29 Comments

I would rather read your film criticism than anyone else's. Your combination of informed, trenchant analysis and deep love for the genre is absolutely killer.

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Very flattered. If only I didn't have politics to distract me!

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"...and the addition of a young Brit lady assistant played by Lily Collins reminded me so much of the relationship between Oldman’s Churchill and his assistant played by Lily James in Darkest Hour that I wonder if Oldman has something about it in his contract."

Better Q.: Did Oldman ever get his Lily's confused?

But anyway, at the end of the day, the only real Q is whether the movie was enjoyable because god knows it couldn't possibly resolve the issue of who wrote the script or at least who wrote which piece of the finished movie. (Which may leak over into having addressed the auteur theory. Or not, at least for Mank itself because we all know Fincher is the last great American auteur.)

Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot. As Roy noted, a bunch of lovely performances. Although I'm'a thinking now that maybe it should have been a light fiction like Kane. More appropriate maybe. And if people actually remembered Kane, this wouldn't have had to been produced by (or is that for?) Netflix.

And note that while I was watching this on the iPad, the Mrs. was watching Hillbilly Elegy which it turns out she really disliked.

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The under appreciated J. Varney in real life was a fairly hip guy from Kentucky who was, by all accounts, articulate and fun to be with..He had done Shakespeare and created in the cheezy Earnest world an indelible character (much as it might pain us...), and justifiably won an Emmy for the kids’ show..

As with actors and musicians, you meet your author-heroes at your peril.

“ ..what did the famous spiritualist have to do with Sherlock Holmes?”-TS Eliot

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I remember him pitching Purity (a Nashville dairy) products in the '80s.

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Varney was a heck of an actor. Watch him play a straight role in "Ernest Goes to Jail." He's supremely creepy as a bad guy. I've also seen a few of his non-series bits, and he was remarkably versatile.

Most of the Ernest films are dumb and clunky, with an occasional good joke every 20 minutes or so. Mostly they're for kids--we watched them with our son. But if you want to watch one of the funniest movies ever made, see "Ernest Rides Again." For some reason in that one the writers and production company cut loose. Varney still does the Worrell character, but there are more bizarre throwaway lines than just about any film I've ever seen. It really is a classic.

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To coin a phrase, that is entirely original with me: Damning with faint praise?

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as opposed to fainting from damned praise?

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Well. You’ve done it again, Roy. Reading this tempted me to click on the Lily Link, then, in turn, click on the Dunkirk Link...and so on and so forth. I’ve just now climbed out of the Edroso Rabbit Hole. Now I want to watch Billboards and Dunkirk again. But, oddly enough (or not?) I’m running cold on Mank

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I watched it last night. Gary Oldman is one of the best actors alive and it’s always delightful to see him do his stuff, and the production and cinematography were gorgeous. Beyond that, it was kind of meh. For someone who really loves the Old Hollywood era I can see how it would be very enjoyable.

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So “Mank” isn’t quite “Hollywood Elegy”?

Also, Mel Gibson nailed down the Jesus pornography film.

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Beverly Hillbilly Elegy

(I'm sorry, it was *right there*.)

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Great review Roy. I felt about the same after watching it Friday night. There’s something fundamentally silly about the film, which for me at least had to do with the “writer as hero” bit you mentioned as well as the cheerful pretentiousness of the whole production, but it did draw me in and in the end I enjoyed the ride. Can’t ask for much more from a movie.

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'There is for me no harder sell than a movie about someone who makes movies'.

Does that include 'the Player'? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpDDTS08wPs

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or “Ed Wood”(speaking of Orson..) or “Day for Night?”

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I love those movies, but because these successful versions are so well known we forget that for every one of those, there are a dozen like "The Scarlett O'Hara War" or "The Oscar." I will add: I never really liked "The Bad and the Beautiful," and I couldn't even get through "Two Weeks in Another Town."

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Or the movie I produced -- well, backed part -- Welles' last, "The Other Side of Wind"?

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Sounds like the movie should have been titled "Wank."

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LOL. Hollywood is the wonderful world of Wank.

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We'll have reached Peak Wank when they make "Finch: the Unknown Story of the Making of 'Mank'."

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Thanks for mentioning the soundtrack. I was more than a little surprised when I saw it rocketing up the pirate charts last week. I'm trying, but I just can't imagine Reznor doing '40s music let alone anything with strings or horns.

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It's like he was dropped in 40s Hollywood (with ProTools) and had to make his living doing movie music. It has the same weirdness for me as Randy Newman's early scores (like Ragtime) -- Newman grew up with movie music but the slight unnaturalness of it makes it distinctive. (Or maybe that's just talent.)

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Wow, 52 cuts on this soundtrack?! Warmer than I expected but yeah, something is just a tiny bit different. Consistent use of an isolated instrument to offset the orchestra is the first thing I noticed. Emotionally evocative. For some reason it's making me smile.

Nothing makes me smile anymore. I think I'm going to run this thru some software to see if Trent slipped some subliminals.

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Reznor's done some great soundtrack work -- he actually knows stuff about music

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“writers are also a dangerous topic for movies because for one thing, they’re written by writers, who are keenly aware of what an unglamorous trade they’re in” —This reminds me of someone’s quip from a few years back about “write what you know” leading in practice to creative writing instructors producing novels in which middle-aged professors get it on with lissome undergraduate cuties.

In 1973 the late R.V. Cassill, a middle-aged man who had in fact taught creative writing, and who was then on the faculty at Brown University, published a lighthearted piece in 𝘌𝘴𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘦 titled “Up the Down Co-Ed: Notes on the Eternal Problem of Fornication With Students.” Reading it, I was amused. The administration at Brown, apparently, was not.

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So I guess I'm going to have to watch Citizen Kane and then come back and read your last two articles again. I'm such a Philistine...

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I have notes! I've been dying to talk about this movie all weekend. I bought in for about the first two-thirds, and it seems funny that even in a script that bounced around in time, it still had a fairly formal three-part arc -- the last act, which took up about 3 minutes, threw me from the whole film. Maybe his character-driven "I want credit" take was there all along, hidden in his breezy bon mots (my favorite parts were with his old Algonquin buddies) and caustic explosions of self-destruction, but when it hit because Welles showed up for edits I kept thinking, where the hell did this come from? There wasn't antagonism toward Welles, or at least any more than there was antagonism for everyone else in his life, until his fit of ego was played as a redemptive reclaiming of Mank's talent or some shit. Welles, who was up against it and took real risks, was done dirty. And then the women in his life gave him completely unearned forgiveness ("not for me, Mank, but HEARST deserves your sympathy" -- get bent woman.) and then it was over.

Oldman was great, giving us olds a good look at how we can still play thirty year olds, and it was fun seeing him have to give sympathetic speeches about socialism knowing he'll have to go on Fox at some point to answer for his sins -- that's acting for you, eh comrade?

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Well, taking as a story, not as gospel, I found it enjoyable, engrossing, with a number of really good performances.

The mystery for me at the moment is why did someone about ~20 years after Kael's theory was debunked, felt compelled to write this screenplay? And anything other than Mank writing a first draft solo was gratuitous. And a further mystery around the movie: After reading a bunch of related articles, I still don't know: Whose idea was it to base Kane on Hearst, and why?

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Another take: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/11/the-wrong-mank/

I found Proyect when the late A. Cockburn insulted him. So I had to check him out https://louisproyect.org/ I like Proyect more every time I read him. Almost as good as you, Roy.

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