David Fincher: Making audiences wish they could buy anti-anxiety insurance with their popcorn - Director Profile - Brief Article - Interview

David Fincher's cinematic world is one where evil lurks around every rain-driven, sepia-toned corner, and within everyone. To Fincher, like Hitchcock and Rod Serling before him, darkness is not merely the absence of light, but a place within the mind to be constantly explored.

In this month's Panic Room, Jodie Foster plays a Manhattan mom who, over the course of one night, must protect herself, her daughter and a mysterious set of valuables from a trio of thugs. Like all of Fincher's theatrical features, [Alien.sup.3] (1992), Se7en (1995), The Game (1997) and Fight Club (1999), it's an emotional and psychological test of wills for the hero, and the audience. Here, Andrew Kevin Walker, Fincher's pal and screenwriter of Se7en, puts the director through a decidedly more amiable test. Scott Lyle Cohen ANDREW KEVIN WALKER: Is it true, as I've read, that you started making movies when you were eight years old?

DF: Well, I started filming things on Super 8 cameras when I was eight.

AKW: What kind of narrative would you have in them? Man versus dog? Soldier versus firecracker?

DF: [laughs] Boy ties younger sister to railway tracks, causing death and dismemberment.

AKW: Sounds dastardly! OK. Let's talk about Panic Room. What was it that attracted you to the material when you read David Koepp's script?

DF: I liked the idea of trying to do something that all takes place in one house on one night. I thought it was an interesting notion, but that wore off so quickly during the actual production.

AKW: It wasn't fun?

DF: No. The continuity trappings of it couldn't have been less pleasurable. But I read the script and thought, This is a movie. It's got what cinema--at times--has, unlike any other medium. It's about what you see, and it's about the dramatic irony of the audience seeing more than the individual characters see at any one time. As a director, film is about how you dole out the information so that the audience stays with you when they're supposed to stay with you, behind you when they're supposed to stay behind you, and ahead of you when they're supposed to stay ahead of you.

AKW: I visited the set of Panic Room, and you're always organizing things very carefully, but it seemed like you planned this film out to the nth degree.

DF: We certainly did a lot of planning, but no matter how much you do, you can't overcome chaos. It's funny: I showed the pre-visualization [video storyboards] to Steve Soderbergh and said, "This is what I'm going to try and do." And he was like, "Oh, that's amazing," and laughed. I asked him why he was laughing and he said, "By doing all this you're sealing your fate because none of it is going to come off this way." [both laugh] On any given day, you show up, and if you have talented actors, they're going to lead the work in another direction or illuminate something you never thought of, so you have to be prepared to change your plans.

AKW: There's been a lot written in the press about a collective you're supposed to be forming with Soderbergh and the other "super-directors"--there's no other word for them--Spike Jonze, Alexander Payne and maybe Sam Mendes. What I've read is that you guys are supposedly going to sign a deal with one studio, and each make a certain number of films in a certain number of years.

DF: I can't talk about it. Nothing's done yet.

AKW: OK. Last question: Other than rage and wildly unchecked egotism, what are the personality traits or characteristics that help in being a director?

DF: Belligerence certainly helps. And there's a requisite paranoia. There's fear--fear of failure--and an overwhelming urge to be liked.

Andrew Kevin Walker is the screenwriter of Se7en and Sleepy Hallow (1999).

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