The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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Hooray for Hollywood! Distributed by Netfl ix and written by Fincher's late father Jack, Mank examines a period in the life of Herman J. Mankiewicz, played by Oscar winner Gary Oldman. Mankiewicz may be unfamiliar to the average moviegoer, but in the screenwriting community, the name is legend. "Mank" was regarded as a self-destructive genius, brilliantly banging out contributions on some 80 fi lms. Practically crippled by alcoholism, his career was on the skids and he had pretty much been "shown the door" by Hollywood's power elites no longer amused by his antics. Yet his fall from grace did not deter a radical young fi rst-time fi lmmaker to come a-knockin' with a blank check in hand and carte blanche to hire whomever he wanted. That fi lmmaker was Orson Welles. And the movie he wanted Mank to write with him was Citizen Kane. It was the so-called "Golden Age" of Hollywood, yet the 1930s were a complicated time. The world was climbing out of the Great Depression and America was navigating the rise of political fascism. Hollywood, with its newly minted "talkies" and the introduction of Technicolor, was there to help people through the tumult. Filmgoers lined up for a mixture of glitz and glamour from the likes of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, or swashbuckling adventures starring Errol Flynn, the genius comedic antics of the Marx Brothers and even a scare or two with the introduction of Universal's Dracula and Frankenstein, played by Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, respectively. Telling stories about Hollywood's early days presents many challenges for the storytellers who must fi nd ways to recreate the era, and one can confi dently assume that none will pay more attention to period detail than Fincher's Mank. The Location Manager In terms of fi nding classic locations in Los Angeles that have survived the moving hands of time, Fincher couldn't have found a better guy for the job than LM William "Bill" Doyle/LMGI. L.A. is a classic example of a city in a near- constant state of reinvention, but despite the years, some amazing original sites still remain, and Doyle knows most of them. "I've always loved reading about how cities develop," Doyle says. "Understanding a city… How it was developed or why it was founded, how it was built and when it expanded… Knowing how these things happened can help you make sense of any city anywhere in the world when you're looking for something specifi c." Mank, of course, is very specifi c, and Doyle and his team were ultimately able to put their mark on the fi lm with a variety of stunning locations, but it wasn't easy. It also helped that both Fincher and production designer Donald Graham Burt have lived in the city for decades as well. "David knows the city the way most LMs know it," Doyle says. "He knows what's gone. And he understands how we can massage what's left into working for us…" Like many before him, Doyle took a circuitous route to the Location Department. He had studied fi lm production, broadcast news and photojournalism in college and believed that would be his path, but he became disillusioned with the news business early on and began searching for something else. "I came to L.A. from the East Coast with no real contacts and got the only job I could fi nd at the time, working as an assistant carpenter at a company called Sunrise Sets," says Doyle. SLM/co-producer Bill Doyle/LMGI