RKO 281
(The Making of Citzen Kane)
Starring Liev Schreiber, James Cromwell, Melanie Griffith, and John Malkovich
Produced by HBO
1999
This movie is about the "Greatest Movie Ever Made", Orson Welle's 'Citzen Kane'. It is timely given the current collapse of the Hearst corporation, whose founder, Randolph, was the thinly (very) disguised movie subject.
Most interesting is the film's explanation of what 'rosebud' really means. I can't say whether this story is any more true than any of Hollywood 's (or HBO's) - or for that matter, Hearst's - but it is a good one.
The time of this production was the lead-up to WW2 - the movie has Hearst referring to Roosevelt as a 'Bolshevik'. My very slightly historical perspective was that Hearst and Roosevelt worked together to bring us into the European conflict - perhaps that was only later.
Ah, the politics of the story.
FWIW, I wonder what Joel Connelly, long time democratic political columnist with the Seattle Hearst paper has for a 'Rosebud'?
The spoiler for Hearst's 'Rosebud' is in the clip:
