In the movie "The Social Network" there is a strange moment: there is a story about how a clever Jewish boy cut off the idea of a computer network from the druzhbanov, where you can discuss chicks, sculpted something there as best he could, neither shaky nor roll, and then it was shown in passing - they came some uncles, dumped the dough, "here the chip went down."
So with the arrival of David Fincher in the cinema - something strange. Quite by accident, his family (dad is the head of the bureau of Life magazine) lived next door to George Lucas ("Star Wars"), at the age of eight they bought him an 8-mm camera. The boy worked as a dishwasher and a cook, and then - once - and without any education, except for high school, he already works in production for John Corti (a prominent animator, Oscar-winner), and then straight to George Lucas in the company as a producer of visual effects for an animated picture Twice Upon a Time (1983). Then he was an assistant cameraman and a backdrop photographer - OK, more euphonious than the background - in the films Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
At the same time, everything he says about his film education usually boils down to how, at the age of eight, he saw a documentary about how Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was filmed: real time. Of course, I understood that people just play their roles, but I could not even think that the movie has been filming for four whole months! And between scenes - long hours. The real circus turned out to be behind the scenes, as it should be, and it seems that since then I have been obsessed with the question "How?" - it was magic. And the understanding that 24 photos, shown quickly and consistently, give movement, determined my confidence that I want to do this all my life. "
He left Lucas to shoot an advertisement for the American Cancer Society, the one where the fetus smokes a cigarette. The video attracted attention in Hollywood and very soon he had the opportunity to shoot a documentary about the musician Rick Springfield (ex-band Zoot, but who needs these Australian bands?). This is how he began his directing career. Together with three directors, who also mainly directed music videos, and with two producers, he founded Propaganda Films. The company has focused on filming advertisements and music videos. From their achievements - they hired David Lynch to direct the film "Wild at Heart", and also acted as producers of the series "Twin Peaks" of the same Lynch. I must say right away that it all ended rather sadly - romantics-filmmakers came into conflict with the realities of the market and corporate culture.Especially not to get involved with PolyGram, who fused them with the highly controversial alcoholic beverage company Seagram.
In the meantime, Fincher reluctantly shoots ads for all kinds of Coca-Cola, jeans and sneakers and frankly hates it all, hanging out only on music videos, which he shot as many as 53 pieces during his career - from Madonna and Michael Jackson to George Michael and Billy Idol.
But on the other hand, it was on them that he honed his pen and calls this genre "his universities": "There I learned to work in strict terms and on small budgets."
Have you seen Aerosmith's Janie's Got A Gun?
This is also him.
In those same years, he developed for himself one of the basic principles of director's work: "Take full responsibility, because in any case, you will be to blame for everything."
It will come in handy for the first big Hollywood movie "Alien 3".
Alien 3, the third sequel to the legendary Ridley Scott film, was a problematic project from the start.
David Fincher took over from fired Australian director Vincent Ward.
By this time, Ward was an author - a participant in the Cannes Competition and the owner of about 30 different film awards.
In 1990, Ward wrote the storyline for Alien 3, a future sequel to Aliens;
he was the fourth of ten different screenwriters to work on the Alien 3 project.
The first was William Gibson - if you know what I mean.
Much of the plot and a few characters from Ward's script were later combined with the prison setting from David Tui's script to form the basis of Alien 3. However, the core of his story, known as the "Monks in Space" version, did not make it into the final cut of the film, which was acknowledged by London newspaper The Times Online, which in 2008 put it at the top of its list of "greatest sci-fi movies ever have never been removed. "
In place of such a director and screenwriter, the studio took Fincher, who had one documentary and musical film behind him. At the same time, Fincher did not like the script, but he was so glad of the opportunity that he did everything in his power. When the film came out, he met with a wave of criticism, including from the author of the previous series, James Cameron - he called him a slap in the face for himself and his fans. Disappointment also reigned among fans of the topic. This is strange, because, for example, I like the third tape much more than Cameron's bloated narration. But that doesn't mean anything - I like the Covenant too.
Fincher distanced himself from the result as much as possible - at every corner he told how he hates this film and how this film hates him, and blamed everything on the producers who did not trust him to decide anything.
Well, as you wanted, dear, it's called the "studio system", and in general Hollywood is a field of producers, not directors at all.
Fincher left his first big project with an established conviction - to take with him only those with whom he had already worked and who belong to his inner creative circle.
What he was not allowed to do on "Alien 3".
Frustrated by all this, Fincher decided to go back to the music video and shot the same video with giant girls for the Rolling Stones (Love is Strong) 1994. The video received a Grammy. And then he changed his mind to go to the video monastery - then he was just slipped the original script by Andrew Kevin Walker "Seven". To make it clear: Walker is not a scriptwriter, his main job is to rewrite other people's scripts, this is what they call a script doctor. In addition to "Seven", he also wrote the monstrous "8 mm" and "Sleepy Hollow". With the script for "Seven," he himself came under the knife - the studio said that his script was too dark for the target audience, and gave it to be cut and rewritten. But then Fincher appeared with Morgan Freeman, and they defended the original version.
When Se7en came out in 1995, it became clear how quickly Fincher can learn.
Filmed in the twilight, the picture scared the viewer a lot and became a role model for professionals.
Handwritten captions were revolutionary in general.
Indeed, Fincher has been very creative with credits and opening shots ever since.
And behind the scenes, a remix of Nine Inch Nails - Closer sounds.
Fincher has done a lot of interesting things with Trent Reznor since then.
At the box office, the film became the seventh most successful film in 1995.
He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Editing.
At the MTV Movie Awards, he received the award for best film, and Brad Pitt received the award for "Most Desirable Man".
It is noteworthy that it was the musical circles that appreciated the quality and the inner musicality and rhythm of the picture.
“The darkest and most ruthless picture of the Hollywood mainstream,” as one Pulitzer laureate put it.
After Seven, Fincher directed a video for the band of Bob Dylan's son Jacob, The Wallflowers (6th Avenue Heartache).
The director's third film, 1997's The Game, was not as successful at the box office.
This is the story of an investment banker, to whom a relative made a strange gift - he entered it into a "game" that could drive the banker crazy.
The main character is played by Michael Douglas.
But not even Douglas can give meaning to this boring movie.
Fight Club 1999 Fincher agreed to shoot in 1997. A year later, the book by Chuck Palanyuk (who is diligently called Palahniuk in Russia, but there is no such Ukrainian surname, but there is Palanyuk) was published under the same name. Palanyuk is a prominent writer, he has composed as many as 19 novellas, two comics and two coloring books for adults.
In the case of Fight Club, Palanyuk got into the nerve points of office plankton, who, after drinking beer and pulling off the path, imagines himself to be secret rebels and fighters. In fact, Fincher also came out on many topics of a whole generation, for which his film adaptation is considered cult. At the same time, primitive, pseudo-philosophical phrases like "The main rule of a fight club is not to say that it exists" or other platitudes like "We are from a generation of men raised by women." In fact, by this time, the much deeper phrase "The devil's main trick is that he convinced everyone that he does not exist" from "Ordinary Suspects" was already four years old, but who remembers? This goes well for a generation that massively believes that Dostoevsky has "too many bukaf".
Here, Pitt is in one of his best roles, and the film itself is the most influential of the director's filmography.
Despite the cult status, the commercial results of the film are not that much - 63 million were spent and 101.2 million were earned. Now the theorists of cinema are still unearthing cultural layers that were applied by the director with a generous brushstroke - for example, “homoeroticism in the image of Tyler Durden as a manifesto of the suppressed desires of the narrator ".
Fincher's next project could have been Spider-Man, but he brought his vision to the studio and was instantly sent out.
Instead, the film was directed by Sam Raimi, author of 1981 Evil Dead.
The unbearably boring film Panic Room was released in 2002.
Starring the empty-eyed actress Jodie Foster.
The plot becomes more or less dynamic five minutes before the final.
And sorry for the beautiful Forest Whitaker, who has to portray something here.
In short, Fincher could not scare anyone especially with this picture.
But Zodiac 2007, released five years later, turned out to be no less powerful than Seven, despite the fact that the director's fantasy was limited to a documentary book by Robert Graysmith, who devoted half his life, collecting the fact about the hunt for a real serial killer named "Zodiac".
But no real events can limit the director's choice of visual language.
And Fincher turned out to be quite "noir", although this word is now molded right and left.
And thanks to the film, the Zodiac case was reopened.
Even though the Zodiac case was still heard by a huge number of Americans, the film came out commercially at zero at best.
In 2008, he almost fit into the project of the film adaptation of Arthur Clarke "Date with Rama", but problems with the script did not allow the project to start.
But 2008's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was his breakthrough in industry recognition - he received three Oscars.
The film is a screen version of Scott Fitzgerald's story about a man born an old man and then only getting younger.
Brad Pitt in a romantic role.
He is paired with Cate Blanchett.
All in all, a good duet.
Despite the fact that the story is simple, the budget turned out to be 167 million - due to special effects.
But they also raised quite well - 335 million. And those of the Russians who want to see what the city of Murmansk in 1941 looks like can see Fincher.
In 2010, Fincher hired Jesse Eisenberg to play Mark Zuckerberg.
The film "Social Network" (Social Network) - an attempt at a biographical drama on the then fashionable theme based on Sorkin's book "Accidental Billionaires".
Soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
It was this couple who received an Oscar for their work on the film.
The film grossed 224 million. Someone liked it, some did not.
The whole film does not let go of me a feeling of falsehood.
Well, what later became Zuckerberg, we are already observing in real time.
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" 2011 is an attempt at another adaptation of the novel by the Swedish detective Stig Larsson with Daniel Craig in the title role. There are usually attempts to discount the 2009 Swedish film The Man Who Hated Women, which is based on the same story directed by Niels Uplev, when it comes to Fincher. But don't listen - the Swedish version has won tons of awards, including BAFTA. And it is warm and lamp. Still, the Swedish director feels the Swedish writer more accurately, whatever one may say.
Fincher declared the film immediately as a quasi-Bond with megatitles to the Led Zeppelin Immigrant Song, sung by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which was quite fashionable at that time.
But this banal connection “oh, we have a movie about Scandinavians here, so there will be the most famous song about the Vikings“ We come from the land of ice and snow from the midnight sun and hot springs ”always upsets me - just like for first graders, right.
But Trent Reznor and Ross in their new band How To Destroy Angels are quite good and again received an Oscar for the soundtrack.
Fincher then produced House of Cards with Kevin Spacey, a remake of an old English TV series.
And he even shot two episodes himself.
In the wake of television success, he received an offer from HBO for three series, but that was all.
But in 2014, he made the film adaptation of Gone Girl by writer-journalist Gillian Flynn. There are only three books in her bibliography, and she sold all three books for film adaptations. For Gone Girl, she received $ 1.5 million from the studio. The music was again provided by Reznor: “David goes to a chiropractor and he hears some kind of relaxing music. This is the kind of music he wanted from me for the film. " As a result, Reznor made a stringy, highly disturbing and nervous music. Under her unfolds a classic thriller with the loss of his wife. Starring Ben Affleck. You will be surprised, but this film, which is never mentioned in conversations about Fincher ("Oh," Fight Club !, Oh, "Seven"!), Grossed the largest box office of all his films - 369 million. There will be no spoilers, but the plot is paradoxical. Fincher received a Golden Globe for Best Director.
Since then, he has been involved in serial projects (in particular, Mindhunter) - 19 episodes have already been released since 2017.
This is according to the documentary book by Olshaker and Douglas about the FBI agent and the formation of criminal psychology in the United States.
I never made it to the second season.
And here is “Love.
Death.
Robots, two seasons of solid animation fun, and Fincher is the producer here.
Twenty-minute and shorter works of the coolest young animators are very different, in completely different techniques, just some kind of world showcase of the genre's achievements.
And, it would seem, all thought and work on technique and technology has long been killed by the industry of endlessly monotonous anime.
So a low bow to producer Fincher.
To the gallery page
The penultimate movie he released is 2020's Mank, a stylish biopic about famed producer Herman Mankiewicz. Citizen Kane is his handiwork. The script was written in the 1990s by David's father Jack Fincher, and he always dreamed of directing it. In life, Munk was a drunken alcoholic and a male trample, but we were offered a stylish soft version of events. Well, God bless him, this Mank.
But in the film there was a glimpse of the German actress Monika Gossmann, our good friend, who, in addition, speaks excellent Russian and generally loves Russia.
We, of course, were happy for Monica, all the cases.
But then I see in her FB a photo from Paris - she starred in the movie "The Assassin" (Le Tueur) and flirts: "Guess who I'm shooting with?"
Yes, it is clear who - once in Fincher's orbit, it is difficult to get out of it.
Therefore, everything is clear as daylight - Fincher is filming the adaptation of the French comic strip by Luc Jacamon and Matz.
The series of books began to be published in 1998 and currently has 12 volumes.
Fincher started this work at Paramount, and then moved on to Netflix with the project.
So it makes sense to wait for this story about the nameless killer played by Michael / Michael Fassbender.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.