Today a new weekly trend begins! Every Tuesday here at Scribute, from now until the end of time, will be True Story Tuesday. This means every Tuesday I will post a review of a documentary movie. The reason for this is (1) because I love documentaries and (2) because this is the Blog of Knowledge and it’s hard to walk away from most documentaries without gaining at least a little bit of knowledge. So on to my first review: Collapse.
This is not the story of Orson Welles’ experience in making the movie “Citizen Kane,” nor is it a documentary on how it was made. This is the documentary of the relationship between Orson Welles, director of “Citizen Kane” and William Randolph Hearst, the man whose life the movie is based on. Welles was just twenty-four years old when he began to work on “Citizen Kane.” He was a young man who had become famous all too quickly and believed that he was truly the best and nothing he did was wrong. Hearst was an older man who had become rich from mass media, including newspapers, radio, and magazines.
William Hearst is often considered the biggest and best influence ever in mass media. That is a huge accomplishment. When Hearst was young and failing out of college he told his father, George Hearst, that he wanted to take over one of the newspapers that George happened to own. His father couldn’t understand why he did not want to inherit something more profitable, but agreed nonetheless. Will’s plan was to publish any story, whether it had been covered already or not, and make it his own. He would even pay people to create news. For example he paid someone to jump off of a ferry and see how long it took to be rescued by the crew or other bystanders.
Orson Welles used Hearst’s own moves in creating “Citizen Kane,” which ultimately led to the conflict between Welles and Hearst. Just as Hearst’s career was to destroy the life of others, Welles’ career meant destroying the reputation of Hearst. Welles portrayed Hearst as a cruel man who exploited anyone and everyone he could to get ahead in the media business. His life was work first, relationships second. The greatest similarity between Welles and Hearst seemed to be that they have both built careers on controversy.