There’s a genus of spiders named after Orson Welles.
Orson Welles is among the most influential filmmakers of all time, but his impact isn’t confined to the world of cinema and radio. The multihyphenate behind Citizen Kane has even made a splash among biologists — there’s a genus of giant spiders named after him. In total, there are 13 species in the Orsonwelles genus, all of which are found in the Hawaiian islands: six on Kauai, three on Oahu, two on Molokai, and one each on Maui and Hawaii itself (the Big Island). Gustavo Hormiga, the arachnologist who discovered them, explained their name thus: “[Welles] was gigantic in a way in terms of moviemaking. These guys are very unique. They’re also very gigantic. So I just said, OK, I'm going to name them Orson Welles.”
Several of the creepy-crawlies are named after movies Welles directed and roles he performed: Orsonwelles macbeth, Orsonwelles bellum (named for War of the Worlds, with bellum meaning “war”), Orsonwelles othello, Orsonwelles falstaffius, and Orsonwelles ambersonorum. (The last of these is named for The Magnificent Ambersons, which some say is Welles’ greatest film — sorry, Citizen Kane!) If you consider yourself an arachnophobe, try not to fret too much over the description of these eight-legged creatures as “giant”: They’re only about the size of a thumbtack.
When he died in 1985, Welles had nearly as many uncompleted projects as he did finished films and television programs. The most notable of these was The Other Side of the Wind, about a maverick filmmaker who returns to Hollywood to complete his passion project (life imitates art!), which Welles worked on intermittently between 1970 and 1976 but had to abandon due to insufficient funding as well as legal and other complications. Any chance of the “Holy Grail for zealous film buffs” ever being finished seemed to die along with Welles — except it didn’t. Peter Bogdanovich, who starred in the film and was a hugely influential filmmaker in his own right, helped oversee its completion beginning in 2014, after Royal Road Entertainment acquired the project and more than $400,000 was crowdfunded. Netflix eventually stepped in to distribute the film once it was completed, and after decades of uncertainty, The Other Side of the Wind premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival to enthusiastic reviews.
