Mank

Holed up in the secluded North Verde Ranch in the middle of the Mojave Desert, bedridden American screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz has sixty short days to turn in the first draft of the Citizen Kane (1941) screenplay. Grappling with alcohol dependency, Mankiewicz collaborates with Orson Welles, Hollywood's 24-year-old golden boy, and gets to work. As RKO had already given Welles carte blanche, Mankiewicz opts to draw inspiration from his tenure at MGM, his association with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and the latter's 20-year-old paramour, actress Marion Davies of the Ziegfeld Follies.