I don't know if this story is true or false, and I like it too much to care. When famous, mercurial film director Orson Welles was in a difficult moment in his career, he executed a neat little trick. Over the years he had developed a reputation for being unreliable -- his movies sometimes remained unfinished, his attentions would wander, and one on or two occasions his budget overruns were truly astronomical -- so by the late 1950's he found it almost impossible to get financial backing for his pictures.