What’s David Fincher’s next movie? THIS is David Fincher’s next movie.
Genre: Biopic/True Story
Premise: The story of Herman Mankiewicz writing Citizen Kane for Orson Welles, and the wild Hollywood ride that led up to it.
About: We’ve got David Fincher’s next project! This one comes from his father, Jack Fincher, who was obsessed with Herman Mankiewicz, the writer of Citizen Kane, which most cinephiles believe is the greatest movie of all time. Rosebud! I’ve heard that the script is now in Eric Roth’s hands (Jack Fincher died in 2003). This is the Jack Fincher draft. Here is an article on Mankiewicz that I confess I haven’t read yet.
Writer: Jack Fincher
Details: 120 pages
One of the most frustrating things a screenwriter can do is when he has a large cast of characters but he doesn’t give you any indication, as these characters are introduced, who’s going to be important and who isn’t.
For example, let’s say you’re introducing the second biggest character in your script and you do so by saying, “BOB, 31, takes a drink of soda.” Meanwhile, three pages later, you introduce some character who’s only going to be in the script for two scenes. And with him, the description is, “DAVE, 40, thick with rage and beaten down by alcoholism, is an asshole of the highest order, the kind of person you turn away from when you see him on the street.”
To a reader, this is frustrating. Because one of the toughest things for a reader to do is keep track of who’s who in a script, how everybody knows each other, what the specifics of their relationships are, etc. And one of our only clues is how a character is introduced. If they’re getting big thoughtful introductions and we stay with them for 3-4 scenes in a row, that’s typically an indication that THIS IS A PERSON YOU NEED TO REMEMBER.
So when a character is introduced like Barely Introduced Bob is, then 30 pages later he comes back and becomes this super important character, the reader doesn’t remember who they are or how they’re connected to the story. They vaguely remember someone named Bob being introduced, but the introduction was so quick, they assumed the character wasn’t important.
This is only exacerbated when you have a script like Mank where you’re jumping around in time. It’s 1940. Then it’s 1932. Then it’s 1941. Then it’s 1934. Your script is almost designed to make people forget your characters because there are entire sections of the script where key characters aren’t around. Then when we jump back to their year, we have to reset our minds and try to remember who’s who, a tall task when half the “whos” were given blink-and-you-miss-it introductions.
This is why I’m not a huge fan of period pieces that do a lot of time jumping. All these characters are second nature to the writer, as he’s spent months/years with them. But we’re meeting them for the first time. And if you create a story where characters disappear for 30 pages at a time then, when we come back to them, they’re major lynchpins in the film, the average reader is going to be thrown.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. But you need to be an expert in the art of character introduction (great descriptions, memorable introductory scenes) and great with character development in general. Interesting people. Flaws that resonate with audiences. Personalities that distinguish one character from the next. Those are the things that make characters memorable enough that, regardless of how complex the narrative is, we always remember who’s who.
I opened up Mank expecting it to be about Herman Mankiewicz’s (Mank) relationship with Orson Welles during the writing of Citizen Kane. But that’s not really what the story explores.
We meet Mank in 1939 when he’s commissioned to write Citizen Kane for Orson Welles. Mank is in his 40s and a big fat drunk. He’s given a secretary, Rita (who types 100 words a minute – ON A TYPEWRITER, THANK YOU) and he starts to write. However, we barely spend any time with Mank in this setting. The majority of the script is flashbacks.
We flashback to the early 30s where the country is in a depression. As far as I can tell, Mank is still an alcoholic back then, too. He’s just not as bad of an alcoholic. One of the most interesting storylines is that Mank used to be friends with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who is the figure Citizen Kane is famously based on.
He’s also friends with Hearst’s mistress, Marion, and routinely goes up to Hearst’s mansion. There is an opportunity to show the disintegration of Mank’s friendship with Hearst which, we presume, is the reason he’s now recklessly skewering him in this screenplay, but this potentially intriguing plotline is barely covered.
Instead, Mank’s biggest storyline involves the political aspirations of Upton Sinclair, a former writer turned politician who was running on an “End Poverty” campaign who Hollywood hated. Sinclair was famous for getting shafted via false propaganda films that will have some seeing shades of Bernie Sanders.
To be honest, Sinclair’s life sounds interesting. But I’m not reading a script about Sinclair’s life. I’m reading a script about Herman Mankiewicz’s life. Which led to me wondering, “Why is the titular character of the movie playing second fiddle to a politician who was introduced on page 60?”
If you want to be a screenwriter, one of the most important things you must master is focus. Focusing your narrative is everything. If you try to cover eight different storylines, no matter how interesting each of those storylines is individually, you’re going to have a tough time keeping the reader invested.
There’s a quote in the script where Mank’s manager says to him regarding his early Kane pages, “Well I hate to say this, old man, but I am afraid the story as told is a bit of a jumble. A hectic hodgepodge of talky episodes. A collection of fragments that jump around in space and time like – like a bag of Mexican jumping beans.”
I was so struck by how accurately this line explained “Mank” itself that I thought, maybe, Fincher was doing it on purpose. Maybe he was trying to have the script mimic the broken alcohol-ridden mind of Mank himself. But while that sounds great in theory, you’re playing with fire when you’re making your script a metaphor. A script has to work on its own.
If I were producing this screenplay – and I’m guessing that would be David Fincher’s worst nightmare – I would get rid of the Sinclair stuff and focus on a) the current timeline and Mank’s battle with Welles to get the script done, b) his former relationship with Hearst. And c) maybe his relationship with his younger brother, which had potential. That’s all you need. You’ve got yourself a doable interesting biopic that covers a pivotal moment in Hollywood history.
And just to remind everyone – when you’re doing these biopics, YOU CAN’T INCLUDE EVERYTHING. No matter how much you want to. Or how much you can convince yourself that these peripheral stories like Sinclair’s election connect thematically with the rest of the script. This is a movie. It’s not a novel. It’s not a TV show. It’s a movie. And a movie needs to be focused. Which means getting rid of stuff you love. That’s part of the deal you sign when you join the screenwriting club.
HOWEVER!!!
I would like to add a theory I’ve come up with about this project. And if this theory is correct, it throws everything I just said out the window.
This project was given to Eric Roth. What is Eric Roth’s most famous movie? Forrest Gump. What was my least favorite part about Mank? That Mank is the least important character in the story. He weaves in and out of all the Hollywood elite players from that time, each of them getting these big juicy moments. So WHAT IF that’s what they’re going for? Mank isn’t even the key character. He’s more like a Forrest Gump who stumbles into the rooms of these major Hollywood titans. If that’s what this movie ends up being, that could be really cool. I mean, who doesn’t want to see David Fincher’s version of Forrest Gump?
Roth was recently interviewed on Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take” podcast and he sounded really excited about this project so, could it be that’s what he’s doing? We’ll see!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: They say don’t write movies about Hollywood. There’s a caveat to that. You can write movies about Hollywood THAT ARE SET BETWEEN 1930 and 1979. Directors and studios absolutely love this era of moviemaking. So they always love to go back to it when they can. We just saw it with Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. They love creating the Hollywood of old. So if you’re ever going to write about Hollywood, that’s the era to set your screenplay in.
