Cinema

In 1966, the actor Raphael Montañez Ortiz staged his one-man show Self-Destruction at London’s Mercury Theatre. Intermittently screaming “Mommy! Daddy!,” Ortiz tore the clothes from his body, doused himself with baby powder, lay down in a diaper, downed a few bottles of milk and began vomiting profusely. Plastic bags were then distributed to members of the audience, who were encouraged to follow suit. Montañez Ortiz’s performance gave the psychologist Arthur Janov the idea to create primal scream therapy, a psychiatric fad that once counted John Lennon and Yoko Ono among its followers. Janov’s newest initiate might as well be Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, Eternals), whose movie, Hamnet, based on the novel

Orson Welles (1915-85) considered the notion of posterity vulgar, but he knew that he’d be loved once he was dead. That death came suddenly, just over 40 years ago, on October 10, 1985. There was a poignancy to the way death took him – sitting at his typewriter after appearing on Merv Griffin’s talk show. By then, the co-writer, director and star of the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane (1941), hadn’t finished a film since 1973’s ignored but now quietly loved F for Fake. At the end of his life, he may have been better known as the guy in Paul Masson wine commercials than as a cinematic genius.

He was the greatest character actor of the past half-century

Something happens when you watch a movie alone together, laughing, crying and fidgeting in unison

Hollywood used to run on talent. Today, intellectual property is king