The American Experience is an unusually intelligent TV show. The episode concerning the 1918 flu outbreak comes to mind as a typical, interesting piece. But here it presents the usual near-hagiography of Welles. And unsure of whether the story is dramatic enough, they exaggerate plenty, and find witnesses to do the same. They give nearly the whole narrative over to bombast, at one point calling Citizen Kane "the movie that ruined both Welles and Hearst." That's just um... hyperbole.
It's at least the third time this material has been given the run-through after The Citizen Kane Book, RKO-187, and Citizen Kane itself, an dthat's not counting "The Cat's Meow" about William R Hearst. One smirks noting that there isn't much difference between this and the cheesy techniques in Kane's "News on the March" featurette.
Thespian-witness Norman Lloyd who was flown out for 6 weeks of tennis on RKO's dime for a canceled Welles production, finds his own story fascinating; that is, when he's not overacting for the interview, delivering unremarkable memories that he finds remarkable, and obviously bullshitting to make himself seem more interesting.
But nothing will prepare you for Sam Leve... no more annoying person has ever existed. He's a comically over-the-top stereotype, who resembles a bushy frog, and insists to viewers that the things actually happened in his now-unremarkable anecdotes. ("I was THERE. I'm NOT TELLING ANY STORIES!") He gesticulates. He shouts. He's impresses himself. He's a self-parody of everything bad in bio-pix; some utter jackass pulled out of mothballs, whose every word comes off as horseshit. This guy applauds himself for forming a sentence, and he's supposed to offer insight? He wears out his welcome in about ten seconds. Really folks.... give Uncle Morty his meds and put him back in the asylum. He's not helping your movie.
But mostly the problems are those that afflict the "Behind the Music" series. Anything unique or extraordinary is crushed under the wheels of the unrelenting, typical bio-doc format.
It's at least the third time this material has been given the run-through after The Citizen Kane Book, RKO-187, and Citizen Kane itself, an dthat's not counting "The Cat's Meow" about William R Hearst. One smirks noting that there isn't much difference between this and the cheesy techniques in Kane's "News on the March" featurette.
Thespian-witness Norman Lloyd who was flown out for 6 weeks of tennis on RKO's dime for a canceled Welles production, finds his own story fascinating; that is, when he's not overacting for the interview, delivering unremarkable memories that he finds remarkable, and obviously bullshitting to make himself seem more interesting.
But nothing will prepare you for Sam Leve... no more annoying person has ever existed. He's a comically over-the-top stereotype, who resembles a bushy frog, and insists to viewers that the things actually happened in his now-unremarkable anecdotes. ("I was THERE. I'm NOT TELLING ANY STORIES!") He gesticulates. He shouts. He's impresses himself. He's a self-parody of everything bad in bio-pix; some utter jackass pulled out of mothballs, whose every word comes off as horseshit. This guy applauds himself for forming a sentence, and he's supposed to offer insight? He wears out his welcome in about ten seconds. Really folks.... give Uncle Morty his meds and put him back in the asylum. He's not helping your movie.
But mostly the problems are those that afflict the "Behind the Music" series. Anything unique or extraordinary is crushed under the wheels of the unrelenting, typical bio-doc format.