Profile: David Fincher, Part 1
Our friend Trevor Hogg’s latest FlickeringMyth.com profile is on director David Fincher, currently out with his new movie The Social Network. Some excerpts from Part 1:
Watching a behind the scenes documentary on the making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was a life altering experience for the six year old son of a Life magazine bureau chief and a mental health nurse. “Prior to seeing that, I just assumed that movies took place in real time,” recalled Denver, Colorado born filmmaker David Fincher. “But they were filming train robberies and shoot-outs, and blowing up balsa-wood trains at locations across the West. It never occurred to me that you could infer this whole world, putting together the pieces. It was just revelatory. And that’s pretty much when I made up my mind. If you want to be happy, you’ve got to direct movies.”
Transplanted to California and armed with an 8mm camera given to him as a birthday present, Fincher pursued his cinematic ambition not far from the front doorsteps of movie celebrities such as George Lucas. “In my neighborhood, none of my friends ever looked at the film industry as this thing you couldn’t do,” explained the director who along with his friends watched Lucas shoot American Graffiti (1973). Graduating from high school, Fincher landed a job loading cameras and performing animation duties for director John Korty (Who Are the DeBolts?); one of his assignments involved providing the visual effects for Twice Upon a Time (1983) where he met frequent collaborator Ren Klyce. “He’d use his hands and tell a story,” stated Klyce who remembers Fincher’s uncanny ability to find a way to pitch ideas to producers while having lunch with them, “and everyone at the table would be completely silent, listening to him describe this movie idea he had floating around in his head. He had this knack at eighteen to hold court in a very creative manner and suck people in.” The determination of the aspiring filmmaker paid off, for the eighteen year old was hired by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the special effects company owned by George Lucas. For the next four years, David Fincher did matte photography for pictures such as Return of the Jedi (1983) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
Presented with an opportunity to director his first commercial, Fincher left ILM to produce a public service ad for the American Cancer Society, featuring a fetus smoking inside a womb; the huge buzz created by the shock value led to TV spots for Revlon, Converse, Nike, Pepsi and Levi’s. “I would never do commercials where people hold the product by their head and tell you how great it is,” remarked the moviemaker. “I just wouldn’t do that stuff. It’s all inference…The Levis commercials I did weren’t really about jeans, the Nike commercials weren’t about shoes. The Instant Karma spot was some of the better stuff I got offered, and it was never about people going, ‘Buy this shoe, this shoe will change everything,’ because I think that’s nonsense.” Joining Propaganda Films, David Fincher produced a series of high profile music videos for Don Henley (The End of the Innocence), Paula Abdul (Straight Up and Cold Hearted), Billy Idol (L.A. Woman), Aerosmith (Janie’s Got a Gun) and Madonna (Express Yourself and Vogue). “All of a sudden there’s this thing called MTV,” stated Fincher, “and I’m going, ‘I know how to do that.’”
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