Whilst Orson Welles justifiably gets a lot of the credit for Citizen Kane - oft touted as one of the greatest films of all time, if not the greatest - but what a lot of people might not know is that he co-wrote the script with one of the all-time great Hollywood writers, Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was Mankiewicz' influence which placed 'Rosebud' - and arguably, the entire meaning of the film - into the script. Namely, as we all know, that the last word on billionaire magnate Charles Foster Kane's lips is "Rosebud". It's a callback to the last time he was truly happy and innocent in his life... when he played on his childhood sled, named - well, you get the picture. It all stems from Mankiewicz' childhood, for whom a bicycle stolen from him was symbolic. His biographer, Richard Meryman, considers it the prototype of Kane's sled. The term Rosebud itself was actually taken from the name of a prize-winning racehorse, Old Rosebud; the writer was renowned for his gambling addiction, and his first winning bet was on that same racehorse. For him, it signalled his distance from the rest of his family, and his long-lost innocence. The more you know.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
