The Furniture: "Mank", Crusader Against Tackiness
"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on images for magnified detail)
Opulence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes things that are expensive are worse. This is the message of Mank.
Or, rather, a message. But much of the film’s impact does spring from an acknowledgement that it would be cost-prohibitive to replicate the colossal excesses of the real Hearst Castle. Production designer Donald Graham Burt is pretty clear about that in this short video feature about his work. So, rather than trying and failing, they did something different...