David Fincher is a "meticulous" director who won't settle for anything less than perfect, says his Mank star Gary Oldman.
In the new Netflix movie, the Oscar-winning actor star as Herman J. Mankiewicz, who co-wrote Orson Welles' 1941 classic Citizen Kane, alongside Amanda Seyfried as actress Marion Davies and Charles Dance as publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst.
Fight Club filmmaker Fincher is notorious for requiring his cast to do many, sometimes a hundred, takes of a particular scene, but Oldman has insisted it was nice to know that the filmmaker wouldn't settle for anything less than the best.
"We're in an age now where budgets are becoming more and more restricted and you're making movies, you're doing two takes, three takes, and you're moving on, and you really have to sort of push if you want a third or a fourth take," he explained to Deadline. "With David, like I say, you not only get a big bite of the apple, you feel at the end of the day when you walk away that you covered the scene. You don't feel like you're working with someone who will settle. David isn't going to settle. He's not going to walk away from something until he's got it, and that gives you a great security."
He added that the Gone Girl director loves having a reputation for doing so many takes and Oldman has a sneaking suspicion he might play up to it sometimes.
"You're there to do the work and he's obsessive, he's meticulous, yeah, he is all those things, and yeah, he does a lot of takes. I think he likes the reputation, too. I think he doubles down on it," he smiled.
Mank is streaming on Netflix now.
