Category: 1999. Fight Club

David Fincher: Hollywood’s Most Disturbing Director

With films including Se7en, Zodiac and Fight Club, David Fincher has explored the darkest edges of humanity. Yet there’s more to his unique vision, writes Gregory Wakeman, as the director’s film Mank is released.

Gregory Wakeman
December 3, 2020
BBC Culture

David Fincher fans have had plenty to celebrate over the past few months. September marked the 25th anniversary of Se7en, Fincher’s deeply disturbing psychological thriller that established the then 33-year-old as one of the most iconoclastic young directors in Hollywood. Then, just a couple of weeks later, The Social Network, Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s searing exploration of Mark Zuckerberg and the origins of Facebook, turned 10. Most exciting of all for Fincher aficionados, though, is the fact that, more than six years after the release of his last feature film Gone Girl, Mank will finally arrive on Netflix on 4 December.

Fincher has waited around 20 years to find the perfect home for the film, which was originally written by his father Jack in the late 1990s. But while most major Hollywood studios were put off by the idea of a black and white biopic of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz, Netflix gave Fincher carte blanche to fulfil his vision.

The early reviews for Mank have been extremely positive, and Fincher has immediately become one of the main contenders for the best director Oscar. Covid-19’s disruption of the 2020 cinematic calendar means that Fincher’s competition isn’t quite as strong as it could have been. But it’s to the Academy Awards’ great shame that this titan of modern filmmaking has somehow only received best director nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network. Despite this oversight, Fincher’s place in the cinematic pantheon has long been secure. No other modern filmmaker has examined alienation, depression, obsession, and the dark side of intelligence like he has, while keeping a stylish, visceral, and, most importantly of all, entertaining approach. 

But what is it that sets Fincher’s work apart from that of his peers?

La Septième Obsession 31: David Fincher

La Septième Obsession

OBSESSION: David Fincher

1. Mank de David Fincher

Le grand film de Fincher débarque sur Netflix le 4 décembre. L’occasion d’un entretien avec le cinéaste, mais aussi avec ses collaborateurs les plus proches. 16 pages spéciales.

Scénario pour une critique par Nicolas Tellop

Filmopathe entretien avec David Fincher – par Nev Pierce

Collaborer avec Fincher entretiens avec Erik Messerschmidt (chef opérateur) – Donald Graham Burt (chef décorateur) – Trish Summerville (costumière) – Kirk Baxter (monteur)

2. Revisiter Fincher

Plongée exceptionnelle dans l’oeuvre de l’un des plus grands cinéastes contemporains. Filmographie commentée, analyses… 50 pages à lire.

4 nuances de Fincher par Jean-Sébastien Massart et Fabrice Fuentes

David Fincher en 14 titres Propaganda Films (clips) – Alien 3 – Se7en – The Game – Fight Club – Panic Room + les plans de Panic Room – Zodiac – L’Étrange histoire de Benjamin Button – The Social Network – Millénium + la musique hantée de Millénium – Gone Girl – Mindhunter

3. Analyses

Démoniaque – la perfection du crime par Nathan Reneaud
Fantômes et paranoïa par Jérôme d’Estais
Solitude & obsession – Fincher Dogma par Alexandre Jourdain
Poétique du suicide par Aurélien Lemant
Le système des objets – design finchérien par Dick Tomasovic

Sommaire complet

Commander

David Fincher: film studios ‘don’t want to make anything that can’t make them a billion dollars’

Robbie Collin, Film Critic
November 14, 2020
The Telegraph

An hour or so into the 1999 premiere of Fight Club, David Fincher slipped outside for some air. The director hadn’t known exactly what to expect when his brutally violent black comedy was selected for the Venice Film Festival, but whatever the dream scenario had been, this wasn’t it. The walkouts had started early, and become a steady stream. The only audience members laughing were his leading men, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton – though in fairness, the two had shared a joint beforehand. The first review off the presses had described Fincher’s film as “an inadmissible assault on personal decency” with a fascist bent, and the festival crowd weren’t noticeably any more enthused.

“The resounding thuds every scene landed with just became too much,” Fincher, now 58, tells me from home via Zoom. He recalls sitting on the steps outside and watching half a dozen disgusted older women file past: “all wearing at least one item of leopard print, like six Anne Bancrofts in The Graduate.” One evidently recognised the American enfant terrible and hissed something to her companions, who looked across and shook their heads in sync. “It was then I knew that what we’d done was wrong,” he says, beaming with pride.

Fincher’s tremendous latest film – his first since Gone Girl in 2014 – is unlikely to cause many viewers to storm home, not least because they’ll already be there when they watch it. Mank is a Netflix production, filmed just before the pandemic struck, but edited, polished and due to be released under lockdown conditions. Set in the Golden Age of Hollywood and shot in silvery monochrome, it follows the political chicanery and personal vendettas that led to the writing of Citizen Kane: a film released in 1941, and still widely considered the greatest ever made. Mank’s hero isn’t Orson Welles, Kane’s startlingly young director and star (he was 25 when it was released), but Gary Oldman’s Herman J Mankiewicz – a wildly talented screenwriter and incorrigible gambler and drunk, whom Welles enlisted to ghostwrite the script.

Read the full interview [Only for subscribers – 1-month free trial]

Mix Magazine 2020: The Music in Sound with Ren Klyce

Ren Klyce in Peter Elsea’s Studio (1984)

Larry Blake
November 5, 2020
Mix Magazine / SoundWorks Collection

Animated short for Sesame Street (January 17, 1984) produced by John Korty. Sound and music by Ren Klyce:

The David Fincher You Meet in His Movies

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Se7en and the 10th anniversary of The Social Network, The Ringer hereby dubs September 21-25 David Fincher Week. Join us all throughout the week as we celebrate and examine the man, the myth, and his impeccable body of work.

The protagonists of everything from ‘Fight Club’ to ‘Zodiac’ to ‘Gone Girl’ have something in common: they’re all cut from the same cloth as their director

Adam Nayman
September 23, 2020
The Ringer

No filmmaker has ever put himself into his work like Alfred Hitchcock. In movie after movie, the director made blink-or-miss-them appearances located at the edge of the frame—crossing a street walking a dog; appearing in a photo for a weight loss clinic—that prompted audiences to play a game of spot-the-auteur. These slyly miniaturized acts of showmanship were simultaneously sight gags and wry reminders of who was really in charge: The so-called “master of suspense” mixed in among the actors he infamously referred to as “cattle.”

David Fincher has not appeared in any of his own films: the closest thing to a cameo comes in 2014’s Gone Girl, a positively Hitchcockian thriller right down to its shower scene featuring a bloody blond. Midway through the film, suspected wife killer Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is being coached on an upcoming television appearance by his high-priced lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), who’s determined that his client makes just the right impression. During their dressing room prep session, the attorney pelts Nick with gummy bears to sharpen his posture and line readings. Perry supposedly didn’t know who Fincher was before being cast in the part, but that doesn’t preclude the fact that in this scene, he’s doing an indirect impression of his director—a control freak who once said there are only two ways to shoot any given scene, and that one of them is always wrong.

Read the full article

David Fincher’s Longtime DP Jeff Cronenweth Has Advice, Insight, and Stories

25th Annual American Society Of Cinematographers (ASC) Awards (2011)

A podcast about how to build a career in filmmaking. No Film School shares the latest opportunities and trends for anyone working in film and TV. We break news on cameras, lighting, and apps. We interview leaders in screenwriting, directing, cinematography, editing, and producing. And we answer your questions! We are dedicated to sharing knowledge with filmmakers around the globe, “no film school” required.

Jeffrey Reeser
August 28, 2020
No Film School

Oscar-nominated camera wizard Jeff Cronenweth sat down with us to talk about his origins in the film industry.

As a young man, Cronenweth spent time on the set of Blade Runner as his father, Jordan Cronenweth shot it. He walks us through the next chapter of his career, starting out as an AC for legendary DP Sven Nykvist and how his longtime working relationship with David Fincher began when shooting pickups for a Madonna music video.

We discuss his experiences crafting the look of Fight Club, The Social Network, and Gone Girl, among other great films. Now in 2020, he is up for an Emmy for his work on the Amazon series Tales From The Loop.

Listen to the podcast:

No Film School
Apple Podcasts

Follow Jeff Cronenweth, ASC Archives on Twitter

The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast: Chuck Palahniuk

Merrick Morton / Allan Amato

Bret Easton Ellis
August 4, 2020
The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast

The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast is an audio trip inside the mind of the controversial best-selling author of Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho and White. The podcast has been delivering compelling discussion of film, television, music and pop culture since 2013. Each new episode will be released exclusively on Patreon.

All things Fight Club, the bygone days of literary stardom, DFW to Vonnegut to Nathaniel West, video games replacing the novel, best movie adaptations, financial ruin…

Enjoy this free episode of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast with author Chuck Palahniuk. Like what you hear? Subscribe for $2 and gain instant access to new episodes and all earlier Patreon episodes dating back to April 2018. You are NOT charged to listen to old episodes… You are only charged $2 for new episodes when they are released every two weeks. Thanks for listening!

Listen to the podcast

Portbox: How Jeff Cronenweth Builds Iconic Images That You Can’t Forget

Madhav Goyal
July 12, 2020
Invisible Storytelling (Portbox)

Academy Award-nominated Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl) breaks down the visual decisions behind some of the most studied films of the past three decades, and what it actually takes to build imagery that lasts.

Cronenweth explains how he and David Fincher approached the unreliable narrator problem in Fight Club, why the opening scene of The Social Network was shot with crossing cameras instead of traditional coverage, and how shallow depth of field became the primary tool for conveying isolation in Tales from the Loop. He also gets into why fear is essential to staying sharp, and why fighting for every single shot matters more than most cinematographers realize.

If you have ever wondered how great cinematographers make technical decisions in service of emotion rather than spectacle, this conversation gets into the specifics.

Read the episode notes:

How Jeff Cronenweth Builds Iconic Images That You Can’t Forget

Listen to the podcast on:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Amazon Music

Master Class with David Fincher / Master Class de David Fincher

Carlos Reviriego
September 15, 2014 (May 8, 2020)
TAI Escuela Universitaria de Artes

Interview with David Fincher at the TAI University School of Arts (Madrid), hosted by Carlos Reviriego.

In English, with Spanish subtitles.

Questions:

0:00:33 – What did the book ‘Gone Girl‘ is based on had that made you want to film a movie about it?
0:02:33 – Talk about your first years in the movie industry.
0:06:38 – You once said ‘No one hates Alien3 more than me’. Can you talk about it?
0:09:31 – David Lynch was here last year, and he said that the most important advice was to always fight for the final cut of your film. Do you think the same?
0:15:03 – Some critics think that ‘Fight Club‘ and movies on your filmography celebrate violence and anarchy. What do you have to say about it?
0:18:39 – Do you see yourself as a perfectionist?
0:22:17 – What’s more important, talent or hard work?
0:25:40 – What changes with digital cinema?
0:28:09 – How do you work with the Cinematographer and the Art Department?
0:34:31 – Can you talk about your work for TV and House of Cards?
0:36:37 – How do you feel about Amy’s character in Gone Girl?
0:37:53 – Do you get involved in the writing process?
0:39:08 – Why do you tend to use green and yellow colours in your cinema?
0:41:12 – Do you see a certain similarity between Brad Pitt’s character in ‘Twelve Monkeys‘ and ‘Seven‘?
0:43:02 – What do you look for in an actor?
0:48:38 – Is it more complicated to do fiction or documentary?

Encuentro con David Fincher en la Escuela Universitaria de Artes TAI (Madrid), conducido por Carlos Reviriego.

En inglés, con subtítulos en español.

Preguntas:

0:00:33 – ¿Qué te atrajo de la obra literaria en la que se inspira ‘Gone Girl‘?
0:02:33 – Háblanos de tus comienzos
0:06:38 – Una vez dijiste que nadie odió Alien3 más que tu. ¿Puedes hablar sobre ello?
0:09:31 – David Lynch estuvo aquí el año pasado y dijo que lo más importante era tener el corte final de la película. ¿Opinas lo mismo?
0:15:03 – Algunos críticos opinan que ‘Fight Club‘ y otras de tus películas ensalzan la violencia y el caos. ¿Qué tienes que decir al respecto?
0:18:39 – ¿Te consideras un perfeccionista?
0:22:17 – ¿Qué es más importante, el talento o el trabajo duro?
0:25:40 – ¿Qué añade la conversión al digital del cine a tu obra?
0:28:09 – Tu estética tiene una firma o un sello personal. ¿Cómo trabajas con el Director de Fotografía?
0:34:31 – ¿Puedes hablar sobre tu participación en televisión y en House of Cards?
0:36:37 – ¿Qué piensas del personaje de Amy en Gone Girl?
0:37:53 – ¿Cómo te involucras en el proceso de escritura del guión?
0:39:08 – ¿Por qué tu cine tiene cierta tendencia a usar verdes y amarillos?
0:41:12 – ¿Crees que hay cierta similitud entre la forma de actuar del personaje de Brad Pitt en ‘Twelve Monkeys‘ y ‘Seven‘, que fueron rodadas en la misma época?
0:43:02 – ¿Qué buscas de un actor a la hora de trabajar con él?
0:48:38 – ¿Es más complicado rodar ficción o documental?

Magaly Briand / TAI (2014)