David Fincher -- c/d?

Loved me some Mank

I really enjoyed it - I went into it tonight half expecting to be bored or unmoved based on what I’d read here. I think within the bounds of what the movie ~is~ it was really successful.
And I say that discounting what it should have been or what it was expected to be etc etc

I mean just as a biopic alone I loved that it didnt do all the usual david copperfieldian born lived died etc, that you get Mank through the lens of Hearst/Kane, figuratively & literally. I was really taken by the way both fed into each other.

Anyway, yay Mank

also i howled when Poor Sue gives that line to Mank about how it’s been a long time since she saw a horse’s face LMAO BURN

Liked Oldman and Charles Dance and the guy who played Ben Heck but much of it felt like Old Hollywood cosplay and the incessant namedropping "Ah, there's Irving Thalberg! / Oh, play the piano Charlie (Chaplin)/ Look, here's Norma Shearer!" took me back to the dreaded (for me) "Midnight In Paris" and its phony parade of Jazz Age celebs at every corner.

Plus it didn't help that I've never bought this "Mankiewicz wrote all of it " story one bit

also i howled when Poor Sue gives that line to Mank

Tuppence Middleton was good. In general I appreciated the (seemingly deliberate) avoidance of recognizable stars.

i quite liked this. i rewatched ed wood a week ago and i was struck by how they're both movies about movies that copy the aesthetic of the movies they're about

also i was watching with headphones and i maybe i'm crazy but it sounded like the dialogue had an effect on it to make it sound like you're watching a movie in a theater - a very slight echo/reverb

I never realized until last night that John Houseman the producer that babysat Mank was the very same John Houseman the actor of 3 Days of The Condor, Paper Chase etc.

what a career! crazy.

admittedly there is some execrable dialogue in this in short bursts, but more often than not it is pretty sharp. I'm only half way through - but enjoying it. Even Gary Old-man is pretty good value.

"Mank" is not an interesting enough personage, but David Fincher does this sort of t hing well.

It's meh.

(xpost) Here is a dime, Mr. Hart--call your mother and tell her there's seeeeriiiiouuus doubt about you becoming a lawyer.

welles scholar joseph mcbride has a pretty comprehensive response to the film’s historical claims here:

https://www.wellesnet.com/mank-welles-mcbride/

Saw that

it’s funny (well, not funny funny but yknow, funny) that the subject still gets discussed by Wellesheads & Mankheads at the teetering-on -pistols-at-dawn level of discourse even now

has mcbride ever heard this do you think

https://genius.com/Orson-welles-frozen-peas-annotated

in honor of Morbs I am never going to watch this

Ha! Well done.

he knew i had terrible taste
i have no regrets

but i miss him like crazy

this was so dull I turned it off after 20 minutes

"has mcbride ever heard this do you think"

this makes me want to see a Mank where Danny McBride plays Mank and yeah I guess Jody Hill or David Gordon Green directs too

This is a fascinating interview w Ren Klyce the sound designer on Mank (who’s worked on most/almost all of Fincher’s major movies)

The minutaie layed out here is incredible - and lol at how much of the story is Fincher asking for the moon & then getting annoyed at how long it takes to achieve his wild asks

https://theplaylist.net/mank-sound-design-ren-kylce-interview-20201207/

While never dull, Mank mistakenly gets too ambitious; it's the most unwieldy picture of Fincher's career. I'd have wanted a movie about his support for Upton Sinclair.

Good details about the fact/fiction of that here, by Greg Mitchell who wrote “Campaign of The Century” about Sinclair’s run

The Mank connection to Sinclair is heavily fictionalized it seems, but the studio involvement in scuttling Sinclair’s win was pretty true, if not watered down

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/movies/mank-upton-sinclair.html?smid=tw-share

I think Fincher maybe tried to have it be about ~too much~ and Mank the character gets a little foggy between timelines

But I think Mank’s change of heart in wanting credit is the heart of the movie, and the movie writer in The System is where the richness is

I’ve watched it a couple of times now & don’t believe Fincher is waging any kind of war against Welles the way wellesians make it seem. I think the thought exercise of viewing Welles & Kane through Mank’s gimlet eye makes it hard not to seem like jabs are being intentionally thrown. as Mank says in the movie (paraphrasing) he *is* capable of being serious ... about things that are funny.

The movie is telling this creative undertaking through Mank’s experience of it and trying to underline that whatever Mank wrote, once it was written, was something he was proud of, and willing to stand for, which is something he had never really done, and what a seachange that is for a man who never held his own work in much high regard at all.
I don’t think it’s trying to challenge any accepted facts or say that Welles did less or whatever. imo.

Mank sank by script that's rank

I would have probably like it more if I was an Old Hollywood nerd

lol all the old hollywood nerds I know HATE this movie

A leaden mess. Stick with a topic and develop it: the '34 gubernatorial race, carousing with Perelman, Hecht, et. al, the writing of CK.

The film can't take a "side" because it's an overloaded buffet.

I would have much preferred another season of Mindhunter. Maybe watching this with low expectations helped and despite some of awful dialogue I found it quite enjoyable as far as Netflix productions go!

I'd rank his films thusly.

i feel like you nailed the best two; i'd switch around a bunch of stuff below them, mostly bc i'm the only huge fan of panic room and i actually really love the way he adapted gone girl

I remember panic room being a lot of fun

it’s so fun

I found the cast unattractive but it's been so long.

Gone Girl and Zodiac are basically tied for me lol

the social network is very good

i probably need to see gone girl again but i had read the book before i saw the movie and didn't really feel like the movie added much that wasn't already in the book. i remember it being a fine adaptation but not a special movie beyond that. i'd be curious to hear more from fans of the movie about what it is that appeals to them about it as a movie. this is not a challenge, again i haven't seen the movie since it first came out.

I found it obvious and cloddish. No surprises except when Tyler Perry was onscreen. I wish Verhoeven had directed.

i read the book first too! i thought the movie basically removed everything i found annoying about the book

i'm not sure how to counter "obvious and cloddish" but i found it visually awesome and appropriately creepy and cold

also idk the book has a binary structure right? and fincher had to make that more like an unfolding narrative and i think he did a great job of threading everything together

Not having to read Gillian Flynn’s sentences makes the film an immediate improvement

lol essentially yes

the only thing I'd want excised is the Scott McNairy character/scene

also, v good Fincher commentary track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIJXB1jfB2o

Maybe the novel (I've only read Sharp Objects) offered interior monologues or a narrator who made Pike's character less...transparent? She practically twirled a mustche. idk this played like a movie whose developments were obvious and took a long time time getting to the denouement.

idk maybe knowing the twist inoculated me against noticing any mustache-twirling, pike seemed to nail the "presents a cool surface beneath which roil the thoughts of a high-key sociopath" 2 me

the book alternates the two main characters as (unreliable) narrators iirc

That's helpful. Maybe Fincher, trying to compensate, emphasized Pike's villainy as a way of reflecting the explicitness of the text.

well this was a crock of absolute shit

Be crueler.