadway production, performed in fascist-style staging months before the technique became a cliché. Richard is learning fast: how a theatre actually runs, how a genius treats the people around him, how charm and cruelty travel in the same coat. He also falls for the stage manager played by Claire Danes, which goes about as well as you'd expect when Orson Welles is in the building and has noticed her too.
Linklater keeps the scale intimate despite the subject — this is a 114-minute film about ambition, infatuation and the specific education you get from watching a brilliant egoist operate at close range. McKay's Welles doesn't feel like an impression. It feels lived-in. Stream Me and Orson Welles online on iFILM.
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