There is an urban legend about the making of Touch of Evil.
It goes something like this.
Orson Welles experienced enormous success early. In 1938, at age twenty-one, he was part of the very successful radio broadcast War of the Worlds.
By age 24, he was given the keys to his own movie to direct and write. The result was Citizen Kane, often mentioned as the greatest film of all time.
By the late 1950s, Welles had developed a reputation as difficult. He spent time in Europe and was looking to restart his Hollywood career.
The urban legend is that Welles was in a producer’s office and asked the producer go into his pile of scripts and find him the worst script, from that script he’d create a great movie.
The result was Touch of Evil, based on Badge of Evil. It includes one of the greatest opening scenes ever.
Welles was not given final cut, and behind the scenes, editing was made which he vociferously disagreed with. The movie was many years later edited to Welles’ liking, after he died.
In that spirit, I am going to take a dreadful topic and attempt to make a great post out of it.
Let’s look at some wrongheaded laws in North Carolina.
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