Back in Truth be told, I am not a supporter of bullfights and I don’t think I ever will, but I think that it is a good idea to at least go and see one in person at one point in your life. The experience will give you a fair amount of food for thought and you will then be able to judge by yourself, which constitutes the first step towards becoming your own judge.
Welles: My father and I made a tour of the grand boulevards of antique Europe. And when we were in Iberia I had the chance to face the bulls. At the knee of the great Manolete I took up the cape and sword - (he uses his napkin and knife to demonstrate) -- across from me stood a mammoth bull reputed to have gored a full seven men to a grisly demise! So -- with Manolete shouting encouragement I flourished . . . I flourished again . . . and the bull charged! Across the golden dust it came, thundering like the great minotaur of legend, closer, ever closer, its calamitous hooves pounding into the dirt, shaking the earth as I held the crimson eye of the bull with my own, defying it -- it was almost upon me and I flourished one last time! -- the monster swept past! - (he spins his napkin in the air and his knife is now gone, a magic trick) -- and my sword was gone -- buried in the bloody eye of the beast!
Hearst: You are evidently a man who knows a great deal about bull. Of all man's malignity -- of all his sadism -- none is more depraved than cruelty to animals.
Welles: In Spain the cruelty would be in denying the beast a fighting end.(excerpt from a dialogue between William Randolph Hearst
and Orson Welles, from the movie RKO281)
