Essay Problem

[SteveJ]

An essay of mine about the film director Orson Welles was recently featured in Sein und Werden magazine:

http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/3_4/page14.html

Since the essay's publication, I've been invited to submit a companion piece to a well-known web mag. My problem is this: I've recently read an outstanding Welles biography in which the author has summed up the very esssence of Welles's artistic 'vision' (in my opinion) and so, I now feel that I have nothing new or fundamentally insightful with which to furnish my second essay on the subject.

It's not as if I've a lack of material (there are thousands of entertaining Welles anecdotes, from both his professional and personal lives), or even that I lack some insight into the man...it's just that a superb biographer has preempted me, to the extent where I now I feel like writing to the magazine's editor to explain why I won't be submitting. But this feels so weak, despite my honesty in this matter...

Any advice, please?

[williemeikle]

You need a hook to hang your piece on Steve... something that will make it yours.

If I was doing it I'd be focusing on his love of trickery and illusion, and maybe comparing him other great showmen, possible with reference to Houdini or Chaplin.

Another tack I might tackle if I knew more about it was his guerrilla approach to film-making and how it was ahead of its time and now becoming more and more common in this digital age.

And thinking about that... how would Welles have embraced the digital age? How would he approach making Macbeth (say) in this day and age...

Just thinking off the top of my head. Hope it's useful