For some movie buffs, showing Orson Welles' acclaimed film "Citizen Kane" at Hearst Castle is like having a screening of "Star Wars" on the Death Star.
Fifty film fans had the opportunity to watch Welles' 1941 groundbreaking film partly based on the late William Randolph Hearst at the media tycoon's own private theater at Hearst Castle, a concession the magnate would probably not have made.
The screening Friday with a price tag of $1,000 was part of the San Luis Obispo Film Festival. It included an exclusive tour of the estate, which is now a state park, and a reception on the mansion's patio overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It will benefit the nonprofit Friends of Hearst Castle, a preservation group.
Welles' cinema classic was shown before in the Hearst Castle's visitor center in 2010, but this was the first time the film was screened in the opulent, 50-seat theater at the hilltop estate.
Great-grandson Stephen Hearst, the vice president and general manager of Hearst Corp.'s Western Properties, gave his blessing to the festival to screen the film both times. He didn't attend, but said he saw it as an opportunity to show the differences between his great-grandfather and Charles Foster Kane, the character played by Welles.
"My logic back then was very simple, this was an opportunity to clarify the record, to draw the distinction between the fictional character of Charlie Kane and his gloomy Xanadu and WR Hearst and his beautiful architectural masterpiece at the top of the hill at San Simeon," Stephen Hearst said.
William Randolph Hearst sought to derail the movie, which portrayed the rise and fall of an obsessively controlling media mogul, but the film went on to win an Academy Award in 1942 for best original screenplay and is now considered one of the greatest American films. The film, a searing critique of a newspaper magnate, has many similarities to Hearst's life.
But Stephen Hearst said the screening, which was hosted by Ben Mankiewicz, the grandson of Herman Mankiewicz, who co-wrote the "Citizen Kane" screenplay, was an opportunity to draw the distinctions between William Randolph Hearst's life and Welles' fiction.
"I view it as clarifying the record, and showing what an extraordinary human being WR was and what he accomplished in his life," Stephen Hearst said.
California governor signs law to protect children from social media addiction
California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday.
California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform's algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children's access to social media, but they have faced challenges in court.
The California law will take effect in a state home to some of the largest technology companies in the world. Similar proposals have failed to pass in recent years, but Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law in 2022 barring online platforms from using users' personal information in ways that could harm children. It is part of a growing push in states across the country to try to address the impacts of social media on the well-being of children.
"Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children โ isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night," Newsom said in a statement. "With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits."
The law bans platforms from sending notifications without permission from parents to minors between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, when children are typically in school. The legislation also makes platforms set children's accounts to private by default.
Opponents of the legislation say it could inadvertently prevent adults from accessing content if they cannot verify their... Read More