The authorship of Citizen Kane has been the subject of much debate ever since Pauline Kael's essay Raising Kane which put forth the strange notion that Orson Welles was less of the driving force behind Kane and naming screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as the unsung hero who deserved sole credit for one of cinema's greatest achievements.  Fincher seems to be using this template for his bio pic of Mankiewicz, played by Gary Oldman as a shambolic court jester much in demand among the Hollywood elites until his own self-destructive tendencies bring it all down. As with all Hollywood lore, the characters that populate this myth are well known epic figures from Irving Thalberg to Upton Sinclair, but the underlying themes of movies as propaganda and the political machinations of the media machine bely a certain unconscious irony for Fincher, who seems to be trading in the very same myth making by upholding the idea that Welles was a megalomaniacal credit hog and not the brilliant filmmaker who would go onto make many superb films.