Hollywood on Hollywood: The dark side of the dream factory
The IndependentYou can’t blame outsiders for being deeply suspicious of Hollywood. David Fincher’s Mank, soon to appear on Netflix, is just the latest in a very long line of films focusing on the venality and corruption of the studio system. It’s about how Herman J Mankiewicz came to co-write Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, still acknowledged by critics as among the greatest films ever made. It’s the story of Mankiewicz himself, the toast of the Algonquin Round Table and the wittiest writer in Hollywood struggling to get a job. From the brattish teenage actors in David Cronenberg’s Map to the Stars and Gloria Swanson’s raddled ancient diva in Sunset Boulevard, to the creepy studio bosses, the drunken, badly paid screenwriters and the harassed, overworked assistants in the mailroom, characters in films made in and about Hollywood are a very dysfunctional bunch.
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