Tag: Screenwriting

Seven: The Gwyneth Paltrow and Morgan Freeman diner scene may be its most pivotal moment

Two characters, four minutes, a brief exchange: Seven’s diner scene may be the most pivotal in the whole movie.

Ryan Lambie
February 6, 2024
Film Stories

Spoilers ahead for 1995’s Seven. Spoilers also ahead for 1995’s Se7en. Whichever way you spell it, consider yourself warned.

When Seven came out in 1995, it finally put David Fincher on the map as a filmmaking talent after the production nightmare he endured with Alien 3 only three years earlier. A mid-budget thriller elevated by its top-notch performances and unremittingly tense, grim tone, it also – as most readers will know – contained one of the most celebrated and discussed endings in film history.

Amid all the despair and violent murders, though, one quieter scene may be Seven’s most pivotal. It’s the moment where Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), the young wife of hot-headed detective Mills (Brad Pitt) surreptitiously meets Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) in a busy downtown diner. Ostensibly, she’s there to vent her feelings about moving from the comfort of the suburbs to a noisy and rundown metropolis (the city in Seven is never named, but it’s implied to be New York).

As the pair talk, though, Somerset astutely figures out that something more serious is bothering Tracy. She then reveals that she’s pregnant, and is unsure whether she wants to keep the baby, given they’ve just moved to a cramped apartment and her husband’s just taken on a demanding new job.

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The Screenplay for “Love, Death + Robots: Bad Travelling” by Andrew Kevin Walker

January 26, 2024
andrewkevinwalker.com

Download the Screenplay and Beat Sheet for Love, Death + Robots: Bad Travelling from Andrew Kevin Walker’s website (links in the top right of the script pile).

Winner of the 2022 Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement for Writing in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production.

Follow Andrew Kevin Walker on Instagram

Read the LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. Volume 3 guide

Watch LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS on Netflix

In Conversation: David Fincher and Michael Fassbender with Rian Johnson on “The Killer” at the Academy Museum

Rian Johnson
November 15, 2023
Netflix: Behind the Streams

Director David Fincher and actor Michael Fassbender discuss making The Killer with moderator Rian Johnson at The Academy Museum in Los Angeles.

Watch The Killer on Netflix

In Conversation: David Fincher and The Crew of “The Killer” in New York

October 27, 2023
Netflix: Behind the Streams

David Fincher discusses the making of The Killer with Writer Andrew Kevin Walker, Editor Kirk Baxter, and Sound Designer Ren Klyce, after the “Tastemaker” screening for The Academy at the Whitby Hotel in New York.

Watch The Killer on Netflix

In Conversation: David Fincher and The Crew of “The Killer” at the Academy Museum

Elvis Mitchell
October 24, 2023
Netflix: Behind the Streams

Director David Fincher, Editor Kirk Baxter, Writer Andrew Kevin Walker, Sound Designer Ren Klyce, and Director of Photography Erik Messerschmidt, discuss their film The Killer with moderator Elvis Mitchell at The Academy Museum in Los Angeles.

Watch the conversation with subtitles in French, Spanish, and Italian.

Watch The Killer on Netflix

David Fincher and Sound Designer Ren Klyce at The Egyptian Theater: “The Killer” Screening and Q&A

Froilan Fuentes

Jim Hemphill
November 9, 2023
West Coast POPCast (YouTube)

The Egyptian Theatre re-opened in Hollywood with a special screening of The Killer, followed by a Q&A with Director David Fincher and Sound Designer Ren Klyce hosted by Jim Hemphill.

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”).

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

Frédéric Bonnaud, Director of the Cinémathèque française
Anaïs Duchet, Interpreter
October 13, 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.

‘The Killer’ Writer Andrew Kevin Walker on Fincher, That Tilda Scene and Minimizing Dialogue

The “Seven” screenwriter also details the process of getting Michael Fassbender’s character down to 13 lines.

Adam Chitwood
December 31, 2023
The Wrap

Andrew Kevin Walker and David Fincher have one of the most creatively fulfilling relationships in Hollywood, and their latest collaboration “The Killer” is certainly one of their best.

Walker burst onto the scene as the screenwriter behind 1995’s twisted serial killer thriller “Seven,” whose shocking ending immediately caught the eye of Fincher and became the director’s second feature film. Walker would go on to perform uncredited work on scripts for “The Game” and “Fight Club” and wrote a few other Fincher projects that never came to pass (including a “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” reboot for Disney), and recently co-wrote and produced the 2022 thriller “Windfall” for Netflix and filmmaker Charlie McDowell. But “The Killer” brings Walker and Fincher back into familiar territory with a fresh twist.

When Fincher first pitched “The Killer” – which follows an assassin (played by Michael Fassbender) following a botched hit – to Walker back in 2008, they talked about minimizing the character’s dialogue. When the project gained new life at Netflix a decade later, Walker was tasked with a very specific job: try and write the film with only 10 lines of dialogue for Fassbender’s character.

Walker nearly succeeded, getting the total number of lines down to 13, but after the first assembly cut of the film was put together, Fincher and Walker agreed the film needed more voiceover. Much more.

Walker unpacked this process and his relationship with Fincher in an interview with The Wrap, also touching on how he went about crafting the Tilda Swinton scene in the film and the somewhat ambiguous ending.

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‘The Killer’ filmmakers David Fincher, Andrew Kevin Walker on paring down the dialogue and being inspired by Don Siegel

David Fincher, Erik Messerschmidt, Michael Fassbender (Monaris / Netflix)

The Killer sees David Fincher deliver a lean, efficient and darkly funny hitman tale. Screen talks to the filmmaker and screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker about bringing a French graphic novel to the screen.

Mark Salisbury (Ex-Twitter)
December 20,2023
ScreenDaily

“Obviously, I’m drawn to nihilism,” says a grinning David Fincher, director of Se7en, Fight Club and Gone Girl, when asked why he wanted to adapt French graphic novel series The Killer into a film. “But I wanted to make a fucking Don Siegel movie. I wanted to make a Michael Winner movie. I’m so tired of slogging through characters you create to deliver some idea of backstory. What’s the greatest backstory in the history of motion pictures? ‘What were you doing in China­town, Jake?’ ‘As little as possible.’ It explains everything in one line.

“I love it when you can distil motivation down to these incredibly brief and simple evocations,” he continues. “I’m tired of two-hour 45-minute movies, and two-hour 30-minute movies. I’m tired of making them. I’m joking, but does it warrant it? Then I started thinking about Get Carter, Charley Varrick. Movies where it just is what it is.”

This was back in 2007, when the graphic novel series — written by Alexis ‘Matz’ Nolent and illustrated by Luc Jacamon, and first published in 1998 — was being developed into a film by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and Paramount. Fincher was intrigued, but was directing Pitt in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, so was not ready to commit. “It wasn’t like you were going, ‘This has to be seen.’ It was more of a way to explore some things I was interested in — the broadest brushstrokes of backstory and this idea of intercepted thought. Why is it we assume when we hear a character’s thoughts that it’s the truth? I don’t know people who aren’t lying to themselves.”

Fincher approached Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, who had done uncredited rewrites on Fight Club and The Game as well as work on several unmade Fincher projects — among them The Girl Who Played With Fire, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, an adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama and a remake of The Reincarnation Of Peter Proud — to see if he was interested in adapting The Killer. But Walker was not, according to Fincher. “He didn’t want to touch it then.”

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