Orson Welles on Hemingway

From the interview with Michael Parkinson "Orson Welles - Interview (1974)": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dAGcorF1Vo
Here you can find the mentioned documentary from Joris Ivens and Hemingway on Spain with the voiceover from Orson Welles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX0RseyGo7g
John Huston on Hemingway's suicide (in a Rolling Stone interview conducted by Peter S. Greenberg in 1981):
Question: Welles based Jake Hannaford, the character you play (in Welles' unfinished film "The Other Side of the Wind") on Ernest Hemingway and you were friends with Hemingway and spent time with him in Cuba. Were you surprised when he put a gun to his head and shot himself?
John Huston: No, I wasn’t. It was exactly what I would have expected him to do under the circumstances. And I say that with profound admiration for both him and the act.
Q: Really?
J.H.: Oh, yes. He was on his way out mentally, and he had tried once before. He was very canny about it. He had these flashes of sanity. Once they were taking him to the Mayo Clinic on a chartered plane and he tried to jump out of the plane. They subdued him. Then he talked his way out of Mayo and got home. And if you saw the pictures of him near the end, you could see it in his face. The smiling one — the flesh was gone — that was somebody else.
Q: You say “with profound admiration for the act under those circumstances.” Do you think you would consider doing something like that?
J.H.: I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else. If I didn’t, it would be out of cowardice and nothing else. I mean Hemingway wouldn’t have done it had it been cancer. But he was on his way to imbecility. That is a hell of a thing to have around. I’m intrigued by the way suicide is approached by different cultures. In some places it’s the thing to do. But the bourgeois of the United States legislates against it. In this society, death is a kind of a shameful thing and is to be concealed even after the spirit has left.
Q: Have you ever been at a point in your life when you’ve contemplated suicide?
J.H.: Only theoretically.
Q: Then you talked yourself out of it?
J.H.: I don’t mean that I came that close to it. No, I wonder if I would if…
Q: If what?
J.H.: Well, if I had a flash like Hemingway, for instance. Because I like to live. But in a situation like Hemingway’s, I hope I would pull the trigger. I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t.

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