Courtesy of The Record

Over 200 students gathered in the Davies Auditorium on Saturday night for a showing of “Citizen Kane 2,” a parody sequel produced by the Yale Record.

The short film — with a runtime of around twenty minutes — follows the grandson of Charles Foster Kane from the acclaimed 1941 film, “Citizen Kane.” In the sequel, the younger Kane is now a journalist for his grandfather’s company, The Inquirer, facing struggles with his career and his marriage. 

“We were nervous because as a satire, we expected people to laugh, but we didn’t know much of it would land,” said Fernando Cuello Garcia ’24, the director of the film. “But the screening was fantastic — you couldn’t hear half the movie because people were laughing. It was great to hear people really enjoy our work.”

According to lead actor Brennan Columbia-Walsh ’26, the film is a satire highlighting “the corruptive effect of power in an industry once glorified for its honesty, honesty which has now been reduced to avarice and nonsense; that is, the industry of tabloid journalism.”

The film was produced in conjunction with the Record’s “Lights, Camera, Action!” issue, said Record editor-in-chief Clio Rose ’24. The Record is Yale’s campus humor magazine.

“After Orson Welles died, we got the rights to [Citizen Kane],” Rose said. “We didn’t think he did a very good job with it, so we decided the story needed retelling. When we ran into funding problems, we worked with the Libertarian party of the Southern Connecticut River Valley.” 

Rose then clarified that the Record is a satire publication.

Cuello Garcia, who is not a member of the Record and who was brought in to direct the film, discussed the challenges of creating a film with a tight turnaround.

“We shot the whole thing over a weekend and edited it in very few hours,” he said. “We had a small crew of three people, and the only people on set with film experience were me, Aris [the director of photography] and Julia, [the producer]. But even though we were a tight crew, it was easy from a talent perspective — Brennan Columbia-Walsh and Chesped Chap, who were actors we worked with most closely, were fantastic.”

Rose told the News that the lead actor, Columbia-Walsh, “was entirely CGI.” In response, Columbia-Walsh confirmed that the film was real and so was he.

“What started as an analytical delve into the spectacle of old Hollywood turned into an extremely rewarding process, a lauded and beloved satire and an incredibly well-made film thanks to the professionalism and dedication of the film crew and the Yale Record,” he added. “It was a delight for all involved.”

Julia Arancio ’23, the film’s producer and a member of the Record, mentioned the novelty of creating a film with the Record, a publication primarily focused in magazine and print satire. 

“I was very excited to bring my background in film to the Yale Record,” she said. “It was my job to make sure that all the various groups of people involved came together.”

Arancio also lauded Cuello Garcia’s “impressive and nuanced directing, each take exceed[ing] the last in emotion and complexity.”

“As writers, we can only dream of having such a cast bring our words to life,” she said.

Arancio added that she believes the film will “revolutionize cinema — we are saving an art form that is bogged down with too many tired ideas.”

The movie is available on the Yale Record’s Youtube channel.

Correction 2/14: A previous version of this article misquoted Cuello Garcia. The article has been updated to reflect that the director of photography also had prior film experience. 

TOBIAS LIU
Tobias Liu covers the School of Music and the undergraduate music scene. He is a sophomore in Trumbull College from Johns Creek, Georgia majoring in Economics and Molecular Biology.