Mank (2020) on Netflix
In 1940, Orson Welles recruits Herman J. Mankiewicz to write a screenplay. With a broken leg, Herman dictates pages to his secretary while John Houseman worries about the script.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb6.8/10105,780 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
RKO gives Orson Welles a free hand on his next project, and Welles brings in Herman J. Mankiewicz to write the screenplay. Herman is in Victorville, California, laid up with a broken leg from a car crash. He dictates the pages to his secretary, Rita Alexander, who spots similarities between the script's main character, Charles Foster Kane, and William Randolph Hearst. Producer John Houseman is uneasy about the script's dense, nonlinear shape, and Herman's brother Joseph fears the subject will anger Hearst.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mank (2020)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- David Fincher first planned Mank as his follow-up to The Game (1997), with Kevin Spacey and Jodie Foster set to star, but it never came together because Fincher insisted on shooting it in black-and-white.
- The screenplay by David Fincher's late father Jack Fincher followed Pauline Kael's 1971 claim that Orson Welles did not deserve screenwriting credit for Citizen Kane, an argument rebutted by Welles's friend Peter Bogdanovich and later discredited by scholars including Robert L. Carringer.
- Charles Dance said that a scene involving a drunken Herman Mankiewicz took over 100 takes, while Amanda Seyfried said one of her scenes took over a week and 200 takes for Fincher to shoot.
- The night-time moonlit stroll between Herman Mankiewicz and Marion Davies was shot during the day at Huntington Gardens and a Pasadena mansion using the day-for-night technique, because cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt needed daylight for the lighting.
- Because Mank was shot in black and white rather than converted, costume designer Trish Summerville and production designer Donald Graham Burt looked at their work through noir and monochromatic filters on their iPhones to check how it would appear.
- Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross forsook their usual synth-heavy style for Mank, using period-authentic 1940s instruments, and because of the COVID-19 pandemic each member of the orchestra recorded their sections for the score from home.
