You wouldn’t think that Ren Klycewould have a whole lot more to learn about his job as a sound professional on movies. He’s been at it for nearly 30 years, going back to “Se7en” in 1995 and presiding as director David Fincher‘s designated sound guy ever since. He’s earned nine Academy Award nominations for his sonic work, including on Fincher’s “Fight Club,” “The Social Network,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Mank.” And yet while discussing his latest collaboration with his favorite director, Netflix‘s “The Killer,” he asserts, “I learned a lot on this film. I think I learn every time. I always think, ‘Oh, I’m finally figuring out how to do my job.’ You get a new project and you realize that you’re learning a whole new set of skills. I like the idea that there’s still sort of a beginner mentality to the approach, and I think that’s actually a healthy way to do any type of work, honestly.”
In their Actors on Actors conversation ‘Shame’ costars Carey Mulligan (‘Maestro‘) and Michael Fassbender (‘The Killer‘) reminisce on working with Steve McQueen and talk about the directors they worked with on their current projects, David Fincher and Bradley Cooper.
VarietyActors on Actors presented by AIR from Amazon Studios.
From ‘Shame’ to Netflix Films: Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan on Rejection and Being So in Character You Act Without Thinking
In “Maestro” and “The Killer,” the characters played by Carey Mulligan and Michael Fassbender exist in different worlds. Mulligan’s Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, an up-and-coming actress who becomes conductor Leonard Bernstein’s wife and soul mate, breathes rarefied air among East Coast artists from the 1950s through the ’70s. Fassbender’s tightly coiled, mostly silent assassin, meanwhile, travels the world seeking vengeance, while keeping his focus by doing push-ups on his fingertips.
Twelve years ago, though, Fassbender and Mulligan inhabited the same toxic universe, as dysfunctional siblings in 2011’s “Shame.” The film was writer-director Steve McQueen’s bleak, sexually explicit examination of sex addiction through the eyes of Fassbender’s character, Brandon, a New York City executive brought low by his self-destructive desires. Mulligan’s Sissy, a lounge singer, was sorrowful and also boundary-less.
Roman Polanski’s 1974 neo-noir Chinatown is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. In this episode, we’re joined by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt to discuss this masterpiece of cinema.
We start by talking to Erik about his passion for filmmaking and what led him to a career in cinematography. He shares how he was drawn to the camaraderie and creative collaboration of working on set. Over time, he realized the cinematographer role allowed him to blend his interests in art, science, and technology.
This year, he’s reunited with David Fincher for his adaptation of the graphic novel, The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender, and also teamed up with Michael Mann to shoot his racing biopic, Ferrari, starring Adam Driver.
When it comes to Chinatown, Erik praises the elegant camerawork and seamless visual storytelling. Polanski uses the camera deliberately, guiding the audience through clues and reveals without excessive dialogue. The mystery unfolds through precise editing and minimalist framing. We also discuss the phenomenal performances and how Polanski pulls back at key moments to ground the major plot turns.
Chatting with Erik gave us a new appreciation for the nuance and artistry of Chinatown. It’s a masterclass in subtle visual storytelling that inspired generations of filmmakers. Roman Polanski’s direction and Robert Towne’s script form a potent combination. We highly recommend revisiting this neo-noir gem.
The violence in The Killer isn’t indiscriminate, or extensive, but it has impact. And as much as Michael Fassbender’s hitman often works with a gun, sometimes things required more intimacy than that.
His journey to dispense his brand of justice takes him to Florida to find The Brute (Sala Baker), a mountainous fellow assassin. In the dead of night, he decides to steal into his house – when all hell breaks loose.
“The Brute represents somebody who may have done horrible things to somebody close to him,” says David Fincher, setting the scene. “He’s come to get his retribution. But I always loved the idea that everyone’s plan works… till you get punched in the face.”
The confrontation grows and grows and would require the utmost effort from the cast, stunt team and other heads of department. “It’s full on,” says Michael Fassbender, who does his fair share of stunt work himself, but is clear who is taking the major beating. “It’s the most physical [this sequence]. Not so much for me, as for the two boys. The fight is messy, it’s intense.”
Before battle could commence, the stage needed to be set. Producer William Doyle had found the exterior of The Brute’s house, while the interior was built in a studio space in New Orleans, with production designer Don Burt having to consider what was right for the character, the story and the stunts.
“The set was built in conjunction with the whole design of the fight itself,” says Burt. “There were a couple of instances, like, ‘Let’s put the door here, to the left instead of the right, so that works better for flowing through to the next room.”
Burt talks highly of fight coordinator Dave Macomber, who worked for months prior to the production to help design the conflict. “He did a video of the action, set up boxes to simulate the rooms and things that would have to be broken, and he would send us specific notes on what would happen.”
There was then time dedicated to a walkthrough rehearsal on the set. “Ceán [Chaffin, producer] made sure that happened early enough so there would be time for the art department to rebound!”
Alongside Burt and Macomber, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt worked to establish the geography of the house for the audience. “We had to think about how to explain the space, while simultaneously shooting a fight scene,” says Messerschmidt, who points out how they carefully considered the staging with a view to story and commonsense, rather than amping the natural chaos of a fight.
This extended to how the scene was lit with a view to reality. “The sequence is hard, the camera is moving all over the place, the actors are moving all over the place, and it’s fast,” says Messerschmidt. “So we have to think about how we’re going to stage it for the light.”
This meant discussions with the art department about finding sources, from lights fitted under the kitchen cabinets, to establishing streetlights outside. “We decided we wanted hard, artificial street light through the windows,” says Messerschmidt, which meant erecting lights on the exterior location to match that. “In terms of the scope of the movie, a tremendous amount of energy went into just figuring out that fight.”
For fight coordinator Dave Macomber, whose stunt credits include HBO’s Watchmen (2019) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), working with Fincher was a unique experience. “He’s different from any other director I’ve worked with,” says Macomber. “His approach to things, all the intricacies, being able to do the number of set ups he does at the speed that he does.”
He regards the director as being able to predict, or foresee, elements which only become obvious to others in retrospect. “It takes a second to go, ‘Okay, he wants this in order to be able to achieve that!’ Most people only see that when they’re looking at their movie.”
It would be easy to imagine a fight as simply a blizzard of blows, but Macomber sees the possibilities of revealing character in the carnage. “I’ve always thought of fight moves as kind of ‘action dialogue,’” he says. “So whenever we’re creating these kinds of sequences, I’m always trying to keep in mind the motivation of the person within the scene.”
Macomber recalls long conversations with Justin Eaton, the stunt double for Fassbender, as they choreographed the sequence, checking “Does that really make sense?” For Eaton, who has worked with Macomber several times, it was a hugely positive experience, not least because he saw his friend given license to explore what was best for the material. “Fincher gave Dave a lot of freedom, to kind of audition what he thought would be the best way to capture things. Dave was blown away, because Fincher is one of his favorite directors. He’s been like a kid in a candy shop working on this.”
“The way the fight is designed, it’s like each piece goes into the next piece,” says Sala Baker, whose work as a stunt performer and actor goes back to playing the physical incarnation of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. “David is such a particular mind,” says Baker, who really enjoyed how curious and open the director was, exploring suggestions and ideas to the full. “If you say anything, he’s going to really get into it. And Michael is so easy to work with, fun and open to adjustments.”
Baker also stresses how well-looked after everyone is, however bruising their scenes might be. “It’s such an amazing working environment to have that kind of care.” Pain, of course, when you’re delivering stunts, is part of the job. As Dave Macomber explains, “The way I think about it is there’s a difference between pain and injury. And there’s a difference between injury and debilitating injury. We accept the fact that things are going to be painful!”
“I feel sorry for those guys,” says Fincher, reflecting on the reality of staging the fight, although it all aids the experience on screen. “I like the idea of the audience rooting for this confrontation,” says Fincher. “And then it goes on and on and on. And you’re kind of going, ‘Good God, it’s awful what they’re doing to each other!’”
How does one design a costume for a character, who does not want to be seen? Costume designer Cate Adams unveils the meticulous process behind crafting the enigmatic costumes inDavid Fincher’s‘The Killer.’ In an exclusive interview with Spencer Williams, Adams shares behind-the-scenes stories, from deciphering Fincher’s vision for a character who effortlessly blends into the background to the awe-inspiring challenge of outfitting the incomparable Tilda Swinton. Join us as Adams takes us on a journey through cities, layers, and hidden Easter eggs, providing an intimate look into her creative process and the transformative power of costumes in film.
For his muscular new thriller, David Fincher worked with many of his closest collaborators to develop inventive approaches to the film’s cinematography, with Erik Messerschmidt ASC, editing, with Kirk Baxter ACE, sound, with Ren Klyce, and score, with Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross.
David Fincher’s The Killer is a violent thriller starring Michael Fassbender as an unnamed hitman whose carefully constructed life begins to fall apart after a botched hit. Despite his mantra to always remain detached and methodical in his work, he lets it become personal after assassins brutally attack his girlfriend, and soon he finds himself hunting those who now threaten him.
The Netflix film reunites Fincher with Kirk Baxter, the Australian editor who has worked on all of Fincher’s films since The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and who won Oscars for his work on The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
I spoke with Baxter about the challenges and workflow
How did you collaborate with Fincher on this one?
I try not to weigh David down with too many background questions. I keep myself very reactionary to what is being sent, and David, I think by design, isolates me a bit that way. I’ll read the script and have an idea of what’s coming, and then I simply react to what he’s shot and see if it deviates from the script due to the physicality of capturing things.
The general plan was that the film would be a study of process. When The Killer is in control, everything’s going to be deliberate, steady, exacting and quiet. We live in Ren Klyce’s sound design, and when things deviate from The Killer’s plan, the camera starts to shake. I start to jump-cut, the music from composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross comes into the picture, and then all of our senses start to get rocked. It was an almost Zenlike stretching of time in the setup of each story then a race through each kill. That was the overarching approach to editing the film. Then there were a thousand intricate decisions that we made along the way each day.
At the opening of David Fincher’s The Killer, Michael Fassbender’s unnamed assassin describes his look as based on a German tourist he saw in London. It’s a convenient disguise for blending in on the streets of Paris because, as he explains, no one wants to interact with a German tourist. But what does that look like off the page? That task fell to costume designer Cate Adams, working with the exacting director. “David had a lot of ideas about how he wanted him to look,” she says. “He did not want him to look cool at all, like a typical assassin.” The solution? Bucket hats, Skechers and “lazy people clothing.”
It’s been 4 years since Michael Fassbender was on the big screen but he’s making up for lost time with 2 new movies, Next Goal Wins and The Killer. Josh and Michael catch up on it all including his passion for race car driving and quoting movies.
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.
The Fincher Analyst 