RKO 281

(1999)

★ 6.5 IMDb · 102 votes

Genres: Drama, History, телевизионный фильм

Year: 1999

Runtime: 84 мин

Country: United States of America, United Kingdom

Director: Benjamin Ross

Cast: Лев Шрайбер, Джеймс Кромвелл, Мелани Гриффит, Джон Малкович, Лиам Каннингем, Дэвид Суше, Фиона Шоу, Anastasia Hille, Бренда Блетин, Рой Шайдер

Plot

In 1939, boy-wonder Orson Welles leaves New York, where he has succeeded in radio and theater, and, hired by RKO Pictures, moves to Hollywood with the purpose of making his first film.

Coming to Hollywood as a celebrated boy genius featuring a spectacular career arc in New York including his radio hoax War of the Worlds, Orson Welles is stymied on the subject for his first film. After a dinner party at Hearst Castle, during which he has a verbal altercation with William Randolph Hearst, Welles decides to do a movie about Hearst. It takes him some time to convince co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and the studio, but Welles eventually gets the script and the green light, keeping the subject very hush-hush with the press. The movie is about an aging newspaper publisher who controlled his enemies as ruthlessly as he controlled his friends; and whose mistress was destined for fame. When a rough cut is screened, Hearst gets wind of the movie's theme and begins a campaign to see that it is not only never publicly screened, but destroyed.