There’s nothing Hollywood loves more than movies that celebrate just how great a place Hollywood sure is by golly! Surprisingly, Hollywood also loves movies about how tough and unfair a
That little girl knows we shouldn t be gathering. HAPPIEST SEASON. Having made no secret of my childlike but abiding love of Christmas movies and despite our conventional notions of time and meaningful dates of demarcation having slipped away in 2020, I feel compelled to watch them. Maybe it s a passive version of the denial that has led swaths of the populace to wantonly infect each other, maybe a minor act of nostalgia hard to say. But the tree is trimmed, stockings by the chimney (not far from a similar display of masks), the door is bolted and I m watching holiday movies.
Mank, directed by David Fincher (
Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Gone Girl) from a 1994 screenplay written by his late father, Jack Fincher, is a biographical drama about American screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his role, or purported role, in the creation of
Citizen Kane (1941), the first film directed by and featuring Orson Welles. It is a Netflix Original film.
Much can be said about this subject, but we will have to limit ourselves.
Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman in
Mank
An initial title in
Mank informs us that Welles was brought to Hollywood in 1940 at the age of 24 by a struggling RKO Pictures and “given absolute creative autonomy, would suffer no oversight, and could make any movie, about any subject, with any collaborator he wished…”
‘MANK’ AND THE DEATH OF THE MOVIEGOING EXPERIENCE
If last Thursday marked a movie milestone, it’s interesting that “Mank” began streaming on Netflix the very next day. A beautifully shot homage to old Hollywood, it stars Gary Oldman as the alcoholic screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, engaged in the creation of the 1941 masterpiece “Citizen Kane.” Or at least its first draft.
While many have marveled at the audacity of the young Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to take on press baron William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), it was Mankiewicz who was really biting the hand that fed him.
He’s seen in flashbacks as a frequent dinner guest at Hearst’s San Simeon mansion and a friend and confidant to Hearst’s lover, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried).