Deep Dive: Directors series - David Fincher
Welcome to the first Deep Dive: Directors series! I was debating how I wanted to execute the idea for a 'creatives' specific dive. Doing a full biography felt too daunting and I'd probably just poorly plagiarize Wikipedia. And doing a full review of an entire filmography also seems like a crazy endeavor to take on. So I settled on a hopefully simple concept: briefly examine five of the films from their filmography and use that as a way to highlight their accomplishments. Now when I say 'five films', I don't necessarily intend to rank or choose their 'best' films. Instead my goal is to choose films that have a particular significance to them. That may be because they are highly regarded and won a bunch of awards, or it may just be that the film highlights specific aspects of the director's talents or career. With that said, I don't really know what that final product will look like so here's hoping it's good. 
For our inaugural entry for this series we are going to look at David Fincher. Fincher is known as one of most talented and scrupulous directors of modern times and has an extremely strong filmography to back it up. He has a known proclivity for dark, gritty, and psychological films that examine humanity from a variety of lenses. However, his catalogue also features some unexpected entries that veer into more romantic, comedic, or reverent areas. But before we jump into the films I chose to highlight, let's take a minute to learn about the man behind the camera.
Fincher's initial interest in making films came early in life.
I was about seven years old and I was watching network television, because that’s all there was, and there was a documentary on the making of George Roy Hill‘s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Fincher says. “I had not seen the movie, but my parents had told me it was a great movie and I was allowed to go see it. I just saw this making of and it was the first time it ever occurred to me that movies weren’t made in real-time, that if you watched a movie that took two hours it was probably made in a couple afternoons. If it was complicated, it could take a week. It never occurred to me that it took months and months and months. So I watched this and thought, you get to blow up full-size balsa wood trains, you get to have cowboys on horseback and you get to hang out with Katharine Ross. This sounds like a pretty good job.
His parents helped fuel his growing interest by buying his first camera, a Super 8, on his 8th birthday. And while many directors claim George Lucas and Star Wars as inspirations for their career paths, Fincher can claim Lucas as an inspiration for different reasons. Not only were the two neighbors for a portion of their lives, but also Lucas' American Graffiti filmed in their neighborhood. Fincher recalls being able to see principal photography occurring on a daily basis and cites that as a major influence on his ever-growing passion. However, as he approached high school age, Fincher's family moved from their North Hollywood home and resettled in Oregon. Fincher took the move as an opportunity to start getting serious about his desire to be a filmmaker.
I knew the only way out of there was going to be on me. I wouldn’t be able to be in the film business in southern Oregon and wouldn’t witness the things I’d been seeing. So instead, as this scrawny drama nerd who always wanted to be a director, I developed my own curriculum and executed it.
His self-made curriculum included a variety of different endeavors including working on his craft by getting involved with the high school drama department where he learned about set design and lighting. After finishing his duties at school, he would then go work as a projectionist at a local movie theater. Then, on weekends he worked at a local television news station as a PA. From there, Fincher already knew exactly what his next steps would be - a plan he recalls telling his parents around 15 or 16 years old:
After high school I’m going to move back down to Marin. I want to eventually get a job working at Industrial Light & Magic. From there, I’m going to make television commercials and move to Los Angeles. Then I’d like to make sequels to my favorite science fiction movies.” My dad, who was big on taking long, deep breaths while thinking about things, said probably the most important thing ever: “Well, what if that doesn’t work out?” I was kind of like, “Fuck you. I’m not thinking about plan B.
You’d start from scratch and [Fincher] would spend five hours and 57 minutes dressing the fuselage, dressing the background, moving the background around, putting the bottle right in place, finessing the light so it felt like you were in flight, the right amount of spritz on the bottle, the right amount of napkin. Every aspect of every aspect was considered and perfected. Then he would roll the camera for three minutes, and that was lunch and that one was done. It was an amazing thing to watch because you see a blank frame and then you see him paint, basically.
Finally, in 1990 Fincher completed the path he once laid out for his parents by getting tapped to direct Alien 3 (but more on that later). After a brief retreat back to commercials and music videos, Fincher decided to tackle more feature films and began building one of the best filmographies of any current director. I'll spare you the full recount, but amongst his major films, Fincher has amassed over $2 Billion in box office returns and won a variety of Directing awards including a BAFTA, Golden Globe, two Grammys, and an Emmy. All told, across the the various major film awards ceremonies, Finchers's films have amassed 92 nominations and 20 wins in a variety of categories.
But, without further ado, I think we should move on and start talking about the five David Fincher films I chose to highlight his career (thus far).
ALIEN 3 (1992)
As for what went wrong - a few things. But this path to failure started before Fincher even became involved with the film. After Ridley Scott created a sci-fi horror masterpiece with the original Alien film, 20th Century Fox recognized the enormous potential the IP had. For the follow up, the studio tapped James Cameron to direct the sequel, Aliens, which proved to be a critical and commercial success. Executives wanted to keep the ball rolling, but the development for Aliens 3 was a tumultuous one. Numerous writers and directors were attached at various points, but the film couldn't seem to get off the ground - a fact many speculate was due to the studio's meddling.
It makes sense then that Fox eventually went with an unproven but talented commercial and music video director. It also makes sense that the end product that premiered in 1992 is a hot mess. Fox needed someone talented to helm their prized IP, but also wanted someone they could lean on in order to exert their own creative control. Fincher recalls:
I was a 27-year-old rube trying to navigate an impervious bureaucracy. It was an absurd and obscene daily battle to do anything interesting with what we were allowed to do.
When Alien 3 released, it was met with a luke warm critical reaction - but did amass a fairly decent box office return for Fox. Its most staunch critic was Fincher himself who has remarked multiple times how much he dislikes the film. "No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me." Other critics noted that while the film fails in multiple areas, it does succeed in being very visually compelling with Robert Ebert specifically calling it, "probably the best-looking bad movie I've seen in a while." The film also managed to secure an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects.
So, why is this film included in this Deep Dive? It's a failure. It's not a good movie. I tried to watch it like 5 times and kept falling asleep. But failure is important and it taught David Fincher an important lesson.
After Alien 3, Fincher retreated back to his commercial and music video career. Not only did he not enjoy his first foray into feature films, but he also fully expected to never be employed for a feature again. Luckily, a mere three years after Alien 3's premiere, Fincher fired back with the mystery thriller Se7en which began an avalanche of successful films.
Fight Club (1999)
But they (the executives) were all fired, that's the beauty of it. Every time somebody comes and says, "You've gotta scratch our backs," I say, "Why? You're not going to have this job in 11 months. I wanna talk to your assistant."
Despite any reservations about the studio, Fincher was highly enthused at the prospect of adapting Chuck Palahniuk's book. And this time around, he wound up with a studio team that was ready and willing to support him. Fincher recalls:
If you've never read the book, it's as good as it gets – I nearly pissed myself, I was laughing so hard when I read it. The guy who became my agent, Josh Donen, who was trying to buy the book with me, had told me to read it. I was like, 'I don't read books, and I'm in the middle of postproduction on The Game,' but he said, 'You have to read it tonight.' So I did, and I called him back and said, 'We gotta buy this.' And he said, 'You waited too long. Fox bought it. But go in and meet with Laura Ziskin.' So I did and I told her, 'I don't want to make the $3m version of this; I want to crash planes, I want to blow up buildings and I want to do the thing that Hollywood really shouldn't do, material like this.' She said, 'Great!'
So, why Fight Club vice The Game or Se7en? At the end of the day, I just think that Fight Club has a bit more to say and features a more robust narrative to explore. It also feels more experimental visually than his other films.
Fight Club is also a good demonstration that Fincher is a prolific student of not just film, but of human psyche. In describing his adaptation he notes:
There’s the idea that on the path to enlightenment you have to kill your parents, your god, and your teacher. So the story begins at the moment when the Edward Norton character is twenty-nine years old. He’s tried to do everything he was taught to do, tried to fit into the world by becoming the thing that he isn’t. He’s been told, “If you do this, get an education, get a good job, be responsible, present yourself in a certain way, your furniture and your car and your clothes, you’ll find happiness.” And he hasn’t. And so the movie introduces him at the point when he’s killed off his parents and he realizes that they’re wrong. But he’s still caught up, trapped in this world he’s created for himself. And then he meets Tyler Durden, and they fly in the face of God—they do all these things that they’re not supposed to do, all the things that you do in your twenties when you’re no longer being watched over by your parents, and end up being, in hindsight, very dangerous. And then finally, he has to kill off his teacher, Tyler Durden. So the movie is really about that process of maturing.
Ultimately, Fight Club was not an initial success compared to some of his other films. Rather, strong word of mouth helped salvage its theatrical run commercially, and then a cult-movie status lifted the film into more widespread notoriety after it was released on DVD. It was also considered a highly controversial film during its release. Many feared, and were proven right, that a string of real world fight clubs would begin cropping up across the US. Worse, there were a few instances of extremists that planned or executed bomb attacks, citing the film as an inspiration. The film even has relevance today as the themes of perceived male disenfranchisement have been returning to the zeitgeist.
Fincher himself has remarked his own dismay at the continued misconstruing of Fight Club, noting that:
The fact that it has been misinterpreted by people whose points of view I couldn’t really imagine is alarming.” ... "the novel and the film were 'fairly obviously' a critique of the 'Nietzschean Übermensch,'" as well as “a cautionary tale about what to do with the anger engendered by your disenfranchisement.
Unfortunately, it may not be the legacy Fincher intended for the film to have, but its continued relevance speaks to why I included it here.
Gone Girl (2014)
Skipping ahead in time, let's take a look at one of Fincher's most commercially successful films: Gone Girl.
One of the more famous aspects of David Fincher is his obsessive attention to detail and his reputations for filming sometimes hundreds of takes for a single shot. That reputation has led many to believe that he is a megalomaniac or a tyrant during filming. However, in reality, Fincher is known by those that work with him as a very collaborative filmmaker. In a piece for The Ringer, the author noted:
During interviews with more than a dozen cast and crew members—ranging from those who have worked with him consistently since his earliest days as a director, to those who were part of a single project—he was called “exacting,” “razor-sharp focused,” “intense,” “tough,” “extremely observant,” “very articulate,” and “relentless.” Some also admitted that “there are times he can be a dick,” that he was “difficult,” “condescending,” and “a bit of a bully.” But he was also described as “very self-depreciating,” “so witty,” “fucking hilarious,” “one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” “very generous,” and “my dearest, dearest friend.”
Gone Girl is a good representation of such a collaboration because Fincher directly collaborated with the original author, Gillian Flynn, in adapting her novel into the final film. When 20th Century Fox initially optioned the book, Flynn negotiated that she would get to write the first draft, which is not uncommon. However, even she noted:
Normally what happens is the author writes the first draft, and then they quickly get rid of the author and the author is never seen or heard from again. Then they bring in the big guns to take over. I was lucky that David Fincher came aboard. He read my first draft, and within days I was flying out to L.A. to meet him.
Instead of being pushed out, Flynn and Fincher spent a long time working on the final draft together. She recalls that "[he] really liked the book and didn't want to turn it into something other than what it already was," and he also reassured her, even when she second-guessed herself. For his part, Fincher also had a great respect for Flynn and her work:
I think the movie works on a purely procedural level and on a purely page-turning-mystery level. But it has a real riptide to it, taking to task our cultural narcissism and who we think we are as good wives, good husbands, good Christians, good neighbors, good Americans, good patriots. Once you get fractal about every fissure in somebody’s public facade, you’re going to see stuff you wish you hadn’t. Can we hold ourselves to the same scrutiny to which we hold people we’ve never met? The great gift of Gillian, who’s very wry and bright, and the fun I’ve had on this movie was having a kindred spirit who likes the naughtiness of going, “You can have your cake and eat it too—but it’s preachy cake."
Another thing I want to highlight using Gone Girl is how important composition and blocking are to Fincher's 'style'. Usually, if you were to ask a casual audience member to name a director with a distinct style, Fincher wouldn't get mentioned. When most people think of a highly stylized director their minds will jump towards a Wes Anderson, Edgard Wright, or maybe even Michael Bay. In other words, a director that has an obvious flair to their visual language. Fincher's style is more grounded than most directors, choosing to prioritize distinct compositions with specific intentionalities to them, vice 'style'.
We can see evidence of this in Gone Girl as described by Fincher himself as he breaks down a relatively simple scene in the movie where the two main character first meet at a party. In the clip Fincher walks through how he 'blocks' or positions things within his frames. More specifically he highlights that when the two characters first meet and are on an even playing field, the frame is split straight down the middle, with both character occupying the same amount of space and relative position to the camera. As David begins trying to seduce Amy in the scene, the frame shifts so that David now occupies more of the screen. Amy then resists his advance and the frame returns to a 50-50 split. Later, as Amy takes the lead in the flirting, she walks toward the camera with David trailing behind - she now occupies more space and is closer to camera. Once they stop, the frame settles in a position where Amy holds the majority of the frame. These are subtle touches and most audience members won't consciously clock the dynamics in real time. Nevertheless, Fincher is using his visual language not just to make something look good in camera, but also to relay critical bits of psychology to the audience.
In the end, Gone Girl would become Fincher's most commercially successful film to date- grossing over $370 million at the box office. It also garnered a great deal of praise from both critics and audiences (though it is not his top rated film).
Zodiac (2007)
I think one of the marks of a great director is that once you get to a certain point in their filmography, choosing which film is considered 'the best' becomes nearly impossible. Instead, it mostly just boils down to personal taste. For a lot of people (and possibly myself) Zodiac represents the 'best' Fincher movie. 
Even though Zodiac was released in 2007, Fincher's interest in the mysterious serial killer actually started around the time he got his first camera. He specifically recalls talking about Zodiac with his father as a child:
"I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now. And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: 'Oh yeah. There's a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who's threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.”
Over 30 years later, Fincher was approached by the screenwriter James Vanderbilt and Pheonix Pictures to bring the story of Zodiac to the screen. They assumed Fincher would not want to do another serial killer movie, but to their pleasant surprise Fincher was very interested. In a piece for The Ringer, Vanderbilt recalls that:
[He] went all in on Zodiac, telling Vanderbilt that they should approach it like journalists. They immersed themselves in the history for a year and a half before they returned to the screenplay. “No one told us to stop, so we just didn’t,”
Over the course of their extensive research, the pair found that much of the investigation boiled down to hearsay and speculation. This idea bled over into how they sculpted the film. For instance, they chose to center the story around a reporter who wanted to get at the truth at any cost - an obsession. They integrated the confusion and inconsistencies of the investigation into details of filming. If you pay attention, you'll notice that the when the Zodiac killer is on screen, he looks a little different each time. That is because they used different actors to depict the killer at different points of filming - mimicking the inconsistencies detectives had to work through at the time of the killings.
Zodiac also represents another well-known thing about Fincher - he will keep shooting the same scene over and over again until it's perfect. Sometimes this can mean doing over 100 takes. He has talked about this many times:
My philosophy is you spend $250,000 on a set. You put it on a sound stage that costs $5,000 a day; $8,000 on lights; $150,000 on crew; actors from all over the world. And the idea is to get them out as soon as possible? That doesn’t make any sense to me. I want to make sure we get it. I don’t want to have to say, ‘Well, we tried.’ My process is to give 17, 18, 25 bites of the apple.
Zodiac is also the most noted example of a cast that, while appreciative of the process, struggled with Fincher's approach. Robert Downey Jr., for example, jokingly compared his experience on set to being in a Gulag. Jake Gyllenhall, the youngest actor amongst the leads, was vocal at the time about his frustrations with the large number of takes. There is a great clip of one particular instance of a shot where Jake is sitting in a car and all he has to do is put the book that is in his hands onto the seat next to him. It is maybe a 3 second shot in total. The final count was 26 takes.
Mark Ruffalo, who is more understanding of the methodology, has also talked about the perfectionism and his experience.
There was one take, we were on like take 85... and he started walking over to me and I thought to myself 'you know what, they're going to have to pay me anyway. They got the wrong guy. I know they got the wrong guy and obviously he's finally figured it out so it's fine Mark you did your best.' And then he walked right by me to the background guy... and he moved him like two inches and then he turned around and walked away and patted me on the back... I'm only 10% of the frame and this guy's going for 100%. And this actor is hitting his high spot at this moment, this actor is still lagging and he is going to wait until we're all the best we could possibly be at that special moment when everything comes together.
The last piece about Zodiac that I want to touch on brings us back to how blocking and composition are important to Fincher. In the clip below we see a detailed breakdown of how these facets all intertwine.
In the end, Fincher's meticulousness help shape Zodiac into a special film. His passion, not only in the initial research and conceptualization of the film, but also in the execution of it, make it feel uniquely him.
The Social Network
If you recall from the section for Alien 3, the film was a critical mess but was able to secure an awards victory for best visual effects. You'll also recall that in his early years, Fincher was a visual effects producer and then transitioned to working at ILM. I bring up these facts because Fincher is a director that uses way more CGI than most audience members would suspect while watching his films. The trick is, he is really really good at integrating it into his film. We will use the regatta scene from The Social Network as an example.
If you watch the scene you may notice a couple of interesting things are happening. The most obvious thing happening visually is what's known as a tilt-shift photography. This technique is usually done to control the appearance of perspective in an image. In the case of this scene, that perspective is used to change the apparent depth of field and focus on the characters involved in the race. The trick here is that the effect is being done digitally in post, vice in camera.
Less obviously, Fincher is pulling off another trick at the same time - the entirety of the background for this scene has been digitally replaced. In fact, considering the scene includes over 57 shots, the background has been replaced and tracking perfectly synced over and over and over again without you even noticing.
Lastly, this scene revolves around the emotional place of two main characters known as the Winklevoss Twins. The problem being, there is only one actor playing the twins and they will be on screen at the same time from multiple vantages. In solving the 'twin' problem, Fincher utilized a 3D face mapping technique that utilized a massive 'orb' of cameras the captured Armie Hammer's performance digitally, which would later replace the stand-in actor's face during the scenes. However, this technique has two notable things about it. First, this was 2010 and this was an untested technique that was ahead of its time. And second, this technique requires the filmmakers to be 100% certain of what the shot will look like because the lighting from the digital model cannot be adjusted after the fact. Not a problem for Fincher, whose meticulousness we have already documented. Now, there are plenty of other instances of Fincher's surprisingly extensive and sneaky use of CGI, but the point is that Fincher, like all things in his films, is an expert at composing for aesthetic and intentionality at all times.
The last part of The Social Network I want to talk about, and the reason this film is so well respected, is that is represents the collaboration of two masters at work. Aaron Sorkin is a fantastic writer with a very particular style. We also know Fincher is that way with his own approach. The marriage of the two still feels so perfect I can't believe it actually happened. Sorkin himself frames the partnership pretty well.
You know, at first glace it's an unusual marriage of director and material. David is most known for being peerless as a visual director, and I write people talking in rooms
After its release, The Social Network quickly became a commercial and critical hit. It brought in a total of $224 million, making it Fincher's second highest career gross. It also netted a fair share of award wins and nominations including several Best Director victories. Nevertheless, Fincher again ended the award season without an Oscar for Best Director. The honor instead went to Tom Hooper for The King's Speech - an outcome that continues to be criticized by movie fans today.
Final Thoughts
David Fincher is, and will hopefully continue to be, one of the greatest directors of all time. His level of success may not seem as high as some of his colleagues, but the level of consistency in his work is indisputable. He is extremely meticulous with every detail that he puts on screen and his commitment to getting close to perfection is well documented (sometimes to the exasperation of his actors). It was of little surprise to learn that his obsession with film came from such an early age, and I am glad for it considering it has led to 30 years worth of high quality films to enjoy.
Anyway, this was wayyyy longer than I initially set out to do, but hopefully you enjoyed it. I imagine I'll try to be less robust in other entries for this type of Deep Dive. If for some reason, you still want more David Fincher specific content, check out the excellent sources below that I used to write this, as well as the clips linked in the actual deep dive.
Sources
https://thefilmstage.com/listen-david-fincher-talks-gone-girl-zodiac-and-more-in-50-minute-conversation/
https://archive.ph/20140916082034/http://www.biography.com/people/david-fincher-411094
https://web.archive.org/web/20150829153003/http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-david-fincher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_David_Fincher
https://archive.ph/20140916082034/http://www.biography.com/people/david-fincher-411094
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEH2I_qo2_E
https://www.theringer.com/2020/09/21/movies/david-fincher-profile-director-set-stories
https://cinephiliabeyond.org/fight-club-david-finchers-stylish-exploration-modern-day-mans-estrangement-disillusionment/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/feb/03/david-fincher-interview-transcript
https://www.fastcompany.com/3036579/how-gillian-flynn-adapted-her-biggest-novel-gone-girl-into-her-first-screenplay
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/6diezb/david_fincher_invisible_details_on_finchers/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI-ChM1lVRk
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