Mirrors of Kane continues w/ "Raymond" chapter (video)

Watch Mirrors of Kane Chapter 6 on YouTube:

Raymond the butler's flashback is brief and to the point, a single scene offering a key to Kane's dying words. Nonetheless, the sequence contains riches worth exploring in this chapter devoted to the final narrator, contrasting with earlier Thatcher and Susan material and suggesting a Xanadu similar to the "human zoo" in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Raymond's constant obsession with what everything is worth pays off in the end when he casually and cluelessly orders the destruction of the clue to the mystery he and everyone else have been pondering.

This chapter is also available on Vimeo:

Watch the trailer and earlier chapters: Meeting Kane, Thatcher, Bernstein, Leland, and Susan. The whole series is available all together in a YouTube playlist (the series is based on this essay).

Mirrors of Kane continues w/ "Susan" chapter (video)

Watch Mirrors of Kane Chapter 5 on YouTube:

My summer of Kane continues with the only female narrator of Kane's story - although at one point in pre-production, the screenwriters considered having his first wife share her perspective before deciding to kill her off earlier in life. Susan was in many ways the closest person to Kane, yet she also feels among the furthest away: very much his victim and too busy struggling for survival in his shadow to remember him as much else than a fairy tale monster keeping her locked up. (Though these details don't make it into the video, when we approach the Rosebud sled atop a pile of possessions in the film's finale, a nearby box contains a toy monkey holding tightly to the doll we already saw in Susan's room; indeed, when Kane seems most like Kong terrorizing Fay Wray - during the tropical picnic before Susan decides to leave him - the background "jungle" projection happens to include footage from fellow RKO feature Son of Kong, complete with pterodactyls.)

This chapter is also available on Vimeo:

Watch the trailer and earlier chapters: Meeting Kane, Thatcher, Bernstein, and Leland (the series is based on this essay). The whole series is available all together in a YouTube playlist.

Mirrors of Kane continues w/ "Leland" chapter (video)

Watch Mirrors of Kane Chapter 4 on YouTube:

Jedediah Leland is Kane's close friend and eventually his bitter enemy. Writing about the narrators of Kane's life in an essay fifteen years ago, I had a very jaundiced view of Leland's own jaundiced view; at this point, for whatever reason, I am a bit more sympathetic even as I still think his sense of betrayal says as much about him as Kane. Leland's section of the movie is one of the most unusual and fascinating. These flashbacks, which hardly feature Leland at all, contain much of the most essential material, extend far longer than other flashbacks, and offer an ambivalent view of the protagonist in which the narrator's own open hostility in his spoken dialogue contrasts with a surprisingly nuanced portrait of the subject onscreen.

This chapter is also available on Vimeo:

Watch the trailer and earlier chapters: Meeting Kane, Thatcher, and Bernstein (the series is based on this essay). The whole series is available all together in a YouTube playlist.

Citizen Kane at 85 (video): Returning to conclude Mirrors of Kane this summer, beginning w/ "Bernstein" chapter (+ announcements on YouTube & podcasts including Lost in Twin Peaks)

Ten years ago - exactly, to the day - I celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of Citizen Kane by announcing a video essay series on the movie, focused around the five narrators of Charles Foster Kane's story. I did not expect a decade to pass before I finally wrapped this project up, but here we are. After releasing a first chapter in 2016 and a second chapter in 2021, I spent much of the past winter editing the remaining chapters so that they're all ready to share this summer. I'll publish one a month starting with a chapter devoted to Bernstein, Kane's loyal business manager who presents a rosier picture of the young man than others will offer of Kane at different stages of his life.

Watch Mirrors of Kane Chapter 3 on YouTube:

This chapter is also available on Vimeo:

Additionally, I've published an update on my mostly-dormant Lost in the Movies podcast feed promoting this series:

And last week I offered a YouTube announcement of this series which included some other updates on my work:

Watch the trailer and earlier chapters: Meeting Kane and Thatcher. The whole series is available all together in a YouTube playlist (the series is based on this essay).

Finally, although unrelated, this is the first opportunity to share an announcement I published on the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast feed about resuming work on that project:

Spring 2026 Project Update: Mirrors of Kane complete, Journey Through Twin Peaks "Americana" chapter underway (+ new Patreon welcome video)

Every turn-of-the-season (this one is publishing at the exact minute of the vernal equinox), I'm offering readers of this website an update on my four major unfinished projects: the Journey Through Twin Peaks video series (begun in 2014), the written TWIN PEAKS Character Series (begun in 2016), the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast (begun in 2018), and the Mirrors of Kane video series (begun in 2016 but based on an essay written in 2011). In December, I stopped offering exclusive podcasts and reviews on Patreon so that I could focus as much attention as possible as these long-term goals, and I'm pleased to announce that progress has been made. I've entirely concluded my work on the Mirrors of Kane series; new chapters will be published on YouTube and Vimeo on Citizen Kane's eighty-fifth anniversary, May 1. I'm also chipping away at a particularly complex Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter on Twin Peaks' connections to American history and iconography. This should be finished within a week or two.

After that, I will focus on completing the public presentation of Lost in Twin Peaks' second season, followed by the top nine entries (based on screentime) for the TWIN PEAKS Character Series. I hope to wait until after those two projects are complete to focus exclusively on Journey Through Twin Peaks, but depending how bogged down I get on Lost in Twin Peaks this summer I may pause that work to research, outline, and write the narration for remaining Journey chapters. We'll see how it goes.

Here is a status update with more details, as well as a reminder of what's been published or finished behind-the-scenes, for each project (more specific daily progress can be tracked on this constantly updated page):

December 2025 Patreon round-up: 2025 American Generations Reflections + Advanced Script for Mirrors of Kane narration & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast

Following last year's tradition, even though there is a bonus $5/month tier reward I could have featured in the top image, I'm going instead with the $1/month advance - in this case, a screenshot of Susan Alexander Kane overwhelmed by the opera house lights, linked to the narration script for an upcoming video about her. As for the higher tier, in addition to the Twin Peaks Conversations episode on Jane Austen and David Lynch (covered in a separate cross-post earlier this month), I did write a reflection on various generations in the year 2025 (following responses to 2023 and 2024), which was published this morning. Perhaps at some point in upcoming years I will highlight an image associated with that recurring essay project but for now I'll stick with the world of fictional New Yorker Charles Foster Kane rather than real, contemporary New Yorkers Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump (who is, like Kane, both a New Yorker and a Floridian - he also once cited Kane as his favorite film in this bizarre analysis).

This month wraps up my exclusive rewards on the $5/month tier - from now on, I will offer advances on both tiers. Cross-posts will appear on this site less frequently than before (probably alongside project updates at the end of each season), usually to highlight written pieces like a TWIN PEAKS Character Series entry or script for another video essay narration. In 2026, my entire focus will be on wrapping up four projects: Mirrors of Kane, Lost in Twin Peaks, the TWIN PEAKS Character Series, and Journey Through Twin Peaks.

What are the December rewards?

November 2025 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #12: The Damned + Advanced Script for Mirrors of Kane narration (w/ Majority Report call-in opposing Chris Pappas)

First suggested by a patron following my episode on The Zone of Interest last year, Luchino Visconti's 1969 melodrama The Damned - set during the rise of dictatorship in thirties Germany - provides a suitably apocalyptic conclusion (for now, at least) to my two-year $5/month tier Films in Focus podcast. Based on patron polls conducted every couple months, I recorded a dozen episodes on films which often followed troubled protagonists trying to figure out themselves, and the world, against a backdrop of socially fraught circumstances (call this "the Fire Walk With Me effect"). Of course, to label Martin von Essenbeck (Helmut Berger) a "protagonist" stretches may associations with that term. He certainly is no hero; aside a few key exceptions like the put-upon anti-Nazi couple of Herbert (Umberto Orsi) and Elizabeth Thallmann (Charlotte Rampling), the film is almost entirely stocked with schemers, cowards, and outright fascists, and yet Martin still emerges as perhaps the worst of them all. Nor does he fit our usual conception of an active central figure; although his illicit desires and self-indulgent actions drive the narrative, it is other characters who manipulate him into or out of the place that they want him. Having inherited his grandfather Joachim's (Albrecht Schoenhals') shares of the family's steelworks following a staged assassination, Martin finds himself in a three-way tug of war. This involves his conniving mother Sophie (Ingrid Thulin) and her lover Friedrich Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde) who want Martin to serve as an impotent figurehead for their ambitions; his cousin once removed Konstantin (Reinhard Kolldehorf), prominent in the SA paramilitary division of the Nazi Party, who wants to retain his executive control by sidelining Martin completely; and his other cousin once removed, the SS officer Aschenbach (Helmut Griem), who maneuvers various actors in a game of thrones which could tighten the Party's grip on this important industrial firm while also offering Martin a source of ego-stroking pride as well as an outlet for feverish, fetishistic revenge.

This is the plot of The Damned; however, the impression it creates has as much to do with the saturated, operatic quality of its visual flourishes and the darkness of its sexual psychology as with the intricacy of its narrative mechanics. This is especially true during the film's idiosyncratic dramatic centerpiece, a re-creation of "The Night of Long Knives" in which the once-central SA stormtroopers were betrayed by Hitler and slaughtered en masse by the SS and Gestapo amidst a drunken orgy at a country resort. Around here, the film's second half tips into a more intense, brooding, hot-blooded, and exaggerated pitch reminiscent of other Visconti films of the time. Indeed, this discussion encouraged me to dip back into my own Visconti mini-retrospective of sixteen years ago, when I reviewed The Leopard, Rocco and His Brothers, and Ludwig after big-screen viewings in Boston - The Damned very much incorporates elements of all three from its vision of a patriarch presiding over a dying world to its dysfunctional family portrait driven by jealous rivalry to its vision of decadent depravity in the midst of a ruling class' decline.

I'm also re-visiting past work - while setting up a future project - for the sake of the $1/month reward, offering another narration script for the upcoming Mirrors of Kane video series in a continuation of last month's trend. After next month's Twin Peaks Conversations episode, exclusives will be put aside in favor of advances for both tiers, while I work on finally finishing the four big projects behind the scenes in 2026: Mirrors of Kane, and Lost in Twin Peaks, the TWIN PEAKS Character Series, and Journey Through Twin Peaks.

What are the November rewards?

belated October 2025 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Conversation on Andor w/ Riley MacDonald + Advanced Script for Mirrors of Kane narration

Due to other Patreon commitments and the length of time this took to transcribe, my discussion with Riley MacDonald about the Disney Plus Star Wars series Andor (whose second season ended in May) has been a long time coming. It took nearly six months to slot in as a $5/month tier reward. Nonetheless, Andor is also the most recent film or television project that I've covered online, and the only one from this current year. While very much a TV show - at least within the widespread understanding that streaming services fall into the same broad category as the old networks and cable stations - Andor's roots are firmly cinematic. Not only does the series and its world exist in the once-exclusively-movie-based Star Wars universe created by George Lucas in 1977, Andor also leads even more directly into the events of the 2016 Rogue One, itself a prequel to the first Star Wars. Directed by Gareth Edwards and written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy (from a story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta), Rogue One is a stew emerging from different collaborators. That said, Michael Clayton writer/director Gilroy receives particular acclaim for polishing the film's script to sharpen its plot and characters. Ironically, given the history of both mediums, Gilroy emerges as a more singular auteur on Andor, as a showrunner supervising every detail and providing the overall organization despite not directing any particular episode. Choosing a character who was not even the central lead of Rogue One as its protagonist, Andor was not as highly anticipated as other Star Wars shows when it debuted in 2022 but quickly earned astonished and rapturous praise for its gritty realism - not a term anyone would usually associate with the space opera franchise. Essentially a spy thriller grounded in a thoughtful study of how revolutions have often developed throughout (Earthly) history, Andor became particularly popular on an American left adrift after Bernie Sanders' failed presidential campaigns. With its second season arriving mere months after the inauguration of Donald Trump's second, and already far more radically authoritarian, administration, this aspect of the show's popularity only grew.

Introducing us to Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as a scrappy criminal on the proudly communitarian and industrial planet Ferrix, Andor charts Cassian's journey across two seasons within the orbit of merciless, dedicated spymaster Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), alongside fellow Rebels like Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau), and Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay). Their stories are cross-cut with the double life of Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly), the growing isolation of the fervent Saw Guerrera (Forest Whitaker), and the efforts of Imperial intelligence officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and the fellow-traveling bureaucrat Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) to track them all down. The highlight of the first season may be an extended foray onto the prison planet Narkina-5, which crystallizes Cassian's political awakening and galvanizes a movement. In the second season, the show's formerly loose three-episode arc organization becomes ironclad, with each trio representing a different year in the approach toward Rogue One's (and the first Star Wars') drama. Familiar characters like the Death Star's supervisor Orson Krennick (Ben Mendelsohn) merge with Andor's ensemble as we become re-acquainted with familiar worlds like Yavin as it develops from untamed wilderness to bustling Rebel base. The centerpiece of this season is probably the ruthlessly planned and executed Ghorman Massacre, in which a once-venerated people are targeted for genocide on the pretext of terrorism, but actually because their resources are needed to complete a superweapon.

Joining me to discuss Andor for the first time since he appeared on my podcast covering The Lighthouse is my cousin Riley MacDonald. In this case, I've transcribed and edited our sprawling, initially four-hour dialogue into text form (as I did with an earlier MacDonald conversation, in this case with his brother Tyler to discuss Killers of the Flower Moon). Riley's astute political insight and unique experiences feed into his analysis of Andor as not only a work of art and entertainment but also an acute exploration of political struggle with constants across time and (literal) space, even when located in a galaxy far, far away. If you want to check out many other pieces devoted to that galaxy, all of my Star Wars-labeled posts including this one are gathered here (and also listed at the end of the link below).

Meanwhile, for all tiers, I'm also previewing text of my narration for an upcoming video essay - the first chapter since 2021 in my long-dormant Mirrors of Kane video series. I intend to finally finish this project, hopefully alongside several others, next year for Citizen Kane's eighty-fifth birthday...a decade after I offered the first chapter on its seventy-fifth. The Andor conversation isn't the only thing I've been working on that takes some time to put together...

What are the exclusive October rewards?

Citizen Kane at 80 (video): Returning to Mirrors of Kane series w/ "Thatcher" chapter

Five years ago, I kicked off a brand new video series to honor Citizen Kane's seventy-fifth anniversary. However, the first video hit during a lull on my site and a busy time in my offline life and I let the project die...or rather, go to sleep. I'm not fully resurrecting it yet - that will wait until I'm much further along on my new "Path back to Journey Through Twin Peaks" schedule - but I wanted to do something for the film's eightieth anniversary this month (how time flies!) so here we are. It helps that the chapter next in line turned out to be much simpler than the first, an introduction which incorporated many different approaches and pieces of media. Chapter 2 focuses on the film's first "narrator," Walter P. Thatcher, Kane's guardian and constant foil. Thatcher's sequence is unique in several ways, encompassing Kane's entire life rather than a single period, conveyed through a written memoir rather than a direct interview with the reporter character, and keeping Kane at more of a distance than the later flashbacks. The challenges here are different from that expansive intro, as I illustrate or visually expand upon various concepts using limited footage from the relatively brief Thatcher material. I also dip into the documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane in order to discuss the differences between William Randolph Hearst and Charles Foster Kane (and the similarities between Kane and Orson Welles).

The chapter is also available on Vimeo:

And if you want to watch the whole series thus far, including the trailer, check out my YouTube playlist.

Mirrors of Kane: Citizen Kane video series, chapter 1: "Meeting Kane" (Introductions)

Earlier in the month, on Orson Welles' 101st birthday, Fandor Keyframe posted "Meeting Kane", the first chapter in my Mirrors of Kane video essay series. (update: Fandor has since made this video private and I have re-located it to my personal channel - see below.) "Meeting Kane" is available on both Vimeo and YouTube (where it has joined a new Mirrors of Kane playlist to keep track of the series). Both are embedded below.

Here is the intro I wrote for Fandor

MIRRORS OF KANE
CHAPTER ONE: MEETING KANE

Today, CITIZEN KANE turns seventy-five. That's five years older than writer/director/star Orson Welles when he passed away, and roughly three years younger than Charles Foster Kane himself when he whispered his final "Rosebud". Like those septuagenarians, the film remains celebrated, but - also like them - it may be misunderstood. The "greatest film of all time" is placed on a lofty pedestal that commands distanced respect and resentment, rather than affection. Even its greatest admirers often emphasize the film's technical achievements and immense influence over any emotional resonance. Most infamously, KANE has been called "a shallow masterpiece" (Pauline Kael) and "a labyrinth without a center" (Jorge Luis Borges) - and much discussion surrounding the movie, however admiring, tends to concur with that judgment.

MIRRORS OF KANE, my first multi-part video series since JOURNEY THROUGH TWIN PEAKS, serves two, related purposes. First, the following chapters will focus in turn on each of the film's five "narrators", the characters who trigger the film's flashback structure. Often dismissed as convenient storytelling devices, these characters actually reveal as much about themselves as Kane. These revelations are both dramatic and stylistic, lending each section of the movie a distinct flavor. Second, using these individuals as touchstones, this series will emphasize the power of the film's relationships, between characters and also between different parts of the film (including CITIZEN KANE's quasi-"ring" composition in which the second half mirrors and reverses the first). Throughout this exploration I will engage with the work of critics with whom I mostly align (Laura Mulvey) and respectfully diverge (Roger Ebert), assembling a chorus of voices as diverse as the film's own.

"Chapter One: Meeting Kane" serves as a concise, playful, and personal introduction to this mission. I pose questions that will be addressed in upcoming chapters, challenge the "cold"/"shallow"/"purely technical" interpretation of the film, and recall my own excited initiation into CITIZEN KANE's world (including its bizarro-world similiarity to Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE). This kicks off not only a series of video essays, with new entries to appear regularly over the next few months, but also, hopefully, a conversation. Where does YOUR view of Citizen Kane fall? How did YOU first discover the movie? What have YOU noticed on repeat viewings? With its panoply of conflicting points of view, maverick approach to filmmaking, and skeptical take on elite institutions, CITIZEN KANE remains a democratic masterpiece, a fact worth celebrating off and onscreen. To take part, visit me on YouTube, Vimeo, or my site Lost in the Movies, where I will be linking to new entries throughout May and June.

To be continued...

Update 2021: chapter two was finally published 

Citizen Kane at 75: a new video essay series

Today, for the 75th anniversary of Citizen Kane, I am announcing Mirrors of Kane. This brand new video series is my first since Journey Through Twin Peaks concluded a year and a half ago. The first chapter, which should appear in the next few weeks, will debut on Fandor Keyframe, while the rest will be hosted on my personal YouTube/Vimeo channels. The series will be structured around the five "narrators" of the film, who inspire its flashback structure: Walter Parks Thatcher, Mr. Bernstein, Jedediah Leland, Susan Alexander Kane, and Raymond the butler. It's based on an essay I wrote in 2011 but will also expand the scope of the analysis by, in the final chapter, digging into the structure of the film including its striking efficiency as a "ring composition" (written about by Mike Klimo with regards to the Star Wars saga). It will also incorporate criticism of the film that I do and don't agree with - I'm really looking forward to engaging with this material visually, something I've already begun with the first chapter which is finished and awaiting its premiere on Fandor.

Citizen Kane at 75 (trailer)

And of course, I've also created the above trailer, which is available on YouTube and Vimeo. If you like it, please share - your word of mouth will be the main way people discover this series and join the conversation. Most importantly, I want to highlight the human pulse of Citizen Kane, a film that is too often celebrated as a purely technical achievement. As such, it can seem intimidating and/or alienating to many viewers, something to admire from a distance rather than invest themselves in emotionally. As a narrative analysis, these videos will pay attention to the subtle ways character, camera, and cutting intertwine to tell a series of "short stories" about Kane (and also about the storytellers themselves) which coalesce to form a rich, intricate tapestry.

Update: I originally planned to continue the series through the spring and early summer and included a schedule/directory here to link all of them. However, after Chapter 1 the project was postponed so the directory will reappear when the other videos are ready.

Update 2021: Chapter 2 was finally published although other the rest will wait until 2022 (update 2025: or, apparently, well beyond that)...

Vimeo embed: