Catch My Soul was intended as an audacious desert-rock modernization of Othello, with Richie Havens as a pacifist commune leader and the story transplanted from Shakespeare’s Venice to New Mexico. Patrick McGoohan, who had previously starred in the acclaimed jazz-inflected Othello adaptation All Night Long, directed the 1974 film as his only feature behind the camera. According to McGoohan’s later account to Première magazine in 1995, the production’s central creative disaster began when the unnamed producer, who was also living in New Mexico, became a Catholic convert during the making of the picture. The producer then took control of the finished film and re-cut it, adding approximately 18 minutes of overtly religious material that McGoohan considered ridiculous and fundamentally incompatible with the film’s original conception.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
The Catholic Recut That Turned Patrick McGoohan’s Directorial Debut into a Disaster
Catch My Soul / 1970s
Catch My Soul was intended as an audacious desert-rock modernization of Othello, with Richie Havens as a pacifist commune leader and the story transplanted from Shakespeare’s Venice to New Mexico. Patrick McGoohan, who had previously starred in the acclaimed jazz-inflected Othello adaptation All Night Long, directed the 1974 film as his only feature behind the camera. According to McGoohan’s later account to Première magazine in 1995, the production’s central creative disaster began when the unnamed producer, who was also living in New Mexico, became a Catholic convert during the making of the picture. The producer then took control of the finished film and re-cut it, adding approximately 18 minutes of overtly religious material that McGoohan considered ridiculous and fundamentally incompatible with the film’s original conception.
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