The Cat’s Meow

The Cat’s Meow is based on one of the many rumours that circulated in the heyday of the silent film in Hollywood. The young producer Thomas Ince died in 1924 soon after celebrating his birthday on the yacht of William Randolph Hearst. It was inconceivable that the dedicated inventor of what was to be known as the studio system could die like that. One of the persistant stories that soon emerged was that Ince had been killed on the boat and that the powerful media magnate Hearst (on whom Orson Welles based his Citizen Kane) managed to cover up the real course of events. Steven Peros wrote a play based on what allegedly happened. Bogdanovich in turn used that play as basis for this film about the dark side of the Hollywood elite bathed in wealth. Apart from Hearst and Ince, there are many illustrious and less illustrious guests on the party boat, including Charlie Chaplin and the wouldbe filmstar and Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies (a sparkling role by Kirsten Dunst).Bogdanovich has a great reputation as a film lover. His The Last Picture Show, one of the most beautiful films of the seventies, seranaded the end of the small town cinema and he published interviews with the true greats of the history of cinema. In Henry Jaglum’s Film Festival of Cannes, also being screened at the festival, he appears in a cameo role.