Carringer Chapter 2

This chapter discussed scripting in Citizen Kane. It began by introducing Mankiewicz who was hired to help in the screenwriting. I found the background information and description of him to be very interesting because the reading noted that the project had to be kept quiet and that Mankiewicz left Hollywood to complete the work in order to keep it secret and deal with his alcoholism. It explained how initially he had written a film called "American" which transformed into Citizen Kane and the narrative order between the two was roughly the same. The chapter goes on to describe the similarities of the two and how many of the scenes in Citizen Kane are adapted from Mankiewicz own life and experiences. It was not until the fourth draft that the name Citizen Kane appeared for the first time. When the production estimators saw this script they were worried because it was 50-60 pages longer than the longest script the studio had ever shot. The revised final draft featured four changes, each one containing a large reduction in playing time or set costs.
In the second part of this chapter, the controversy over writer credit is discussed. It seems as though Welles originally intended to take sole credit for the script. This is because Mankiewicz's contract for work with the script was with Mercury Theatre meaning it contained the standard waiver of rights of authorship. I found this to be incredibly interesting and upsetting due to the amount of work he put in I would think he would be given an immense amount of credit. Evidently, Mankiewicz felt similarly and spoke publicly about his frustrations which generated a lot of unwanted public exposure. This led to Welles putting Mankiewicz's name first but the Screen Writers Guild rejected it initially before allowing it.