- 6 months ago
Producer Douglas Urbanski recounts captivating stories of Orson Welles and the making of the film Citizen Kane at Variety's 120 Screening Series in honor of its 120th anniversary, presented in Laser by Barco, showcasing 10 films that have shaped the last 120 years of storytelling.
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00:00Orson Welles took a lit candelabra and threw it at John Houseman, and the curtains caught
00:05on fire and the back of Chasen's burnt down.
00:21Before we even start our conversation, as you know, for some of you who've been here
00:25before, I like asking, who's just seen Citizen Kane for the first time?
00:30You've seen one of the greatest films ever made.
00:35No, it's not embarrassing.
00:36It's really like, you know, to see this, I remember seeing this, I think, on VCR in film
00:42studies class.
00:43So I saw it on a tiny screen, like on the box TVs, and it was, so to see the end of this
00:48was amazing.
00:49But Douglas, you know, I mean, I'm so glad you're here tonight.
00:52You know, I watched my, I remember seeing it in 2020 when it came out, and I watched it
00:57a couple of weeks ago, and, you know, the Titus, Citizen Kane.
01:01Let's talk about your, you know, the first time you saw the film, and what you remember
01:06about it.
01:06You know, I wondered why you asked me here tonight.
01:09I did not produce Social Network in it.
01:12I did not produce the movie.
01:13I appear in a little tiny role, as David asked me to.
01:16But I thought you asked me here, because we actually own Joseph Cotton's house that we
01:21live in in Palm Springs.
01:23And I thought, ah, that qualifies.
01:25Anyways, I first saw Citizen Kane, and you've all just seen this, and you all applauded
01:30at the end.
01:31There are certain movies that if you watch them at home on television alone, eh, and
01:37there are other movies that you must watch in the communal experience.
01:41All About Eve, if you're showing us another one, if you're showing All About Eve, invite
01:44at least five people and have pizza, because it's a different thing.
01:47But Citizen Kane, I was at NYU, and there was a place called the Bleecker Street Cinema.
01:55It was a rep house where you, 24 hours a day, they just showed all the great French movies,
02:01the great American movies, over and over.
02:03And you would get your poster, you'd put it on the wall of your dormitory room, and you'd
02:06mark all the movies you wanted to see.
02:08And we'd see the Marx Brothers movies, and W.C. Fields movies, and Citizen Kane.
02:13That's where I first saw it.
02:13So, you know, I mean, we're still talking about this film.
02:18It's impacted so many filmmakers, including David Fincher, who, you know, and of course
02:22Scorsese.
02:23Why do you think, you know, this film has had this lasting impact?
02:28Like, what is it about what Orson Welles did that has made it last through the years?
02:35You know, it's a tough one, because there's a lot of really good movies, and you're showing
02:38a bunch of them.
02:39Wizard of Oz, All About Eve, Bridge on the River Kwai.
02:42There's a lot of really good movies.
02:44It's hard to say what movie is the best, what has the most impact, until you sort of put
02:49the moment behind it, and until you put the stories that swirl around it behind it.
02:57Because Citizen Kane has everything that's not on the screen that lends to its mystique.
03:03It has a wunderkind, who's about 12 years old, who makes it.
03:08It has the clash of ego.
03:13And of course, it has the famous and untrue story that Pauline Kell wrote about, and that
03:18we made a movie about.
03:19So, I think that all the things swirling behind the scenes, everyone in this room, you know
03:28where the Bristol Farms is down the block over here, that is a central figure in this
03:34movie.
03:34You know that?
03:35That is where, should I tell a story?
03:37We love a story.
03:39All right.
03:40And by the way, huh?
03:43It's Sunset and Fairfax.
03:44No, it's over.
03:45Bristol Farms is right here, Beverly and Doheny.
03:48Oh, that one.
03:49Sorry.
03:50And incidentally, I will tell you that my wife, who's in the back here, she and I knew
03:54people who went to the weekends at this house.
03:58We knew Slim Keith and Claudette Colbert, who would tell us over dinner what those parties
04:04were like.
04:04So, having seen the movie and been very young, you would then hear it brought to life for
04:08you.
04:08Anyway, over here at the Bristol Farms, it used to be a famous restaurant called Chasen's.
04:15Orson Welles came out here, the Wunderkind, and RKO said, make whatever you want to make.
04:23And he said, I'm going to make Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
04:26And he got as far as screen tests.
04:29And he brought all the actors out from the acting company of his.
04:35He sat them down at dinner in the private dining room upstairs in the back of Chasen's
04:40and told them, there's a change of plan.
04:45RKO thinks we're making Heart of Darkness, but I've got another movie we're going to make.
04:50And he had really been lusting after this idea of the American dream.
04:54I think it was called All-American, the movie.
04:57And he was writing it and hitting walls.
05:00And John Houseman, who is a huge figure behind the scenes of all of this, those of you who
05:06have seen the paper chase know him from that performance, for which he won an Oscar, which
05:10does figure into the Cain story.
05:13John Houseman and he got into a huge fight in front of the actors over this dinner upstairs
05:18in the back room with Chasen's.
05:19And the fight was so bad.
05:21And they had a huge success with the Mercury players on radio and on Broadway.
05:26But this fight was enormous.
05:28And Orson Welles took a lit candelabra and threw it at John Houseman.
05:33And the curtains caught on fire.
05:34And the back of Chasen's burnt down.
05:37He said, you brought these actors out here under false pretenses.
05:40How dare you?
05:41And it erupted.
05:43John Houseman, who was Orson Welles' producing partner, got in his car and he said, I'm leaving.
05:51And he got his car to drive back to his apartment on Manhattan on 8th Street.
05:55And he stopped in Albuquerque.
05:58And he wrote Orson a letter.
06:01And it's this sort of really strange, almost kind of love letter that two men could write
06:06to each other who have an intense collaboration.
06:08And he writes this letter, which it's published, he can read it.
06:13And he keeps driving.
06:15About four or five days later, he ends up at his apartment on 8th Street.
06:20And as he's walking in the door, the way he tells the story, the phone is ringing.
06:25And it's Orson Welles.
06:26He says, hello, it's Orson Welles.
06:28And Orson says, will you have dinner with me tonight?
06:32And he says, Orson, where are you?
06:34And Orson said, I'm in Chicago.
06:36We're refueling.
06:36I'll be there in a few hours.
06:38And Haussmann agrees to dinner.
06:43And he sits down and he says, the one thing I will not do is come back to you.
06:47I'm never coming back to you again.
06:50And then Orson, who could seduce really well, Orson seduces him.
06:54And he says, here's the thing.
06:56He says, I've hit a problem with the script.
06:59There's only one man, one man who can write it.
07:04And that's Herman Mankiewicz.
07:06And Haussmann essentially says, you know he's unmanageable.
07:10You know he's a drunk.
07:12You know he's unreliable.
07:13Yes, he's the best.
07:13And they all looked up to Herman Mankiewicz.
07:15They all looked up to him.
07:16You're going to be seeing The Wizard of Oz on this series.
07:18And you know the story.
07:20He wrote the first draft.
07:22And as David Fincher tells it, David puts it this way.
07:25That Herman Mankiewicz came up with the greatest special effect in history.
07:29Which is, the moment from The Wizard of Oz goes from sepia to color.
07:33And that was in Herman Mankiewicz's original script.
07:35That's one of his contributions that no one is even aware of.
07:39Anyway, Haussmann gets seduced.
07:41And Orson says, you don't come back.
07:43You're not going to be my partner.
07:44You're done.
07:45We're separated.
07:46But if you fly back with me now and wrangle Herman and oversee the writing of this script,
07:53that's well.
07:53And Haussmann is intrigued.
07:56And he does it.
07:57They fly back.
07:58And the rest is told kind of accurately and kind of not accurately in our film.
08:05Our film Mankiewicz, I don't know if any of you have seen it.
08:07He saw it.
08:13It's a sort of interesting film because it begins accepting the Pauline Kael famous book as true.
08:23And when I was in college and when we saw Citizen Kane in the university bookstore,
08:27the Pauline Kael book was a big book that was in the front of the bookstore in piles.
08:31Because there were a lot of film students at NYU and there it was.
08:34The Pauline Kael book, how it has its origins, how it creates the story that there was a big fight
08:42over the authorship, there wasn't.
08:46Our movie depicts that.
08:48Our movie depicts an arbitration that never occurred.
08:52Until you think of it through the alcoholic eyes of Herman Mankiewicz.
08:58Because he could turn on people.
09:01And he always turned on people closest to him, including one of his closest friends, William Randolph Hearst.
09:07Now Orson, they do the film, and Orson talked a lot about the pained relationship they had.
09:16And he said, he was asked by a reporter, does anyone hate you?
09:21And he said, there's only one person who hates me.
09:23And he said, that's Herman Mankiewicz.
09:24And I don't know why.
09:26John Houseman and Wells didn't really speak again after all of this, by the way.
09:33Houseman went on and had his own career.
09:36He eventually founded the Juilliard School of Drama.
09:40As we know, he won an Oscar for the paper chase.
09:45Herman Mankiewicz had a famous brother who wrote and directed All About Eve, as we know.
09:52So, when Citizen Kane was being finished, here's where Orson's head actually was at.
10:02You may not remember, but an hour or so ago, two hours ago, you saw the opening credits.
10:08And Orson does not have single-card directing credit.
10:12He shares it with the director of photography, Greg Toland.
10:16And he wrote about this and talked about this for the rest of his life, that Greg Toland co-directed the movie with him.
10:20And that's why he gave him the credit.
10:23So, we hear a lot about Orson's ego.
10:26And then we hear a lot of other things that sort of contradict this.
10:29He was very generous with people as well.
10:31So, he puts, he chooses, he has approval over the cards.
10:35He puts Greg Toland's name there on his card.
10:38And he does something else.
10:40They hand him the approvals.
10:42And it says, screenplay by Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz.
10:49And Orson has a red crayon.
10:52And he takes it and he draws an arrow to put Herman's name above his.
10:57And that was really what happened.
10:59And the story grew.
11:02And, of course, it became something that, because Herman was famous for self-destruction and betrayal, that he dined out on for years.
11:10He didn't live very long.
11:11He died of alcoholism.
11:14Now, everyone else in the story you've seen, the Hearst story, you all know Hearst eventually died broke.
11:22You may know that.
11:25Marion Davies, however, was wealthy and bailed him out again and again.
11:31He had given her so much real estate and jewelry over the years that she was wealthy and she squirreled it all away.
11:36And she loved him.
11:37There was no question that she absolutely loved him, even though there was a difference in their ages.
11:44She died of stomach cancer, married another man a few years later.
11:47He died in the house on the corner of Coldwater.
11:49Or just when you turn by the firehouse up there, there's a big orange wall.
11:52That's where he died.
11:54You've seen it in The Godfather, the house with the horse's head.
11:56That's where Hearst died.
12:02John Houseman, on the night he's nominated for an Oscar for the paper chase.
12:08He's terrific in it, if you remember that.
12:10And it spawned a lot of commercials saying we make money the old-fashioned way.
12:14We earn it.
12:15And he flew here for the Oscars and he took as his date Herman Mankiewicz's widow because Herman did not go to the Oscars for Citizen Kane, even though he won it.
12:29And so his wife, Sarah, got to go to the Oscars eventually with John Houseman, who had produced Citizen Kane.
12:37And that's one story I wanted to tell you about.
12:41What an amazing...
12:42Apparently, you have three stories, but isn't that an incredible story, an incredible history lesson that people...
12:49Well, next time you're buying a tomato at the Bristol Farms, you'll say, wow, this is what happened here.
12:56But let's just talk a little bit, and then I want to hear the rest of these stories because these are amazing.
13:02But let's talk a little bit about how groundbreaking this was as far as storytelling visually, that opening, the use of flashbacks,
13:10you know, the depth of field that we see in, you know, in the cinematography, like, talk about how groundbreaking...
13:18I think there's a lot of Guild people here tonight, yes?
13:21Me too.
13:22You'll know exactly when I say this.
13:25There is something to be said about not knowing what you don't know.
13:29And at some point, anyone who's a professional has experienced that.
13:33Thank God I didn't know that then because we'd never have done it.
13:35And I think that that is before your eyes here.
13:38He didn't know.
13:40And so he's playing with things, and he's got Greg Tolan next to him saying, yeah, okay, yeah, we can do that.
13:46And we've all worked, I hope, with a really good DP or a really good special effects person or someone who can say, I don't know.
13:53Then they come up with a way of doing it.
13:55And I think that that's the first big thing.
13:57I'll tell you something else.
14:00At the beginning, this is a story told to me personally by Charlton Heston.
14:04But he told it to many people.
14:08He told the story of having lunch with Orson Welles at Ma Maison.
14:14And you know the story?
14:16Someone giggled.
14:16No.
14:17And it was a lady comes up to Mr. Welles, a tourist lady.
14:22Oh, Mr. Welles, we just love your film Citizen Kane.
14:26It's the best film of all time.
14:29And he says, thank you very much, dear lady.
14:31Thank you very much.
14:32She said, there is one thing.
14:37You know what it is?
14:39He says, what is it?
14:40What is it, dear lady?
14:41What is it?
14:42She said, well, we noticed that when he dies and says the word rosebud, there's no one else actually in the room with him.
14:52To which Welles responds, and don't you tell a living soul.
14:58That was a story that I had heard from Chuck.
15:01It was told to him.
15:03Wow.
15:04Amazing.
15:06Wait, okay.
15:06So what's your other story?
15:08I'm going to let you tell.
15:08No, no, those are just some ones that give you a backdrop, because you've just watched, you've watched two stories, really.
15:14You've watched the story of Hearst and Marion Davies and these people, and then the fiction.
15:18Obviously, there was no rosebud, and obviously there was no journalist.
15:21And then you've watched the story of a bunch of real actors and people in the real life, the Mankiewicz-Welles feud, the supposed writer's guild arbitration that never occurred, the Hearst money in Marion Davies and their death, and then Houseman's visit to the Oscars, taking Mankiewicz's wife.
15:45I always think all of that is extremely romantic, and that was to answer your first question.
15:50What contributes?
15:51Not anyone who knows these stories, but I think the mythology surrounding the film, this film, is as interesting as the actual film itself.
16:01You don't have a lot of wunderkinds who are very young, who come from the theater, who've never done this before, who bring a bunch of unknown actors and make this kind of movie.
16:10There are a lot of good movies made in those years, but this was a one-off.
16:15And isn't it interesting that he never did it again?
16:21It is one of those things that always strikes me, which is we all knew he was talented, and we all knew he could come up with things.
16:28Watch him on The Tonight Show, he's terrific.
16:31But he never did it again, even though he tried.
16:35And of course, there is the story.
16:39He directs a film with Charlton Heston, a very, very good film.
16:42Do you know the film?
16:45I think it's called The Future of Kind.
16:46What's that?
16:48Touching Evil.
16:51And the story, also told to me by Heston, was Chuck wanted to make this movie.
17:00It was a B movie at a particular studio, I want to say Universal, and they were going through the list of directors.
17:08And Heston says, you'll all appreciate this.
17:11Heston says, why not Orson Welles?
17:13Because we've cast him as the sheriff.
17:15To which the studio executive says, has he ever directed before?
17:20And that is another story.
17:24So I think the stories surrounding this and the personalities are as big as the movie.
17:29I mean, there are so many stories, and obviously, Hearst did not like this film at all when it came out.
17:36Well, there's an interesting thing there.
17:39He obviously didn't like it, because it was, for whatever reasons, privacy, he felt betrayed.
17:45Because Mankiewicz was in his inner circle, as our film, as Mank shows, he was in there.
17:51And Mankiewicz was so self-destructive, he destroyed every strong, good relationship he had.
17:57There is another story, though, connected to this.
18:01There's a man named Michael Lindsay Hogg, who was a good director.
18:05And if you've ever seen Brideshead Revisited, you remember that.
18:08He directed it.
18:10And the rumor was, for years and years and years, and he's still alive.
18:14He lives upstate New York.
18:16I'm in occasional touch with him.
18:19He, the rumor was always that he was Orson Welles' son.
18:24His mother was the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.
18:26And they had met on, I want to say Jane Eyre, that Orson was starring in.
18:32And there's this child.
18:35And the rumor was always that he was Orson's son.
18:38And it's most likely a true story.
18:41The resemblance is there in so many ways.
18:45And the story, I think Michael either told it to me on the telephone or it's in one of his books.
18:52A house was rented on the Santa Monica Beach, a little bungalow house for Geraldine Fitzgerald to live in.
18:59She was here as a contract player working in films.
19:01And he was there as a little boy, maybe five, six years old.
19:06And back at that time, you would let your kid go out and wander all day.
19:10And he wandered down the beach and there was a door and a wall, a gate open.
19:16And it was a hot day.
19:18And he went in and there was a swing pool with not anybody around.
19:21And this little boy takes off his clothes and goes swimming.
19:26And the way it was described, a very elegant lady came out there and said,
19:31Who are you? You know you're not supposed to be here.
19:33And he got all nervous and she said, But would you like to come in for some lemonade?
19:37And he remembers going in and he went into what he described as a dining room.
19:45And there was an old man sitting at the end of the table who he made contact with and conversation with,
19:50who was very nice to him, who would have known who he was.
19:54And that man was William Randolph Hearst.
19:58Fantastic stuff, isn't it?
20:00Oh my gosh.
20:01See, people come to our screenings and stay for the Q&As and you get a history lesson.
20:06Well, Hollywood anecdotes are forgotten stuff.
20:09They're really important, I think.
20:12We talked about winning the Soul Oscar.
20:16There are so many great lines in this screenplay.
20:20People used to quote them.
20:22But do you have a favorite line from the film?
20:27From Citizen Kane?
20:27From Citizen Kane, yeah.
20:28Well, you've just all seen it, so I will mess it up.
20:30I do have a favorite line.
20:31And you think of people, sometimes they're filmmakers, who spend their own money making movies, or lots of money making movies.
20:43And sometimes they're wealthy, sometimes they're not.
20:47But you think of that line when he inherits the newspaper.
20:49And the guy says to him, Mr. Kane, we are losing, whatever the number is, this is $100,000 a month.
20:59And he says something like, well, that rate, sir, I'll be broke in 300 years.
21:04And whatever the lines were, that was always one of my favorite exchanges.
21:07Because it just, and he gets under something.
21:10He gets under something about this reach for success.
21:18And I always think when you see the black smoke at the end, it all is nothingness.
21:25And he can't help but, remember, Orson had done a lot of plays.
21:28He had done a lot of Shakespeare.
21:29And he would have been very aware of all the symbolism along the way here.
21:33Well, to that, like, you know, let's talk about the symbolism of, you know, Rosebud and the American dream and his story.
21:41Like, you know, what happens in the film and the metaphor of it all just not being successful
21:50and the isolation that comes with achieving the American dream.
21:56It's a hard one for me to answer.
21:58Only because I look at the work of Orson Welles, Citizen Kane, and then I think of the work of Arthur Miller.
22:07And if you'll notice that if you watch a film like, let's say, Streetcar, or not Streetcar, let's say, On the Waterfront,
22:14they're almost, or Marty, they're almost always as a priest character who comes in, usually Karl Malden.
22:21And the thing is that if you put religion in any of these movies, in Arthur Miller's writing or in Orson's stories,
22:33you don't have the story because you need to build on the isolation that people feel
22:40and maybe even the inaccessibility of the love you might have or other things.
22:44They must argue about the human condition, and they're not only arguing the human condition.
22:51I would put it this way.
22:53The better the work, the more, and the greater the talent,
22:59the less certain the artist writing it is about what they're saying.
23:03They may think they're certain, but they're having an argument with themselves.
23:07Do I want all of this money?
23:09Do I want San Simeon or Xanadu?
23:11Do I want the art?
23:12If I get it, maybe this is what will happen to me.
23:17And yet some people have a lot of that are quite happy, as are some people who don't have it.
23:21I think there's always this internal argument.
23:24And Orson, there would be no doubt that he would be having an argument himself.
23:28There is a funny day.
23:311992, first weekend in December, Gary Oldman and I were supposed to fly to New York.
23:39He was going to do Saturday Night Live.
23:40Dracula had come out a week or two earlier, a big hit.
23:45And across the street from a friend of ours' house, Orson Welles' house was for sale.
23:51And they were having an open house.
23:52It was on Stanley in Hollywood.
23:55And so he said, let's go over and have a look.
23:59We've got to go see.
24:00And, you know, it's kind of sad.
24:03You go to the house.
24:05And you expect one sort of house, but there's shag carpeting.
24:09And there's this sort of jacuzzi in the attic.
24:12And it's all sort of, and I feel certain he would have struggled for money at some point.
24:18He was doing those commercials.
24:19And there are many more commercials than the ones that come to your mind.
24:23If you're on YouTube, there's some really weird things.
24:25And you also have the commercials where he's getting drunker during every take when he's drinking the wine.
24:29And they have all of that on YouTube.
24:31But the thing about the house that was the, really, we were talking about this the other night when I said I was going to come here.
24:37And Gary reminded me, he had a screening room.
24:43But the screening room was the garage.
24:46And I don't mean a converted garage where you put some of these chairs.
24:49It was a garage with a garage door and a projector on a table hanging off.
24:54And a scrolled screen that had been rotted was hanging there.
24:58It was left.
24:59He had been long dead because he died in the mid-'80s.
25:03I was meant to have lunch with him.
25:04And he was, I was producing Broadway shows with very big older stars in those days.
25:10And his lawyer in New York, his then lawyer, said to have lunch with him.
25:15He died of a heart attack.
25:17Interesting.
25:17A few days earlier.
25:19Interesting was he and Houseman didn't speak all those years until one day Merv Griffin, who had a big popular TV show on the day, said,
25:27what about a reunion of these two?
25:29And you can find this on YouTube also.
25:30And you see Orson and Houseman, and they're very uncomfortable with each other.
25:36They're not interested in the reunion.
25:37It sounded like a good idea before we turned up.
25:41And right after that interview, Orson went home and dropped out of a heart attack that night.
25:46So they had the reunion.
25:48It wasn't so hot.
25:49And that was that.
25:54They're interesting, big, big figures.
25:56And I think that's it.
25:58And the movie, you've just seen it all.
25:59It's pretty good, isn't it?
26:02How many times have you seen it?
26:04I'm just curious.
26:04Oh, goodness.
26:08I've probably, I don't, I've lost count.
26:09I mean, I've probably seen it more than 20 times in my life.
26:12And we're making Manc, of course.
26:13We all went back and we all were invited to screenings and we all saw it again and again.
26:19And, but it's one of those movies that you, it's a little bit like cold coffee at some
26:25point where you just say, I don't like cold coffee.
26:28I don't feel like it today.
26:29And there's other movies.
26:31For me, it's The Wizard of Oz.
26:33You tell me there's a Wizard of Oz.
26:34I say, when is that?
26:35What time is that?
26:35I got it.
26:36I want to hear the overture.
26:38I want to hear it start.
26:39You know, I want to, I want to be, I want to, I want to remember all the stories about how
26:43it was made.
26:44I want to remember the genius of the production system of the day.
26:47I want to remember all the things about it.
26:49So, and I can't wait.
26:51This movie is a little bit harder because once you see it, it's hard to recapture that
26:55first experience that some of you had, unless it's been a long while.
26:58And those of you who have seen it for the first time tonight have the luxury of seeing it with
27:02other people on a screen in a dark room.
27:05Very different from putting on the VCR at night and watching it.
27:08Yeah.
27:08Amazing.
27:09Douglas and his stories.
27:11Oh my God.
27:12So, so fascinating.
27:14Thank you so much for that.
27:16Thank you to Variety, of course, to Soho House and to Barco.
27:20Thank you all for coming out tonight.
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