Nick Davis - Ann Katz Festival of Books and Arts

Nick Davis Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait. Interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz, Turner Classic Movies host

A fascinating, complex dual biography of Hollywood’s most dazzling—and famous—brothers, and a dark, riveting portrait of competition, love and enmity that ultimately undid them both.

One most famous for having written Citizen Kane (with Orson Welles, as most recently portrayed in David Fincher’s acclaimed Netflix film Mank); the other, All About Eve; one, who only wrote screenplays but believed himself to be a serious playwright, slowly dying of alcoholism and disappointment; the other, a four-time Academy Award-winning director, auteur, sorcerer and seducer of leading ladies, one of Hollywood’s most literate and intelligent filmmakers.

In this large, moving portrait, woven together by the grandson of Herman, great-nephew of Joe, we see the lives of these two men – their dreams and desires, their fear and feuds, struggling to tear themselves from their dark past, and the driving forces that kept them bound to a system they loved and hated.

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