David Fincher on “Mank,” and Daniel Alarcón’s Favorite Children’s Books

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David Fincher made his name in Hollywood as the director of movies that pushed people’s buttons—dark thrillers like “Fight Club,” “The Game,” “Seven,” and “Gone Girl”—but his new film belongs to one of Hollywood’s most esteemed genres: stories about Hollywood. Around thirty years ago, his father, the late Jack Fincher, gave him the draft of a screenplay about Herman J. Mankiewicz, who wrote “Citizen Kane” and other classics. Fincher tells David Remnick that Mankiewicz was a key figure in film—one of that first generation of writers who invented a vibrant language for movies as they came into the sound era. Nominated for ten Academy Awards (including a Best Director nomination for Fincher), “Mank” is the story of the writer’s conflict with Orson Welles in the making of “Citizen Kane,” and their struggle is one that has bedevilled creators and critics down the decades: Who really authors a film? Plus, the journalist and fiction writer Daniel Alarcón talks about three children’s books he’s been enjoying with his son during the pandemic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.9	The first rule of fight club is, you do not talk about fight club.
0:15.8	The second rule of fight club is, you do not talk about Fight Club. David Fincher made his name in Hollywood
0:24.0	as the director of movies that kind of push people's buttons, thrillers like Fight Club and Seven,
0:30.5	and he moved on to blockbusters like the social network and Gone Girl. All that time, though,
0:37.0	Fincher had a special project in his back pocket,
0:39.7	a script written long ago by his father, Jack Fincher. It's a movie about the making of movies,
0:45.1	a very old Hollywood-style picture, and it stars Gary Oldman as the screenwriter Herman J. Mancoitz
0:51.3	at about the time that he was working on the screenplay for Citizen
0:54.6	Kane, and the film is called Mank. Some 30 years after Jack Fincher gave his son, David, the first
1:00.8	draft, Mank is up for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Director. David, from the most parochial
1:07.8	point of view, I've got to tell you that I'm sure you made this movie Mank about Herman Mankowitz because he was the first drama critic of the New Yorker magazine.
1:18.6	Well, that's where it all started.
1:20.8	I went back and looked at it. The reviews are two, three paragraphs long.
1:25.4	Really? Yeah. He was a terse guy.
1:27.7	I think when you had that much other activity going and drinking and whatever, two or three paragraphs.
1:33.0	Well, the Algonquin.
1:34.2	Yeah.
1:34.7	There was a lot to do at the Algonquin.
1:36.6	That's absolutely right.
1:40.7	Pops.
1:42.0	This is Herman Mankiewicz, but we're to call him Mank.
	...

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