MANK - Netflix biopic on Herman Mankiewicz

[Le Chiffre]

The makeup tests were October 1939 -- several months before Victorville.

Right. HEART OF DARKNESS collapsed in December, 1939, and Houseman/Mank started the Kane screenplay around February 1940. So the movie has them getting a call from Welles about the makeup tests for HOD, just as they're settling into Victorville (?).

Atcolomb wrote:
Finished watching Mank and i thought it was good. Great cinematography and the acting was fine. It does help if you know your Hollywood history. You do get the impression at the end that Mank did all the work on Citizen Kane which is not the case.

There is one line in the film where Mank and Welles are talking on the phone, and Welles, after offering compliments on the draft, says that he's going to run the whole thing through his typewriter. Mank replies, sarcastically, "The whole thing? Thank you."

[Wellesnet]

From Twitter:
"one last thing about mank & then i'm done. am i crazy or did a 1930 flashback scene reference frankenstein & the wolf man as films that already existed??? i'm convinced i'm missing something & that i was mistaken somehow about it"

That's something a 20-second Google search would have caught. "The Wolfman" didn't come out until 1941.

[Terry]

I made it as far as Mankiewicz hazily dictating the News on the March copy which John Houseman wrote, which is about five minutes (either Howard Koch or Richard Wilson also credited Houseman with the news copy for the War of the Worlds broadcast.) I could barely understand a word Gary Oldman was slurring. Why was Orson capering about in his black trilby and cape from Great Mysteries/F for Fake in 1940 and still wearing the Raja of Rukh's beard from the previous year's staging of The Green Goddess? Was he doing promotion for The Shadow, since he hadn't appeared on the show since 1938? I'll take the credit-stealing Welles of Marcy Kahan's Victorville over this mess. Hard pass.

[mido505]

Nice link to Wellesnet article by Ray Kelly here: https://thefilmstage.com/mank-review-da ... d-history/ Paragraph that begins "So let’s talk about Orson Welles. Word’s circulated that some version of Jack Fincher’s screenplay stepped in line with Pauline Kael’s “Raising Kane,” a protracted argument that Welles had siphoned creative credit owed to Mankiewicz’s brilliance."

[atcolomb]

One problem i did have watching it was the sound which sounded like a echo chamber. I viewed the movie thru the tv app and was forced to use my tv speakers instead of my soundbar and my tv speakers are not the best. Also at times i could not understand what Gary Oldman was saying so about 20 minutes into it i switched on the close captioning.

[MartynH]

I was telling a woman who lives by me about this film because she likes Gary Oldman. And because of her it occurred to me that the majority, I think, who see this film are not going to have a scooby do (clue) about the 'credit' question. This is why even before the mistakes in the film are taken into account it won't harm Welles's reputation that much. Although, it probably won't stop Hollywood drooling over it come Oscar time.

[Le Chiffre]

I'll take the credit-stealing Welles of Marcy Kahan's Victorville over this mess. Hard pass.

Ah Victorville, haven't heard that in awhile. Good program; I'll have to give it another listen in light of the new film. Apparently it' s not at the BBC site right now, maybe it will come back. I would hope BBC might be thinking the same thing. IIRC, David Ogden Stiers played Houseman in that one.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bff1

*

Whatever one's opinion of the new film, it's nice to see so many interesting articles and discussion online about it. Here's another good article from NYT:
Who Wrote ‘Citizen Kane’? It’s No Mystery by Ben Kenigsburg
The Netflix drama “Mank” suggests that Herman J. Mankiewicz, credited along with Orson Welles, primarily wrote the script. But that has long been debunked by scholars.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/movi ... B9jqHcySsg

For Welles scholars, the idea that Mankiewicz alone wrote “Citizen Kane” is an old falsehood, and its continued repetition may testify to the staying power of “Citizen Kane.”

The critic Andrew Sarris, in an April 1971 retort to Kael’s essay, noted that even if Mankiewicz had written every word, Welles was no less the auteur of “Citizen Kane” than he was of his 1942 adaptation of “The Magnificent Ambersons,” whose “best lines and scenes were written by Booth Tarkington.”

While Urbanski said that Kael’s argument had been discredited by historians, he added: “You could equally say that our film is 100 percent accurate if, and here’s the if, you accept that you’re looking at it through Herman Mankiewicz’s alcoholic perspective, because that changes everything.” Mankiewicz, he said, was the “motor” of a movie that functions on several layers.

...and a good one from Variety:
Who Wrote ‘Citizen Kane’? It’s a Mystery Even if You Know the Answer
By Owen Gleiberman
https://variety.com/2020/film/columns/w ... 234841438/

In fact, the answers to all this were nailed down long ago, by Robert L. Carringer in his 1978 article “The Scripts of Citizen Kane” (which became absorbed into his riveting book “The Making of Citizen Kane,” published in 1985) and by sources like Peter Bogdanovich in his eye-opening 1972 Esquire magazine piece “The Kane Mutiny.” Both offer definitive evidence that Welles was intimately involved in the writing of “Citizen Kane.” And both serve as a rebuke to the writer who first lit the controversy on fire: Pauline Kael, the great film critic — to me, she’ll always be the greatest film critic — who in her 50,000-word essay “Raising Kane,” originally published in The New Yorker in 1971, made a rare fatal blunder by fudging facts and systematically overstating Mankiewicz’s contribution to the movie.

In other words…done and done. Case closed. End of controversy.

But not really. Because even once you accept that Orson Welles did deserve the co-screenplay credit for “Citizen Kane,” there’s a question that lingers, and it’s the mystery that I think Kael tried (unsuccessfully) to poke at. Kael’s essay, among other things, was a kind of backhanded meditation on the inner meaning of what a screenplay is. And the reason that question creates such an endless conundrum when we think of “Citizen Kane” is that “Kane” was the Hollywood movie that changed the answer to it.

[Wellesnet]

Indiwire reports on Mank's poor showing on Netflix:

The one major film to debut, timed to the awards season, failed to gain traction.

“Mank,” David Fincher’s Netflix biopic of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, is considered a leading Oscar contender but debuted to very little initial response. Available on Friday, it showed up at #10 Saturday (the first day it could chart), and has not reappeared since. The black-and-white film starring Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried didn’t gain the attention of other high-profile originals like “Da 5 Bloods,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” and “Hillbilly Elegy,” all of which debuted at first or second. Bumping “Mank” from 10th place was the 2000 Adam Sandler comedy “Little Nicky.”

[Roger Ryan]

... HEART OF DARKNESS collapsed in December, 1939, and Houseman/Mank started the Kane screenplay around February 1940. So the movie has them getting a call from Welles about the makeup tests for HOD, just as they're settling into Victorville (?).

I am very much in agreement with your overall assessment of Mank upthread, "Le Chiffre".

Knowing that the film is taking a lot a liberties with historical accuracy (and, apparently, Mankiewicz had little concern regarding the 1934 California gubernatorial race, which is the most interesting and important aspect of the story), I'm not too surprised that the chronology of Welles' unrealized RKO film projects would be ignored. However, here is where I believe Mank could have had a better and more dramatic set-up if it stuck closer to the truth.

My pitch: an opening scene where Welles meets with Mankiewicz where it is established that there is an urgency to put something before the cameras after two initial projects have fallen through. Welles wants to do an original story about a powerful man seen from multiple perspectives and Mankiewicz reveals he has the perfect model. Mankiewicz will have to write a first draft quickly, but for no screenplay credit. The opening film credits roll as Mankiewicz is driven to Victorville.

With this opening, the viewer will be introduced to the idea that Mankiewicz has some knowledge of Hearst and is using him as a model for the screenplay he's writing. As it is, the Hearst connection to American comes very late in Mank; if the viewer doesn't already know that Hearst was an inspiration for Kane, this aspect of the story becomes unnecessarily diffused. Also, by establishing that Mankiewicz has agreed to write the screenplay for no credit at the beginning, it makes the climatic scene between Welles and Mankiewicz more dynamic.

I also wasn't keen on the sentimental closing moment of Rita Alexander revealing her husband has survived. Since Mank has already established a flashback structure, I would have closed the film by going back to the last time Mankiewicz was at San Simeon with the drunken "Quixote story pitch" and Hearst's chilling "organ grinder's monkey" anecdote.

[tonyw]

Excellent response, as always, Roger.

Here is an entry from today's Shadowplay, accompanied by mostly perceptive comments from the site's key contributors.

https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2020/12/0 ... ent-405490

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks Tony. Good to see Shadowplay weighing in.

My pitch: an opening scene where Welles meets with Mankiewicz where it is established that there is an urgency to put something before the cameras after two initial projects have fallen through. Welles wants to do an original story about a powerful man seen from multiple perspectives and Mankiewicz reveals he has the perfect model. Mankiewicz will have to write a first draft quickly, but for no screenplay credit. The opening film credits roll as Mankiewicz is driven to Victorville.

Yes, that sense of urgency is what's missing, or not established clearly enough. The screenplay seems to assume that anyone watching has seen Kane and is already familiar with the background and the writing credit controversy. I agree that Mank's agreeing to write for no credit would have been better to establish at the beginning since it plays such an important part at the end.

Was it Mankiewicz who proposed Hearst? I don't recall that ever being determined for sure in any Welles interviews I've read. If it wasn't ever asked of Welles, it should have been.

[MartynH]

I recall Welles saying on the BBC Arena interview of 1982 that one of the first big figures suggested was Howard Hughes - presumably when the film was called American. However, Welles then said 'I would have been no good as Hughes, Cotten would have played Hughes, let's get a part (figure) I can play'

[Roger Ryan]

... Was it Mankiewicz who proposed Hearst? I don't recall that ever being determined for sure in any Welles interviews I've read. If it wasn't ever asked of Welles, it should have been.

Well, my proposed opening scene is taking liberties with the actual genesis of Kane in a way that Mank does throughout. It was an attempt to show that the film would not have to follow the Kael interpretation to be dramatically successful; in fact, I believe the film would be better dramatically by acknowledging a collaboration between Mankiewicz and Welles.

I'm sure the reality of the genesis of Kane involved a lot of back-and-forth between Welles and Mankiewicz. We know that Welles was interested in telling a story about a powerful man told from multiple perspectives, and Welles has commented on searching for a suitable model (someone with political influence, but who was not a politician). Given that Mankiewicz had been part of Hearst's circle, and had been interested in the publisher as a possible subject for a film, probably convinced Welles that a newspaper publisher would be a good fit for the approach he wanted to take and Mankiewicz (a former journalist as well) could write what he already knew. Of course, our association of Mankiewicz with Hearst exists almost exclusively because of Welles' first feature. Had Kane never happened, would Mankiewicz's proximity to Hearst or Davies be historically noteworthy? As it is, Robert Carringer documents in "The Making of Citizen Kane" that Mankiewicz "borrowed" enough material from the Hearst biography "Imperial Hearst" that the book's author, Ferdinand Lundberg, instigated a lawsuit. Not everything Hearst-related in Kane came from Mankiewicz's personal knowledge.

I recall Welles saying on the BBC Arena interview of 1982 that one of the first big figures suggested was Howard Hughes - presumably when the film was called American. However, Welles then said 'I would have been no good as Hughes, Cotten would have played Hughes, let's get a part (figure) I can play'

Carringer claims that Welles told him that a character in Smiler With The Knife (the spy thriller Welles tried to develop after the collapse of Heart of Darkness) was based on Howard Hughes, although that idea may have migrated to American early on. Cotten claims the same thing in F for Fake if one cares to trust that "documentary" .

[atcolomb]

After watching Mank and RKO 281 i decided to watch Peter Bogdonovich's The Cat's Meow last night and did like it but not sure if the story about Hearst shooting Thomas Ince is true or not. Tonight i will watch the 2001 documentary Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies.

[MartynH]

In the Robert Carringer book there's a storyboard titled 'Yacht Cruise' - page 145 - Kane has arranged for Susan's lover to have a 'fatal' accident. But is was never shot. However, it shows the rumour was common knowledge in Hollywood at the time. I think Welles once said if we'd included it in the film Hearst would never have come for us in the way he did.