Orson Welles could not handle the truth. He was a devout communist and racial apologist (which, after the manner of sociopolitical continental drift, would make him a modern Republican), who was devastated by actually accidentally killing his communist revolutionary hero (who drowned trying to reenact his journey by raft in an earlier Latin American minor communist revolutionary achievement, for a film Welles was making on that selfsame commie). He spent most of his life in bewilderment and the confusion of a perpetual drunken haze (like Truman Capote and others who had served their single major purpose, and had become expendable if not disposable). Chimes at Midnight was basically his suicide note (that he never cared enough about himself to eventually fulfill). He was among the greatest of all clowns and stooges, even if he could not have seen that. Broken and utterly spent. Etcetera.