Tag: Profile

Trent Reznor and More on Scoring a Movie During COVID: ‘Like Trying to Be Intimate in Hazmat Suits’

Reznor, Atticus Ross, Daniel Pemberton and George Clooney talk about the challenges of recording music during a pandemic.

Steve Pond
January 12, 2021
The Wrap

When it comes to the postproduction process on movies during a pandemic, much of the work doesn’t have to change dramatically. Film editors, after all, are used to sitting in dark rooms, often by themselves; sound editors and visual-effects artists can also do their work in front of computer screens and share it with co-workers without needing to be in the same room.

But recording a movie’s musical score is different. Unless a composer both writes and performs everything him or herself, a film score involves getting people together to play music — in the case of orchestral scores, getting lots of people together to play music. 

Trent Reznor, composer of the score to David Fincher’s “Mank” with Atticus Ross, had a succinct and evocative phrase for working on the music to that film in the early days of the pandemic. “It wasn’t impossible, but it felt like trying to be intimate in hazmat suits,” he said.

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How Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Became 1930s-Style Tunesmiths for ‘Mank’

TheWrap magazine: The Nine Inch Nails composers were hired to write the score but ended up also creating music to play over radios in David Fincher’s film, “(If Only You Could) Save Me,” a big-band ballad with a sultry vocal by Adryon de León.

Steve Pond
January 15, 2021
The Wrap

A version of this story about Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and “Mank” first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.

The Design of ‘Mank’: How Costumes and Sets Energized David Fincher’s Homage to Old Hollywood

TheWrap magazine: Costume designer Trish Summerville and production designer Donald Graham Burt take us behind the scenes.

Joe McGovern
January 12, 2021
The Wrap

A version of this story about “Mank” appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

“Fincher-vision” is the term that costume designer Trish Summerville uses while discussing her experience working with director David Fincher. “His mind is so clear about what he wants, but there’s still room for spontaneity,” she said. “That’s why there’s so much happiness in the craft departments on his films. And so much repeat business.” Production designer Donald Graham Burt echoed her sentiment. “When David starts telling me about a new film, he visually sees the whole thing in his head,” he said. “But there’s room for expansion creatively.”

Those qualities were essential to “Mank,” Summerville’s third project with the director and Burt’s sixth. (Burt won an Oscar for 2008’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”; Summerville’s other credits include “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” and “Red Sparrow.”) Fincher’s look at the screenwriter of “Citizen Kane” is a rich evocation of 1930s Hollywood that’s grounded in the reality of its time and place, though the film was shot in silvery black-and-white.

The two department heads talked often, ironically, about color. “There are some colors that don’t translate well,” Summerville said. “Salmon and chartreuse and acid greens are jarring in black-and-white. So Don and I talked a lot about our color palettes.” Summerville also reminded Fincher, making his first black-and-white feature, not to place too much trust in his eyes and instead view everything through the camera monitor.

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Making of ‘Mank’: How David Fincher Pulled Off a Modern Movie Invoking Old Hollywood

The director had to employ digital advances to achieve a vintage aesthetic in telling the tale of ‘Citizen Kane’ screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz: “If we had done it 30  years ago, it might’ve been truly a bloodletting.”

Rebecca Keegan
January 11, 2021
The Hollywood Reporter

Screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz never sought credit for conceiving one of the all-time great ideas in the history of cinema — the notion that the Kansas scenes in The Wizard of Oz should be shot in black and white and the Oz scenes in color. In fact, for much of his career in Hollywood from the late 1920s to the early ’50s, Mankiewicz seemed to view his scripts with about as much a sense of ownership as a good zinger he had landed at a cocktail party.

But what fascinated David Fincher was that when it came time to assign credit on the screenplay for Citizen Kane, which Mankiewicz wrote with Orson Welles in 1940 (or without, depending on your perspective), the journeyman screenwriter suddenly and inexplicably began to care. Precisely why that happened is the subject of Fincher’s 11th feature film, Mank.

“I wasn’t interested in a posthumous guild arbitration,” Fincher says of Mank, which takes up the Citizen Kane authorship question reinvigorated by a 1971 Pauline Kael essay in The New Yorker. “What was of interest to me was, here’s a guy who had seemingly nothing but contempt for what he did for a living. And, on almost his way out the door, having burned most of the bridges that he could … something changed.”

Shot in black and white and in the style of a 1930s movie, Mank toggles between Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) writing the first draft of Citizen Kane from a remote house in the desert and flashback sequences of his life in Hollywood in the ’30s, including his friendship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), who inspired Citizen Kane, and Hearst’s mistress, actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried).

A filmmaker known for his compulsive attention to detail, Fincher had even more reason than usual to treat every decision with care on Mank, as he was working from a screenplay written by his father, journalist Jack Fincher, who died in 2003. Jack had taken up the subject in retirement in 1990, just as David was on the eve of directing his first feature, Alien 3, and the two would try throughout the 1990s to get the film made, with potential financiers put off by their insistence on shooting in black and white.

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Awardsline: The Big Picture

David Fincher brings the big screen to us for his latest picture. With a cast led by Gary Oldman & Amanda Seyfried, is Mank a love letter to cinema’s golden age or an indictment of the shadier side of the movie biz?⁠

Joe Utichi
January 6, 2021
Awardsline (Deadline)

Read the full issue of Deadline Presents Awardsline

The Burning Question That Drove David Fincher’s Decades-Long Journey To Make ‘Man

Joe Utichi
January 6, 2021
Deadline

David Fincher turns Netflix homes into 1940s movie houses with his latest opus, Mank, which explores the life and frustrations of Citizen Kane’s screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, as he works his way through the draft of what will become Orson Welles’ seminal directorial debut. With its title role imbued with Mankiewicz’s world-weary wit by Gary Oldman, and from a script first drafted more than 20 years ago by Fincher’s father Jack, who passed away in 2003, the film reignites the debate about the authorship of a film Welles might nearly have taken sole credit for. But it is about more than that besides; a love and hate letter to the machinations of the movie business, a remarkably timely examination of the façade of truth in the news media, and an intimate study of tortured souls beaten down by the world around them and their own insecurities. Joe Utichi meets Fincher, Oldman and Amanda Seyfried—who rehabilitates the image of actress and socialite Marion Davies—for a closer look.

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Amanda Seyfried embraces the silences in David Fincher’s ‘Mank’

Actress Amanda Seyfried says she’s never worked so hard in her life as she did on “Mank,” but to do so with director David Fincher was a “dream.”
(Michael Nagle/For The Times)

Gregory Ellwood
January 4, 2021
Los Angeles Times

How excited was Amanda Seyfried at the prospect of starring in a David Fincher film? “I would have played a piece of wood,” she says with a laugh. Luckily for all involved, the role as silver screen star Marion Davies for Fincher’s Netflix release “Mank” was nowhere near as stiff. In fact, Seyfried delivers a scene-stealing performance, one that neither of the two initially took for granted would happen for the story of “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his friendship with the actress and companion to media mogul William Randolph Hearst.

Fincher recalls an initial 1 a.m. Skype with Seyfried after she’d finished a long day of shooting another film. As hard as it may be to fathom, the seminal director insists he was “sort of panicking” through his pitch to her. He was trying to convey aspects of the film he envisioned beyond what was on the written page but was having trouble expressing his thoughts.

“She was actively participating in helping me to find the right words to pitch her on this project. And it wasn’t like she did it two or three times. She did it, like, three times a minute for 45 minutes. After a while, it became obvious that this was sort of a second nature thing that she does to make other people feel comfortable or to make other people feel heard. And, by the end of it, when we hung up, I thought, ‘the woman who has to give semi-inebriated little Herman Mankiewicz a tour of her [private] zoo, has to have this skill or has to have this tributary to her behavior. It has to be something that’s sort of innate.’ It’s the den-mother thing.”

Even as Fincher was telling himself, “‘If she says yes, take her up on it,’ because there was something really special about that,” Seyfried was feeling an urgency of her own.

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How Territory Studio recreated 1930’s Hollywood for Fincher’s Mank

London-headquartered facility Territory Studio, has recreated the iconic LA street of Wilshire Boulevard for David Fincher’s 1930’s-set, Mank. The sequence using LED rear projection to evoke the traditional techniques used during the 1930s and 1940s which the movie pays homage to. Here’s how. 

Adrian Pennington
January 4, 2021
RedShark

Territory’s team led by VFX Supervisor Simon Carr and CG Supervisor Ashley Pay spent a considerable amount of time in LA in pre-production, working with Fincher and DP Erik Messerschmidt ASC. They used archival footage, maps and old photography coupled with their own research and black and white photographic references captured while driving on Wilshire Blvd to inform lighting and texture in the CG scene. They began to rebuild the famous street as it would have appeared when Herman J. Mankiewicz and Sara Mankiewicz drove down it in 1934. 

“We wanted to capture the imagery of a new city rising from the sand and dust, distinctly modern, yet with a sense of the Wild West,” Carr says.   

Territory was tasked with conveying the sense of lawlessness and neglect in a city without road markings or highway code. Scouting both on the ground in LA and via Google Maps, they drew out the ground plan: identifying shops, gas stations and cinemas from the archive footage along which to drive a virtual camera car.

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Sounding Out Ren Klyce On David Fincher’s “Mank”

7-time Oscar nominee reflects on his longstanding working relationship with the director and the creative challenges of their latest collaboration

Robert Goldrich
January 1, 2021
Shoot

Sound designer, editor and mixer Ren Klyce is a seven-time Oscar nominee, five of those nods coming for David Fincher movies–Fight Club in 2000, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2009, The Social Network in 2011 and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for both sound mixing and sound editing in 2012. (Klyce’s other two noms are for Star Wars: Episode VIII–The Last Jedi for sound editing and mixing in 2018.)

Now Klyce is again in the awards season conversation for Fincher’s Mank (Netflix) which centers on screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (portrayed by Gary Oldman) as he races to finish director Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane on a tight timetable, secluded in a bungalow in a desert town miles removed from Los Angeles as he recuperates from a car accident in 1940. Attending to him are his secretary Rita (Lily Collins) and his German nurse (Monika Grossmann).

In the process, through Mankiewicz’s worldview–marked by his abiding social conscience and wit, at times caustic–we are introduced to not only Hollywood but life in the 1930s, ranging from the grandeur of Hearst Castle and high society to the struggle of the rank and file during the Great Depression. We also become privy to Mankiewicz’s own inner struggles with alcoholism, as well as a professional battle with Welles (played by Tom Burke) over screen credit for what became the classic Citizen Kane. The Mank cast also includes Charles Dance (as William Randolph Hearst), Amanda Seyfried (as Marion Davies, Hearst’s wife), Tuppence Middleton (as Sara Mankiewicz, Herman’s wife), Arliss Howard (as Louis B. Mayer), Sam Troughton (as John Houseman), Tom Pelphrey (as Joe Mankiewicz, Herman’s brother), Toby Leonard Moore (as David O. Selznick) and Ferdinand Kinsley (as Irving Thalberg).

For Klyce, Mank posed layers of challenges on top of the conventional goal of having the soundtrack support the story. “We hear all the dialogue, feel the motion of the music, get a sense of surroundings and characters through sound design. It helps us to connect with the characters,” Klyce explained.

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Mank Is a Rich Immersion Into Hollywood’s Black-and-White Glory Days

A rendering of the archway in the dining room at Hearst Castle, which features Spanish Revival details. Drawings by Daniela Medeiros

David Fincher’s new film tells the story of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he pens the script for Citizen Kane

Mara Reinstein
December 3, 2020
Architectural Digest

Judging the film Mank just based on the story alone—cynical, heavy-drinking screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz evaluates his turbulent travails through Hollywood as he struggles to script Citizen Kane—doesn’t do it justice. A work of impeccable craftsmanship that unspools in crisp black-and-white, Mank, which premieres Friday, December 4, on Netflix, allows viewers to journey back in time to experience all the glamour and grit of Los Angeles during the 1930s and early ’40s. And that’s exactly how director David Fincher (Gone Girl, The Social Network) intended it.

“I remember when David first spoke to me about it,” Oscar-winning production designer Donald Graham Burt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) tells Architectural Digest. “He said ‘I want it to feel like you’re in a film vault and you see Citizen Kane and then you see a film next to it and it says Mank and you think, ‘Oh, I never saw that.’ He wanted it to look like a film made in that period.”

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An Exclusive Look at the Making of Mank

Production designer Donald Graham Burt takes AD behind the scenes of the Golden Globe–nominated film

Cathy Whitlock
February 12, 2021
Architectural Digest

‘Mank’: How the Cinematography of David Fincher’s Film Took Inspiration From ‘Citizen Kane’

Gary Oldman, as Herman J. Mankiewicz, holds forth at a dinner party at William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon home, created at Los Angeles Center Studios. “The room is dark and it’s made to look musty and cold,” says cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt.

While legendary DP Gregg Toland and the indelible images he created for Orson Welles’ masterpiece inspired the new movie, the director and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt aimed for a look that suggests an echo, not a copy.

Carolyn Giardina
December 22, 2020
The Hollywood Reporter

Gregg Toland is one of the most influential cinematographers of all time, and his work on Orson Welles‘ Citizen Kane (1941) — with innovations including deep focus, which keeps the foreground, middle ground and background all looking sharp — is iconic. So when director David Fincher and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt set out to make Mank, the Netflix drama that stars Gary Oldman as screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz in the throes of writing Kane, Toland’s efforts had to be carefully considered.

“David and I talked at length about it. That was something we wanted to echo and reference and pay homage to, but we weren’t really trying to emulate it,” says Messerschmidt, who earned an Emmy nomination this year for Fincher’s Netflix crime series Mindhunter. “We didn’t want people to necessarily look at the film and be like, ‘Oh, it’s Gregg Toland’s work.’ We were trying to keep the photography story-driven and within the narrative of what we were trying to translate to the audience.”

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‘Mank’ Costume Designer Trish Summerville on Designing for Real-Life Old Hollywood Figures

L’OFFICIEL speaks to the costume designer about outfitting characters like Orson Welles, Marion Davies, and more Hollywood figures in David Fincher’s ‘Mank.’

Sophie Shaw
December 8, 2020
L’Officiel

In Netflix’s newly released Mank, Hollywood’s latest movie about the movies, glimpses of the era’s glitz and glamour are thrown amidst the alcohol-sodden life of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), or Mank, as he works on what would become his and Orson Welles’ magnum opus, Citizen Kane. For Costume Designer Trish Summerville, she wanted to show a piece of Hollywood history through an honest portrayal. “I don’t want to do a pretend version of what Hollywood should be,” Summerville tells L’OFFICIEL. 

Like many buzz-worthy films in history, excitement for Oscar-contender Mank built thanks to a key name tied to the project: David Fincher. The exacting director was a draw for Summerville, who previously worked with him on Gone Girl and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Everything else—like doing a period piece, filming in black and white, and working with an all-star cast—was a plus from there, according to the designer.

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