Orson Welles' career: bad luck or witchdoctor's curse?

Stumbled across this a couple of days ago:

This is a story I've heard vague tell of before, but Geoffrey McNab does an excellent job of mapping it out in The Independent this weekend. It's 1942, and Orson Welles in in Brazil, working on the documentary, It's All True. First, one of the subjects of the documentary drowns. Meanwhile, Orson's got enemies back in Hollywood; some of them are conspiring to pull the funding on his documentary, whilst others are merely butchering The Magnificent Ambersons in ostensible response to a single disasterous preview screening. The money finally runs out before Welles can finish filming, and when he tells this to a witch doctor who is supposed to appear on camera, the witch doctor pierces a copy of the script with a steel needle strung with red thread – supposedly putting a curse on the director that would last until his death in 1985.

Anyone else remember those Paul Masson commercials? Or for the electronic boardgame 'Dark Tower'? I'm voting for curse.