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mank, the unmaking<\/h1><\/div>
Nev Pierce<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/header>

David Fincher doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s doing. Or, at least, he doesn\u2019t know why. A film about Herman Mankiewicz writing \u201cAmerican,\u201d the first draft of what became Citizen Kane? Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. That time being, variously: 1991, 1997, maybe the early aughts\u2014certainly now, twenty years later.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cI think it\u2019s a waste of time,\u201d says Fincher, of wondering why he chooses certain movies. \u201cThis is me railing against theme again. I don\u2019t believe in it. I\u2019ll simplify: I think storytelling (and the only thing that we as storytellers have control over) is the things that we dramatize as to who the characters are, and the things we choose to dramatize as what the characters go through. So, it is character, and it is plot, and it is\u2014the most important thing, that I\u2019m still learning\u2014chronology: What happens where. Because that\u2019s everything.\u201d<\/p>

Fincher isn\u2019t as comfortable talking about the why of things as much as he is about the how. And perhaps if the question could be answered completely during the making of a film, then the result would not be worth watching. And perhaps Mank isn\u2019t about one thing, anyway, and certainly not about the writing of Citizen Kane, as much as it is about self-sabotage and self-respect, addiction and decency, propaganda and story. The mess of making things, really. And the making of a mess.<\/p>

Mankiewicz was all over the place as a person. A dissatisfied journalist, frustrated playwright and reluctant screenwriter, a man for whom words came too easily for him to imagine them worthy of respect. Ruled by insecurity, arguably instilled by a father\u2014a professor\u2014he could never please, he used alcohol to numb wounds it would ensure never healed. He was also, by the reckoning of his contemporaries\u2014from Ben Hecht to Nunnally Johnson\u2014a genius. But, really, genius has its limitations, not least when you\u2019re drunk or dead.<\/p>

Citizen Kane was\u2014you know this, of course\u2014for decades considered the greatest movie of all time. At least by critics. And even if you object to the idea of codifying cinema\u2014labeling apples as superior to oranges (who gives a fig?)\u2014it was undoubtedly one of the most influential. \u201cRaising Kane\u201d\u2014Pauline Kael\u2019s New Yorker article (subsequently packaged with the script in The Citizen Kane Book)\u2014gives Mankiewicz all the credit for writing it. Peter Bogdanovich\u2019s \u201cThe Kane Mutiny\u201d\u2014a repudiation of Kael\u2019s argument, published in Esquire\u2014still gives him plenty. If you want to relitigate that, then the internet is always at your disposal. But the arguments about who owns Kane\u2019s success, who is its God, lean on the notion that filmmaking is an act of creationism. Perhaps, though, it\u2019s down to evolution.<\/p>

\u201cShort-term memory has crucial importance to our intelligence. But it pales in the end beside the miracle of the brain\u2019s permanent storehouse, that prodigiously crammed, seemingly bric-a-brack-strewn Xanadu basement belonging to the Citizen Kane in all of us\u2014long-term memory.\u201d<\/p>

\u2014JACK FINCHER, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE<\/div><\/div>

\u201cI don\u2019t know that I remember the beginning,\u201d says David Fincher. You can\u2019t blame him. Mank, the version you\u2019ve watched, is the latest in countless iterations. It\u2019s just the only one that has escaped his head. Maybe it started when he read \u201cRaising Kane\u201d as a teenager (on microfiche in the school library, rather than as a book). Or before that, when he\u2019d ask about the best of everything, as defined by his dad, the author and journalist Jack Fincher. \u201cHis orientation was very much that the most important movies were always about journalists (or written by a journalist), writers or newspapermen. I inherited from him this notion that Citizen Kane was the greatest American film ever made.\u201d So maybe it started in Oklahoma. Maybe in France. Maybe New York. We don\u2019t know whether Jack Fincher saw Kane as a ten-year-old in the dust bowl, (\u201cI can\u2019t imagine it came to Tulsa, but maybe it did.\u201d) or when he was at the University of Lyon on a Fulbright scholarship, or back on the East Coast in the late 1950s. But, when David said he was going to watch it in film class, Jack was enthusiastic. \u201cHe was giddy\u2014\u2018You\u2019re in for a treat.\u2019 He was a big Welles aficionado. At the time, he thought the makeup was great and the performance was transformative. But the thing he kept coming back to was how cinematic it was. I think I knew at the time that it had been written by an ex-newspaperman, and was probably being graded on a curve\u2014but there was no talk of Mankiewicz. It was really Welles.\u201d<\/p>

Still, in the fall of \u201975\u2014after Jaws, Dog Day Afternoon, Monty Python and the Holy Grail\u2014David wasn\u2019t quite prepared for this thirty-four-year-old film (\u201ca cave painting\u201d) to have such an impact. \u201cI remember being completely swept away by the speed at which it got its points across and the confidence of the directing... even though I didn\u2019t run home from school shouting, \u2018Wow, the confidence of that directing!\u2019 I just was aware that I was seeing something that had a kind of force.\u201d As Fincher became more and more interested in movies\u2014he returned to see All the President\u2019s Men five times in a row\u2014the conversation between father and son would still often return to Citizen Kane, this film they both beheld with something approaching awe. \u201cIt was a thing we got to share.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

It was around thirteen years later that Fincher\u2014back visiting his parents in Ashland, Oregon, on a break between shooting music videos with the likes of Sting and Steve Winwood\u2014chanced upon his father\u2019s copy of Kael\u2019s book, and they chatted again about its contested claims over authorship and the idea that Mankiewicz had a hand in many great movies, whether credited or not. He went back to work\u2014you can see traces of Kane in the snowbound grief of his 1989 video for Madonna\u2019s \u201cOh Father\u201d\u2014and their conversation restarted in the \u201990s when Jack retired. Having spent most of his life as a journalist\u2014including a stint as San Francisco bureau chief for Life magazine\u2014Jack now wanted to use his storytelling skills for film. Fincher, who was soon to direct his first feature, Alien 3, suggested he look at the relationship between Mankiewicz and Welles. It was a tossed off idea, a hunch it might make a movie. \u201cSo, he went away, he wrote a script. I went away, I made a movie. I came back, licked my wounds and read the script. And it was junk.\u201d<\/p>

It wasn\u2019t that Mank was unreadable. The dialogue worked, the story held together\u2014but it seemed naive. Jack had written magazine profiles on, among others, Raquel Welch and George C. Scott, \u201cbut he literally had no understanding of Hollywood. He had a healthy contempt, but without any real data\u2014and certainly without any experience.\u201d Fincher, though, now had experience, dearly bought, of the enforced collaboration necessary to make a movie. \u201cIt [Jack\u2019s original script] was very much a saber-rattling: \u2018Directors are pompous fuckwits who take advantage of...\u2019 And I remember thinking that didn\u2019t ring true to my experience.\u201d They went back and forth on drafts for a couple of years\u2014\u201cI would send him notes and he would roll his eyes and get frustrated\u201d\u2014before it settled into silence. They didn\u2019t fall out. They just fell quiet, over this, at least\u2014until Jack happened upon the story of how Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer, the godfathers of MGM, produced fake newsreels to swing the 1934 gubernatorial race against socialist candidate Upton Sinclair. \u201cI could be wrong, but I think he may have seen a PBS documentary or something.\u201d (This seems likely to have been We Have a Plan, part four of a seven-part PBS series about the Great Depression, which aired in 1993.)<\/p>

Mankiewicz was a man of snapshot brilliance. His contribution to The Wizard of Oz\u2014to suggest shooting Kansas in black-and-white and Oz in color\u2014might be, in Fincher\u2019s words, \u201cthe greatest special effect in cinema history.\u201d But he has no credit on the final film. He would come in, solve a problem, go for a drink. What if, Jack wondered, they linked him to this notion of fake news\u2014the irony of a man, for whom talk is cheap, really coming to realize the value, or cost, of his words? \u201cHe got really excited by this idea of, \u2018What if I can fold these two things together?\u2019 I was like, \u2018Whatev!\u2019 and went off to do Seven.\u201d<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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\u201cAnyone who is content, isn\u2019t paying attention.\u201d Fincher is talking to Andrew Kevin Walker, the writer of Seven, who has swung by the set of Mank\u2014today occupying two stages at the Los Angeles Center Studios\u2014to visit his old friend. What they\u2019re directly discussing escapes eavesdropping, but it\u2019s likely related to the footage Fincher has on his iPad, showing the work-in-progress supplied most days by Kirk Baxter, an editor on Fincher\u2019s films since Zodiac (and sole editor since Gone Girl). After lunch, we walk to Stage Two for an exchange between a bed-ridden Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman)\u2014bandaged and bloody after a car crash\u2014and Orson Welles (Tom Burke). \u201cGary, can I see as much as you look at Tom?\u201d says Fincher. \u201cShow me.\u201d There\u2019s a wind machine set up to catch the cape Welles is wearing as he marches in with majesty, his presence serving as his own entourage.<\/p><\/div>

Action.<\/p>

\u201cMank, it\u2019s Orson Welles.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cOf course it is.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI think it\u2019s time we talked.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m all ears.\u201d<\/p>

Fincher calls over: \u201cNice. Once again. And Gary give me the tiniest little smile when he laughs.\u201d<\/p>

Another.<\/p>

\u201cAnd great, one more time\u2014put \u2018Of course it is\u2019 together a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>

Another.<\/p>

\u201cSay it again: \u2018Of course it is.\u2019 Even in an ether haze, you can be sarcastic.\u201d<\/p>

Another.<\/p>

\u201cOkay Gary, one more and don\u2019t smile\u2014it\u2019s just a \u2018Yeah, that makes total sense.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

Another.<\/p>

\u201cOkay Gary, one more, and stretch out the \u2018Of course it is.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

Another.<\/p>

\u201cOkay, last one, last one\u2014I\u2019ll live with this.\u201d<\/p>

Another.<\/p>

\u201cGot it, moving on.\u201d<\/p>

Fincher turns his attention to a new set-up. Walker takes the opportunity to slip away before the next stretch of shooting makes leaving impossible. \u201cGood luck with your writing,\u201d he says, with a smile. \u201cBreak a leg. If you start feeling good about it, you\u2019re doing it wrong.\u201d<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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\u201cAs a director, you may get rid of something not because it isn\u2019t good, not because it doesn\u2019t sound true or the dialogue isn\u2019t scintillating, but because you just may not understand the drama.\u201d Working with a screenplay, David Fincher is all about intent. Trying to see what the writer wanted and why, and then executing it as he understands it. The first few drafts, he\u2019ll let complete understanding slide a little, but when it comes down to something he can shoot, he has to know. \u201cYou\u2019re not a responsible interpreter if you can\u2019t say to the person who conceived of this notion, \u2018I just don\u2019t get it. I just don\u2019t. You\u2019re talking about something I will never feel.\u2019 The director\u2019s like the quarterback: You\u2019re going to get way too much credit. You\u2019re going to get way too much blame. So, if you don\u2019t understand something, the last thing you want to do is say, \u2018Yeah, I shot that. I didn\u2019t know which take to print. Didn\u2019t make any fucking sense to me, but the one that\u2019s in the movie, I thought was the best reading of whatever the thing was that the guy gave me, so I was doing the best I could!\u2019\u201d<\/p>

But Fincher\u2019s understanding can grow. So, while Jack\u2019s notion of embroiling Mankiewicz with MGM\u2019s fake news didn\u2019t initially appeal, Fincher eventually changed his mind. \u201cHe came back with this cockamamie thing about socialism and Upton Sinclair. At first, I thought, \u2018Well, this is totally extraneous bullshit.\u2019 And then, over time, I realized: It\u2019s actually an interesting way into this character. It was an interesting way of dramatizing his self-loathing.\u201d<\/p>

Both Jack and David had ethical questions over conflating these two true stories. In the end, though, what it did for the character trumped the idea of documenting history. (It wasn\u2019t as if they were, say, doing a version of the Tate-LaBianca murders where Sharon Tate doesn\u2019t get killed.)<\/p><\/div>

There was still a push-me-pull-you between father and son over the extent to which the script would also deal with the matter of credit. Jack was someone who held screenwriters in high esteem, higher esteem than probably most screenwriters\u2014certainly Mankiewicz\u2014held themselves. He and Fincher would discuss Paddy Chayefsky, Bill Goldman, Bo Goldman, Ben Hecht. \u201cJack felt this was a really difficult kind of writing\u2014and something he had great respect for. He also believed that the beleaguered writer was not a clich\u00e9 because of, necessarily, a personality type, but because of circumstance, what it is to have a great idea, and then have a bunch of idiots between you and the presentation fuck it up.\u201d<\/p>

As one of those idiots, Fincher felt a little differently.<\/p>

\u201cPauline Kael can write beautifully about movies. Doesn\u2019t mean she has a fucking clue as to how they get made. There\u2019s an aspect of filmmaking that is mud-wrestling. Until you\u2019re scraping it out of your eye sockets, you don\u2019t really understand what it takes.\u201d<\/p>

Still, whatever his misgivings, there was a draft Fincher considered strong enough to take to Polygram to try and get financed. Locations were scouted. Laray Mayfield\u2014who would go on to cast Fight Club\u2014compiled a notebook with pictures of each real-life character. Kevin Spacey was likely to play Mank. \u201cI certainly felt he was verbal enough,\u201d says Fincher. \u201cBut maybe not as naturally...\u201d He trails off, before adding, \u201cWe had to get at kind of a lovable thing with Mank, because he had to be somebody that you\u2019re hanging on every word to hear what tightrope he\u2019s going to weave for himself next.\u201d Regardless of whether they had the right actor or not, nobody wanted to fund Mank anyway\u2014at least not as the black-and-white, period piece Fincher envisaged.<\/p>

The fact that it wasn\u2019t financed may, as far as the film is concerned\u2014if not the people\u2014be just as well, given screenwriter-father and director-son weren\u2019t completely in sync. \u201cI felt like Jack had ascribed this kind of general alcoholic malaise to Mankiewicz. And what I kept finding in the story, was the notion of this guy who felt like he was slumming, up until he wrote this thing that was unbridled.\u201d Fincher thinks Mankiewicz was able to mine his personal history with press magnate William Randolph Hearst\u2014upon whom Charles Foster Kane was partially based\u2014and really let rip, precisely because the screenwriter was initially going to be uncredited, having agreed to write under contract for Welles\u2019s Mercury Theatre. \u201cIt was only when he was completely hidden from view\u2014\u2018Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain\u2019\u2014and talking about something that was getting a little bile off his chest, that he flourished and wrote one of the great screenplays for motion pictures of all time,\u201d says Fincher. \u201cI felt like the thing that was always lacking, the thing that got obviated and obscured behind the notion of this credit squabble, was the idea that there was this reemergence, this burgeoning self-respect and this sense of accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>

Fincher could understand Mankiewicz feeling he was slumming it. While earning thousands at MGM (during the Depression, no less) was obviously desirable, it wasn\u2019t\u2014for someone who dreamed of being a great playwright\u2014satisfying. \u201cI could relate to people saying, \u2018Oh my God, I love your work.\u2019 It\u2019s like, \u2018Yeah, but it\u2019s just a Michael Jackson video\u2014contain yourself\u2019\u201d It\u2019s something Fincher has also seen in the world of commercials, with directors who reach a moment where they start to question their purpose. \u201cThey ask, \u2018What am I doing?\u2019 They find a point in their lives where they feel, not that \u2018It must come from me!\u2019 or \u2018My voice!\u2019 or any of that bullshit, but, \u2018I want to apply my problem-solving to things that I\u2019m interested in.\u2019 And not just, \u2018Let\u2019s do one-more tighter on the candle, with a few more water droplets on it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

It\u2019s not that Fincher looks down on anyone who makes a living that way\u2014he made a living that way, and it was a handsome one. It just wasn\u2019t fulfilling. \u201cI\u2019m not gonna say you lose your soul, but I am saying it\u2019s not particularly nourishing. It felt a lot like writing magazine stories\u2014which my dad did.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

It\u2019s not that Fincher sees this as without merit, or that Jack did. But even the most ardent of magazine journalists would admit that it is, inherently, a secondhand act of creation\u2014often a job of reflecting or dissecting another person\u2019s art or career. You\u2019re a commentator, not a player. His dad enjoyed his job\u2014\u201cFor somebody who\u2019s curious, that\u2019s a great gig\u201d\u2014but Fincher thinks it was probably also why he was drawn to the idea of the mistreated writer. It wasn\u2019t a mindset David shared. \u201cLook, it was more interesting to me, not the idea of somebody who is saying, \u2018Let\u2019s arbitrate,\u2019 but lamenting, \u2018I finally feel like I rose to an occasion that was worthy of my best. And that\u2019s not something I want to be forgotten.\u201d<\/p>

Whether this idea\u2014of a person finding a sense of accomplishment and purpose\u2014was quite so clear to Fincher back then, as it is now in his retrospective contextualization, is a moot point.<\/p>

\u201cMy dad was in his sixties, and I\u2019m sure that he felt a great deal of, \u2018What am I gonna leave behind?\u2019 A friend of mine, his father\u2014a very famous producer\/director\u2014referred to his filmography as his \u2018dried leaves.\u2019 And I\u2019m sure there was a part of my father who said, \u2018I\u2019m going to right this\u2014R-I-G-H-T\u2014for the Mankiewiczes of the world.\u2019 But I\u2019m sure a lot of that was his feeling like, \u2018What have I done? I got a bunch of magazine stories to show for it, and a couple books.\u2019 The fact that he decided to immortalize that struggle was telling. And it certainly wasn\u2019t ignored by me. But the reason we abandoned making the film together in the late \u201990s was partially because nobody wanted to finance it, but also because we couldn\u2019t agree on the extent to which this should be an arbitration.\u201d<\/p>

So, the script sat there, again.<\/p>

Fincher and Jack would occasionally discuss it, but it was more or less done. \u201cAnd he ended up having chemo to worry about, and not so much the rewrites.\u201d This was the early aughts. Fincher had just finished Panic Room. Jack and Claire, Fincher\u2019s mother, were still living in Oregon. He found them a house in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, and they spent quite a bit of 2002 together. \u201cAnd we would talk about it from time to time. I would take him to his chemo, and\u2014he was in therapy a little bit in the last couple of months of his life\u2014we would talk about it in the car. But it was understood that this would not be something that would ever get made. And that was okay.\u201d<\/p>

Ren Klyce\u2014a friend of Fincher since their teenage years, responsible for sound on each of his pictures since Seven\u2014remembers it a little differently. \u201cHe really wanted to have this film for his dad, so he kept trying to get it made. And then Jack just got sicker and sicker.\u201d<\/p>

Klyce\u2014who manages to be an articulate, intelligent professional, yet also seem a little like a survivor of Dazed and Confused\u2014still lives in Marin County, Northern California, where he first met Fincher as a teenager, both working junior roles at Korty Films. He remembers David as confident, assertive, and convincing, even then\u2014and Jack as a kind figure, who made him a present of one of his books: Lefties: The Origins & Consequences of Being Left-Handed. \u201cJack is left-handed. I\u2019m left-handed. And he signed it to me. \u2018To Ren: To living in a world that we never created. Love, Jack.\u2019 And then, in parentheses, \u2018(David\u2019s dad)\u2019\u2014in case I forgot!\u201d (The book was previously published under another title, which could have served as a thematic summary of his son\u2019s films up to a certain point: Sinister People.)<\/p>

Jack loved movies. Well, not all movies. \u201cI gave him the script to Fight Club, and he said, \u2018Good God, why would you want to make this? There\u2019s nothing funny about it!\u2019\u201d recalls Fincher. \u201cI gave him the script to Seven, he was like, \u2018Is there something that happened in your childhood... ?\u2019\u201d<\/p>

On the contrary, Fincher characterizes his upbringing by Jack and Claire as pretty much \u201cidyllic,\u201d although it\u2019s worth noting that neither parent hid the realities of the world. His dad, in particular, never sugarcoated anything\u2014explaining, for example, that the reason a highway patrol car was following the school bus in their town of San Anselmo, California, was because the Zodiac Killer had threatened to shoot children as they got off it. David was seven.<\/p><\/div>

While Jack pursued journalism, Claire worked as a nurse for people with substance-abuse issues. (She would later segue into mental health, eventually specializing in such care for the geriatric community.) It was in August 1970, a few weeks shy of David\u2019s ninth birthday, that he drove with his dad to pick her up from work, only to find her workplace\u2014the Marin County Civic Center\u2014locked down due to a hostage situation. (The incident, an attempt to force the release of the Soledad Brothers, left four people dead, including a judge.) It was quite a confusing time for a boy whose mother took him to church on Sundays with his sisters. \u201cThere was this way of doing things that my mother was very intent on indoctrinating us in, which was, you got spiffed up, you wore a tie, you combed your hair, you said \u2018Yes, ma\u2019am\u2019 and \u2018Yes, sir.\u2019 And yet, at the same time, there was Nixon, the Vietnam War, and people were shooting each other at my mother\u2019s place of business. It was difficult to reconcile, because it seemed like, \u2018Okay, so, if we do this, we\u2019re all gonna be okay,\u2019 and, \u2018Do you feel safe going to work, even though there was a guy with a sawed-off shotgun there the other day?\u2019\u201d<\/p>

If you\u2019re looking for a Rosebud-style summation of a psyche (\u201cdollar-book Freud,\u201d as Welles would have it), then perhaps we could label this incident it. But if that explains Seven, it doesn\u2019t explain Mank, which has less to do with Fincher\u2019s childhood than it does with Jack\u2019s own. Born in Bonham, Texas, in 1930, he was raised in Depression-hit Oklahoma, by Grace Mae Hutcheson and, occasionally, Merlin Jackson Fincher, who ran a hamburger stand and drank until he fell over. In the era of the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin and Frank Capra\u2014Duck Soup, Modern Times and It Happened One Night\u2014you could say Jack was raised with movie ideals. It might be just as accurate to say he was raised by movies. Merlin\u2014David\u2019s grandfather\u2014was a physically and verbally abusive alcoholic who used to drop young Jack off at the cinema and then drink the day away. Movies were a literal and metaphorical escape. For thirty cents, Jack could spend the afternoon in other worlds.<\/p>

\u201cI think the movie theater made more sense to him than real life,\u201d says Fincher, who remembers Jack telling him, probably before he was ten, about life in the Depression\u2014about going to a diner where the cashier asked to see the contents of his father\u2019s pockets before they\u2019d serve them food. \u201cIt was kind of humiliating. And he would say, \u2018That was just the Depression.\u2019\u201d Fincher also remembers his father telling him about the Okie migration to California, thousands of people fleeing famine for a new life on the West Coast\u2014and, in general, a different sensibility from (and toward) those who had nothing. You see it in Mank, when Herman bumps into C. C. [played by Jay Villwock] outside MGM, and his old friend doesn\u2019t take the hand he offers to shake. \u201cI was confused, \u2018This guy\u2019s kind of an affable homeless guy\u2014he\u2019s like the movie version of the hobo, a Sullivan\u2019s Travels kind of thing.\u2019 And my dad said, \u2018No\u2014at this point, everybody was in it together.\u2019\u201d There was more of a sense, Jack told him, that anyone could end up in that situation. \u201cAnd people were respectful about imposing\u2014\u2018Brother, can you spare a dime?\u2019 The attitude of the impoverished was very different. Jack wanted that to come across. That Mank would see a guy who was down on his uppers, and would walk over to him and be offering his hand, and C. C. would want to shake, but also know that he didn\u2019t want to put Mank in a position of having to ask, \u2018Holy shit, man\u2014you don\u2019t have TB, do you?\u2019\u201d Certain elements of the Depression that are in the screenplay, then, are from experiences lived and witnessed.<\/p>

Fincher doesn\u2019t think he ever met his grandfather\u2014he died in 1965, when David was three\u2014but he lived on in his dad\u2019s memory, as an example of what not to be. Jack tried to be a good father\u2014the father that the movies made him. Fincher\u2019s mother was just as devoted, but without any cinematic inspiration. \u201cMy mom\u2019s kind of a ruthless pragmatist,\u201d says Fincher. \u201cI get that from her. My, \u2018We better get four fucking set-ups before lunch,\u2019 you know? But my dad had\u2014and it\u2019s not a term that\u2019s often abused in my case\u2014a little bit more of a romantic side, that I think I got from him. And I mean that in a more global sense, rather than the Hallmark sense. He had a sense of, if you really cared and you really made yourself available, and you really worked hard, you could do anything. And my mother was much more, \u2018Movies are sort of silly and rubbish, because they reflect a manipulated and concerted effort to leave you with the following feeling...\u2019 I think she, once they were married, saw a lot more movies. Mostly out of being supportive.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

In addition to Mank, Jack\u2019s other screenplays included a biopic of Howard Hughes, and a dark comedy\u2014loosely inspired by the bitter divorce of the painter Margaret Keane\u2014about two people trying to prove what bad parents they were, in order to avoid child custody. Alongside Lefties, he also wrote The Brain: Mystery of Matter and Mind\u2014but that\u2019s a textbook, and, proficiently written though it is, probably not what he\u2019d want to be remembered for. In contrast, there\u2019s his rigorously researched, lucid exploration of IQ and beyond, Human Intelligence, described as \u201ca complete, literate and intelligent book on intelligence in all its aspects\u201d by no less a mind than Isaac Asimov. Published in 1976, it includes a caption (for an unseen poster) from David Fincher at age seven: \u201cThe Universe is in God\u2019s Brain.\u201d Also, the following dedication:<\/p>

\u201cEspecially to Claire, and to Erica, David and Emily\u2014loving partners in all the sacrifice that made it possible\u2014this book and its author are dedicated.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Jack Fincher died of pancreatic cancer in 2003. Seventeen years later, Fincher thinks his mother is \u201cvery touched\u201d that the film has finally been made. But, also: \u201cI think she\u2019s a bit, \u2018Really? 2020? You couldn\u2019t do this in 1999?\u2019 I think it\u2019s a bittersweet thing.\u201d<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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Late January 2020, and the Sony lot in Culver City is doubling as the MGM lot of 1934. Well, reverting really, as this was where the outfit fronted by Leo the Lion actually used to operate. Herman (Oldman) is watching with wide-eyed brother Joseph (Tom Pelphrey) as L. B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) gives a speech to an audience of cast and crew, imploring them to take a pay cut to save the studio. It\u2019s an appeal to loyalty and emotion that feels completely timeless to anyone who has been employed by someone truly wealthy: \u201cI won\u2019t break up this family over something like money.\u201d<\/p>

Eric Roth walks over and introduces himself. Sneakers and jeans, a walking stick and a smile, he has a grandfatherly aspect, and is immediately, quietly excited about Mank, whispering of Fincher, \u201cI could work with him forever,\u201d before following it with, \u201cHe\u2019s tough. He\u2019s relentless.\u201d Roth\u2019s arched eyebrows underline this point\u2014though he seems to think of it as positive. Perhaps it\u2019s because of the results. Perhaps he just likes to be punished. He is, after all, a writer. \u201cMy partner says to me, \u2018You\u2019re a goat.\u2019\u201d She doesn\u2019t mean the Greatest of All Time, but rather, the mammal often kept as company for a thoroughbred horse. \u201cThey lay there and keep you comfortable. There\u2019s some truth to that.\u201d We amble over to craft services and briefly discuss another script he\u2019s working on with Martin Scorsese. Fincher walks past, and Roth pipes up with a mischievous smile, \u201cHow do you spell your name?\u201d Fincher replies: \u201cMy name? B-O-S-S.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThis is a business where the buyer gets nothing for his money but a memory. What he bought still belongs to the man who sold it. That\u2019s the real magic of the movies, and don\u2019t let anybody tell ya different.\u201d<\/p>

\u2014MAYER<\/div><\/div>

Roth\u2019s role in Mank isn\u2019t foundational in the way it was on his first collaboration with Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which he wrote and received an Oscar nomination for. (He has another three nominations, plus a win for Forrest Gump.) Instead he\u2019s a producer\u2014alongside Ce\u00e1n Chaffin and Douglas Urbanski\u2014tasked specifically with helping Fincher deliver the shooting script.<\/p><\/div>

Working on Button had proved both positive and personal. Roth\u2019s parents died as he was writing it, while Fincher was drawn to the material in the wake of Jack\u2019s death\u2014the reverse-aging Fitzgerald fable appealed after seeing someone face their own mortality in close-up. Roth thinks his track record ensured initial respect, and age probably helped. (He\u2019s seventeen years older than Fincher.) \u201cI think we found some familial kind of relationship.\u201d It also helped that neither were shy of effort. \u201cI don\u2019t mind working hard, as long as he\u2019ll work as hard as I will\u2014and he\u2019ll outwork me any day.\u201d Fincher mentioned Mank to him in passing, and Roth expressed an interest in helping out, if needed. In fact, as Fincher has it, Roth mentioned it a few times, during Button and their work on House of Cards (on which they were both executive producers). \u201cHe kept on saying it.\u201d So, when the second season of Mindhunter wrapped, and Netflix gave Fincher the nod to make Mank, Roth was a natural call. \u201cI said, \u2018Look, will you come produce this with me? I need somebody to talk this stuff through with.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

Roth quickly agreed, though when he visited Fincher\u2019s office, in L.A.\u2019s Little Armenia neighborhood (a couple of blocks from the Museum of Death), the director was in for a shock. \u201cThe first thing out of his mouth was, \u2018You know what, I don\u2019t think I\u2019m the guy for this. This is talkie, zippy, snappy... you should call Aaron [Sorkin].\u2019 I was like, \u2018You fuck!\u2019 Like, \u2018I don\u2019t get it, you solicited me. You made this a non-decision for me for the last thirteen years!\u2019\u201d<\/p>

Fincher describes the situation as \u201calternately incredibly frustrating and hilarious.\u201d He pushed down his irritation, however, and they got talking. The first scene discussed was Mankiewicz laid-up in bed, with Welles explaining he has no restrictions on making his film. \u201cI brought this up to Eric, just as, here we are at Netflix making this, and they\u2019ve said, \u2018Go with God! Make it as good as it can possibly be\u2014it\u2019s up to you!\u2019\u201d Fincher suggested they needed a moment between Welles and Mankiewicz where the jobbing screenwriter realizes there are no limits. \u201cHe\u2019s not gonna have to ever suffer the indignity of providing clay pigeons for studio executives. This is gonna be down to him and the cinematic adaptor.\u201d Roth took a few seconds to consider this, before exclaiming: \u201cHow terrifying!\u201d It was the instant Fincher knew, for certain, he was the perfect partner for this job.<\/p>

\u201cIt was interesting,\u201d says Fincher. \u201cBecause at the same time that I was thinking, \u2018I\u2019m gonna strangle you,\u2019 it was also, \u2018You\u2019re exactly the right guy, because when I finally frame the thing that I think is missing in this interaction, you had the response that has to be in this movie,\u2019 which is: \u2018Trapped. Oh my God\u2014trapped. This is going to be about merit.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

And so, they began. Reading through the script together, parsing every scene and sentence, ensuring Jack\u2019s research and ideas stood up to their lived experience. It wasn\u2019t that the substance changed a lot\u2014it was more a question of emphasis. Roth, having worked with everyone from Spielberg to Kurosawa (uncredited, on Rhapsody in August), has an innate sense of how the dream factory works. You could say that he knows where the bodies are buried (like Raymond, the butler in Citizen Kane\u2014which popularized the phrase). \u201cOh my God, do I know where the bodies are buried!\u201d Roth laughs, before explaining that the fact that he sleeps so little means that, for years, he\u2019s received phone calls in the early hours, from people spilling their stories\u2014not that he has any personal plans to write a memoir, akin to Mankiewicz\u2019s on-screen sharing of what he\u2019d overheard at Hearst Castle, San Simeon. \u201cIt would be such a betrayal. And they\u2019re just human beings, who have their own inadequacies, you know? And sometimes, the way they express them are a little bit... a little scary.\u201d Understanding the normal nature of people in film (making some allowances for the fact the business attracts a disproportionate amount of narcissists) was important for the screenplay; knowing that there\u2019s a messy and mundane aspect to making movies, much more than there is a magical one. This is true of personalities and process. Roth recalls arguing for a week with director Stuart Rosenberg over a scene in the script for The Onion Field, until the director said, \u201cLeave it in the script. I\u2019m not gonna shoot it.\u201d (The film was eventually directed by Harold Becker.) It was an early, formative experience in understanding the roles of writer and director. \u201cIf they finally don\u2019t see it, or don\u2019t want to find some way to do it, that\u2019s the end of it.\u201d This echoes Fincher\u2019s reflections on understanding a writer\u2019s intent, and only executing what he can understand. \u201cI think the other reason David maybe likes me is I\u2019m very aware of what I think a screenwriter\u2019s role is,\u201d says Roth. \u201cIt\u2019s a complete bastardized form of writing.\u201d Roth feels like a frustrated novelist, and only considers a couple of his movies to be truly intelligent, despite being one of the most garlanded and well-rewarded screenwriters in the world. There\u2019s some concern within the production of Mank that audiences may not relate to the story of a Hollywood insider, but it\u2019s also a story about someone who feels they\u2019ve failed to live up to their potential\u2014and that\u2019s pretty universal. \u201cI think that\u2019s true,\u201d says Roth. \u201cI also wonder if David feels like he failed to live up to [his] potential. I know probably I do, even though I probably shouldn\u2019t feel that way.\u201d<\/p>

Perhaps it\u2019s the curse of every screenwriter to feel this way to a degree, because their words only come to audiences with the help of others. It\u2019s inherently a collaborative process, whether the collaboration is welcome or not. Part of Roth\u2019s longevity, alongside hard graft and talent, is down to understanding that he is, in some way, an author, not the author\u2014not that Fincher looks at the screenplay as simply a guideline, or just a jumping-off point. \u201cHe\u2019ll fight the battles with the actors for you about it,\u201d says Roth. \u201cIn other words, \u2018I don\u2019t want you wandering too far. This has all been really banged out.\u2019 And it\u2019s hard, working with him that way, because he\u2019s relentless about every word, and he\u2019s OCD enough to want to cut every \u2018and\u2019 and \u2018but.\u2019 Everything is so tight. He\u2019s a big believer\u2014and I\u2019m not as good about this\u2014with cogency. How does one thought follow another?\u201d<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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\u201cI don\u2019t want him finding these words! That\u2019s why we wrote them out in advance.\u201d Fincher is chuntering to script supervisor Sharron Reynolds-Enriquez, as they watch Arliss Howard as L. B. Mayer confronting Mankiewicz after he drunkenly expounds the story of what will become Citizen Kane. Fincher mutters about something being the \u201cenemy of actors\u201d\u2014it\u2019s hard to make out. \u201cLines\u201d or \u201clighting?\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s both. Charles Dance, sat next to Howard as William Randolph Hearst, looks patient, wary and amused. There is no way to tell if he is acting. Later, in a break between set-ups, Howard stands alone outside the stage, repeating his lines to himself over and over and over and over. He is dressed as a lion-tamer.<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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\u201cI had a lot of trouble with the text on this,\u201d says Howard, several months later, reflecting on the shoot. \u201cAt first, I thought, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m losing my mind. I\u2019ve got early onset Alzheimer\u2019s.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t figure out what it was.\u201d Eventually, he did. \u201cA lot of it had to do with this alarming thing that I\u2019d never accessed in myself before, which is: wanting to please.\u201d He\u2019s not alone in that. Amanda Seyfried\u2014perhaps the movie\u2019s most astute piece of casting, as the underestimated movie star Marion Davies (Hearst\u2019s lover)\u2014recalls wondering to herself, \u201cWhy do I want to please him so?\u201d Howard discussed it with Oldman during shooting, and realized it was simple, but new: He just really wanted Fincher to be happy\u2014something which confused and concerned him. \u201c\u2019Cause, I mean, I\u2019m not an evil person, but I could give a shit whether directors are happy or not. That\u2019s not my job.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Still, he did here. Howard was one of very few people who didn\u2019t have to read for their roles, so he knew Fincher really wanted him there\u2014and he\u2019s hardly a greenhorn or a stranger to demanding and brilliant directors, having worked with both Kubrick and Spielberg. Perhaps it was the specificity that Fincher required, combined with the nature of the material, which is itself examining the nature of collaboration, and Mankiewicz\u2019s struggle with his own sense of worth and purpose in his work. Whatever\u2014it was hard. Fincher is demanding. You\u2019d think this might be irritating\u2014or cause resentment (it certainly has with one or two actors over the years)\u2014but Howard just sounds excited. \u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019re running behind this idea,\u201d he says, \u201cand he\u2019s gathered all these extraordinary creative people around him. One time, he goes, \u2018Why is it so hard for you to remember the lines between action and cut? That\u2019s where you\u2019re supposed to be saying them\u2014between \u201cAction\u201d and \u201cCut!\u201d\u2019 And I said, \u2018\u2019Cause you\u2019re in my fucking head between action and cut! You gotta get out of there!\u2019 And he kind of looked at me. He goes, \u2018Oh. Okay.\u2019 And then I walked over to the camera to talk about something else, and he said, \u2018There are no free-range actors on my sets.\u2019\u201d Howard laughs. \u201cI just love that shit. \u2018No free-range actors.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

Howard thinks Fincher might be surprised if he could let the actors loose a little bit\u2014but it\u2019s a passing observation, not a criticism. Fincher gets fed up of people talking about the number of takes he does. But, tough\u2014he does do a lot. And it is draining. But it is also reassuring. Every actor knows they\u2019re going to leave it all on the floor. Both Charles Dance and Tom Pelphrey talk about being on productions where they felt like they had to, effectively, direct themselves. There\u2019s no danger of that here. Pelphrey considers it a relief to be able to give yourself over, \u201cto just be the actor. To get to totally put the blinders on, put your head down, show up prepared, and just give over to his notes, his instruction, what he\u2019s seeing. You\u2019re just like, \u2018I trust it, I trust it, I trust it.\u2019\u201d Tom Burke\u2014who flecks Welles\u2019s matinee idol allure with spots of confounded toddler\u2014talks of going home exhausted at the end of each day, \u201cconfident we\u2019ve done it every way we could, or certainly every way we should.\u201d<\/p>

Time with the actors is Fincher\u2019s number-one priority, according to Ce\u00e1n Chaffin, who has produced each of his features since The Game. (They first worked together on a soda commercial, in 1992, and have been a couple since 1995, marrying in 2013.) First, in rehearsal\u2014a quasi-rehearsal, really, as often it\u2019s actor and director simply discussing the text\u2014and then on-set. His goal, she says, is \u201cas much time with the actors in front of the camera as possible.\u201d Fincher\u2019s attitude to performance was the biggest surprise for Gary Oldman, when they started working together. The pair have been friends for years\u2014family, really, is how Oldman characterizes it\u2014as two of his sons are half-brothers to Fincher\u2019s daughter. They\u2019ve spent many a Christmas and Thanksgiving together, and Oldman is obviously well-aware of Fincher\u2019s films themselves. \u201cYou know he\u2019s a visualist,\u201d says the actor. \u201cYou know that he can conjure a world and give you atmosphere and give you a frame.\u201d Combine that knowledge with the prospect of trying to make a film that would seem at home next to Citizen Kane, shot in black-and-white, and Oldman knew how \u201cfabulous\u201d it would look. \u201cBut I had not anticipated how specific he was with the beats and the text. I had not realized that. There\u2019s even more energy in that than the other.\u201d<\/p>

Oldman didn\u2019t have anything to lean on, either. Whether it\u2019s as subtle as the receding hair of Shelly Runyon in The Contender, or the painstaking, extensive make-up employed for his Oscar-winning performance as Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour, the actor usually has something. Not here. Fincher nixed any notion of an artificial hairline, fake teeth, or nose, to make him look more like Mank. About the only thing Oldman was allowed to do was put on weight. \u201cThat\u2019s terrifying,\u201d says the actor. \u201cThere\u2019s really nothing to hide behind. At least for Smiley [in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy], I had the glasses. I had something. He wanted me to be no tricks or bullshit: \u2018Just you.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/div>

On-set, Oldman seems tired, but happy. \u201cHe has a very specific vision. He\u2019s heard it and seen it in his head for all these years. And it is very, very specific, what he wants\u2014and he challenges you like no director I\u2019ve ever worked with. And I\u2019ve worked with some great people. But nothing like this. This is like acting boot camp.\u201d<\/p>

Fincher seems genuinely surprised to hear this, when it\u2019s put to him. It\u2019s probably hard not to feel it as a criticism as much as a compliment\u2014like he gives people a hard time. Not that he\u2019s going to lose any sleep over this, in particular: \u201cI believe that actors should be held as accountable as dolly grips, as electricians,\u201d he says. \u201cIn order to run the circus, you have to know where the elephants are. \u2018Who has the cockatoo?\u2019 You have to keep track of that stuff. And everybody has a different discipline. I look at it as, \u2018I\u2019m going to give you authorship of this, but I am going to poke and prod to push you. I want to see you responding in the way that somebody who has never been in this circumstance before would, right? A lot of the stuff that Mank goes through, I mean, there\u2019s so many times where he\u2019s doing stuff on autopilot, but the consequences of it need to surprise him\u2014and so, that surprise needs to be part of it. But he [Oldman] has read the script. The actor knows what is going to happen. We just need it to feel like it\u2019s happening for the first time, and that the outcome was unexpected. So, you\u2019re going to have to change things up and make things new for them. And, at the same time, you also need to make sure that you have the pieces that tell the story that you needed to tell.\u201d<\/p>

Part of what Fincher is doing\u2014what any director is doing, if they\u2019re decent, even if they don\u2019t know it\u2014is giving the actors the chance to forget anything apart from right now. Being present is the thing.<\/p>

Ferdinand Kingsley, who brings a predatory expedience to the usually deified Irving Thalberg, remembers Fincher\u2019s enduring direction as \u201cfaster and simpler.\u201d He also remembers being somewhat staggered to find himself as part of the production, his highest profile work to date, but this links back to the idea of presence. He turned to Arliss Howard, when they were filming Marion\u2019s elaborate home movie at Hearst Castle, in disbelief. \u201cI was just like, \u2018Look at this. This is absolutely crazy. Look where we are\u2014this is our job.\u2019 And Arliss just sort of turned to me and was like, \u2018Do not forget that feeling!\u201d<\/p>

Kingsley took this to mean, it seems, \u201cDon\u2019t lose that feeling of, \u2018Wow, I\u2019m here\u2019\u201d\u2014which is part of it. Though relaying this to Howard, his emphasis is on the moment, rather than being grateful. \u201cWhat I was saying to Ferdie, was, \u2018Remember that you felt present\u2019\u2014because presence is everything. It\u2019s not about whether you appreciate it or don\u2019t appreciate it. It\u2019s, \u2018Are you living inside it? Are you really there, man?\u2019 And that\u2019s what great acting is. When you see great actors, they have dispelled the illusion of anything, by being present. That\u2019s what I think you feel in any great art: presence\u2014fully inhabited.\u201d In this way of thinking, even playing a character becomes somewhat secondary\u2014as Howard expresses it: \u201cI\u2019m not playing Louis B. Mayer. That\u2019s solved by the script and by the billing. I\u2019m not playing Louis B. Mayer. I\u2019m playing a guy. I\u2019m being a guy that\u2019s walking down a hallway with a couple of other guys, talking. I\u2019m a guy who\u2019s got his feelings hurt. And you try to live in that pocket. And all the preparation, and the costume, you let them do their job. I look at a lot of my preparation as adjacent to what\u2019s gonna happen between action and cut.\u201d<\/p>

It\u2019s an interesting notion, echoed in a different key by Burke, discussing playing the iconic Welles. \u201cI was never worried about going down a road of just doing an impression, \u2019cause I think we all do impressions of who we are anyway.\u201d Persona, who we are and how we present ourselves, how we value ourselves and who we pretend to be or wish we were, it\u2019s all a part of acting, yes. It\u2019s also part of what tortures Mankiewicz, who hasn\u2019t lived up to his hope for himself. It\u2019s the reason he asserts himself over credit for Citizen Kane, because he finally feels he\u2019s written something of worth. His Oscar becomes a moment of redemption, of self-worth, though not enough to stop the slide to an alcoholic\u2019s death (of uremic poisoning, in 1953). The tragedy of Mankiewicz might have been in imagining that writing, any type of writing, can bring you value beyond the value you give yourself. \u201cI remember Fincher said one time, \u2018If you\u2019re looking outside yourself for help or an answer, you\u2019re looking the wrong way. It\u2019s all inside,\u2019\u201d recalls Howard. \u201cAnd I remember saying something like, \u2018Well, try and make a movie all by yourself. See how that goes.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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\u201cI know what you mean,\u201d says Fincher to director of photography Erik Messerschmidt. \u201cBut it\u2019s supposed to look like a crypt.\u201d They\u2019re setting lights for a set-piece scene. Well, every scene appears to be treated equally on a Fincher production, but it\u2019s fair to say that, for this, they\u2019ve allowed plenty of time. They will be shooting it for a week. The dining room at Hearst Castle, San Simeon, has been recreated on a sound stage at the Los Angeles Center Studios. The diners are in circus attire. \u201cHow are you?\u201d someone asks Charles Dance, as he walks up in a gold lam\u00e9 ringmaster\u2019s jacket. He pauses, before quietly offering: \u201cIt\u2019s a bit early to say.\u201d Dance will sit silent for hours and watch, today, as Hearst witnesses Mankiewicz arrive late for dinner, drunk as a lord, and throw up\u2014literally and emotionally. Oldman is eating a tofu substitute for the fish Mankiewicz is supposed to dine on. At 9:05 a.m., the camera turns over, and a couple of takes in, Fincher can be heard muttering to himself, at the monitor: \u201cPlease, Gary, don\u2019t eat unless you have to\u2014you will be dead by fucking noon.\u201d He seems a tad irascible. The camera rolls on. Take 16. The first half of Camera A is \u201cgood\u201d\u2014Camera B is \u201cdog shit.\u201d Take 18: \u201cAll right, last one\u2014here we go.\u201d But after: \u201cShitballs.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWithout their being able to prevent it, [Orson Welles] charmed, bullied, and provoked Mankiewicz, Houseman, Toland and Bernard Herrmann into their best work for the screen. That is a sort of authorship that consists of dictating the terms in which collaborators deal with him.\u201d<\/p>

\u2014DAVID THOMSON, THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM<\/div><\/div>

\u201cI enjoy the idea of what I do. But the process is...\u201d Fincher trails off. He\u2019s speaking from his Los Feliz home now that post-production is about two-thirds done. \u201cNot to get all bedridden with consumption about it, but the compromise is the hard part.\u201d He appreciates the input of others and recognizes its value, but finds the process of shooting arduous. \u201cIt makes you just think, \u2018If I could only just snatch it from my prefrontal lobes and play it for you!\u2019 But the only reason I\u2019m confident that would be the best version of it, is \u2019cause I\u2019ve never had to endure seeing that rough cut. Then you\u2019d sit there and scream, \u2018Jesus, man\u2014you really need to think this shit through! You\u2019re gonna need ninety other people to really test this and make sure these ideas are solid!\u2019\u201d<\/p>

Each film is a jigsaw puzzle\u2014to use the metaphor employed by Jerry Thompson, the reporter in Citizen Kane, talking of how to put together a newsreel report into the motivations of the man at the center of that story. In filmmaking, though, not only are there an incredible amount of parts to make up the picture, it\u2019s a picture no one has ever seen. There\u2019s a skill in presenting it to people before the fact, to ensure you\u2019re imagining the same thing. When Fincher first mentioned the film to regular collaborators Ren Klyce and production designer Don Burt, in separate chats, he discussed the idea of Mank being found on a shelf, next to Citizen Kane\u2014a kind of forgotten artifact. \u201cI thought that was an interesting way of presenting what the visual of it was,\u201d says Burt, who has worked with Fincher since Zodiac (2007), and won an Oscar for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There are a few people who keep coming back for more. \u201cI think you\u2019re there because you have the same work ethic\u2014and you\u2019re really great at your job. Those\u2019re the only two things that work around him, really,\u201d says Chaffin, explaining the hiring rationale behind a Fincher production. He gives people opportunities based on who they are\u2014and what he thinks they can do\u2014as much as for what they\u2019ve done. When he first met Laray Mayfield, in the mid-\u201980s, she was working in craft services. He subsequently hired her as his assistant, and spotted her nose for casting when making music videos together. \u201cDave\u2019s like, \u2018Come on, I got your back, go try it.\u2019\u201d (Fight Club was her first feature credit as casting director.)<\/p>

Trent Reznor was obviously known for Nine Inch Nails, for whom Fincher had shot the video \u201cOnly,\u201d before the director decided that he and Atticus Ross should try their hand at scoring The Social Network. They won an Oscar for that, and are now delivering a blend of Bernard Herrmann-esque orchestral score and big-band sounds for Mank\u2014something nothing their previous recordings would have suggested they could do.<\/p><\/div>

Klyce worked with Fincher on his very first directorial outing, shooting a commercial for the American Cancer Society. Nearly forty years later, they\u2019re still collaborating\u2014on the sound of Mank. Fincher calls him the \u201cthe angel on the shoulder,\u201d always pushing to make the sound as good as it can possibly be. It\u2019s proved complicated to return to the simplicity of the 1930s. The elaborate Foley process has included playing dialogue through vintage telephones, to capture the appropriate atmosphere, as well as amassing an array of phone \u201cfutzes.\u201d Even car-door slams and idling engines are from period-specific automobiles. \u201cI\u2019m up to version twenty of this thing we call the patina,\u201d says Klyce. \u201cThe patina being this old-fashioned sound of the movie. He asked me to cut together our movie with the patina, and then intercut Citizen Kane.\u201d Successfully managing monaural\u2014without losing clarity and straining the attention of modern audiences\u2014has required anything but a one-track mind. If you can imagine it, they\u2019ve probably tried it. It\u2019s a quality they\u2019re looking to match in the visuals, too. Erik Messerschmidt, who was the gaffer on Gone Girl before Fincher brought him in to photograph each episode of Mindhunter after the pilot, has been echoing, although not precisely aping, the stylings of \u201930s and \u201940s pictures. They looked at Kane, obviously, and adopted Welles\u2019s stage holdover of fading to black in-camera, rather than in post. They also looked at other Toland pictures\u2014The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage Home\u2014and experimented with deep focus and Kane\u2019s signature low, wide shot. \u201cAnd the lighting, the use of smoke and atmosphere in the air and shafts of light, and the kind of richness\u2014which, in other films of that period, is not really present,\u201d says Messerschmidt. \u201cFilm noir didn\u2019t really come about until the mid \u201940s, the kind of true, very stark look. I think Citizen Kane is responsible for a huge part in that. And we want people to recognize it, but not really be like, \u2018Oh they\u2019re trying to be Gregg Toland.\u2019 I mean, I can\u2019t imagine a worse thing to say. But we definitely were inspired.\u201d<\/p>

For costumes, Fincher turned to Trish Summerville, his \u201cmuse\u201d on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was, at the time, by far her biggest production. For Mank, she had to create and curate a selection of costumes that would work within reality on-set, but also translate in black-and-white on-screen\u2014as well as survive the shoot. In the election night sequence, they were repairing items of vintage clothing as shooting went on, \u201c\u2019cause some of them just start to disintegrate literally on the body.\u201d<\/p>

It\u2019s conspicuous that as skilled as each HOD is, they seem focused on the story as a whole, rather than simply their own element within it. Summerville recalls the Hearst dinner party wasn\u2019t originally circus-themed, until her research indicated he\u2019d held a couple of such seemingly ridiculous shindigs. And it was she who suggested Mayer dress as a lion-tamer, which is both apt for his position as head of MGM, and suitably absurd, putting him in jodhpurs and a pith helmet as his temper frays. This serves as a great example of what Mank is about in its story: the mystery and importance of collaboration. Mayer as lion-tamer wasn\u2019t in the original script. It isn\u2019t explicitly the writer\u2019s concept, or the director\u2019s. But it comes out of the petri dish the elements have been placed into. Peter Mavromates, who has been post-production supervisor on nine of Fincher\u2019s eleven films, points to a trait that\u2019s crucial for every member of the team: \u201cIt\u2019s a requirement to work here that you have to be curious. If you\u2019re not curious, you\u2019re not going to last with us.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Fincher doesn\u2019t believe in the idea of the auteur, in the sense of everyone in service to one person\u2019s authorial idea. \u201cI feel like moviemaking owes a lot more to demolition derby than it does to neurosurgery.\u201d Although that isn\u2019t to say that he completely aligns with Welles\u2019s famous quote that a director is someone who \u201cpresides over a series of accidents.\u201d You do pick the road you travel on and those you travel with, after all. He talks about Travis Bickle\u2019s famous line, \u201cYou talking to me?\u201d\u2014improvised by Robert De Niro on Taxi Driver\u2014as an example, suggesting it should accrue to Paul Schrader, as even if he didn\u2019t write those words, he generated the world in which it could be spoken. \u201cAnd I\u2019m sure Scorsese saw this moment and went, \u2018Holy shit. That\u2019s the treatise... That is the Travis Bickle experience!\u2019 \u2018You talking to me?\u2019 Like, there is no better way to encapsulate what this guy is looking for. He\u2019s looking to be respected. He doesn\u2019t understand what that\u2019s gonna take. That doesn\u2019t mean that Robert De Niro wrote Taxi Driver. It doesn\u2019t mean that Martin Scorsese is any less of a fucking genius for going, \u2018Definitely print that take!\u2019 You know what I mean? All of that goodness accrues to everyone who was paying attention.\u201d<\/p>

To that end, Fincher wants people who are addressing their efforts to the moment, rather than floating off into the realm of theme or ideas. \u201cI\u2019ve always found that the people I respect the most that I\u2019ve worked with in this weird business (from the best script supervisor that I\u2019ve ever worked with, best cinematographers, best rigging grips, best writers, best actors), were people who invariably saw their jobs as solving a problem. It\u2019s problem-solving. And I think that when you talk about the look of a film, you can show reference ad nauseam, you can have access to all of your mood boards, and bullshit like that. But when it gets right down to it, and the sun is moving and the cast is there and they\u2019re in makeup, and they\u2019ve been getting wigs on since 5 a.m., it\u2019s a very pragmatic process. It is about solving the problems that are directly in front of you.\u201d<\/p>

Don Burt certainly sees his own role that way\u2014and for all the flowery things people say about Fincher, the softly spoken production designer\u2019s assessment of him will likely mean most to the director. \u201cI don\u2019t mean this in a derogatory way, but, to me, he\u2019s just another guy,\u201d says Burt. \u201cIt\u2019s just being with a regular guy, trying to figure out the movie. And doing it for the right reason.\u201d<\/p>

Also, to that end, although he won\u2019t necessarily tell you this, Fincher wants to know everyone\u2019s jobs\u2014so that if you can\u2019t solve the problem, he can. (\u201cI heard lots of rumors, good and bad,\u201d says hair designer Colleen LaBaff, of working with Fincher. At the end of her first day with him, she was incredulous. \u201cBy the end of the test, I\u2019m like, \u2018You\u2019re kidding. This guy knows how to make a wig!\u2019 It was pretty incredible... and sometimes, it was really tough.\u201d)<\/p>

Sometimes, how to approach something comes down to knowledge; sometimes, to instinct. There aren\u2019t necessarily hard and fast rules to things. Originally, in its \u201990s version, Mank was going to shoot in 4:3 aspect ratio using a BNC (Blimped Newsreel Camera). \u201cThe whole idea was to do it with the equipment of the day,\u201d says Fincher. \u201cAnd then I started fretting, \u2018You have now officially disappeared up your own ass, without a flashlight.\u2019\u201d Today\u2019s version\u2014okay, the only version, really\u2014has a 2.2:1 aspect ratio, was shot in 8k on a RED Weapon Helium Monochrome and will add its screen degradation\u2014cigarette burns, film scratches, grain\u2014after the fact. Fincher knew this was absolutely the right way to go... and he would figure out why later. \u201cYeah. \u2018It has to be this way!\u2019 \u2018Why?\u2019 \u2018I will get back to you! But it has to be. It can\u2019t even be entertained any other way!\u2019\u201d He laughs. \u201cLook, I don\u2019t know why it seemed to me it has to be in black-and-white. And then when some\u00ad-body would say, \u2018Yeah, but they didn\u2019t have CinemaScope back then,\u2019 I yell, \u2018Shut up! It\u2019s none of your business!\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Fincher is being flippant here, though it\u2019s fair to say he doesn\u2019t always come across as such. Sometimes, his barbs stick. (\u201cI\u2019m way more sensitive to what he says, you know,\u201d says Roth. \u201cI get hurt, and he doesn\u2019t think I do.\u201d) \u201cI don\u2019t think David hears himself like others hear him,\u201d says Chaffin. \u201cI think that [his] confidence comes off sometimes to people as being harsh. But that\u2019s very rare. Most of his crew come back time and time again.\u201d (\u201cI didn\u2019t like David very much in the beginning,\u201d says Gigi Williams, head of makeup. \u201cI really didn\u2019t like him. But then he grows on you. And everyone kept saying, \u2018He makes your job better.\u2019\u201d)<\/p>

You can see some of this acerbity on-screen\u2014and in characters. The playwright Marc Connelly, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930 (and knew Mankiewicz as a fellow member of \u201920s New York gathering of wits and geniuses the Algonquin Round Table) characterized Herman thus: \u201cMank could be a little bit insistent\u2014more forceful than we. He was a man whose convictions came out as obsessions.\u201d It\u2019s a description that some might argue also applies to Fincher. Certainly, he is like a dog with a bone over certain ideas and ideals. Although cinematographer Messerschmidt\u2014a calmly spoken, youthful late thirties, who seems like he\u2019d appear laidback in a firefight\u2014doesn\u2019t see it that way. \u201cI think David\u2019s reputation as being obsessive is not really correct,\u201d he says. \u201cI think David is attentive.\u201d<\/p>

Whether you see his attitude as pleasingly attentive or unhealthily obsessional\u2014or sliding along an axis between both, depending on sleep, anxiety and caffeine\u2014Fincher is pretty self-aware. He knows he can be hard work. It\u2019s just, well, he doesn\u2019t know how else to be. It\u2019s been particularly hard on Mank, perhaps, because of the gestation period. \u201cI said to him, \u2018This has been in your head twenty-seven-plus years, and it\u2019s not doing you any favors,\u2019\u201d says Chaffin. \u201cIt was making him feel more insecure about what he was doing, in a way. He expressed it the other day as kicking the can down the road. And he\u2019s been kicking this can down the road. \u2018It wasn\u2019t time to make it yet.\u2019 \u2018There\u2019s no interest.\u2019 \u2018Black-and-white film.\u2019 \u2018No money.\u2019 Whatever it may be. This was something in his head that he still wanted to make, but it just kept getting pushed.\u201d<\/p>

Chaffin sees this side to him, of course, in a way few others do\u2014although people get glimpses. \u201cHe does have a softness and a sensitivity to him, definitely,\u201d says Kingsley. \u201cOtherwise, he wouldn\u2019t be a great artist, I don\u2019t think. I feel like you can see that through Ce\u00e1n. \u2019Cause she\u2019ll say, \u2018Oh, he was up last night worrying about this,\u2019 and he\u2019ll be like, \u2018Aw, shut up, Ce\u00e1n. I don\u2019t worry!\u2019\u201d<\/p>

If \u201cinsecure\u201d is a not an adjective many people would use in relation to Fincher, it\u2019s perhaps because he\u2019s worked quite hard to disguise it\u2014or to protect himself from it. Since Alien 3, an experience so miserable that it is hard to get him to expound upon it at any length, he has strived to put himself in positions of control. Not for the sake of control in itself, but for the sake of the work. Klyce reflects that Fincher has been learning from every production what to watch out for, what to avoid. It\u2019s arguably to the benefit of his subsequent films that Alien 3 was poorly received and a nightmare shoot. If it had been a hit, coming off his success in music videos and commercials, he might have become insufferable. \u201cMaybe you\u2019re right,\u201d says Klyce, before thinking: \u201cI mean, people call him insufferable anyway. But I know what you mean. Maybe the experience of meeting and being controlled by producers or studio heads and so forth, and learning that way, he reverse-engineered... Like he\u2019s put the safeguards in place...\u201d<\/p>

Fincher qualifies his attitude to filmmaking, or the conversations and conflict around it, thus: \u201cI never had a problem with negotiating with, or having to explain myself to, somebody who also has their name on the thing, right? I don\u2019t have a problem fighting with Scott Rudin [a producer on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network], I don\u2019t have a problem fighting with Eric Roth. I have a problem fighting with people whose names are never going to [be on the film]. When studio people say, \u2018Well it would just make us more comfortable if it was shot on color stock and then printed to black-and-white.\u2019 And one asks, \u2018But the notion is to actually derive a black-and-white film from it?\u2019 \u2018Yeah, but it would make me more comfortable if...\u2019 I have a problem with that.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Reznor talks of having seen Fincher in \u201cbattle mode\u2014fiercely protective of the project and the people working on the project.\u201d Kirk Baxter is wary of appearing sycophantic, but says he sees something of the director in several of his leads, and with Mankiewicz\u2014particularly in how he stands up for what he think is right, whatever the cost. \u201cI find that particular quality that Mank has, Fincher does, too. He will set himself on fire, for a principle.\u201d<\/p>

Fincher would probably brush off the comparison, or point back to his father. \u201cMy dad was very much like that\u2014he would definitely take posers to task for their assumptions, or their sweeping pronouncements and broad brushstrokes. But he always showed compassion to people who weren\u2019t as maybe intellectually or experientially as fortunate.\u201d He highlights the scene of Mayer\u2019s birthday party, which Marion leaves in shame after suggesting Hearst is picking the president\u2019s cabinet. Mank follows to check that she\u2019s okay. \u201cThat\u2019s a very Jack move. The moment where Mank encourages Marion, and then Marion has a deadly faux pas and finds herself forced from the room. The fact that Mankiewicz goes after her to see if she\u2019s okay and offer her [a drink]... Now my dad wasn\u2019t a big drinker, but that\u2019s obviously the thing that Herman and Marion bonded over. There\u2019s a lot of things that the character does that remind me of Jack.\u201d<\/p>

Nobody was more miserable, more bitter and funnier than Mank... a perfect monument of self-destruction. But, you know, when the bitterness wasn\u2019t focused straight onto you\u2014he was the best company in the world.<\/p>

\u2014ORSON WELLES<\/div><\/div>

Fincher\u2019s father would get nervous when people drank too much. Just as the memory of poverty gets baked into people\u2019s bones, so does the memory of abuse. Jack did drink, but not a lot. Not after what he\u2019d seen. It\u2019s another element of what makes up Mank, as a screenplay\u2014Jack\u2019s understanding of an alcoholic. \u201cI don\u2019t know that he embraced all of the complications of people who self-immolate,\u201d says Fincher. \u201cBut I do think he had a pretty good understanding of the working alcoholic, in the way he laid out Mankiewicz.\u201d<\/p>

It\u2019s notable that it\u2019s not a judgmental portrait. There\u2019s no sense of being lectured by script or screen. It\u2019s just a fact that Mankiewicz drinks too much, and it\u2019s to his own detriment as a person, though it also appears to help him when he comes to write. \u201cLook, we all know people who... I have known people who are extremely self-destructive, and alcoholism was the least of their fucking problems,\u201d says Fincher. \u201cBut it was all part and parcel of the kind of wanton messes that they were. So I think it\u2019s an interesting thing. For a guy who was probably raised on Bing Crosby movies and Glenn Ford and The Lost Weekend, and shit like that\u2014he wrote things in a fairly kind of impartial, humanist way. He didn\u2019t feel the need to apologize or ridicule or talk about the hot mess that Mankiewicz was.\u201d<\/p>

The extent to which Mank, as a film, is about alcoholism, is an open question. Fincher doesn\u2019t particularly stress it. Douglas Urbanski, in contrast, thinks it\u2019s the main thrust. \u201cIt hit me profoundly, as time went on. David does not go for the low-hanging fruit that is in this movie: So, when you watch the film, you discover it\u2019s not about politics. And it\u2019s not about fake news. It\u2019s not about corporate greed or the studio system. These are all wonderful textures to the backdrop of the thing. But it\u2019s a film about a slow, self-inflicted suicide of an alcoholic.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Urbanski has known Fincher for years, too, as Oldman\u2019s business partner. On-set, he and the actor have an intimate, truly touching connection\u2014like brothers, in its familiarity. A former theater producer and occasional actor, who you may recognize as the irascible president of Harvard in The Social Network, Urbanski has an endless store of anecdotes and Hollywood connections, although he dismisses the idea that he knows everybody by drawing a comparison with his friend, Peter Ustinov. (\u201cOh no, I\u2019ll tell you who knew everybody: Peter Ustinov knew everybody. You\u2019d call Peter Ustinov up and it would always be, \u2018I just finished an early morning tennis game with the pope, and I\u2019m on to meet Gorbachev for dinner.\u2019 It was always these names. Ustinov knew everybody. I know some people.\u201d) He lives in a Beverly Hills house first owned by Mankiewicz\u2019s fellow New York writer Dorothy Parker, where he once used to host a contemporary figure of comparable wit\u2014the British journalist Christopher Hitchens. Urbanski mentions him as a reference point for the characterization of Mank, as the funniest, sharpest, most engaging of people, but also a contrarian who alienated his friends. Oldman\u2014who has survived his own battles with booze and is more than two decades sober\u2014doesn\u2019t comment on that comparison, but says of Mank: \u201cFor some reason, like a lot of alcoholics, he just can\u2019t back away from hell.\u201d<\/p>

Fincher contends that it was useful to have someone who understood addiction, standing in Herman\u2019s shoes: \u201cWell, I don\u2019t think it would\u2019ve been smart to cast the person to play Herman Mankiewicz who didn\u2019t have some kind of understanding, either from family, or from an intimate, as to what alcoholism is. That\u2019s also to say that I believe that Mankiewicz is defined by his wit and then his alcoholism, and not by his alcoholism and then his wit. Wit first.\u201d The film can, of course, be about several things. And even within alcoholism, there is the difference between those who drink because of a genetic compulsion, and those who use alcohol as an anesthetic\u2014a way to self-medicate when afraid to confront their own frustrations or failings. Or even their potential failings, as there\u2019s an argument that Mankiewicz\u2014after years of writing comedies he felt were beneath him\u2014was simply just afraid to try. He was somebody who once claimed, \u201cMy half effort is worth everybody else\u2019s full effort\u201d\u2014which is both an amusing quip and a sly self-exculpation for avoiding the writer\u2019s nightmare of confronting the limit of your own talent. If he remained drunk and flippant, delivering zingers between bouts of poker in a studio writers\u2019 room, he would never have to discover whether he could really deliver something he considered worthwhile. Kingsley has a useful summary of the film: \u201cI think it\u2019s an exploration of what pushes people to feel they have to tell their stories at all costs. And it costs him a lot.\u201d<\/p>

Howard looks at it in line with Fincher\u2019s other work, in a way that perhaps the director would not, and draws a comparison with Kubrick\u2014though not the fairly easy one about multiple takes and meticulousness. He doesn\u2019t see them as particularly similar personalities. \u201cNot so much.\u201d But there were thoughts that occurred during filming Mank that brought the late director to mind and their conversations while shooting Full Metal Jacket in the mid \u201980s. Kubrick told him most war movies followed the template of Westerns, but he was interested in something different. \u201cHe said, \u2018I\u2019m just interested in the machines that human beings build to destroy themselves.\u2019\u201d Howard mulled this over during Mank, considering how Mankiewicz is slowly drinking himself to death, how Mayer and Thalberg are involved in annihilating the working class, how they and Hearst might reflect the psychology of tyrants. \u201cThat\u2019s what I think reminded me of what Stanley\u2019s talking about, \u2019cause I think David\u2019s work is existing always very specifically in a straightforward narrative, but the metaphor is always hovering around how people fuck each other. And fuck themselves, it seems to me.\u201d<\/p>

It\u2019s a salient point that may suffer in its condensation. (But Howard\u2014who is, as he says of Fincher, \u201cdelightful\u201d\u2014talks in pages with more tributaries than the Amazon.) Still, although there\u2019s plenty of destruction in Fincher\u2019s films, it might be that he\u2019s most interested, consistently, in the opposite: creation. This features even in the most unlikely places, whether it\u2019s in the ingenious invention of a lonely man craving attention (Seven), or a dangerous outsider exploiting the sins of humanity (The Social Network). All of this is by accident, even as it is by design. It\u2019s by problem-solving, facing what\u2019s in front of you, dealing with the moment. And Fincher isn\u2019t interested in examining it. \u201cYou can\u2019t talk to the dolly grip and opine, \u2018The-matically, this camera move is too fucking fast,\u2019 you know? It doesn\u2019t help.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

One evening, after an afternoon of directing Burke as Welles reacting to Mankiewicz\u2019s draft of \u201cAmerican\u201d\u2014\u201cOkay. Nice. Same thing. Little simpler. Little quieter\u201d \/ \u201cA little bit, a teeny bit jealous of how good it is.\u201d \/ \u201cPick up that line again and really barrel through\u201d\u2014we jump into Ce\u00e1n\u2019s car and head for dinner. The radio plays the Citizen Kane suite by Bernard Herrmann, which seems like an outrageous coincidence until you consider that this is, well, Hollywood. At the restaurant, Josh Donen stops by the table to say hello. Fincher\u2019s business partner, he understands a tad about Hollywood lore and reality, as the son of the late Stanley Donen, director of Singin\u2019 in the Rain. They chat a little before food arrives and he departs and wine is poured and discussion turns to Citizen Kane\u2014how it was the first film to really exploit cinema\u2019s potential, how previously the camera had been \u201cchained,\u201d how films should ask questions more than provide answers, how Fincher hopes people will watch Mank, and it won\u2019t seem too \u201cinside baseball\u201d; how he wonders\u2014and these aren\u2019t the words, they\u2019re the impression of the words\u2014whether he\u2019s making the right choices, honoring the intent, doing the writer justice. And we\u2019re back at the beginning. Like the rest of us, David Fincher doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s doing. Or, at least, he doesn\u2019t know why. \u201cHow stupid is this?\u201d he says, taking a drink. \u201cI\u2019m making a movie for the one person who won\u2019t ever see it.\u201d<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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