SOMEONE ELSE’S MOVIE is just what it says on the label: Each week, an actor, director, screenwriter, critic or industry observer will discuss a film that he or she admires, but had no hand in making.
The show returns to London so journalist and filmmaker Neville Pierce — whose latest short, Promise, just arrived on Vimeo — can discuss the life-changing impact and technical virtuosity of David Fincher‘s Seven. Your genial host Norm Wilner believes in the second part.
Promise is a haunting film of loss and hope which takes an old story and sets it in contemporary Britain. “Pregnant with resonances, both biblical and political” – Projected Figures
Promise was made as part of The Pitch, a competition which offers its winner a £30,000 production budget and a trip to Hollywood.
Read an interview with Promise screenwriter and Pitch finalist Hannah Lee.
In 2009, shortly after The Social Network—then known only as “the Facebook movie”—was announced, Mashableran a story with the headline, “No, You Cannot Turn Facebook into a (Decent) Movie.” Even after it was reported that the brilliant filmmaker David Fincher would direct Aaron Sorkin’s script about Mark Zuckerberg and the early days of Facebook, the Huffington Postpublished a story proclaiming “The Facebook Movie Puts the zZzZ’s in Zuckerberg.” Some months later, after the film’s cryptic, one-minute teaser trailer hit the internet, the Atlantic remained skeptical, predicting that The Social Network would be “deadly dull.”
Then, eight years ago this week, that all changed. On July 16, 2010, Sony Pictures released the first full-length theatrical trailer for The Social Network, made by the artsy trailer house Mark Woollen & Associates, upending the narrative surrounding the film almost overnight:
David Fincher’s 1995 psychological horror/thriller Se7en is one of most enduring and terrifying films of its kind, standing alongside the likes of The Silence of the Lambs, Zodiac, Frailty, and The Vanishing, amongst others. The tale of two detectives, one new to the force and one on the way out, searching for a serial killer whose victims are chosen according to the seven deadly sins, Se7en was lauded upon release and was wildly commercially successful.
While the gritty, grimy, darkness that pervades throughout the film hovers like a miasma of evil, it’s the ending that has cemented the film in cinema history. I urge those who have not seen the film to avoid reading any further because this piece will delve deep into spoiler territory, ruining a great deal of what makes this film so special.
A craftsman with a camera and an artist with a vision. Frank W Ockenfels 3 takes us through his detailed story of his close relationship with the late David Bowie. A master of light and one of the industry’s most prolific photographers, this is ‘Magic Hour.’
Click for a full screen view:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Design by P+A / Mojo, Photography by Frank Ockenfels 3)
The Social Network (Design by Neil Kellerhouse, Photography by Frank Ockenfels 3)
The Social Network (Frank Ockenfels 3)
The Social Network (Design by Neil Kellerhouse, Photography by Frank Ockenfels 3)
The Social Network (Frank Ockenfels 3)
2011-02-09. The Hollywood Reporter (Photography by Frank Ockenfels 3)
2011-02-09. The Hollywood Reporter (Photography by Frank Ockenfels 3)
2011-02-09. The Hollywood Reporter (Photography by Frank Ockenfels 3)
2011-02-09. The Hollywood Reporter (Photography by Frank Ockenfels 3)
Hard working Background Casting Director Jennifer Nash, from Mindhunter Extras Casting, continues to make the rounds looking for the literally thousands of background actors of all ages and ethnicities, especially African-American, that Mindhunter is going to need for its second season. Last May, she paid a visit to The Burgh Boyz and asked for their help:
“Season one took to film about 11 months. And there’s some pre-production too.”
“We’ve just started shooting season two.”
“[We’ll be here] at least until Christmas, very possibly until March of 2019.”
“Costumes are such an important part of this. Our team of customers is award-winning. If you checked out their resumes, and our hair and makeup, you would just go: “Oh, my goodness!”. They’re the best in the business. As is David Fincher, our incredible Director and Executive Producer, who is directing this first episode, which is epic. So, if you want to be on Mindhunter and work with David Fincher, get in now, get in now! You’ll be working with him!”
“David Fincher handpicks about 90% of all of the background actors in the episodes that he directs. He is so specific and detail-oriented. Makes my job Super Duper hard but you’re not just a crowd. You’re always hand chosen by everybody for that specific role.”
“I’ve been able to cast television shows and movies in New York from the beach in L.A. Not this one. This one I am like hustling hustling, because I need real people that have real jobs. In season one I’ve cast Dental Hygienist, a literal Rocket Scientist, I’m not even joking, Professors, College Students, Uber and Lyft Drivers, Waiters, Waitresses, Bartenders, ex-Military, ex-Police, Sheriff’s, everybody who looks like you [one of the hosts] for FBI…”
“This summer in Wilkinsburg, we have scenes coming up where I need thousands of background actors, thousands per day. We are going to be like the circus comes to town, to Wilkinsburg, and that community can use all of the business that we bring, we’re going to bring a lot of business to that community. And it’s going to be iconic scenes there, in my opinion from reading the scripts, the standout scenes of the entire season two. I’m not supposed to really tell, give the story away, but it gives me goosebumps just to think about these scenes. And it’s mostly African-American that I need for those scenes that are going to be very dramatic.”
“I’m looking for background actors of all ages, no experience needed. I need babies to 106 years old. Last season our age range was six months to 96, so this season I’m putting out the challenge, just push it a little. All colors of the rainbow. In fact, some colors of the rainbow are hard to find in Pittsburgh, not a huge Latino community here. All you Latino beautiful people, I need you, and everybody else. And thousands of background actors in Wilkinsburg this summer, thousands, for iconic scenes that you will never forget. Promise.”
Breaking through with his first guest star role on David Fincher’s Netflix crime drama Mindhunter, where he would play terrifying serial killer Edmund Kemper, Cameron Britton found both an incredible artistic opportunity and a challenge that would daunt any actor, coming face to face with one of the industry’s most formidable auteurs.
In his first experience playing a real-life figure, Britton couldn’t have found a more deliciously complicated character than Kemper, who is still alive, living out his remaining years at California Medical Facility. Towering over his victims at 6’9” (Britton is 6’5”), Kemper’s dominance wasn’t only physical. Murdering 10 people, including his mother and his paternal grandparents—before desecrating their bodies—Kemper also possessed great intelligence and a knack for manipulation that made him a nightmare for his opponents, in life and in prison, where FBI agents (played in the series by Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany) tried to come to grips with his psychology.
“What drew me to the role was this dynamic where he’s this horribly violent, narcissistic, selfish person with no remorse, and yet he’s well spoken, he’s polite, he’s engaging,” Britton explains. “That sort of ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’ concept, it’s always been interesting to me. If you are threatening and your opponent knows it, why flaunt it? Why not offer them the path of least resistance?”
To play Kemper effectively, Britton would have to dig uncomfortably deep into the psyche of a murderer who viewed himself as the hero of his own story, figuring out what it was that baffled psychologists—what made him tick.
Cameron Britton Breaks Through Playing Real Life Serial Killer Ed Kemper in Mindhunter
Hugh Hart
June 14, 2018 MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), The Credits (Profiles Below the Line)
Netflix true crime drama Mindhunter moves efficiently in tracking the origins of forensic science as experienced through FBI odd couple (Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany) until midway through its second episode. Then, Cameron Britton makes his entrance. Playing real-life 70’s-era serial killer Ed Kemper, Britton strolls into an interrogation room and takes the show in utterly unnerving new direction through his embodiment of folksy evil incarnate.
If you’ve seen classic David Fincher films like Seven, Zodiac, or even The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you know the infamously exacting director has a type: the obsessive who tries to solve a crime in the library or the archives, nimbly combing through databases and warehouses full of forgotten evidence. The Fincher obsessive starts their work unblemished—but by the end, it has upended their lives.
In the case of Fincher’s 10-episode Netflix series Mindhunter, that obsessive is Holden Ford, played by Tony-nominated actor Jonathan Groff. Holden starts as a textbook Groff character: neat, bookish, pretty, an F.B.I. choirboy who becomes a teacher and researcher after a hostage situation goes wrong. But soon, alongside behavioral scientist Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) and anthropologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), Holden falls down the rabbit hole of a new line of thinking about killers, one that brings him a little too close to the murderers themselves.
Erik Messerschmidt first worked with David Fincher as a Gone Girl gaffer—in collaboration with DP Jeff Cronenweth. But Messerschmidt got his chance to mine the auteur’s rich, iconic aesthetic as cinematographer of Netflix’s crime drama Mindhunter.
Created by Joe Penhall, with Fincher on as a director and executive producer, the 1970s-set series follows two FBI agents (played by Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany) who look to expand criminal science by delving into the psychology of murder, coming uncomfortably close to the real-life monsters who would later be deemed “serial killers.”
Messerschmidt has been praised this season for the striking, atmospheric visuals he brought to Mindhunter—his first full series as a DP— though he prefers that his work remain invisible, operating beneath the surface:
“The second the audience is aware that a human is operating the camera, subconsciously there’s an awareness that someone else is in the room. Hopefully, the audience doesn’t notice the operating, they don’t notice my work, they are only seeing what’s happening on-screen between the characters. That’s the goal.”
The Fincher Analyst 