By Chris Benedict

The Mercury Theatre’s October 30, 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast was both trick and treat. The perpetrator, star and narrator of F For Fake, speculates in a poignant segment of this-his last completed film-that one day our works in stone, paint, and print-the treasures and frauds alike-will ultimately fall to war or wear away to ash. Despite the fact that our songs will all one day be silenced, he urges us nonetheless to collectively go on singing, proposing that one man’s name alone may not matter all that much.

That being said, Orson Welles is a name that very much matters. A professional mischief maker with a penchant for magic and flair for the dramatic, inspired by both William Shakespeare and Harry Houdini, Welles framed the narrative of his own contrived mythology, shrouding the fact and fiction of his personal biography alike in embellishment or outright illusion. He consumed food, wine, women, knowledge, and power in equal measure, with a gluttony which knew no boundaries, disregarded all the rules and held open contempt for authority which challenged his own. A self-manufactured enigma, Welles was many things to many people. A genius, a bully, a friend, a fiend, an open book, a closed fist.