Category: 1999. Fight Club

With Your Feet in the Air and Your Head on the Ground

I am Travis’ Essay on Love, Sex, Masculinity, and Fight Club

Travis Woods
March 2024
Bright Wall/Dark Room: Issue 129: 1999


A dark room. Two bodies in the center, colliding beneath the amber haze of a single hanging light bulb.

The first rule of watching Fight Club is: the film is not misogyny-pumped propaganda for incels.

All you can hear are flat, hard packing sounds over yelling.

The second rule of watching Fight Club is: the film is NOT misogyny-pumped propaganda for incels.

Muscles ripple. Lips pull back from teeth like swollen window shades. 

Third rule of watching Fight Club: it’s not an anti-capitalist tract; it’s not really a consumer critique.

The wet choke of a gasp. Snorting bull-breath plumes of carbon dioxide exhale from one face into another.

Fourth rule: it’s not even an indictment of white-collar workplace drudgery at the end of the 20th century.

An arm wraps around a neck from behind, the crude approximation of a desperate headlock.

Fifth rule: it’s not a movie in support of anarchism, fascism, terrorism, or any other –ism.

That arm slips upward from all the sweat and the momentum, catching the other’s lip, hard.

Sixth rule: of all things, it’s a film about taking responsibility.

That lip bursts. An arc of spit, braided with a little bit of blood, sprays out into the darkness in a bubbly pink froth. For some reason, they both think of soap when they see this. And smile.

Seventh rule: it’s about a boy terrified of a girl, and of what she might mean for him. Mean to him.

The two bodies fall back down onto the sweat-softened mattress as one. This rawboned man, this bedraggled woman. She pretzels her legs around his hips, his laughing mouth is pulled to hers.

And the eighth and final rule of watching Fight Club: this is a fucking love story.

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Dave Macomber, Stunt Coordinator: Visualising a Fight for David Fincher, Unreal Engine & VFX

Hollywood Stunt Coordinator & VFX Artist Dave Macomber discusses pre-visualizing the fight sequence for David Fincher’s The Killer and his new Unreal Engine project.

Jamie Bakewell
April 11, 2024
The VFX Process (Bigtooth Studios)

Dave Macomber is an award-winning stunt/fight coordinator and second-unit director in the film industry. With a passion for Visual Effects (VFX), Dave seamlessly incorporates VFX elements into his stunt visualizations, providing a comprehensive template for directors and the rest of the crew.

Having worked on iconic blockbusters like Transformers, HBO‘s Watchmen, and numerous Marvel Cinematic Universe films, Dave’s expertise shines through. Just a glance at his IMDB page showcases his impressive portfolio.

In his latest project for David Fincher‘s The Killer, Dave coordinated a gripping 6-minute fight sequence shot mostly in darkness. Join him as he shares insights into working with David Fincher, revealing that Fincher is an extremely collaborative director, and how his background as a VFX artist dictates his approach to photographing sequences in his movies.

‘Killer vs Brute’ exemplifies Dave’s mastery in delivering high-impact action sequences. Even though the scene turned out to be a success, Dave states that it was “the most intimidating thing I’ve ever done in my career.”

Venturing into Unreal Engine filmmaking during his spare time, Dave’s creativity knows no bounds. Last year, he unveiled The Ronin, his first Unreal Engine short film, showcasing a fight scene performed entirely by himself, using Rokoko Motion Capture technology. Now, with The Widow: Assassins Highway, Dave enlists a team of Marvel stunt performers to help him capture the stunts and elevate the action.

This episode offers a captivating glimpse into the VFX pipeline, the Hollywood stunt process, and Unreal Engine filmmaking.

Listen to the extended version of the conversation as a podcast:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify

Follow The VFX Process (Bigtooth Studios): Website, YouTube, Instagram, Ex-Twitter, Discord, Linkedin

Follow Dave Macomber: Instagram, YouTube, Twitter

How Laray Mayfield Became Director David Fincher’s Go-to Casting Director

Neil Turitz
March 1, 2024
Casting Networks

Laray Mayfield got into casting the way a lot of other professionals got into it, by accident.

She was doing another job and someone said, “Hey, you should do this,” and once she did, it stuck. That’s not an unusual story. What makes this unusual is that the person who told her is arguably the best American filmmaker working today, David Fincher, with whom she’s been working for nearly 40 years.

Mayfield has since built an impressive career, with an Emmy award for the first season of House of Cards and two Artios awards —the highest honor the Casting Society offers— to her name. Her latest collaboration with Fincher, The Killer, is streaming on Netflix. She spoke with us from her home in Nashville.

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Why “Shot On iPhone” Commercials Look So Good! Ft. Claudio Miranda

Gene Nagata
February 5, 2024
Potato Jet

Huge Shoutout to Claudio Miranda & the Crew.

Claudio Miranda, Director of Photography, ASC ACC: Instagram
Josh Davis, Gaffer
Yong Ok Lee, Production Designer
Robert Smathers, 1st AC
Angie Su, Director

Phone rigged by TILTA Khronos (still in development) but will be available publicly soon.

David Fincher at The Cinémathèque Française: “Zodiac” Screening and Q&A

Audrey Odori

Frédéric Bonnaud, Director of the Cinémathèque française
Anaïs Duchet, Interpreter
October 14, 2023
Cinémathèque Française

The Cinémathèque Française (French Cinematheque) hosted a David Fincher Retrospective from October 13 to 22, 2023, in Paris (France).

Supported by Netflix, Patron of the Cinémathèque, it opened with a preview screening of The Killer followed by a Q&A with Director David Fincher, and Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt, ASC.

The next day, a screening of Zodiac was followed by a discussion with the director about the film and his career, “David Fincher par David Fincher, une leçon de cinéma” (“David Fincher by David Fincher, a lesson in cinema”).

Holt McCallany Talks to David Fincher about “The Iron Claw” and the Role of a Lifetime

By David Fincher
December 29, 2023
Interview

After casting Holt McCallany in Alien 3 and later in Fight Club in the types of tough-guy roles that have largely defined his four-decade career, David Fincher finally let the 60-year-old actor showcase his softer side as FBI agent Bill Tench in Netflix’s psychological thriller Mindhunter. It was that performance, in which McCallany was able to balance steely professionalism and quiet melancholy, that earned him a meeting with director Sean Durkin, who was looking for the right person to play the patriarch of the Von Erich clan in The Iron Claw, his biopic of the legendary Texas wrestling dynasty. As Fritz Von Erich, a loving but severe father who pushed his four sons (played by Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, and Stanley Simons) beyond their limits—often with tragic results—McCallany is earning the best reviews of his career, and even, to his own shock, some Oscar buzz. As he told Fincher over Zoom a couple of weeks ago, he’s still letting it all sink in.

DAVID FINCHER: Hey Holtster! How have you been?

HOLT MCCALLANY: I’ve been great David, because there were a couple of articles, one in Variety, one in Vulture, that picked me as somebody who could get a possible Academy Award nomination for Supporting Actor, even though it’s going to be a very tough year.

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Holt McCallany as Fritz Von Erich. By Devin Yalkin

Variety Awards Circuit Podcast: Danielle Brooks (“The Color Purple”) and Holt McCallany (“The Iron Claw”)

Clayton Davis
December 14, 2023
Variety

Also on this episode, “The Iron Claw” actor Holt McCallany talks about playing the legendary wrestler Fritz Von Ehrich in Sean Durkin’s powerful new drama. He discusses coming to peace with many of his scenes that were cut from the film, and what we can expect from his upcoming directorial effort “The Star Maker” after getting script notes from David Fincher.

A quintessential “that guy” performer in the eyes of most audience members, this veteran character actor boasts over 80 credits in a three-decade career, including turns in “Nightmare Alley” and Netflix’s “Mindhunter.” As the hardened patriarch of a family of pro wrestlers in A24’s sports drama, McCallany exudes an intense and thorny power, expertly revealing the dangers of a particular form of pressurized ambition. It’s a performance that’s reminiscent of J.K. Simmons Oscar-winning turn as the abusive music teacher in “Whiplash.”

The Signature Moves of David Fincher

Adam Schoales, video producer/editor
October 27, 2023
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)

From his earliest days working for ILM on Return of the Jedi; to his countless music videos for stars like Madonna, Michael Jackson, and The Rolling Stones; to his groundbreaking big-screen adaptations, there’s no one with an eye quite like David Fincher. But how does he do it (apart from doing over 100 takes)? Through his use of razor-sharp precision; his omniscient and unencumbered camerawork; his pitch-black comedy; and the recognition that deep down people are perverts.

Films Included: The Social Network (2010), Alien3 (1992), SE7EN (1995), Zodiac (2007), Mank (2020), Panic Room (2002), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Gone Girl (2014), The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Want more TIFF? Find us here: Ex-Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook

The Best Movie Sound Design of 2023

Ren Klyce, Richard King, Ai-ling Lee, and Johnnie Burn are among are greatest artisans working today. Here’s why.

Chris O’Falt, Sarah Shachat, Jim Hemphill, Bill Desowitz
December 8, 2023
IndieWire

George Lucas once said, “The sound and music are 50 percent of the entertainment in a movie.” It’s a quote you hear many pay lip service to, but the reality is that’s not how we think about movies. If it was, then sound masters like Ren Klyce, Richard King, Ai-ling Lee, and Johnnie Burn would be household names in the filmmaking world.

There is one group, though, that lives by Lucas’ words: fellow great directors. Filmmakers like David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Glazer, Greta Gerwig, and Bradley Cooper think of their movies in terms of sound and build it into their process, from conception through post, and seek out aural masters like Klyce, King, Lee, and Burn.

In reviewing the year in sound design, the IndieWire craft staff was near unanimous on the year’s very best, quickly zeroing in on these five titles.

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Here’s Every Sitcom Code Name Michael Fassbender Uses in ‘The Killer’

The titular assassin of the new David Fincher thriller travels the world under a few familiar pseudonyms.

John Dilillo
November 10, 2023
Tudum by Netflix

What’s a hit man without a code name? James Bond is 007; The Gray Man’s Court Gentry is Sierra Six; even Get Smart’s Maxwell Smart goes by Agent 86 when he’s on the clock. In David Fincher’s new assassin thriller The Killer, the titular professional has more than a few pseudonyms, and they all have a shared origin. Played by Michael Fassbender, this killer has a taste for television — every one of his aliases is borrowed from a classic sitcom. “He may have been raised on [television],” says The Killer screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (who previously teamed with Fincher on their shared breakout Se7en). “It may have been more of a parent to him than any parent.”

The running gag originated with an earlier Fincher/Walker collaboration. “I was doing a polish on Fight Club,” Walker tells Tudum. “Fincher and I realized that Edward Norton’s character had to have little name badges on, or sign up sheets for his support groups he would go to. And Fincher was like, ‘Well, let’s just use names from Planet of the Apes, like Dr. Zaius or Cornelius, etcetera.’ ”

When Walker began working on The Killer, he decided to similarly sneak casual sitcom name-drops into scenes where the main character introduces himself, as a subtle Easter egg for particularly discerning viewers. Fincher persuaded him to blow the idea up further. “I started even more obscure than they are now, with characters like Mr. Mooney,” foil to Lucille Ball on her ’60s vehicle The Lucy Show, Walker says. “It’s the genius of Fincher that he was like, ‘OK, here’s your kind of silly little hidden joke. Let’s bring it forward.’ ”

Under Fincher’s watchful eye, the production made sure to spotlight each and every alias. “When he was shooting a lot of the car interiors and doing a few tiny reshoots and inserts,” Walker says of Fincher, “he shot close-ups of plane tickets, close-ups of the driver’s license, he made sure to show every single name first and last.” You can see each of those names — as well as a handy guide to which sitcoms they spring from — below. 

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David Fincher: “Directors are trained dogs who like to do a backflip and be applauded afterwards”

The man who directed films such as ‘Seven’ and ‘Zodiac’ has released his latest film: ‘The Killer.’ In an interview with EL PAÍS, he reflects on his cinematographic technique, his fascination with criminal minds, his terrible experience directing ‘Alien 3′ and his reputation for being tough on set.

Tommaso Koch
5 November 2023
El País (in English)

In front of David Fincher, there’s a table and a glass of water. The typical, minimal decoration of any interview. But the talent of the 61-year-old director isn’t typical or minimal at all. With just a few bursts of words, he can transform a nondescript setting into a sudden master class in cinema.

He’s always thinking about how something could be filmed, from where, with what intention. His long shots — assembled with frenetic phrases — are capable of turning even the dullest premise into a thriller.

The Denver-born director has a career that spans three decades, with iconic films such as Seven (1995), The Social Network (2010) and Gone Girl (2014). He’s one of the most-admired filmmakers on the planet, for his visual style, his extensive research into the abysses of the mind and his capacity for immersive narration.

Fincher is a relentless perfectionist, just like the protagonist of The Killer, his latest film, now playing in theaters and available on Netflix on November 10. The professional assassin has a perfect record… until, for the first time, he makes a mistake.

In Fincher’s career, there are hardly any. Except, perhaps, right at the beginning. He was 30-years-old and had a solid reputation as a director of music videos, when he was offered something on the big screen. From the vertigo of recording Madonna or Michael Jackson, he was suddenly part of something even more terrifying: Alien 3. But he wasn’t scared of the creature, he was simply horrified by the industry, its thirst for money, its managers, its obstacles to creativity. To this day, he says that no one hates that film more than him. “I was like, ‘Well, surely you don’t want to have the Twentieth Century Fox logo over a shitty movie.’ And they were like, ‘Well, as long as it opens.’ He added that the experience made him “a belligerent bastard.”

Another key to his fame is his impeccable workmanship. He’s always hunting for details, seeking the perfect final result. Some say he goes overboard. Gyllenhaal — who starred in Zodiac (2007) claims that Fincher “paints with people” while working. “It’s tough to be a color,” the actor added, in an interview with The New York Times. “It’s hard to be David Fincher,” Jodie Foster once said.

The director confessed, in a chat with Sam Mendes, that the phrase he repeats most on set is “shut the fuck up, please.” He admits that he becomes firm when he notices that someone is slacking. He believes it’s necessary, given the time and the money at stake. The viewer also isn’t allowed to relax.

Years ago, he was in talks to direct an installment of Spiderman, but what he proposed must have been so different that the executives despised it. With Fincher, it’s all love or hate.

The premiere of Fight Club (1999) — at the Venice Film Festival — awakened, above all, the latter sentiment. “They wanted to tear off our skin,” the creator said some time later. However, when he returned two months ago to the festival — where this interview was held — the event organizers welcomed him like a divo.

Read the full interview