WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.040 You know, there's a specific category of celebrity 00:00:02.040 --> 00:00:04.740 that I find absolutely fascinating. Oh, yeah. 00:00:04.919 --> 00:00:06.960 It's the kind where if you ask three different 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:10.119 people who this person is, you get three completely 00:00:10.119 --> 00:00:13.039 incompatible answers. Like they live three different 00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:15.140 lives. Or just that their cultural footprint 00:00:15.140 --> 00:00:20.739 is so, so weirdly shaped. We're talking about 00:00:20.739 --> 00:00:23.500 George Orson Welles today. And I realized that 00:00:23.500 --> 00:00:26.440 for my nephew, Welles is just the voice of a 00:00:26.440 --> 00:00:28.879 robot in the old Transformers movie. Unicron. 00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:32.039 A planet -eating robot, which, to be fair, he 00:00:32.039 --> 00:00:34.020 voiced with absolute Shakespearean conviction. 00:00:34.420 --> 00:00:36.479 Right. But then for my dad, he's the sell -no 00:00:36.479 --> 00:00:38.280 -wine -before -it's -time guy from those old 00:00:38.280 --> 00:00:40.640 TV commercials. A bit of a punchline. Yeah, a 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:42.679 punchline about a heavyset guy holding a glass 00:00:42.679 --> 00:00:45.840 of cheap wine. But if you open a film textbook, 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:49.060 he is God. He is the creator of Citizen Kane, 00:00:49.340 --> 00:00:51.659 the greatest film ever made. And that disconnect 00:00:51.659 --> 00:00:54.140 is exactly the problem, isn't it? We tend to 00:00:54.140 --> 00:00:56.020 see Wells as two different people. There's the 00:00:56.020 --> 00:00:57.960 boy wonder genius who conquered the world at 00:00:57.960 --> 00:01:01.289 25. And then there's the failed tragic showman 00:01:01.289 --> 00:01:04.510 doing magic tricks on talk shows. But the mission 00:01:04.510 --> 00:01:06.769 of this deep dive is to see if we can prove that 00:01:06.769 --> 00:01:09.069 they are actually the same person. The showman 00:01:09.069 --> 00:01:11.629 and the genius. They're inseparable. You don't 00:01:11.629 --> 00:01:13.890 get Citizen Kane without the huckster who bluffed 00:01:13.890 --> 00:01:16.129 his way onto the Irish stage. And you don't get 00:01:16.129 --> 00:01:18.810 the tragedy of his later years without the uncompromising 00:01:18.810 --> 00:01:21.390 artist who refused to play by Hollywood's rules. 00:01:21.750 --> 00:01:24.469 So let's unpack this. Because the story usually 00:01:24.469 --> 00:01:28.129 starts with, he made Citizen Kane, but... He 00:01:28.129 --> 00:01:30.189 didn't just pop out of the womb holding a movie 00:01:30.189 --> 00:01:32.290 camera. No, and to understand the man, you have 00:01:32.290 --> 00:01:34.150 to look at the boy wonder years. He was born 00:01:34.150 --> 00:01:38.670 in 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And frankly, his 00:01:38.670 --> 00:01:41.090 childhood sounds less like a biography and more 00:01:41.090 --> 00:01:43.950 like a gothic novel. How so? Well, he was hailed 00:01:43.950 --> 00:01:46.469 as a prodigy almost immediately, but the household 00:01:46.469 --> 00:01:50.290 was intense. His mother, Beatrice, was a concert 00:01:50.290 --> 00:01:53.489 pianist, very refined, very demanding. I read 00:01:53.489 --> 00:01:55.209 she taught him Shakespeare before he could even 00:01:55.209 --> 00:01:58.359 properly read. She did. She treated Orson less 00:01:58.359 --> 00:02:00.560 like a child and more like a small intellectual 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:03.540 equal. But the real chaos came from his father, 00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:05.859 Richard. I've seen him described as an inventor. 00:02:06.060 --> 00:02:09.639 He was, yeah. He made a fortune inventing a type 00:02:09.639 --> 00:02:12.020 of bicycle lamp. But he became an alcoholic, 00:02:12.360 --> 00:02:14.900 stopped working, and spent the rest of his life 00:02:14.900 --> 00:02:17.939 just drinking and traveling the world. So Orson 00:02:17.939 --> 00:02:20.659 is toggling between this high culture pressure 00:02:20.659 --> 00:02:24.900 from his mother and this dissipated, wealthy 00:02:24.900 --> 00:02:28.169 drifter vibe from his father. It's a recipe for 00:02:28.169 --> 00:02:31.509 either a genius or a complete disaster. Or both. 00:02:31.669 --> 00:02:34.550 It was both. And tragedy hit early. His parents 00:02:34.550 --> 00:02:36.830 separated. Then his mother dies when he's just 00:02:36.830 --> 00:02:39.530 nine. His father, who's already an alcoholic, 00:02:39.770 --> 00:02:42.810 just spirals. He dies when Orson's 15. So at 00:02:42.810 --> 00:02:45.389 age 16, he's an orphan. An orphan with a small 00:02:45.389 --> 00:02:47.750 inheritance and absolutely zero supervision. 00:02:47.949 --> 00:02:49.789 Most 16 -year -olds with no supervision would 00:02:49.789 --> 00:02:52.389 probably buy a car or get in trouble. Wells decides 00:02:52.389 --> 00:02:54.990 to go to Ireland. Why Ireland? He said he wanted 00:02:54.990 --> 00:02:57.330 to paint. He went on a sketching tour of the 00:02:57.330 --> 00:03:00.169 countryside, but he ran out of money. And this 00:03:00.169 --> 00:03:02.990 leads to the first great con of his career. The 00:03:02.990 --> 00:03:06.289 bluff. The ultimate bluff. He walks into the 00:03:06.289 --> 00:03:10.009 Gate Theatre in Dublin. Now picture this. He's 00:03:10.009 --> 00:03:12.990 16, but he's big. He's got this booming voice 00:03:12.990 --> 00:03:16.349 that makes him sound 40. He strides in and demands 00:03:16.349 --> 00:03:19.069 to see the managers, Hilden Edwards and Michael 00:03:19.069 --> 00:03:21.169 McLeomore. And he doesn't ask for an internship, 00:03:21.270 --> 00:03:23.990 I take it. No. He tells them he is a star from 00:03:23.990 --> 00:03:26.870 the Theatre Guild in New York. A big name. He 00:03:26.870 --> 00:03:29.169 lies right to their faces and demands a lead 00:03:29.169 --> 00:03:32.729 role. They bought it. Well, not really. Edwards 00:03:32.729 --> 00:03:34.650 later said he didn't believe him for a second, 00:03:34.729 --> 00:03:37.909 but he was so impressed by the sheer audacity, 00:03:37.909 --> 00:03:40.030 the performance of being a star, that he hired 00:03:40.030 --> 00:03:42.090 him anyway. That's incredible. And that is the 00:03:42.090 --> 00:03:44.180 template for the rest of his life. He bluffs 00:03:44.180 --> 00:03:46.280 his way in, and then he has the talent to back 00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:48.180 it up. Speaking of bluffing, we should probably 00:03:48.180 --> 00:03:50.900 clear up one myth right now. I feel like every 00:03:50.900 --> 00:03:53.620 biography mentions he's related to Gideon Wells, 00:03:53.879 --> 00:03:56.219 Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy. Right, that's 00:03:56.219 --> 00:03:58.599 another one of Orson's embellishments. It's a 00:03:58.599 --> 00:04:00.919 great story, fits the great man narrative perfectly, 00:04:01.219 --> 00:04:03.939 but genealogical research shows no direct relation. 00:04:04.259 --> 00:04:06.639 He never let the truth get in the way of a good 00:04:06.639 --> 00:04:10.060 backstory. Never. So he conquers Dublin, comes 00:04:10.060 --> 00:04:12.120 back to the U .S., and lands in the middle of 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:14.800 the Great Depression. This is where he hooks 00:04:14.800 --> 00:04:17.279 up with the Federal Theater Project. This context 00:04:17.279 --> 00:04:20.819 is crucial, right? The WPA. Absolutely. The government, 00:04:20.920 --> 00:04:22.980 through the Works Progress Administration, was 00:04:22.980 --> 00:04:25.279 paying artists to work. It was a relief program. 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:28.000 But Wells didn't treat it like charity. He treated 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:31.120 it like a laboratory. He's in his early 20s, 00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:33.139 and he's given government money and resources 00:04:33.139 --> 00:04:36.339 to put on massive shows. Which brings us to the 00:04:36.339 --> 00:04:39.939 famous one. The Voodoo Macbeth. Now, I want to 00:04:39.939 --> 00:04:42.680 dig into this because on paper, this sounds like 00:04:42.680 --> 00:04:45.040 a disaster waiting to happen. It really does. 00:04:45.220 --> 00:04:47.660 A 20 -year -old white director going into Harlem 00:04:47.660 --> 00:04:51.160 in 1936 to direct an all -black cast in Shakespeare. 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:53.079 It sounds like a vanity project that should have 00:04:53.079 --> 00:04:54.939 crashed and burned. But this is where you see 00:04:54.939 --> 00:04:58.160 Wells' specific genius for context. He realized 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:01.139 that Macbeth isn't really about Scotland. It's 00:05:01.139 --> 00:05:04.860 about... Witches, prophecy, and this raw supernatural 00:05:04.860 --> 00:05:07.899 ambition. So he just swapped the geography. He 00:05:07.899 --> 00:05:11.100 swapped the cosmology. He replaced the three 00:05:11.100 --> 00:05:14.199 Scottish witches with Haitian voodoo priestesses. 00:05:14.699 --> 00:05:18.259 And he didn't do this small scale. He hired 150 00:05:18.259 --> 00:05:21.980 people. 150 people on stage. On stage. He had 00:05:21.980 --> 00:05:25.240 an entire African drumming corps. It was a spectacle. 00:05:25.399 --> 00:05:28.379 And remember, the federal theater project was 00:05:28.379 --> 00:05:30.860 supposed to be about employment. These people 00:05:30.860 --> 00:05:33.480 needed jobs. But Wells treated them like the 00:05:33.480 --> 00:05:35.180 Royal Shakespeare Company. And the community 00:05:35.180 --> 00:05:38.800 responded. They responded hugely. On opening 00:05:38.800 --> 00:05:40.839 night, the police had to close off 7th Avenue 00:05:40.839 --> 00:05:43.579 because 10 ,000 people were trying to get into 00:05:43.579 --> 00:05:45.779 the Lafayette Theater. 10 ,000. For Shakespeare. 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:48.040 It was a blockbuster. It proved that you could 00:05:48.040 --> 00:05:50.519 take high art and make it populist and dangerous. 00:05:50.779 --> 00:05:53.199 It wasn't homework. It was an event. But not 00:05:53.199 --> 00:05:55.100 everyone loved how dangerous he was becoming. 00:05:55.839 --> 00:05:58.439 There's the story that Cradle will rock. This 00:05:58.439 --> 00:06:00.300 feels like the moment he really became a rebel. 00:06:00.519 --> 00:06:02.779 Oh, absolutely. The Cradle Will Rock was a musical 00:06:02.779 --> 00:06:05.860 by Mark Blitzstein, and it was incredibly pro 00:06:05.860 --> 00:06:08.680 -labor, practically communist, attacking the 00:06:08.680 --> 00:06:11.000 steel industry. Not exactly subtle. Not at all. 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:14.379 This was 1937. The government got cold feet and 00:06:14.379 --> 00:06:16.879 tried to shut it down. They sent federal guards 00:06:16.879 --> 00:06:19.579 to padlock the theater on opening night to prevent 00:06:19.579 --> 00:06:22.480 the actors from taking the stage. So most directors 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:24.899 would just cancel the show. Wells and his partner, 00:06:25.060 --> 00:06:28.000 John Houseman, said absolutely not. They rented 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:30.240 another theater, the Venice, 20 blocks away. 00:06:30.519 --> 00:06:33.959 They marched the audience, literally led a parade 00:06:33.959 --> 00:06:36.259 of ticket holders through the streets of New 00:06:36.259 --> 00:06:38.579 York. But the actors couldn't perform, right? 00:06:38.680 --> 00:06:41.420 Union rules. The union said they could not appear 00:06:41.420 --> 00:06:44.319 on stage at a non -sanctioned venue. It was a 00:06:44.319 --> 00:06:46.839 whole thing with equity. Uh -huh. So Wells found 00:06:46.839 --> 00:06:50.420 a loophole. Of course he did. The composer, Blitzstein, 00:06:50.600 --> 00:06:53.439 sat on stage at a beat -up piano. The actors 00:06:53.439 --> 00:06:55.699 bought tickets, sat in the audience, and when 00:06:55.699 --> 00:06:57.639 their cues came, they stood up in their seats 00:06:57.639 --> 00:06:59.740 and sang their parts out to the crowd. That is 00:06:59.740 --> 00:07:02.339 incredibly punk rock. It was electric. It broke 00:07:02.339 --> 00:07:04.439 the fourth wall in a way that had never been 00:07:04.439 --> 00:07:07.740 done. It solidified Wells as not just a director, 00:07:07.759 --> 00:07:10.660 but a leader, a general, and it led him to form 00:07:10.660 --> 00:07:13.339 his own company with Houseman. The Mercury Theater. 00:07:13.579 --> 00:07:16.379 The Mercury Theater, where he continued to poke 00:07:16.379 --> 00:07:19.019 the bear. His first production was Julius Caesar. 00:07:19.470 --> 00:07:22.069 Which is usually, you know, guys in togas. Right. 00:07:22.370 --> 00:07:25.029 But Wells put them in modern fascist uniforms. 00:07:25.389 --> 00:07:27.730 He used lighting that looked like the Nuremberg 00:07:27.730 --> 00:07:30.730 rallies, these stark, brutal cathedrals of light, 00:07:30.829 --> 00:07:33.670 as he called them. He made Shakespeare explicitly 00:07:33.670 --> 00:07:36.970 about the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. He was 00:07:36.970 --> 00:07:39.470 using the theater to comment on the news in real 00:07:39.470 --> 00:07:42.370 time. And he was doing all of this while working 00:07:42.370 --> 00:07:45.769 a second full time job in radio. More than full 00:07:45.769 --> 00:07:48.170 time. He was working so hard he forgot how to 00:07:48.170 --> 00:07:51.009 sleep. He would literally hire an ambulance to 00:07:51.009 --> 00:07:53.230 shuttle him between the theater rehearsals and 00:07:53.230 --> 00:07:55.850 the radio studios. An ambulance? Just so he could 00:07:55.850 --> 00:07:58.910 weave through traffic with the sirens on to save 00:07:58.910 --> 00:08:01.509 time. It's a special level of commitment. And 00:08:01.509 --> 00:08:03.670 he wasn't just doing bit parts in radio. He was 00:08:03.670 --> 00:08:06.850 a star. He was the shadow. Who knows what evil 00:08:06.850 --> 00:08:09.879 lurks in the hearts of men. That was Wells. He 00:08:09.879 --> 00:08:12.220 had this rich, authoritative voice that made 00:08:12.220 --> 00:08:15.620 him a fortune. But he also innovated the medium. 00:08:15.939 --> 00:08:19.339 He invented the first -person narrator in radio 00:08:19.339 --> 00:08:22.120 drama during his adaptation of Les Miserables. 00:08:22.759 --> 00:08:25.519 Before that, radio plays were just people talking 00:08:25.519 --> 00:08:27.720 to each other. Wells realized you could have 00:08:27.720 --> 00:08:29.759 a voice inside the listener's head telling the 00:08:29.759 --> 00:08:32.779 story. Which brings us to the night that changed 00:08:32.779 --> 00:08:37.529 everything. Halloween, 1938. The War of the Worlds. 00:08:37.690 --> 00:08:40.409 The Panic Broadcast. Now, we know people panicked. 00:08:40.750 --> 00:08:43.049 But I've always wondered, why? It's a story about 00:08:43.049 --> 00:08:45.529 Martians. Why did people buy it? Because Wells 00:08:45.529 --> 00:08:48.350 understood how people consumed media. He didn't 00:08:48.350 --> 00:08:51.169 just read the book. He adapted it into a series 00:08:51.169 --> 00:08:54.070 of fake news bulletins. The genius was in the 00:08:54.070 --> 00:08:55.929 format. Right. If you were listening at the very 00:08:55.929 --> 00:08:57.690 start, you heard the intro saying, this is a 00:08:57.690 --> 00:08:59.590 play. But most people weren't listening then. 00:08:59.610 --> 00:09:02.389 They were listening to a very popular ventriloquist 00:09:02.389 --> 00:09:05.509 act on a rival channel. Edgar Bergen and Charlie 00:09:05.509 --> 00:09:07.840 McCarthy. That's the one. And when that show 00:09:07.840 --> 00:09:10.340 went to a musical break, people spun the dial. 00:09:10.440 --> 00:09:12.879 It's called dial spinning. So they tune in five 00:09:12.879 --> 00:09:15.259 minutes late. And what do they hear? They hear 00:09:15.259 --> 00:09:17.840 a ballroom orchestra playing some bland dance 00:09:17.840 --> 00:09:20.340 music, which is then suddenly interrupted by 00:09:20.340 --> 00:09:23.179 a special news bulletin about strange explosions 00:09:23.179 --> 00:09:27.139 on Mars. Then back to music. Then another interruption 00:09:27.139 --> 00:09:30.000 about a meteor landing in New Jersey. It mimicked 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:32.259 the rhythm of actual breaking news. Exactly. 00:09:32.440 --> 00:09:34.480 It sounds like the Hindenburg disaster coverage 00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:37.179 from the year before. It felt raw and spontaneous. 00:09:37.259 --> 00:09:40.460 And because the location, Grover's Mill, New 00:09:40.460 --> 00:09:43.220 Jersey, was a real place, people freaked out. 00:09:43.399 --> 00:09:46.919 Was the panic as big as the legend says? I heard 00:09:46.919 --> 00:09:49.669 that's debated. Historians do debate that. The 00:09:49.669 --> 00:09:51.690 newspapers at the time definitely blew it up 00:09:51.690 --> 00:09:53.929 because they hated radio. Radio was stealing 00:09:53.929 --> 00:09:56.049 their ad revenue, so they wanted to paint it 00:09:56.049 --> 00:09:59.230 as dangerous and irresponsible. But regardless 00:09:59.230 --> 00:10:01.370 of the actual numbers, the perception of the 00:10:01.370 --> 00:10:04.169 panic made Wells famous internationally overnight. 00:10:04.529 --> 00:10:06.389 I read that even Hilder mentioned it. He did. 00:10:06.450 --> 00:10:08.610 He used it in a speech in Munich to mock the 00:10:08.610 --> 00:10:10.710 decadence and corrupt condition of democracy, 00:10:10.929 --> 00:10:12.970 basically saying Americans were so gullible they 00:10:12.970 --> 00:10:15.769 believed a radio prank about Martians. But for 00:10:15.769 --> 00:10:19.000 Wells. Being called a menace by newspapers and 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:22.500 mocked by Hitler was the best PR he could possibly 00:10:22.500 --> 00:10:26.100 get. Hollywood came calling. RKO Pictures. And 00:10:26.100 --> 00:10:28.399 they didn't just offer him a contract. They gave 00:10:28.399 --> 00:10:30.580 him what's still known as the greatest contract 00:10:30.580 --> 00:10:33.100 in Hollywood history. Made it so special. He 00:10:33.100 --> 00:10:35.940 was 24 years old. He had never directed a single 00:10:35.940 --> 00:10:38.860 film. And they gave him complete creative control 00:10:38.860 --> 00:10:42.879 and, crucially, final cut. Explain what Final 00:10:42.879 --> 00:10:45.019 Cut means for people who don't know. It means 00:10:45.019 --> 00:10:47.740 the studio could not change a single frame of 00:10:47.740 --> 00:10:50.639 his movie without his permission. The director, 00:10:50.740 --> 00:10:53.860 not the studio, had the last word. Even the biggest 00:10:53.860 --> 00:10:56.100 directors of the era, like John Ford or Frank 00:10:56.100 --> 00:10:58.539 Capra, didn't have that. And I assume the rest 00:10:58.539 --> 00:11:00.720 of Hollywood was thrilled for him. They hated 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:03.480 him. They absolutely despised him. They called 00:11:03.480 --> 00:11:06.820 him the boy wonder with a sneer. The tray papers 00:11:06.820 --> 00:11:08.679 were printed in editorials hoping you would fall 00:11:08.679 --> 00:11:11.320 on his face. They were sharpening their knives. 00:11:11.340 --> 00:11:13.779 before he even rolled a single foot of film. 00:11:13.940 --> 00:11:16.820 But he didn't fall. He made Citizen Kane. He 00:11:16.820 --> 00:11:19.340 made the masterpiece. Okay, let's get into Kane. 00:11:19.919 --> 00:11:22.700 Because it's easy to say it's great, but I want 00:11:22.700 --> 00:11:25.259 to understand why it looks and feels so different. 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:28.320 Even today, if you watch it, it feels sharper, 00:11:28.440 --> 00:11:32.220 more modern than other 1940s movies. That sharpness 00:11:32.220 --> 00:11:35.019 is literal. It's a technique he and his cinematographer 00:11:35.019 --> 00:11:39.080 Greg Tolan perfected called deep focus or pan 00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:42.659 focus. Explain that for us. So standard Hollywood 00:11:42.659 --> 00:11:44.620 practice at the time was to tell the audience 00:11:44.620 --> 00:11:47.360 where to look. If the hero is speaking, he's 00:11:47.360 --> 00:11:50.200 in focus and the background is blurry. If someone 00:11:50.200 --> 00:11:52.500 walks in the door behind him, the focus racks 00:11:52.500 --> 00:11:55.120 or shifts to them. The director is basically. 00:11:55.279 --> 00:11:57.360 grabbing your head and saying look here now look 00:11:57.360 --> 00:11:59.399 over here and wills didn't want to do that he 00:11:59.399 --> 00:12:02.340 hated it he called it lazy he argued the human 00:12:02.340 --> 00:12:04.440 eye sees everything in focus so why shouldn't 00:12:04.440 --> 00:12:07.039 the camera he and tolan figured out a way using 00:12:07.039 --> 00:12:09.759 special lenses and massive amounts of light to 00:12:09.759 --> 00:12:12.539 keep a wine glass six inches from the lens and 00:12:12.539 --> 00:12:14.980 a man walking through a door 200 feet away both 00:12:14.980 --> 00:12:17.720 perfectly crisp at the same time why does that 00:12:17.720 --> 00:12:19.620 matter for the story though is it just a cool 00:12:19.620 --> 00:12:22.139 trick No, it changes everything. It changes how 00:12:22.139 --> 00:12:25.039 you engage with the scene. Think about the famous 00:12:25.039 --> 00:12:28.179 scene where Kane's parents are signing the papers 00:12:28.179 --> 00:12:30.480 to give them away to the banker. Right, the parents 00:12:30.480 --> 00:12:32.620 are in the front of the room signing the contract 00:12:32.620 --> 00:12:34.799 at the table. They're in the foreground, deciding 00:12:34.799 --> 00:12:37.740 his fate. But in the deep background, through 00:12:37.740 --> 00:12:40.779 the window, you can see the child, young Kane, 00:12:41.370 --> 00:12:44.169 playing in the snow. He's perfectly in focus. 00:12:44.990 --> 00:12:48.169 You, the viewer, can watch the parents destroying 00:12:48.169 --> 00:12:50.710 his childhood, or you can watch the child living 00:12:50.710 --> 00:12:53.629 it totally oblivious. You have to choose where 00:12:53.629 --> 00:12:55.389 to look. It forces you to make the connection 00:12:55.389 --> 00:12:57.590 between the foreground and the background. It 00:12:57.590 --> 00:13:00.009 makes the viewer an active participant in creating 00:13:00.009 --> 00:13:02.330 the meaning of the scene. It's revolutionary. 00:13:02.789 --> 00:13:05.710 And he did the same thing with sound. Yes. Overlapping 00:13:05.710 --> 00:13:08.929 dialogue. In most movies of the era, actors waited 00:13:08.929 --> 00:13:10.809 politely for the other person to finish their 00:13:10.809 --> 00:13:13.990 line. Wells said, in real life, people interrupt 00:13:13.990 --> 00:13:16.490 each other. They talk over one another. So he 00:13:16.490 --> 00:13:19.070 had his actors do that, creating this dense, 00:13:19.129 --> 00:13:21.730 chaotic wall of sound that felt so much more 00:13:21.730 --> 00:13:24.269 real. Not to mention the score. The first film 00:13:24.269 --> 00:13:26.409 score by the great Bernard Herrmann, who later 00:13:26.409 --> 00:13:29.570 did Psycho. Wells and Herrmann spent weeks in 00:13:29.570 --> 00:13:31.809 the gubbing room, treating the sound mix with 00:13:31.809 --> 00:13:34.860 the same precision as the visuals. But for all 00:13:34.860 --> 00:13:37.620 the technical brilliance, the movie had a massive 00:13:37.620 --> 00:13:41.379 problem. And his name was William Randolph Hearst. 00:13:41.460 --> 00:13:44.700 The newspaper tycoon, the inspiration for the 00:13:44.700 --> 00:13:47.960 character of Charles Foster Kane. Wells and his 00:13:47.960 --> 00:13:50.159 screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz, didn't just 00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:53.019 borrow from Hearst's life, they skewered him. 00:13:53.240 --> 00:13:56.679 They portrayed him as a lonely, hollow tyrant 00:13:56.679 --> 00:13:59.700 dying in his castle, Xanadu. And Hearst, being 00:13:59.700 --> 00:14:01.639 one of the most powerful media figures in the 00:14:01.639 --> 00:14:04.159 world, Didn't take it lying down. He declared 00:14:04.159 --> 00:14:06.620 war. He banned his newspapers from mentioning 00:14:06.620 --> 00:14:08.860 the film, not just from reviewing it, from even 00:14:08.860 --> 00:14:11.419 accepting advertising for it. He had his gossip 00:14:11.419 --> 00:14:13.720 columnists dig up dirt on everyone involved. 00:14:13.840 --> 00:14:16.480 And other studios got involved. Yes. Louis B. 00:14:16.500 --> 00:14:18.519 Mayer, the head of MGM and the most powerful 00:14:18.519 --> 00:14:21.279 man in Hollywood, actually offered to pay RKO 00:14:21.279 --> 00:14:23.620 the full cost of the film, place a healthy profit 00:14:23.620 --> 00:14:25.720 if they would just burn the negative and never 00:14:25.720 --> 00:14:28.200 release it. Burn the negative. That is a visceral 00:14:28.200 --> 00:14:30.799 reaction. It shows how threatened the establishment 00:14:30.799 --> 00:14:33.669 was by this. kid from New York. And the tragedy 00:14:33.669 --> 00:14:37.129 is the boycott worked because Hearst controlled 00:14:37.129 --> 00:14:39.590 so many theater chains. Citizen Kane struggled 00:14:39.590 --> 00:14:42.049 to get distribution. It wasn't a box office hit. 00:14:42.149 --> 00:14:45.370 It lost money. So the boy wonder had made a masterpiece, 00:14:45.490 --> 00:14:47.929 but he hadn't made a profit. And in Hollywood, 00:14:47.970 --> 00:14:49.830 that's the only sin that matters. And this sets 00:14:49.830 --> 00:14:52.730 up the fall because if Kane was the peak, what 00:14:52.730 --> 00:14:56.629 follows is. Well, it's just painful. The Magnificent 00:14:56.629 --> 00:14:58.649 Ambersons. This is the great crime scene of cinema 00:14:58.649 --> 00:15:02.370 history. It's the holy grail of lost films. Wells 00:15:02.370 --> 00:15:05.090 adapted this beautiful nostalgic novel by Booth 00:15:05.090 --> 00:15:07.230 Tarkington about the decline of a wealthy family 00:15:07.230 --> 00:15:11.039 as the automobile age begins. He shot it. He 00:15:11.039 --> 00:15:13.580 edited a rough cut. And then he made a fatal 00:15:13.580 --> 00:15:15.779 mistake. He left town. He went to Brazil. The 00:15:15.779 --> 00:15:17.720 U .S. government asked him to be a goodwill ambassador 00:15:17.720 --> 00:15:20.440 to Latin America. It was the middle of WWII. 00:15:20.519 --> 00:15:22.360 They were worried about Nazi influence in Brazil 00:15:22.360 --> 00:15:25.259 and Argentina. So Wells flies to Rio to make 00:15:25.259 --> 00:15:27.980 a documentary called It's All True. He leaves 00:15:27.980 --> 00:15:30.720 RKO alone with his footage of Ambersons. And 00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:33.120 RKO is under new management by this point, right? 00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:35.879 People who didn't like his genius contract. Exactly. 00:15:35.879 --> 00:15:38.490 The people who hired him are gone. The new guys 00:15:38.490 --> 00:15:41.929 hate him. They hold a preview screening in Pomona, 00:15:42.029 --> 00:15:44.769 a suburb of L .A. The audience reaction is bad. 00:15:45.210 --> 00:15:47.470 Why? People are laughing at the tragic parts. 00:15:47.669 --> 00:15:50.210 They aren't used to Wells' dark, ironic style. 00:15:50.470 --> 00:15:53.269 The studio panics, they take the film, and they 00:15:53.269 --> 00:15:55.610 chop out nearly 50 minutes. 50 minutes? That's 00:15:55.610 --> 00:15:57.629 almost half the movie. They butchered it. They 00:15:57.629 --> 00:16:00.389 gutted the entire heart of the film. And then, 00:16:00.429 --> 00:16:02.309 because the original ending was too depressing, 00:16:02.629 --> 00:16:06.230 it was about the inexorable decay of the Ambersons' 00:16:06.250 --> 00:16:09.330 world, they hired a commercial director to shoot 00:16:09.330 --> 00:16:12.669 a new, upbeat, happy ending. Without Wells' knowledge 00:16:12.669 --> 00:16:15.360 or consent. He was in Rio getting these frantic 00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:18.379 telegrams about it, totally powerless. And here's 00:16:18.379 --> 00:16:21.200 the part that hurts the most. The cut footage. 00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:24.919 The 50 minutes of missing Wells material. What 00:16:24.919 --> 00:16:27.259 happened to it? They melted it down for the nitrate 00:16:27.259 --> 00:16:29.419 content to support the war effort. It's gone. 00:16:29.539 --> 00:16:31.940 It doesn't exist. We will never see the real 00:16:31.940 --> 00:16:34.720 Ambersons. That's devastating. Wells said, they 00:16:34.720 --> 00:16:36.940 destroyed Ambersons and the Ambersons destroyed 00:16:36.940 --> 00:16:39.740 me. It was the turning point. And meanwhile in 00:16:39.740 --> 00:16:41.980 Brazil, things are going much better with his 00:16:41.980 --> 00:16:45.320 incurred. It's all true. He was filming incredible 00:16:45.320 --> 00:16:48.399 stuff. He captured the Rio Carnival in glorious 00:16:48.399 --> 00:16:50.879 Technicolor and a heartbreaking story about poor 00:16:50.879 --> 00:16:54.139 fishermen called John Goderos. But back in Hollywood, 00:16:54.279 --> 00:16:57.580 the new RKO management used his absence to paint 00:16:57.580 --> 00:17:00.159 him as irresponsible. They created a narrative. 00:17:00.399 --> 00:17:02.580 A false one. They told the press he was just 00:17:02.580 --> 00:17:05.240 partying in Rio, throwing money away, filming 00:17:05.240 --> 00:17:08.160 without a script. It was a smear campaign. Was 00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:10.690 any of it true? Not really. He was working under 00:17:10.690 --> 00:17:12.930 brutal conditions, often with a non -professional 00:17:12.930 --> 00:17:16.250 crew. But the narrative stuck. RKO fired him. 00:17:16.369 --> 00:17:18.230 They evicted his production company, Mercury, 00:17:18.470 --> 00:17:20.930 from the studio lot. They even changed the corporate 00:17:20.930 --> 00:17:23.849 motto on the studio water tower to showmanship 00:17:23.849 --> 00:17:27.849 in place of genius. Wow. That is a direct shot. 00:17:28.049 --> 00:17:30.589 It was a public execution of his career. In a 00:17:30.589 --> 00:17:32.349 matter of months, he went from the guy with the 00:17:32.349 --> 00:17:34.970 keys to the kingdom to an unemployable pariah. 00:17:35.170 --> 00:17:37.529 So what do you do when Hollywood locks the gate? 00:17:38.200 --> 00:17:41.259 You start hustling. And this is the era of Wells 00:17:41.259 --> 00:17:43.259 I find the most interesting. The independent 00:17:43.259 --> 00:17:46.880 years. He essentially invents the model of the 00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:49.500 modern independent filmmaker. He realized nobody 00:17:49.500 --> 00:17:51.240 was going to give him a budget again, not a real 00:17:51.240 --> 00:17:53.400 one. So he had to pay for his movies himself. 00:17:53.799 --> 00:17:56.039 This is why he started acting in so many other 00:17:56.039 --> 00:17:58.980 people's movies, even bad ones. Exactly. If you 00:17:58.980 --> 00:18:01.819 see Wells in a random movie in the 50s or 60s, 00:18:01.819 --> 00:18:04.269 he's not there because he likes the script. He's 00:18:04.269 --> 00:18:06.269 there to get a check to buy film stock for his 00:18:06.269 --> 00:18:09.170 own projects. He's fundraising. He did try to 00:18:09.170 --> 00:18:11.289 play nice with the studios one or two more times, 00:18:11.289 --> 00:18:14.589 though. There was The Stranger. Right. In 1946, 00:18:15.109 --> 00:18:17.569 he wanted to prove he would be a good boy, a 00:18:17.569 --> 00:18:20.029 director for hire. He directed The Stranger, 00:18:20.130 --> 00:18:22.490 a thriller about a Nazi war criminal hiding out 00:18:22.490 --> 00:18:24.890 in Connecticut. He brought it in ahead of schedule 00:18:24.890 --> 00:18:27.630 and under budget. It was actually his only real 00:18:27.630 --> 00:18:30.230 box office hit on release. And that film has 00:18:30.230 --> 00:18:33.079 a dark footnote, doesn't it? It does. It was 00:18:33.079 --> 00:18:35.599 the first commercial film to use actual footage 00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:38.420 from the concentration camps. Wells had seen 00:18:38.420 --> 00:18:40.980 the raw footage at the UN conference and insisted 00:18:40.980 --> 00:18:43.960 on including it. And then the lady from Shanghai, 00:18:44.180 --> 00:18:46.480 this is the one with Rita Hayworth. Who he was 00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:48.099 married to at the time that they were splitting 00:18:48.099 --> 00:18:51.819 up. A very messy situation. He made this film 00:18:51.819 --> 00:18:55.230 basically to pay back a debt. to the tyrannical 00:18:55.230 --> 00:18:58.589 head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn. And he 00:18:58.589 --> 00:19:00.950 antagonized him at every turn. Oh, he delighted 00:19:00.950 --> 00:19:03.609 in it. He took Rita Hayworth, the most famous 00:19:03.609 --> 00:19:05.769 redhead in the world, the love goddess, and he 00:19:05.769 --> 00:19:08.549 cut her famous hair off and dyed it platinum 00:19:08.549 --> 00:19:10.930 blonde without the studio's permission. Talk 00:19:10.930 --> 00:19:12.990 about biting the hand that feeds you. It was 00:19:12.990 --> 00:19:15.170 symbolic. He was deconstructing the star system, 00:19:15.369 --> 00:19:17.450 taking their most valuable asset and changing 00:19:17.450 --> 00:19:20.329 her. The climax of that film, the shootout in 00:19:20.329 --> 00:19:22.650 the Hall of Mirrors, is iconic. It's pure... 00:19:23.079 --> 00:19:25.799 Visual metaphor. Everything is an illusion. Everything 00:19:25.799 --> 00:19:28.619 is fractured. Just like his career at that point. 00:19:28.740 --> 00:19:30.720 But the studios didn't get it. They recut that 00:19:30.720 --> 00:19:33.220 one too. So he goes to Europe. And we get the 00:19:33.220 --> 00:19:35.680 saga of Othello. This production is legendary 00:19:35.680 --> 00:19:38.539 for the chaos. It took three years to film. Not 00:19:38.539 --> 00:19:40.279 because it was a huge epic, but because he kept 00:19:40.279 --> 00:19:42.440 running out of money. So he would just... He'd 00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:45.099 shoot a scene in Morocco, run out of cash, halt 00:19:45.099 --> 00:19:47.559 production, go act in a movie like The Third 00:19:47.559 --> 00:19:49.920 Man. Where he wrote the famous cuckoo clock speech, 00:19:49.980 --> 00:19:52.440 by the way. He did. He wrote it himself. He'd 00:19:52.440 --> 00:19:55.759 get paid and then call the cast back two months 00:19:55.759 --> 00:19:58.720 later to shoot the reverse angle of a conversation 00:19:58.720 --> 00:20:01.259 in Rome. That sounds like a nightmare for continuity. 00:20:01.619 --> 00:20:04.759 It was. There are scenes where a character walks 00:20:04.759 --> 00:20:06.720 through a door in Italy and enters a room in 00:20:06.720 --> 00:20:09.700 Morocco filmed a year apart, but Wells made it 00:20:09.700 --> 00:20:12.799 work through brilliant, jarring editing. He turned 00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:15.900 the limitations into a unique style, and it paid 00:20:15.900 --> 00:20:19.019 off. Othello won the Grand Prix at Cannes, the 00:20:19.019 --> 00:20:21.279 precursor to the Palme d 'Or. He did return to 00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:23.839 Hollywood for one last big swing. Touch of evil. 00:20:24.079 --> 00:20:27.079 This is 1958. And again, it was almost an accident. 00:20:27.299 --> 00:20:29.519 He was originally hired just to act as the villain, 00:20:29.660 --> 00:20:32.759 the corrupt cop Hank Quinlan. But the star, Charlton 00:20:32.759 --> 00:20:35.819 Heston, told the studio, Wait, you have Orson 00:20:35.819 --> 00:20:37.960 Welles on set? Why isn't he directing this thing? 00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:41.000 And the studio, Universal, said, OK. Reluctantly. 00:20:41.619 --> 00:20:44.940 And Wells delivered a gritty, nasty, absolutely 00:20:44.940 --> 00:20:48.819 brilliant film noir. The opening shot alone is 00:20:48.819 --> 00:20:51.440 one of the most famous in history. A three -and 00:20:51.440 --> 00:20:53.859 -a -half -minute continuous take following a 00:20:53.859 --> 00:20:56.220 car with a bomb in the trunk as it crosses the 00:20:56.220 --> 00:20:59.779 U .S.-Mexico border. It builds unbearable tension. 00:21:00.220 --> 00:21:03.700 But, let me guess, the studio interfered. Like 00:21:03.700 --> 00:21:06.799 clockwork. They watched his cut, didn't understand 00:21:06.799 --> 00:21:08.880 it, thought it was too confusing, and re -edited 00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:12.319 it behind his back. They reshot scenes. Wells 00:21:12.319 --> 00:21:15.079 was so furious he wrote a blistering 58 -page 00:21:15.079 --> 00:21:17.940 memo explaining in minute detail exactly why 00:21:17.940 --> 00:21:19.980 they were wrong and how to fix it. Did they listen 00:21:19.980 --> 00:21:21.740 to him? They ignored it completely. It wasn't 00:21:21.740 --> 00:21:24.200 until 1998, long after he died, that the legendary 00:21:24.200 --> 00:21:26.740 editor Walter Murch found that memo and restored 00:21:26.740 --> 00:21:29.019 the film to Wells' original instructions. It's 00:21:29.019 --> 00:21:31.240 the same pattern over and over. He creates goal 00:21:31.240 --> 00:21:33.480 and the industry turns it into lead. Which is 00:21:33.480 --> 00:21:35.420 why his late career is so poignant because he 00:21:35.420 --> 00:21:37.910 largely stops trying to please them. He makes 00:21:37.910 --> 00:21:40.809 chimes at midnight in 1965. This was his Shakespeare 00:21:40.809 --> 00:21:43.910 mashup based on Falstaff. Right. He took the 00:21:43.910 --> 00:21:46.569 character of Sir John Falstaff and combined text 00:21:46.569 --> 00:21:48.869 from five or six different Shakespeare plays 00:21:48.869 --> 00:21:52.609 to tell his story. Falstaff, the fat, jolly knight 00:21:52.609 --> 00:21:55.190 who is best friends with Prince Howe until the 00:21:55.190 --> 00:21:57.730 prince becomes King Henry V and rejects him. 00:21:57.890 --> 00:22:00.269 That feels deeply autobiographical. Completely. 00:22:00.890 --> 00:22:03.309 Welles, of course, played Falstaff. He saw himself 00:22:03.309 --> 00:22:06.750 in the character, this giant, joyous, life -affirming 00:22:06.750 --> 00:22:09.329 figure who is ultimately cast aside by power 00:22:09.329 --> 00:22:11.549 and politics. And he loved that film. He called 00:22:11.549 --> 00:22:14.009 it his favorite movie. He said, if I wanted to 00:22:14.009 --> 00:22:16.289 get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that's 00:22:16.289 --> 00:22:18.750 the one I would offer up. And then we get F for 00:22:18.750 --> 00:22:22.089 Fake in 1970. This is a movie I tell everyone 00:22:22.089 --> 00:22:23.549 to watch and they always look at me confused. 00:22:23.910 --> 00:22:25.690 It's hard to explain. It's a documentary, but 00:22:25.690 --> 00:22:27.769 not really. It's a film essay. It's about an 00:22:27.769 --> 00:22:30.950 art forger named Elmer DeHory and a fake biography 00:22:30.950 --> 00:22:33.069 of Howard Hughes. But really, it's about Wells 00:22:33.069 --> 00:22:35.690 himself. It's about the nature of art and lies. 00:22:35.970 --> 00:22:38.089 It brings us back to the very beginning, The 00:22:38.089 --> 00:22:41.579 Magician. The con man. Exactly. He starts the 00:22:41.579 --> 00:22:43.640 film performing magic tricks for kids. He talks 00:22:43.640 --> 00:22:45.599 about how he lied his way into the Irish theater. 00:22:46.079 --> 00:22:48.880 He's admitting that art is a lie, a trick to 00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:51.079 make you see the truth. It's incredibly fast 00:22:51.079 --> 00:22:54.660 paced, very MTV style before MTV existed. It 00:22:54.660 --> 00:22:56.740 showed that even in his 60s, he wasn't an old 00:22:56.740 --> 00:22:59.119 master. He was still the most modern filmmaker 00:22:59.119 --> 00:23:01.859 alive. But the public didn't really see F for 00:23:01.859 --> 00:23:04.519 Fake. They saw the Paul Masson wine commercials. 00:23:04.759 --> 00:23:07.859 The sellout years. The famous outtakes. We have 00:23:07.859 --> 00:23:10.180 to address the criticism. People mocked him. 00:23:10.279 --> 00:23:13.180 They said he was debasing his genius to hawk 00:23:13.180 --> 00:23:16.039 frozen peas and cheap wine. It's easy to mock. 00:23:16.589 --> 00:23:18.809 But you have to look at the finances. Every dime 00:23:18.809 --> 00:23:20.589 he made from those commercials, from those terrible 00:23:20.589 --> 00:23:24.089 TV guest spots, went into his film cans. He was 00:23:24.089 --> 00:23:26.250 self -funding The Other Side of the Wind, his 00:23:26.250 --> 00:23:28.809 unfinished final film. He wasn't buying yachts. 00:23:28.849 --> 00:23:31.430 He was buying film stock. He never, ever stopped 00:23:31.430 --> 00:23:34.049 trying to make movies. That hustle was in service 00:23:34.049 --> 00:23:36.109 of the art. We should also pivot to something 00:23:36.109 --> 00:23:38.269 that often gets left out of the artist's conversation, 00:23:38.549 --> 00:23:42.029 his politics. Because he wasn't just a filmmaker. 00:23:42.329 --> 00:23:45.630 He was a loud political activist. Loud puts it 00:23:45.630 --> 00:23:48.900 mildly. He was a radical progressive in an industry 00:23:48.900 --> 00:23:50.539 that was becoming increasingly conservative. 00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:53.559 He wasn't just voting Democrat. He was a passionate 00:23:53.559 --> 00:23:56.220 supporter of FDR. He traveled to nearly every 00:23:56.220 --> 00:23:59.539 state in 1944 to campaign for him. He wrote speeches. 00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:02.200 He even filled in for Roosevelt on the radio 00:24:02.200 --> 00:24:04.279 when the president was sick. And he was extremely 00:24:04.279 --> 00:24:06.940 aggressive on civil rights, which was not exactly 00:24:06.940 --> 00:24:10.480 a safe stance in 1946. No. There's the Isaac 00:24:10.480 --> 00:24:12.279 Woodard story. This is a crucial part of his 00:24:12.279 --> 00:24:15.420 legacy. Woodard was a black war veteran still 00:24:15.420 --> 00:24:17.960 in his army uniform who was pulled off a bus 00:24:17.960 --> 00:24:20.539 in South Carolina and beaten so badly by the 00:24:20.539 --> 00:24:22.599 local police that he was permanently blinded. 00:24:22.660 --> 00:24:25.539 And most of white America ignored it. The story 00:24:25.539 --> 00:24:28.740 was buried. Wells went on his national ABC radio 00:24:28.740 --> 00:24:30.819 show, which was supposed to be a light entertainment 00:24:30.819 --> 00:24:33.680 show, and devoted broadcast after broadcast to 00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:36.180 hunting down the police officer who did it. He 00:24:36.180 --> 00:24:38.680 named the town. He described the officer. He 00:24:38.680 --> 00:24:40.940 said on air, I will not rest until I know who 00:24:40.940 --> 00:24:43.279 you are. That's incredibly brave for a commercial 00:24:43.279 --> 00:24:46.099 broadcaster in that era. It was. And it worked. 00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:49.180 The NAACP credited him with forcing the Justice 00:24:49.180 --> 00:24:51.640 Department to finally investigate. But it also 00:24:51.640 --> 00:24:54.880 put a massive target on Wells' back. When the 00:24:54.880 --> 00:24:57.240 Red Scare started and the FBI began making lists, 00:24:57.500 --> 00:25:00.420 Wells was an easy name to write down. His political 00:25:00.420 --> 00:25:03.039 activism contributed to his alienation from Hollywood. 00:25:03.279 --> 00:25:05.900 On a lighter personal note, he was also a literal 00:25:05.900 --> 00:25:09.690 magician. A lifelong obsession. During WWII, 00:25:09.869 --> 00:25:12.109 he took a break from movies and ran the Mercury 00:25:12.109 --> 00:25:15.289 Wonder Show. It was a giant circus tent he set 00:25:15.289 --> 00:25:17.430 up in Hollywood where he performed magic and 00:25:17.430 --> 00:25:20.150 variety acts for servicemen. He sawed Marlene 00:25:20.150 --> 00:25:22.750 Dietrich in half. He made Rita Hayworth disappear. 00:25:23.109 --> 00:25:25.569 As one does. He truly believed that cinema was 00:25:25.569 --> 00:25:27.869 just the ultimate magic trick. It's all smoke 00:25:27.869 --> 00:25:30.109 and mirrors to create an illusion. So how does 00:25:30.109 --> 00:25:32.789 the story end? The final years. He spent his 00:25:32.789 --> 00:25:35.470 final years as a kind of grand figurehead, holding 00:25:35.470 --> 00:25:37.589 court at Ma Maison, his favorite restaurant in 00:25:37.589 --> 00:25:40.390 LA, regaling people with stories. He was always 00:25:40.390 --> 00:25:42.349 working on the other side of the wind, which 00:25:42.349 --> 00:25:44.150 finally got pieced together and released in 2018. 00:25:44.509 --> 00:25:46.650 He was a regular on talk shows like Merv Griffin 00:25:46.650 --> 00:25:49.099 and Johnny Carson. He was. And on the night he 00:25:49.099 --> 00:25:51.559 died in 1985, he had just appeared on The Merv 00:25:51.559 --> 00:25:54.160 Griffin Show. He went home, sat at his typewriter 00:25:54.160 --> 00:25:56.579 to work on stage directions for a shoot scheduled 00:25:56.579 --> 00:25:58.819 for the next morning, and his heart gave out. 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:01.240 He died working. He died trying to get the next 00:26:01.240 --> 00:26:04.460 shot. Always. When you look back at this career, 00:26:04.700 --> 00:26:07.759 the highest highs, the lowest lows, the sheer 00:26:07.759 --> 00:26:11.400 volume of work, finished and unfinished, what 00:26:11.400 --> 00:26:14.140 is the takeaway? What is the legacy? The tricky 00:26:14.140 --> 00:26:16.809 thing with Wells is he leaves no school. You 00:26:16.809 --> 00:26:18.769 can't really copy Wells because he was a total 00:26:18.769 --> 00:26:21.470 one -off. He was too large for the system. But 00:26:21.470 --> 00:26:23.609 his fingerprints are on everything. Every time 00:26:23.609 --> 00:26:26.609 you see a complex long take in a movie or a nonlinear 00:26:26.609 --> 00:26:29.569 narrative or a deep focus shot, that's Wells. 00:26:29.970 --> 00:26:32.430 He seems like such a tragic figure in some ways, 00:26:32.450 --> 00:26:34.849 the man who peaked at 25. That's one way I see 00:26:34.849 --> 00:26:37.170 it. A man who started at the very top with This 00:26:37.170 --> 00:26:39.109 Isn't Kane and spent the rest of his life struggling 00:26:39.109 --> 00:26:41.670 to climb back there. But I prefer to see him 00:26:41.670 --> 00:26:44.230 as a man who refused to stop creating, even when 00:26:44.230 --> 00:26:46.559 the industry turned its back on him. He proved 00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:48.319 you don't need a studio permission slip to be 00:26:48.319 --> 00:26:51.339 an artist. I think the quote from his friend 00:26:51.339 --> 00:26:53.539 and collaborator Joseph Cotton sums it up best. 00:26:53.799 --> 00:26:56.980 Yes. It's beautiful, Cotton said about Wells. 00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:00.599 He did not want a funeral. All losses are restored 00:27:00.599 --> 00:27:03.519 and sorrows end. If you want to see the genius 00:27:03.519 --> 00:27:06.599 of Orson Welles beyond Citizen Kane, go watch 00:27:06.599 --> 00:27:08.960 Touch of Evil for the sheer craft and style. 00:27:09.240 --> 00:27:11.200 Or watch F for Fake if you want to see his mind 00:27:11.200 --> 00:27:13.920 at work. It's dizzying. Or Chimes at Midnight. 00:27:14.170 --> 00:27:15.769 If you want to see his heart. That's the one. 00:27:16.049 --> 00:27:17.769 That's it for this deep dive into the life of 00:27:17.769 --> 00:27:19.869 the ultimate showman. Thanks for listening. Thank 00:27:19.869 --> 00:27:20.029 you.