…that struck at least one observer as “a bit of a jumble…a collection of fragments that leap around in time like Mexican jumping beans.”
This is exactly and precisely what raw inspiration looks, feels, smells and tastes like. It’s the 1% that Thomas Alva Edison spoke of. The hard work — the “perspiration” — is pulling all the fragments together and giving them some kind of shape, direction and poignancy. And even, if the spirit is upon you, a feeling for the profound.
To go by trailers for David Fincher’s upcoming film, the exceptional achievement of Herman J. Mankiewicz‘s script for Citizen Kane (with liberal flavoring and augmentation by Orson Welles) is that he managed to write it while half in the bag, and often completely soused, shitfaced, three sheets to the wind, etc.
