Tag: Interview

From Gone Girl gaffer to Oscar winner: In conversation with David Fincher’s cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt

EXCLUSIVE: We speak to the award-winning cinematographer ahead of the release of Fincher’s new Netflix thriller The Killer.

Emily Murray
October 26, 2023
Total Film (GamesRadar+)

As we begin to discuss his prolific career and latest film The Killer, Erik Messerschmidt admits that he’s surprised to be here. After working on several commercials and television shows, Messerschmidt ended up on the set of director David Fincher’s hit film Gone Girl, working as a gaffer – for those who don’t know, that roughly means chief lighting technician. The duo bonded, with Fincher then recruiting him as director of photography on several of his projects, including beloved TV series Mindhunter and biographical drama Mank, for which Messerschmidt won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

Going from gaffer to Oscar-winning cinematographer in such a short period of time is quite the impressive career trajectory, and is something Messerschmidt confesses he wasn’t chasing, telling Total Film (GamesRadar+) in our interview: “It wasn’t at all – it was never my goal, really. I was happy as a gaffer, and while I did want to be a cinematographer it felt far away and wasn’t something I was pursuing. But on Gone Girl, I had never experienced a director with such skill before and I fell in love with it. I just thought ‘God, if I can just keep making movies with this person I’d be so thrilled.’ The care and attention David [Fincher] gives to everything is infectious.”

Read the full profile

The Killer cinematographer says film should be seen in cinema

The film is released on the big screen this weekend before coming to Netflix next month.

Patrick Cremona
October 26, 2023
Radio Times

Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker Explains Why Michael Fassbender Eats All Those Hard-Boiled Eggs in David Fincher’s “The Killer”

Fincher’s Se7en and Fight Club collaborator talks protein, process, and audiences’ expectations.

Esther Zuckerman
October 26, 2023
GQ

Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker’s first produced screenplay was Se7en, which became director David Fincher‘s breakout film. Since then Walker has worked with Fincher a number of times, pitching in on The Game and “polishing the edges” of Jim Uhls’ original script for Fight Club. But not everything they’ve collaborated on more recently has made it to the big screen. Walker did a rewrite on the unmade sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and one on a Fincher version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that Walker says could have been “mind-blowing.”

After these and other false starts, a new Fincher/Walker project has finally come to fruition: The Killer, out in theaters this weekend and on Netflix next week. “There’s no way to express proper gratitude to this gentleman David Fincher, and the effect he’s had on my life,” Walker says. “But it is fun to now be able to go, ‘Hey, David and I have been trying to get to this for a long time. Thank you. Go see this, because this one isn’t the only one we’ve been spending years trying to write.'”

Read the full interview

David Fincher: “Who doesn’t think they’re an outsider?” David Fincher on hitmen, “incels” and Spider-Man’s “dumb” origin story

Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/Netflix

The director is one of Hollywood’s most unpredictable film-makers. He discusses making a shamelessly pulpy ‘B-movie’, the misogynistic legacy of Fight Club – and the urge to film 100 takes

Steve Rose
October 27, 2023
The Guardian

For anyone who thought David Fincher’s last film, Mank, was the beginning of a new highbrow phase for the director, his latest offering will be something of a jolt. Whereas Mank – on the writing of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane – was a sumptuous, substantial, awards-friendly hymn to old Hollywood (it was nominated for 10 Oscars and won two), his new film, The Killer, is a pulpy, violent, almost wilfully two-dimensional hitman thriller adapted from a comic book. “I will never be a more mature film-maker. I will carry the 12-year-old me with me wherever I go,” he says proudly.

Rather than growing up, it looks like Fincher is having fun – albeit in a highly controlled, Fincheresque way. He is in a particularly relaxed mode when we meet at a hotel in London. He looks healthy and he is full of wit and energy, almost as if this isn’t the umpteenth interview he has done in his 40-year career.

Despite being one of the most renowned and distinctive film-makers in the business, Fincher is not comfortable with being described as an “auteur”, or even an artist. “There’s this fallacy that film directors come in and explain exactly what it is that they want to see and then they go to their trailer,” he says. “And then it’s presented to them and they make a few revisions, and then it’s trapped in aspic for all eternity. That’s just not it. It’s much more sock puppetry and daycare and plumbing – you know, pouring concrete. It’s a lot more physical labour than people probably imagine.”

Nevertheless, with The Killer, he says: “I just didn’t want to take it quite as seriously.” He describes the film as “like a good B-movie”: lean, gripping and, despite some bone-crunching action, surprisingly funny. Michael Fassbender’s lone‑wolf hitman is almost comical in his fastidiousness, from his defiantly un-Bond dress code (“like a German tourist”), to his reusable folding cup to take on jobs, to his playlist of Smiths songs. But his well-laid plans go off the rails, forcing him to break his own rule: “Anticipate, don’t improvise.”

Read the full profile

David Fincher: “Cuando a la gente le das un cuento sin moraleja se confunde y culpa al director”

El director de obras míticas como ‘Seven’, ‘El club de la lucha’ o ‘Zodiac’ regresa al escenario del primer con ‘El asesino’, un ‘thriller’ sobre un ejecutor profesional químicamente perfecto.

Luis Martínez, Venecia
25 octubre 2023
El Mundo

El asesino, el último trabajo de David Fincher (Denver, Colorado, 1962), es, ante todo, una película tremendamente moral. Sí, trata de la historia de un muy inmoral asesino a sueldo, pero, sobre todo, reflexiona sobre las consecuencias de los actos, sobre la ética del trabajo, sobre el arrepentimiento por los errores cometidos y, apurando, sobre la precisión con la que el mal, así en general, hace de las suyas. De paso, la película supone el regreso de su autor a la irrenunciable fascinación por el crimen en su más brutal y evidente crudeza.

De la mano de Michael Fassbender, se cuenta la historia de un asesino a sueldo que se ve obligado a intentar paliar los efectos siempre tremendos de una equivocación fatal. Nos recibe en Venecia poco después de la presentación de la película en la Mostra. En el Lido, precisamente, estrenó hace casi 25 años El club de la lucha.

Lee la entrevista completa / Read the full interview in Spanish

David Fincher: “I haven’t seen Fight Club in 20 years. And I don’t want to”

Best known for grisly thrillers like Seven and Fight Club, the director speaks to GQ about The Killer, his new hitman revenge movie with a blackly comic twist.

Jack King
October 25, 2023
GQ (UK)

He might not like it, but David Fincher has something of a reputation. It goes back to those Seven days — even before. He’s infamously exacting, requiring his actors to perform endless takes. Sometimes, well into the triple-digits. Rumour has it that Jake Gyllenhaal is still scarred.

In the 61-year-old’s latest movie, The Killer, Michael Fassbender portrays a meticulous hitman who obsesses over every… single… detail. He, like his movie’s director, is exhaustive. Exhaustingly so. He’ll take days on a job. He narrates the virtues of patience like a self-help tape stuck on repeat. Sound familiar? Some critics think so, detecting a whiff of self-deprecation in the air.

It seems a totally reasonable, and legitimate, observation. But does Fincher see the parallel? “No,” he tells GQ. “But I can see why the weak-minded…” He stops himself from finishing that sentence with a wry chuckle. Maybe he’s getting softer.

In many ways, The Killer is natural territory for this maestro of the macabre, best known to most for his grislier thrillers — not least Seven, his they-didn’t-get-it-at-the-time masterwork Zodiac, and the prematurely canned Netflix psychodrama Mindhunter. (Oh, and a bloody-knuckled little ‘90s flick called Fight Club.)

Nevertheless, it’s a sharp left-turn from his last feature, the deeply personal Citizen Kane biography Mank, which was written by his dad Jack, who passed away in 2003. “I’ve always liked B-movies,” Fincher says of the shift to this relatively restrained genre exercise. “And Fight Club to Panic Room, what’s that about? I don’t know, it’s kind of where your interests take you. And I spend a lot of time developing three or four things for every one thing I end up doing.”

The result is an eminently re-watchable revenge movie, morbid and sardonic and wickedly funny, the latter of which hasn’t been highlighted nearly enough in early press. Think John Wick, if Keanu Reeves was a sociopath with a penchant for bucket hats, Amazon and inadvertently xenophobic quips about Germans. Oh, and if he loved The Smiths. Especially “How Soon is Now.”

In a hotel room on one of October’s last sunny days, Fincher spoke to GQ all about The Killer, his feelings about AI, and why one of his (many) canned projects would’ve been “a lot” like The Last of Us

Read the full interview

Script Apart: Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Sharp Objects)

Al Horner
October 22, 2023
Script Apart

Gillian Flynn is an author, screenwriter and showrunner who delights in writing what she calls “bad women” – fascinatingly flawed female characters who she grants the freedom to kill, lie, harm and harass in a way that sometimes ruffles feathers. Take her 2012 novel Gone Girl, for example, which she later adapted into a smash hit movie with David Fincher. That murder-mystery tale of a marriage steeped in deceit captivated the world and sparked near-endless conversation about the poison and/or empowerment of its main character, Amy Dunne.

That novel and movie – released within two years of each other – didn’t just make Flynn a literary darling. It also catapulted her to the summit of film and TV. In 2018, she co-wrote the brilliant Widows with Steve McQueen, and adapted her first novel, Sharp Objects, into a gloriously slow-burning limited series starring Amy Adams. Since then, she’s won cult acclaim for her streaming adaptation of Utopia, the British Channel 4 series.

In the conversation you’re about to hear, we ask Gillian how she pens her captivating characters and the social importance of allowing women to run riot on-screen and in her novels, the way that male anti-heroes are frequently permitted to do. She reflects on the accusations of misogyny that her work attracted from some female writers in the aftermath of Gone Girl’s release and reveals an alternative ending to that story that would have taken the tale of Nick and Amy Dunne in an entirely different direction.

Listen to the podcast:

Script Apart
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Amazon Music
Google Podcasts

Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek.

Follow Script Apart on Twitter and Instagram. Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft and WeScreenplay. To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.

‘The Killer’: DP Erik Messerschmidt, Editor Kirk Baxter & Sound Designer Ren Klyce On “The Joy” Of Working With David Fincher

Antonia Blyth, Senior Awards Editor
October 7, 2023
Deadline

In the David Fincher-directed film, The Killer, from a screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker, and based on a graphic novel, Michael Fassbender stars as an assassin battling his employers when a hit goes terribly wrong.

Speaking during a panel at Deadline’s Contenders London event, editor Kirk Baxter addressed a rumor that the role required Fassbender to not blink at all.

There were many times watching the dailies where he heard Fincher’s voice saying, ‘That’s terrific, but let’s see that once again without the f—ing blinking.’ Baxter added, “Not so much that Fassbender needing that direction, it’s just been a thing.”

Watch the full interview

Look at the Deadline Contenders Film London Studio Photos

Empire’s Massive David Fincher Celebration Issue Revealed

Empire’s original announcement

Sophie Butcher
September 22, 2023
Empire

It’s always an exciting time in cinema when a new David Fincher movie is on the horizon. The modern master of suspense, Fincher’s filmography ranges from chilling murder-mysteries such as Seven and Zodiac to the generations-spanning romance of The Curious Tale Of Benjamin Button, neo-noir The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and true-life tale The Social Network. Now, he’s about to unleash bold new thriller The Killer, a new kind of hitman movie starring Michael Fassbender (in his first role since 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix) as a meticulous professional assassin whose life spirals out of control when a job goes wrong.

The new issue of Empire features the most in-depth look at the movie you’ll find anywhere on Earth – including an access-all-areas on-set report from three locations across the globe, following Fincher and his crew and witnessing his precise, pulse-pounding filmmaking in action. We have brand-new interviews with Fincher and Fassbender from on set about what makes their mysterious eponymous killer tick, how they’re putting the audience inside his head, their process of working together, pulling off incredible stunt sequences and much, much more. And in a rare, revealing additional retrospective interview, Fincher looks back at some of the most stand-out shots from across his entire career – from Ben Affleck’s cringeworthy smile in Gone Girl, to Panic Room’s swooping long-take, and more – sharing the fascinating stories of how they came to be.

The newsstand cover for our David Fincher special is a moody, rain-splattered compilation of some of his most iconic characters – Morgan Freeman’s Detective Somerset from Seven, Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden from Fight Club, Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the Zodiac killer, Rosamund Pike’s Amy Dunne from Gone Girl, and Michael Fassbender’s new hitman protagonist – illustrated exclusively for Empire by Paul Shipper.

Fincher-focused delights aside, the stacked new issue also contains a deep-dive into the new Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes; a celebration of Gravity’s 10th anniversary with Alfonso Cuarón; a set report from Aardman’s stop-motion sequel Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget; we dig into the much-anticipated British indie How To Have Sex; there are fresh looks at anime series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Bradley Cooper’s musical biopic Maestro, Michael Mann’s racing drama Ferrari; and much, much more.

Trust us – this issue is all Killer, no filler. Empire’s David Fincher celebration issue, saluting the work of one of Hollywood’s biggest names, hits newsstands from Thursday 28 September.

The subscriber cover is a noir-ish vision of Michael Fassbender’s titular assassin from The Killer, stalking cobbled streets for his next target, decked out in tourist get-up so as to go unnoticed – illustrated exclusively for Empire by Corey Brickley.

Alex Godfrey, Empire Features Editor (Twitter):

What’s in the box? The new issue of Empire magazine, that’s what. Incredible, globe-trotting on-set access of The Killer, and brilliant writing, from Nev Pierce, who got up-close and personal with David Fincher, Michael Fassbender, and Tilda Swinton.

Read the previews:

David Fincher’s The Killer Brings Michael Fassbender Back To The Screen: ‘It’s The Type Of Film I Was Salivating To Do’

The Killer’s Protagonist Is A New Kind Of Cinematic Assassin: ‘He’s Not James Bond,’ Says David Fincher

On Set Of David Fincher’s Most Bruising Action Sequence

Empire Issue Preview: The Killer, David Fincher Special, The Hunger Games: Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, Gravity

Making A Murderer: On Set Of The Killer With David Fincher

Pre-order a copy online here

Become an Empire member to access the digital edition on launch day.

The Killer is in cinemas from 27 October and streaming on Netflix from 10 November.

Venice Film Festival: “The Killer” World Premiere

September 3, 2023
Venice Film Festival (YouTube)

Press conference featuring Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt ASC, Sound Designer Ren Klyce, Director David Fincher, and Editor Kirk Baxter ACE.

Red Carpet featuring Producer Peter Mavromates, Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt ASC, Writer of the original “The Killer” (“Le tueur”) comic Alexis “Matz” Nolent, Editor Kirk Baxter ACE, Sound Designer Ren Klyce, Director David Fincher. The original stream has the ambient sound turned down to a minimum because it is too busy and noisy, and only barely intelligible in the close-ups.

“The Killer” interview with the director David Fincher

Chiara Nicoletti
September 8, 2023
FRED, The Festival Insider

David Fincher, director of “The Killer“: “We thought it would be interesting if the ‘cool’ assassin movie tropes were all taken away”.

For his twelfth film, “The Killer“, in competition at the 80th Venice International Film Festival, the director David Fincher reunites with Andrew Kevin Walker, with whom he created the indelible serial killer thriller “Se7en” (1995).

Adapted from the acclaimed graphic novel written by “Matz” (Alexis Nolent), the film explores the boundaries of the revenge movie and sees Michael Fassbender in the role of a hitman failing at his main task and being threatened because of this.

In his production notes, David Fincher writes: “We thought it would be interesting if the ‘cool’ assassin movie tropes were all taken away”. The director describes how he decided to let the audience into the protagonist’s train of thoughts as to understand that “what he does and what he thinks do not match”.

“The Killer“ releases globally on Netflix November 10, 2023.

Listen to the interview