Mank (2020) Starring: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily
Collins, Arliss Howard, Tom Pelphrey, Charles Dance. Directed by David Fincher
Screenplay by Jack Fincher. Produced by Ceán Chaffin, Eric Roth, Douglas
Urbanski. USA Black and White Run time: 131 minutes. Biography, Historical.
Hollywood films about Hollywood always run the risk of being
too inside baseball for the average viewer. It gets more so when the subject
matter is 80 years old, as it is with Mank, a biographical film about Herman
J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldham) a screenwriter on Citizen Kane (1941), or as
the film purports, the writer on the film. Based on a claim, and some
would say discredited one, by Pauline Kael in her 1971 New Yorker
article Raising Kane that Welles did not deserve screenwriting credit, the
screenplay was written by Jack Fincher, a little-known screenwriter, whose son turned
out to be film director David Fincher.
