Mank

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, you lilked MANK more than I did, not that I don't admire it.

The movie seems to favor Mank's (and Kael's) claims that he did all the writing on the CITIZEN KANE script. Or just leaves it vague what Welles contributed.
There is a new online piece by the New Yorker's Richard Brody that seeks to spell out what is known about this issue in more detail, and what may be a significant difference between Mank and Welles: Mank had no respect for movies as art, Welles did, Brody says.

As I said at the start of my review, we also don't know how much David Fincher may have revised his father Jack's screenplay. Brody in this article says "Fincher, in making 'Mank,' revised his father’s script to soften its anti-Welles bent." He doesn't seem to have "softened" it all that much! But how much did he tweak the screenplay? Maybe a lot. There is authorship confusion about another screenplay: MANK.

As an admirer of Kael I'm once again shocked by how she's debunked today even or especially by New Yorker writers. Thus Brody when he first refers to her in this article does it this way: "one of the magazine’s film critics at the time, Pauline Kael." That's what he is; Anthony Lane is the headliner, and he's secondary. Kael was the headliner, and for many years. Not "one of." Oh well. But Kael stirred up trouble and ruffled many feathers, as the new bio doc vividly shows. At the time I ignored her preoccupation with KANE and her time in Hollywood, being more interested in her reviews, so was unaware of what damage she did or how she may have been misinformed about Welles and KANE.

Could be that there's still room for more "definitive" research on the respective roles of Mank and Welles in the writing of the CITIZEN KANE script.