MANK - Netflix biopic on Herman Mankiewicz

[Wellesnet]

The leftist publication, The Nation, weighs in on how
‘Mank’ Recovers the Radical Roots of ‘Citizen Kane’:
https://www.thenation.com/article/cultu ... wicz-kane/

Hollywood will never stop trying to decode Orson Welles:
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/1 ... es-rko-281

[Steve Paradis]

The leftist publication, The Nation, weighs in on how
‘Mank’ Recovers the Radical Roots of ‘Citizen Kane’:
https://www.thenation.com/article/cultu ... wicz-kane/

Except it fell hook line and sinker for Mankiewicz's political awareness.
But how accurate is that plot point beyond the fact that Sinclair, a former Socialist, captured the Democratic primary in a landslide and appeared headed for victory that November, leading a mass movement? In the film, Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) defends Sinclair five years before answering Welles’s call to write “Kane.” Mank refuses the MGM chief Louis B. Mayer’s order to hand over a donation to Sinclair’s Republican opponent. Then he tries to get Thalberg to kill the phony newsreels the producer had devised to destroy Sinclair.
It’s true that Mankiewicz played a key role in the 1934 campaign. That Mankiewicz, however, was not Herman but his brother, Joseph, also a screenwriter at MGM. There is no evidence that Herman took any stand for Sinclair, let alone a nearly heroic one, or even voted for him. His brother, on the other hand, wrote outrageous anti-Sinclair radio dramas, he admitted when I interviewed him for my book on the 1934 race, “The Campaign of the Century.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/movi ... Position=3

[Le Chiffre]

Yeah, the film takes some dramatic license for sure, but then, Fincher's THE SOCIAL NETWORK was accused of doing the same thing ten years ago. I liked that film better than MANK.

The Social Network is a masterpiece—does it matter that it bent the truth?:
https://www.avclub.com/the-social-netwo ... 1829175065

Of course, the real Zuckerberg must have some of the attributes the film depicts—he did create the most influential company of modern times and squeeze allies out of it, both of which require a certain amount of cold-bloodedness—which makes comparing the film’s depiction to the real person tricky. However, there’s no denying that other parts of The Social Network, just as central to its thesis about who Zuckerberg is, were more or less invented. (Aaron) Sorkin said the film is “absolutely nonfiction,” albeit “nonfiction about facts that are in dispute.” He also said, “I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling.”

[Steve Paradis]

Yeah, the film takes some dramatic license for sure, but then, Fincher's THE SOCIAL NETWORK was accused of doing the same thing ten years ago. I liked that film better than MANK.

I finally ran down a copy of An Officer and a Spy/J'Accuse. Aside from some telescoping of time, it seems to be very close to the factual record of the Dreyfus case: story, and almost as important, mise en scene --for once, a dirty fin de siècle Paris. It may be a case of the story telling itself, or a storyteller who doesn't need to improve on history to bring it to life.
https://youtu.be/HcRpwG6Nl8g

[Le Chiffre]

I've heard a lot about Polanski's film, but I don't think it's available in America yet, for well-known reasons. I don't know when it will be. Until then, I'll take your word for it that it's faithful to the real story. As an admirer of Polanski's films (not him), I look forward to seeing it sometime.

However, I don't think a film based on historical events needs to necessarily be accurate to be enjoyable. For example, I thought the endings of Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, and INGLORIOUS BASTERDS were hilarious, even though they both make deliberate mincemeat of the real (more tragic) stories. Film, like any other art, has the right to be as accurate as it wants, or to distort or speculate as much as it wants. I don't think art has any real responsibilities whatsoever, except to entertain.

Who's to say what's accurate anyway? As Gore Vidal once put it when newspapers were more of a force than they are now, "If newspapers are the first draft of history, then history is nothing more than the final fiction."

For me, the main problem with Fincher's MANK is not its inaccuracies, but that it's too long and dull. I actually appreciated being told about the importance of the 1934 California election, which I knew nothing about, even if the account is somewhat distorted. I disliked the film's swipes at Welles, but mainly because they had no real reason to be there.

[Steve Paradis]

I've heard a lot about Polanski's film, but I don't think it's available in America yet, for well-known reasons. I don't know when it will be. Until then, I'll take your word for it that it's faithful to the real story. As an admirer of Polanski's films (not him), I look forward to seeing it sometime.

The one I ran down on eBay is from Canada, and looks to be a Russian import. It's an all-region bluray in French and Russian, and with English subtitles. Plays well, even if the subtitles can't handle French accent marks very well.
Looks like this--oddly, the back cover is in English.

Yes, once again the talent is greater than the man. Get used to that if you love film. You can't buy or watch this in the US, but any music store or online service carries the full catalog of Michael Jackson.

[Wich2]

Yes, once again the talent is greater than the man. Get used to that if you love film.

...or for that matter any other art, or any other human endeavor. But ~

~ if you love humanity, as well as art, never put on blinders to that other side of the whole picture.

Honesty is not malice. And it is also - in the long run - for the best, for everyone.

Merriest,
- Craig

[Steve Paradis]

However, I don't think a film based on historical events needs to necessarily be accurate to be enjoyable. For example, I thought the endings of Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, and INGLORIOUS BASTERDS were hilarious, even though they both make deliberate mincemeat of the real (more tragic) stories. Film, like any other art, has the right to be as accurate as it wants, or to distort or speculate as much as it wants. I don't think art has any real responsibilities whatsoever, except to entertain..

I thought about that, and remembered The Bounty, from 1984. The previous versions of that story were simplistic hero vs. villain tales. This one went to the actual record. The mutiny scene is based on the court-martial account and most of the dialogue is verbatim. And it worked.
https://youtu.be/ZFM-OxDGrkg
In this version there were two heroes: Bligh, right but repulsive; Christian, wrong but wromantic. The tagline was Friends through hell; paradise made them enemies.
So maybe you could start with a naive young reporter/researcher/grad student after the origin story of Hollywood's greatest movie. They interview the cast and the crew, and they all have a different story to tell about who did what and when. In the end, our hero gives up, or sees the answer, but the audience sees it anyway: A talent on the way up meets a talent on the way down, and they wring from each other a story, the basis of a film whose success will make them enemies, but which will also be the film that makes them famous.
Two heroes.

Re Polanski: "My Dinner With Roman".
https://youtu.be/zFL8gl_49Rk

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks for the Polanski link. Interesting program. I didn't know he had done AMADEUS on the stage, both directing and playing Mozart. I thought of Welles when Polanski describes the theme of the play as being how mediocrity is always trying to persecute genius, mainly out of jealousy.

Your Kane idea sounds like it might make a good movie. Get to work on that screenplay!

[RayKelly]

NYT: The two narrative lines in “Mank” never make coherent, interesting sense, no matter how Fincher jams them together. The big news during Herman’s MGM years is the industry’s (and Hearst’s) propagandistic drive to torpedo the writer Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California. The real Herman Mankiewicz doesn’t seem to have had much of anything to do with this chapter in American cinema, but Hollywood has rarely let fact get in the way of a juicy story and “Mank” fully commits to its chronicle of events. But it doesn’t just stop there: It tethers Mankiewicz’s nonexistent role in this disinformation campaign to his role in “Citizen Kane,” a fascinatingly self-serving flex.

There are all sorts of ways to look at "'Mank" — as a vindication of Mankiewicz, as an assault on Welles. It’s both, it’s neither. In truth, the two characters are fundamentally in service to a movie that, in its broadest strokes, enshrines its own loathing of the industry, partly through its strained relationship to the truth.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/movies/david-fincher.html

[NoFake]

This just in:

https://www.92y.org/archives/mank?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=Email_Talks_011921&utm_campaign=Talks011921&mcSID=731949

[Steve Paradis]

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts ... mankiewicz
The Man in the Wings: David Fincher on the Shadowy Life of Herman Mankiewicz By ​Sydney Ladensohn Stern JAN 14, 2021

Friendly interview of Fincher by the biographer of the Mankiewicz brothers.
Already visited . . .

[NoFake]

Gary Oldman will be chatting with Entertainment Weekly’s Leah Greenblatt on the 92nd Street Y website tomorrow at 8 p.m. EST:

https://www.92y.org/archives/mank?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=Email_Talks_012621&utm_campaign=Talks012621&mcSID=731949

[Wellesnet]

Netflix's 'Mank' leads Golden Globes contenders with six nominations:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertai ... 359187001/

[RayKelly]

Dallas Video Fest brought Joseph McBride ("What Ever Happened to Orson Welles") and Thomas Schatz ("The Genius of the System") together to discuss "Mank."
https://vimeo.com/508887478