Conrad Black Is Ready for His Closeup

By: Mark Fitzgerald When director Debbie Melnyk and producer Rick Caine began preparing their documentary film about Conrad Black, it was the autumn of 2002. They didn't know that, for their flamboyant subject, it was just before the fall.

"We thought that it would be sort of this story of a man with all these interests who buys newspapers all over the world and rises up and up," Melnyk said by phone from her Toronto office. "And then the story got very interesting."

The 86-minute documentary of that story, "Citizen Black," premieres Saturday, Aug. 28, at the World Film Festival in Toronto. If the title is a little, um, inevitable for a film about a newspaper baron, it fits nobody in the industry these days better than the Quebec-born publisher who renounced his Canadian citizenship so he could become The Lord Black of Crossharbour, PC (Can), OC, KCSG.

Black's outsize personality is exactly what inspired producer Caine to make the documentary, Melnyk said.

"Rick is American and here was this guy who was very flamboyant," she said. "Canada doesn't usually have many flamboyant newspaper publishers, and here was a guy just like Citizen Kane, with a lot of money that he likes to throw around, interested in politics and interested in steering things from behind the scenes."

The pre-release material on "Citizen Black" calls it an "eye-opening and entertaining portrait of a man who is emblematic of our times: the corporate charlatan and Fifth Amendment capitalist."

But in conversation, Melnyk sounds far more sympathetic to the tycoon pinched by money problems and shunned now by the famous friends he invited to be pampered members of his boards of directors.

"Here he was at the top of the world -- 'I'm the king of the world, Ma' type of thing -- and then there's just this spiraling down," she said. "It's tragic, really. He's a very intelligent and also a very charming man. He's not like Rupert Murdoch, where you think it's only about money, money, money. Conrad Black has a sense of elegance about him. He's almost a Renaissance man. He knows a lot about art and history and politics. And to see his fall be all about money, well, it is tragic."

Black at first wanted nothing to do with the documentary -- and for a scary moment, it looked like he would try to derail it, Melnyk said. A day before Melnyk and Caine were to fly to London, where they had scheduled dozens of interviews, they received a phone call from Black's personal assistant, sternly asking what this film was all about and why they were doing it and what were their intentions.

If Lord Black didn't like the answers, the assistant added, he would see that none of his friends or colleagues cooperated with the filmmakers.

"We assured him that we're very fair and balanced people -- though I guess I shouldn't be using that tagline," Melnyk said. Whatever they said must have worked, and they were given generous access, especially at Black's one-time pride and joy, the Daily Telegraph in London.

The story really started, though, the day they returned from England to New York City in May 2003. They went right from the airport to Hollinger Inc.'s annual meeting -- where restive stockholders inside were grilling Black, and restive reporters were stuck outside in the rain. In the confusion, Melnyk managed to be one of the journalists to actually get into the meeting. While Caine was stuck with their equipment outside, Melnyk shot footage of the tumultuous meeting with a mini-DVD camera she had in her purse.

"Citizen Black" shows a side of the press baron rarely seen, Melnyk said, thanks to three hours the filmmakers spent with Black as he signed copies of his Franklin Roosevelt biography at a Washington book fair. "He was very funny, and really trying to sell his book," she said. "I guess I'd never thought of him as a salesman."

In addition to Melnyk and Caine's Persistence of Vision Productions, the film is produced in association between the BBC, TVOntario, SBS-Australia, the Knowledge Network and SCN with the financial participation of Telefilm Canada and Rogers Documentary Fund. Among those featured in the film are Black's wife, Barbara Amiel-Black, Donald Trump, Richard Perle and David Frum.

A Black spokesman, Jim Badenhausen, said Black had not seen the film and had no comment on it. Melnyk said she's invited Black to the premier but hadn't heard back as of Friday. "I told him if he can come, I can scrounge up some tickets for him," she added.