Marian Luntz, longtime head of the film and video program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and probably the most knowledgeable person in town about cinema history, was surprised by her mother the other day.
Helen Luntz, 87, noticed that a movie with Orson Welles’ name in its title (Me and Orson Welles) was playing at the museum as the opening night selection for the Cinema Arts Festival Houston. That jogged a memory for her, and, for the first time ever, she told her cinephile daughter that she had actually met the great man.
Marian was shocked, mostly because this was the first time she’d heard about it. Then she asked Helen how she’d come to meet him.
“My English teacher (in New York) took our class to see his play. What was the name of it? Oh yeah, Julius Caesar."
The teacher had taken her to see the very production that is the subject of Me and Orson Welles.
“Afterward he came over to talk to us,” Helen Luntz went on. “He was very nice, and very handsome.”
Just like Christian McCay, who portrays him so uncannily in the film.
Well, the handsome part, anyway.