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Friday, December 4, 2020

Those Thalberg 'Newsreels' and 'Mank'

If you've watched, or are about to watch, David Fincher's new film Mank on Netflix, which dropped today, you will probably want to watch at least one of crucial plot points in real life:  the movie shorts ordered by the hallowed Irving Thalberg to destroyed front-running candidate for governor, leftwing author Upton Sinclair.  I was first to expose the full story in my book, The Campaign of the Century, recently named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five greatest books ever on a campaign.  I was also chief consultant for one episode of the PBS Great Depression series, directed by Lyn Goldfarb.  

See my New York Times piece on all this and more this week.

Below you can watch the first two of the three newsreels as MGM's "Inquiring Reporter" (Carey Wilson) interview "typical" voters, many of them actors working off scripts.   You can read more about the campaign here or order book here.

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