On a recent flight I watched Orson Welles’ ‘Citizen Kane’ for the 100th or so time and finally realized that this 194_ film, aside from being a visual feast and meditation on the miscues of power and celebrity, is also the template for a certain branch of contemporary documentary filmmaking. In the story engine for the classic film is reporter Jerry Thompson’s fruitless search for the meaning of “Rosebud,” millionaire newspaper tycoon Kane’s last word. With the camera perched over his shoulder Thompson interviews Kane’s ex-wife, his old friends, business associates and employers with their memories acting as what documentary filmmakers call “B roll” or what a Netflix true crime producer might describe as “reenactments” of the subject’s peripatetic life
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Having spent most of the last three years as a director on two doc features, an executive producer on a doc series and as a consultant on two other non-fiction series, ‘Citizen Kane’ resonated with me differently than it has in the past. The search for “Rosebud” nowadays is rarely as straight forward as in the film. For example in looking at the life of baseball Willie Mays (in an upcoming HBO doc I directed) and rap icon Tupac Shakur (the first episode of the Allen Hughes directed ‘Dear Mama’ series I executive produced debuted last week in Toronto), no one involved in the making expected to find these amazing lives defined by a single word.
Yet we were looking for a hook, an explanation, a theme that would explain these outsized characters to the audience. The film’s last scene reveal of Rosebud in ‘Citizen Kane’ is both a profound insight and a slight gag, depending on whether you buy the film’s conceit or not. But what that ending does make clear is that in Kane’s childhood, like that of Mays and Tupac, are the roots of the star we celebrate. It is in those single digit years where the defining desires of all humans are created and where their family’s economic conditions establish a person’s relationship to success and wealth.
In Mays’ case his relationship with his father set him on a path to baseball immortality. In Tupac’s case his mother’s political activism would impact much of his decision making. Yet, for both these men, absence also played a role in their live -- Mays was not raised by his mother, while Tupac was never sure who his real his father was. Neither fact makes them the “Rosebud” of either project, but they were factors in their development away from the ball field and recording studio. The truth is in the real world “Rosebud” is much more likely to be a person than an object.
That I can see the similarities between Willie Mays and Tupac Shakur, two black men who on the surface have zero in common, is a testament to the deep dive I’ve been in the last few years, starting before the pandemic, and continuing through until now. The deeper you look the more people have in common than they seem may seem publicly. It’s a look thought to hold onto in a time of deep division.
Official announcements on the release of the Mays doc and ‘Dear Mama’ are coming shortly.