Editor Kirk Baxter Talks Workflow
on David Fincher’s Mank

By Oliver Peters

David Fincher’s Mank follows Herman Mankiewicz during the time he was writing the classic film Citizen Kane. Mank, as he was known, wrote or co-wrote about 40 films, often uncredited, including the first draft of The Wizard of Oz. Together with Orson Welles, he won an Oscar for the screenplay of Citizen Kane, but it’s long been disputed whether or not he, rather than Welles, actually did the bulk of the work on the screenplay.

The script for Mank was penned decades ago by David Fincher’s father Jack and was brought to the screen thanks to Netflix this past year. Fincher deftly blends two parallel storylines: Mankiewicz’s writing of Kane during his convalescence from an accident and his earlier Hollywood experiences with the studios, as told through flashbacks.

Fincher and director of photography Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, used many techniques to pay homage to the look of Citizen Kane and other classic films of the era, including shooting in true black and white with Red Monstro 8K Monochrome cameras and Leica Summilux lenses. Fincher also tapped other frequent collaborators, including Oscar-winning editor Kirk Baxter, ACE, who won for the Fincher films The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network.

I caught up with Baxter, who runs Exile Edit, to discuss Mank — starring Gary Oldman in the main role — the fourth film he’s edited for Fincher.

Were you able to finish Mank before the virus-related lockdowns started? Did you have to move to a remote workflow?
The shooting had finished, and we already had the film assembled. I work at a furious rate while David's shooting so we can interface during the shoot. That way he knows what he's captured, what he needs, and he can move on and strike sets, release actors, etc. There's this constant back and forth.

When he stops shooting, we are pretty far along in terms of replicating the original blueprint. Then it's what I call the sweeps, where you go back to the top and just start sweeping through the movie, improving it. I think we'd already done one of those when we went remote, so it was very fortunate timing. During shooting, we work in a remote way anyway. It’s a language and situation that we're completely used to.

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