"When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends"
About this Quote
Kick a man while he is down? Welles is more interested in the crowd leaning in to watch. The joke hinges on a physical image - friends’ noses turning up - that does double duty. It’s the literal nosiness of people sniffing around a downfall for gossip, and the figurative “turning up” of the nose in moral disgust. The line lands because it treats betrayal not as a melodramatic twist but as a predictable reflex: misfortune doesn’t reveal hidden enemies so much as it reveals how conditional some friendships always were.
As an actor and director who spent a lifetime ricocheting between acclaim and exile, Welles understood the social economy of failure. Hollywood, especially mid-century Hollywood, ran on proximity: who gets invited, who gets financed, who gets forgiven. When the money or prestige evaporates, the “support system” often reappears as spectatorship. People don’t disappear; they rebrand themselves as concerned onlookers, arriving with questions, advice, and judgment. That’s why “something always turns up” is such a sly setup. You expect a bootstraps aphorism - adversity brings opportunity - and Welles swaps in a petty, human truth.
The subtext is less “friends are fake” than “status is the real friendship currency.” Welles compresses that into a single cruel sight gag, the kind a performer can sell with timing alone. It’s cynicism with stagecraft: a laugh that catches because it’s uncomfortably recognizable.
As an actor and director who spent a lifetime ricocheting between acclaim and exile, Welles understood the social economy of failure. Hollywood, especially mid-century Hollywood, ran on proximity: who gets invited, who gets financed, who gets forgiven. When the money or prestige evaporates, the “support system” often reappears as spectatorship. People don’t disappear; they rebrand themselves as concerned onlookers, arriving with questions, advice, and judgment. That’s why “something always turns up” is such a sly setup. You expect a bootstraps aphorism - adversity brings opportunity - and Welles swaps in a petty, human truth.
The subtext is less “friends are fake” than “status is the real friendship currency.” Welles compresses that into a single cruel sight gag, the kind a performer can sell with timing alone. It’s cynicism with stagecraft: a laugh that catches because it’s uncomfortably recognizable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Fake Friends |
|---|
More Quotes by Orson
Add to List
