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 0UcTaf^aS Wellesian Legacies—What, If Anything, Do Mel Gibson, Stephen Colbert, and Steven Spielberg Have in Common? The Wellesian brand has helped establish at least two images that resonate in contemporary American media culture: the star director and the concept of “truthiness.” This final section examines twenty-first-century manifestations of these themes that intrigued Welles in the earliest stages of his career, and suggests why they retained such cultural relevance. When we compare these two entertainment legacies, the Wellesian concept of “truthiness” appears to have had an even greater impact on American culture than does the advent of the star director.1 The first part of this chapter examines the legacy of directorial branding , using two contemporary director-driven films that initially recall early Wellesian projects. The first movie, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), shared many of the ambitions and obstacles of Welles’s own proposed Christ project but ultimately circumvented mainstream studio barriers to become a huge economic success. The second project, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War of the Worlds (2005), shared many strategies with Welles’s famous adaptation but had a much less immediate impact on its audience than did the 1938 radio broadcast, despite being a box-office hit. Controversy helped fuel the success of both these projects, although the controversy surrounding Gibson’s Passion of the Christ can be understood as emerging from a post-Holocaust perspective, while Spielberg’s adaptation of War of the Worlds can be attributed to its post-9/11 context. Over the course of the twentieth century, the Christ project became a type of American cultural touchstone through which budding star directors (in the case of Mel Gibson, a star actor already) could establish themselves. AFTERWORD  Directors ranging from Cecil B. DeMille to Martin Scorsese took on the challenge of adapting a Christ narrative, with varying degrees of commercial and artistic success. Much like the Holocaust film, the Christ narrative addresses a topic of historic and spiritual importance in an attempt to assert artistic control over archetypal narrative. The assumption is that if the male director (for mastering the master narrative seems to be a primarily masculine preoccupation ) can assert creative control over such a culturally central narrative, then he has achieved technical, commercial, and artistic excellence. In this way, the Christ narrative represents an artistic opportunity for the auteur and a commercial opportunity for the star director. The director highlights his individual interpretation and domination of a culturally collaborative narrative, and if successful, he is rewarded with an increase in filmmaking reputation and commercial status. In Gibson’s case, Passion of the Christ was a huge success, eventually grossing more than 600 million worldwide. Although one of the reasons Welles abandoned his Christ project was religious controversy, this same controversy was one of the major reasons for the success of The Passion. Gibson chose to center his Christ project in the contentious tradition of the passion play,2 and images of Christ’s suffering were cited as a main reason for the box-office draw of the film in terms of their “realism.” However, these images also proved highly disturbing to a broad cross-section of the audience. Ultimately, The Passion appears to have been a short-term success for Gibson, since he has been unable to build on its popularity.3 Thus despite the fact that Gibson brought to fruition a film project Welles was only able to conceive, he has failed at this point to establish himself as a directorial brand. In contrast to Gibson, Spielberg has successfully established himself as a market brand, capable of promoting his films through the association with his own name. He is perhaps the most powerful director of his era, able to “green-light” projects that are associated with his name even as a producer. Though Spielberg is unarguably a star director, critics still debate his entitlement to auteur status based on artistic merit. Spielberg’s artistry has a distinctly commercial bent, and as Warren Buckland notes, “Spielberg’s brand image is closely linked to his internal auteur status [. . .] .”4 By first forming Amblin Entertainment and later DreamWorks, Spielberg also created a marketing structure for films that were associated with but not by him. Both companies were closely linked to Spielberg himself through their logos—much as Welles’s work was always clearly identified by his voice. The Amblin logo directly invoked Spielberg’s signature film, E.T, and as Buckland...

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