The New Yorker Radio Hour - David Fincher on “Mank,” and Daniel Alarcón’s Favorite Children’s Books

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

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. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. The first rule of fight club is, you do not talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is, you do not talk about fight club. David Fincher made his name in Hollywood as the director of movies that kind of push people's buttons, thrillers like Fight Club and Seven, and he moved on to blockbusters like the social network and Gone Girl. All that time, though, Fincher had a special project in his back pocket, a script written long ago by his father, Jack Fincher.

It's a movie about the making of movies, a very old Hollywood-style picture, and it stars Gary Oldman as the screenwriter Herman J. Mancoitz at about the time that he was working on the screenplay for Citizen Kane, and the film is called Mank. Some 30 years after Jack Fincher gave his son David the first draft, Mank is up for 10 Academy Awards, including best director.

David, from the most parochial 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. Well, that's where it all started. I went back and looked at it. The reviews are two, three paragraphs long. Really?

Yeah. He was a terse guy. I think when you had that much other activity going and drinking and whatever, two or three paragraphs. Well, the Algonquin. Yeah. There was a lot to do at the outcome. That's absolutely right.

Wait, but where to call him Mank. Mankowitz? Herman Mankowitz, New York playwright and drama critic turned humble screenwriter, Mr. Hurst. Why? No need to be humble, Mr. Mankiewicz. Pictures the talk of the future. They're going to need people who honor words,

give them voice. There's a golden age coming when all the world will be a stage. And you, perhaps, there's shakes, I wouldn't I thought you'd be that keenly interested in the honoring of words. Now, obviously, Herman Mankowitz is best remembered as the screenwriter of Citizen Kane, which a lot of people call the best movie ever made, and not that these things are baseball standings or anything like that.

Is it, to your mind, the best American movie ever made? No, but it's certainly up. I mean, again, you know, movies are like wines. you know, it's kind of like, it's, things evolve, and they change over time. The mostly men who wrote in that era, you know, Hect and Alexander and Kaufman and Manquitts, they were inventing this stuff as they went. You know, here came the writers from the Algonquin, and, you know, cameras had umbilical cords that went to the wax recorders,

and all of a sudden these movies that it used to be able to swing across, you know, the rafters with some swashbuckler. And now all of a sudden you couldn't do that because you need to record their voice at the same time. And so the movies had been hampered, and so they went to find people who could make this new kind of entertainment scintillate in a different way. So I think it's not so much that Kane represents the highest attainment

of cinematic wizardry. But I tend to think of it mostly as the kind of the first time that real literary conceits kind of merged with a real understanding of cinema and how to present visual ideas to the uninitiated. And all of that held together by the grout of a master showman. I think Wells thought a lot of the audience, and I think the movie does not play down to the cheap seats. At the same time, it has all kinds of entertainment value for people who just want to see characters being thwarted and harumphing. So it may or may not be the greatest American movie ever made. It was certainly the first great American film that you could point to and say, this is what it is to. to fully engage with cinema.

Does that make sense? It absolutely does. I'm trying to, something that is harder for me to comprehend even, is you're sitting here with 10 Academy Award nominations, and more deeply, the satisfaction of having completed this film and realized it, and it was written by your dad. And the script was given to you, in some form or another, as many as 30 years ago.

Well, the first draft, yeah. So what's the emotion of that, the fullness of it? Well, you know, it was a complex relationship to negotiate as far as, as far as, you know, as far as, you know, directed to writer. I, I classically do not see myself as the final arbiter of everything, you know. And listen, I got this from my dad, you know. I have a love of and devotion to the people who stare down the blank page. And I know firsthand how lonely that is.

And I know firsthand how potentially revealing and embarrassing that is. Mank! It's awesome. It's awesome. Hello. How are you? Good news. They don't have yourself together.

Well, I'm delighted to hear it. Houseman's bringing you my notes. Think about him. Meantime, I'll run everything through my typewriter. Everything will sack you. I understand you're in touch. And so I feel very much that my involvement has to be cinematic midwife, you know, or, you know, it's an active interpretation, but there's a huge amount of investment in it. But you're interpreting something that your father wrote a first draft to. You're essentially in creative conversation with your progenitor.

Yeah, and not always the most polite. Yeah. So what's that like? It was, I don't recommend it. You know, I think there are easier, look, I have an enormous, had, and still have an enormous amount of respect for Jack. Jack Fincher, your dad, who was a writer for Life magazine, yeah. Exactly. he was responsible in major ways for my outlook on cinema and storytelling and the movies and interpersonal relationships.

You know, he was a model in a lot of different ways. That, unfortunately, did not save us from having, you know, a lot of, you know, arguments about what's the best way to tell something. You know, we had a lot of conversations. You know, I think that the Rita Alexander thread of, you know, this stenographer who is married to a fighter pilot in Second World War, who is lost at sea off Norway, I mean, I had to take him aside and say, are you telling me that we're going to introduce this woman. in a three-page monologue of Backville Exposition, when she's been traveling in a car with them for four hours to get to Victorville. And he was like, Dave, this is how these movies have played out. And he, you know, would just say, Dave, get off your high horse.

This is, we're doing something inachnistic, which is, you know, a little bit why I chose that we trapped the movie in a kind of black and white mono. Aspec, because it helped to sort of codify the anachronism. Like a clairvoyant. Rita Alexander, Herman Mankowitz. How do you do, Mr. Vankewitz? That's a big question. Well, since you like working nights, Rita here runs on London time.

Her husband is one of our bold lads in the RAF flies. What is it, Rita, spitfires? Hurricanes. My sympathy and prayers. And I beg your pardon? Given the speed, climb and. turning radius to the meshesmith be of one of them. I hope we won't need your sympathy, Mr. Mancowicz. We'll do the praying and the fighting. I will meet with awesome...

I know you know this question is coming like Christmas, so here it is. So in the late 50s and into the 60s, French filmmakers and critics touted what was known as the O'Tooer theory. It's basically a film is the projection of a creator's singular personality, whether it's Goddard's breathless or it's Howard Hawks is bringing up baby, in fact, retroactically. And then along comes Pauline Kale, the New Yorker's film critic in 1971, and she writes a long piece for the magazine called Raising Kane. Right. And she argues that Orson Wells essentially stole credit from Herman Manquitz for Citizen Kane. It's ridiculous. And that Herman Manquitz deserved much more credit for that creation. And your movie is about the creation of Citizen Kane. And I wonder where

you land on that question of Wells'Otour or the Pauline Kale argument that Manquitz deserved so much more credit. Well, listen, Pauline Kale was a wondrous intellect and a fantastic fan of cinema. What Pauline Kale didn't know about the making of movies could fill volumes. And I, I would argue that... Well, flesh out what you mean by... What did Paul and Kale not know, for starters? That there's a third... If... Listen, as the arbiter of everything that's going to go in front of a camera to be recorded

in a dramatic chronological narrative, all of those things are going to be revealing of your subconscious and your belief system and your... aesthetic, that doesn't necessarily mean that this thing springs from your forehead fully realized. It springs from your forehead as a mess of afterbirth that has to be cleaned off and assessed and, you know, and this thing has to be, it has to be raised. You know, it doesn't just, it has to be. It has to be. But it seems like you're arguing neither. for the otter theory of a kind of singular totalist view,

nor are you arguing for the Pauline Kale version of things. A creation like that is a massive bowl of spaghetti. And combing through it to attribute, you know, anything to a single strand is absurd. I always feel there's so much blame to go around. So I've never really understood the idea of fighting to get one's name on something or fighting to get something attributed singularly

to your storytelling, sensibility, aesthetic, behavioral editorial function. I may be a loose canon, but you, my friend, are an outsider. They're exasperate. by me and I've earned it, but you were self-anointed, savior hyphenate. They're just waiting to loaties. Remind me never again to work with a washed-up alcoholic.

Duly noted, Nelson Ogred, please copy. All right. No doubt you'll get your credit, but ask yourself, who's producing this picture, directing it, starring in it. That's just what we need when Susan Leaf came, an act of purging violence. David, we began our conversation.

We were talking about Citizen Kane being or not being the greatest American movie ever made, and you indicated you think it's not. It's up there. I mean, it's in the top five or six. But if it's your last few hours on Earth and you're going to spend it watching a movie, what is it going to be? Oh, God. Movies are far too precious to me.

And there are so many that are, I don't, you know, I couldn't tell you. I couldn't. I, you know, there are certain movies that I go back to, I mean, Chinatown is one of those movies. All the President's Men is one of those movies. Jaws. I mean, there are movies in the last, in the last 80 years that attain that thing that Kane did and shocked everyone. And you have to factor in that a 25-year-old is at the same. center of this three-ring circus when when this movie lands fully formed for world audiences,

that sets it apart. You know, maybe it doesn't set it apart from Jaws, but it certainly sets it apart from, you know, all the president's men or or Chinatown. You know, that guy, he'd done it a while. You ask me what my acceptance speech might have been. Well, here go. I am very happy to accept this award in the manner in which the screenplay was written, which is to say, in the absence of Worson Wells.

How's that? How come he shares credit? Well, that, my friend, is the magic of the movies. Hold up Oscar, mate. Think, smile. David Fincher, thank you so much. Oh, game's no problem. David Fincher's Mank, with a screenplay by the late Jack Fincher,

is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and it's on Netflix. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. Testing, testing. Testing, one, two, three. It works. Well, the one we've been reading most recently, do you want to talk about the Mysterious Benedict Society? I can kind of explain it. I'm not very good at explaining books than I am as reading.

But it's called the mysterious... Yeah. The Mysterious Menick Society. And what is that? What is that? He says. It's a book. David, come on.

What a knucklehead I am. Yeah. Danielle Alercon is an acclaimed fiction writer and a journalist, and he's reported on Latin America for the New Yorker. But I called him recently, not to talk about writing so much, but about what he's been reading. Okay, so a year ago, everything. in my life changed. I used to teach a couple nights a week.

I used to travel a lot, either report or give readings or do things like that. I used to play soccer in the evenings. All of that changed, all of that stopped, of course. And I was stuck at home with this, you know, bright, inquisitive seven-year-old. So I just started, you know, doing the thing that parents do, which is to read to our kids. And I think, like, the first book that we read that I enjoyed reading as much as he enjoyed hearing, was a book called Zorga Mizzou. Zorga Mizzu, I don't know that one.

It's just a, it's a poem. It's a long novel and verse, and I just got really into the performance of it. And that's the thing that was fun for me, and it has been fun for me, is like doing the voices, doing the dialogue. Zorga Mizzu is a crazy adventure story like all these books are. The protagonist is a young girl, you know, drawn into another universe, but I just got really into it, you know? Like I would just the cadence and the bounciness of it and and and just like just just dig the rhythm of it.

Here's a story that's stranger than strange before we begin. You may want to arrange a blanket, a cushion, a comfortable seat and maybe some cocoa and something to eat. I'll warn you, of course, before we commence. My story is eerie and full of suspense. Brimming with danger and narrow escapes in creatures of many remarkable shapes. Dragons and ogres and gorgans and more and creatures you've never even heard of before and faraway places, there's plenty of those

and menacing villains to tingle your toes. So who does it like... Kind of a sousian rhythm there. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I used to give readings of my own work and I enjoyed it. I think it's fun. And being in front of people. And now I had like an audience of one.

But I just got really into it. Dan, you had another pick? I did. Yeah, I did. We read early on this. book called El Defo, which is a graphic novel by a woman MCC Bell. And I liked it for a number of reasons, but essentially the stories of her losing her hearing as a young girl. She had men and jitis at age four, you know, this challenging new situation where she couldn't hear anything and had to wear a special hearing apparatus. For her in the 70s, it was basically like, you know,

putting a cassette recorder around her neck, wearing it like a necklace, and having a microphone, she had to carry everywhere in a headset. And in order to sort of like deal with this new reality, she, you know, she kind of created this superhero in her mind called El Defo.

And, and it's really funny and very moving, sort of how she identifies with this superhero and how she uses that superhero's personality to turn, you know, a disability into a superpower. It's really great, really great.

The exercise is called Pick 3. So what is the third book that you really treasure reading to El Salle? The last book I wanted to mention is called The Wild Robot. The Wild Robot is essentially this tanker ship full of robots, like runs aground, sinks, and drops a container full of robots that wash up onto an island. one of them survives, turns on somehow, and is trying to understand its new surroundings, trying to figure out what it is, if it's an animal, if it's, what it, you know, where it belongs in the universe of beings that inhabit this island. And on the island, animals also don't know

what to make of the robot. Eventually the robot sort of becomes one of them, becomes wild. and it's a magical book because it talks about sort of this interface between technology and nature and also very moving. Not to give any spoilers, but when, well, actually, that's not true. I'm going to give a spoiler, but there's a specific reason I'm going to give a spoiler because it's so moving to me. It was the first book that Eliseo really wept at, honestly. He was so moved by it, and I was so moved by it. I was like, my voice was breaking as I read the end.

when the, you know, the robot has some kind of homing signal that the technology company can hear and they come for him in this like sort of like idyllic, you know, island paradise. And at that point, the robot has the choice. You know, he knows that they want him. They want the robot. They don't want anyone else. The animals who have come to love him want to protect the robot. And he instead decides to basically turn himself in in order to protect them.

And at that point, you know, it's just waterworks in our house. It's a really lovely book, really lovely. It's amazing to think that kids cry from books, that they're so deeply moved. And despite the power of the screen, that a book can really reach down that far still. Yeah, and I think we've been all fighting, you know, during this pandemic to try to, against the primacy of the screen.

You know, it's everywhere. It's how they're doing school. how they're seeing friends. It's a constant. And, you know, to be able to find books that are, you know, page turners and moving and, you know, and teach you something without being didactic, and entertain, crucially, entertain and make the kids laugh, you know, and feel things and think about things, it's just been a joy. It's just been a joy. And all those hours that I've spent with him, you know, I don't think that there's, I'm not, going to look back on this year fondly, but there are things that I will remember and reading

with my son is one of them. Daniel Ellercont, who is a novelist, short story writer, a radio broadcaster, and a writer for the New Yorker. Daniel, thank you so much. Thanks, David. Appreciate it. You can read everything that Danielle Ellercone has written for us at New Yorker.com. That's it for today. Hope you're getting a chance to take in these very first days of spring. See you next time. The Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon and Corby, Calalea, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, Annabelle Bacon, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McGadham, Meng Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Trurina Endowment Fund.