Mank
Short description
Mank centres on Herman J. Mankiewicz, a sharp-tongued screenwriter whose drinking has worn down his standing in Hollywood. In 1940, recovering from a car accident, he is installed on a remote Mojave Desert ranch and pressed to deliver a screenplay for Orson Welles, who is preparing his first feature as director. Working alongside a secretary and a nurse, Mankiewicz draws on his own memories of 1930s Hollywood and of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose circle he once moved in, to shape the script that becomes Citizen Kane. The film follows both the confined writing process and the earlier years of studio politics, friendships and feuds that fed into it.
David Fincher directs, working from a screenplay by his father, Jack Fincher, who wrote it before his death in 2003. It is the eleventh of the thirteen films Fincher has directed in chronological order, following Gone Girl and preceding The Killer. Gary Oldman plays Mankiewicz, with Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, Lily Collins as Rita Alexander, Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer, Tom Pelphrey as Joseph Mankiewicz and Sam Troughton as John Houseman. It was produced by Eric Roth, Ceán Chaffin and Douglas Urbanski on a budget of 25 million US dollars.
The film drew a critics' rating of 7.7 out of 10 from 354 reviews, well above its audience scores of 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb from 104,000 votes and 6.7 out of 10 on TMDB.
What's left behind the scenes
- In one scene, the main character, played by Gary Oldman, drunkenly crashes a party hosted by media mogul William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951, played by Charles Dance). Among the guests was Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies (1891-1961), played by Amanda Seyfried. Dance once said that over 100 takes were made of the party scene.
- The sound in the film was made similar to that in films before the stereophonic system, which became used in the mid-20th century. That is, instead of recording dialogue, music, and other sound effects separately on different tracks, everything was recorded on one track.
- Gary Oldman wanted to wear more makeup to look as much like his character, Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897-1953), as possible, but director David Fincher insisted on minimal makeup.
- The presenter announcing the winner of the “Oscar” for Best Original Screenplay at the end of the film is Ben Mankiewicz, the grandson of Herman J. Mankiewicz.
- Almost the entire month of December 2019 was spent filming in Victorville, California, where Mankiewicz wrote the screenplay for the drama 'Citizen Kane' (Orson Welles, 1941). The ranch had hardly changed since the late 1930s, so the filmmakers were able to convey the spirit of that time.
- David Fincher intended to shoot “Mank” immediately after finishing the 1997 thriller “The Game,” but it was delayed because the studio disagreed with his plans to film “Mank” in black and white.
- In one interview, David Fincher said that the film transports the viewer to Hollywood of the 1930s – early 1940s through visuals and sound design. For example, the music was recorded using microphones from that period. The need to degrade the recorded sound extended the post-production period, and it took longer than expected.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
