Orson Welles Talks About Making 'Citizen Kane' | The Dick Cavett Show

Sir. Wells, I apologize, Mr. Watson, please, oh, yes, my God, okay, yes, and I must say, although there is something about calling you by your name that is done by people whose last names you don't know, it baffles me. Have you ever had that with kids in movies, we get it all the time, you know, the second assistant director, who you haven't been introduced to, always called you by your name and I had one who met me at the airport to take a plane this year and said hello, Orson, I'm glad. to see and he turned to the doorman and said sir, could you take his bag, what happened when he was at his death?

I always wanted to know the answer to this, you always hear that when you were 26 and you did Citizen Kane and they said you can't do these things, you can't have the background in focus or whatever or you can't film a scene that way, mr. Welles or the young mr. Wells or Orson or whatever they called you then and you knew you could and how did you know this because I didn't know any better and it's very much in line with what Jack was saying earlier in the

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, it comes from just you know, pure nonsense, you're sure. that it has to be your good ignorance near Gracchus, there is no authority in the world like this, but this has to be something more than that technically, I mean how did you know that technically you know that everything A movie bag can be learned in about a day and a half.

Well, kids, isn't it now? How does it work? How is it done? I met a guy who knows and asked him and that's it, it's not much harder than Making Home Movies is just three points, Dad, and all these guys who do it try to make it a big mystery because that's how they make a living. and I have the right to say it because in my first film I had Kane, the best cameraman. The one who once lived was Gregg Toland and he came to my office and said, I want to work on the picture of him.

My name is Toland. I said: Why, sir? loud and said because you've never taken a photo and you don't know what can't be done-and then I said but I really can't, you can tell me since there's nothing to do, he gave me the day and a half. lessons and he was right, it

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ed that you have the camera, that's it, there's nothing to do, so we had a day and a half and there it was, but the only thing is that I've been directing in the theater for years and nowadays they have lighting people . We did it then and I had some of the best people in lighting, actually, I think, but a lot of the shows I lit myself and I was supervising them and I thought a director did that on a movie, so for the first 10 days I was moving the lights around the trees and Toland was behind me fixing it and changing the readings in sync shut up let him continue.

I want to see what he's doing, which was very classy of him, I think, and then someone told me and then I went. and I knelt down and apologized and all I thought was what the directors did because if you watch a Ford movie, for example, you were talking about Jack before because of that, he said ahead of time there must have been a hundred cameramen in his long career and almost in every image of Ford you can see by its appearance that it is a front image, yes, by the signature of physical evidence that is on it, you know, every list of great movies, of course, is that many of them start with Citizen Kane and they say it is a better film made, do you agree? no, certainly, no, that is my next no, no, the next one, the one I am preparing at the moment or the next one that will make history, could you give us the title?

I am decided. What is it still? Oh, now, could I check something else with you? Is it true that the Hursts tried to destroy the film before they tried to destroy it? They even tried to frame me because in one city I was on some kind of date, I don't know what connection with their conference, some kind of concert, you know, then I was in a nightclub waiting to get back to my hotel, a little dinner waiter came up and he said it's a police officer who wants to See you okay, I tried to hide because if that ever happens I'm sure I'm guilty, I don't know what you are like but at all, when I see a police officer I know I did it , there was no way around it. go see him and he took me aside and he said orsten I don't know why Austin probably always says don't go back to your hotel room yeah I said why does he say they have a miner under surveillance there and a photographer a lady yeah luckily a lady I think so, I prefer to tell it that way and they were going to incriminate me.

I would have been in jail if, you know, it was the police waiting to intervene and arrest me, that wasn't mr. Hearst himself was someone in that town who thought he would get along with the boss by doing him a favor. Yeah, I don't think Hearst would have stooped to that. Would you change? I had a conversation with him about the picture, yes, he was in an elevator in San Francisco the night it came out, the night we found ourselves going up together and he knew my father. I never met him, you know? and I introduced myself to the things you will do when you are. young man, you know, and I said, would you like to come to the opening tonight? and he didn't answer and I said, well, sir.

Cain would have come and that's the difference between the two people because Charles Foster Kane's character had enough class to have gone to the inauguration, he just seemed very tense, that's the end of that, it wasn't really about him, it was made up. Of many people, what was the last time you saw him? I saw it at the premiere in San Francisco and ran away right after it started. I never saw a photo of me after finishing. You had seen Citizen Kane in all these years. No. I have done some film, except as an actor, but I have never seen a Directory Only Woods photo, yes, 1000 times in the cut, yes, but why wouldn't I want to see it?

No, because I'd like to sit here and think about how good it must be. Has there ever been a chance for you to change something or do something again? Of course, you would want to change everything. I think you know, don't you want to change things after you've done it? him and a movie cappuccino that was the other thing alone and I like to think oh yes and all those great photos that I know if I saw them oh trust you would go