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David Fincher

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David Leo Fincher (born August 28, 1962) is an American music video and film director known for his dark and stylish portraits of the human experience.

Contents

Early life and career

Born in Denver, Colorado, Fincher was raised in Marin County, California. He moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens where he graduated from high school.

Inspired by the film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he began making movies at the age of eight with an 8 mm camera. Filmmaking seemed the perfect outlet for a kid who could spend all day drawing and loved to make sculptures, take pictures and tape-record stuff. Fincher eschewed the film school route, getting a job loading cameras and doing other hands-on work for John Korty's Korty Films. He next got a job at Industrial Light and Magic in 1980 with his first screen credit being for Return of the Jedi, and stayed until 1984. He left the company and directed the documentary The Beat of the Live Drum. Based on its strength he went on to helm TV commercials, shooting his first one for the American Cancer Society, a grim hint of things to come showing a fetus smoking a cigarette. Though he would go on to direct spots for Revlon, Converse, Nike, Pepsi and Levi's, Fincher soon discovered that the slightly expanded format of music videos was an even better place to try things out.

Propaganda Films

With his sights set on a directing career, he along with Steve Golin, Sigurjón Sighvatson and Dominic Sena founded the talent management and advertising and video-production company Propaganda Films in 1986, which would soon become the biggest player in the field of advertising and music videos. Directors such as Meiert Avis, David Kellogg, Michael Bay, Antoine Fuqua, Neil LaBute, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek, Michel Gondry, Zack Snyder, Gore Verbinski, and Alex Proyas among others honed their talents at Propaganda before moving on to feature films. The company shut down in 2001 after key members left. The same year, Fincher, Golin, and Kellogg, among others, formed the talent management and advertising and music production company Anonymous Content.

Music videos

Fincher directed big-budget music videos for artists such as Madonna (including "Express Yourself" and "Vogue"), Jody Watley, George Michael, Aerosmith, Paula Abdul, the Rolling Stones (including "Love Is Strong"), Nine Inch Nails (including "Only"), the Wallflowers and A Perfect Circle, as well as commercials. Like a number of other music video directors, he then moved into film.

Features

Alien³

Fincher's debut was Alien³ (1992), which was then the most expensive picture ever made by a first-time director. Unfortunately the film was not a pleasant experience for Fincher, having had a difficult time with the people at 20th Century Fox, who built sets without a finished script and made production a nightmare. While it received an Oscar nomination for special effects, the film was not well received by critics or movie goers. Depressed and disillusioned, Fincher retreated back into the world of commercial and music video directing, earning a Grammy for the Rolling Stones's "Love Is Strong" (1994), and fearing that he would never work in film again.

Se7en

Fate finally came knocking on Fincher's door with Andrew Kevin Walker's screenplay for a grisly detective story titled Se7en (1995). The relentlessly grim and cynical story of two detectives (played in the movie by Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) tracking down a serial killer who bases his killings on the seven deadly sins, the movie rocketed past the $100 million mark, turning Fincher from Hollywood's favorite whipping boy to arguably the town's hottest director. The film's success was even more remarkable for the fact that it strayed so far from the escapist fare that typically primes a film for mainstream commercial standing.

The Game

David Fincher and Michael Douglas on set.
Enlarge
David Fincher and Michael Douglas on set.

Next came the dark adventure film, The Game (1997), a nightmarish, The Twilight Zone-style thriller which projected the same sense of suffocating enclosure and mounting despair as had Se7en. The film boasted almost as much feel-bad cynicism as Se7en, but failed to get the warm reception enjoyed by its predecessor. The story itself focuses on a closed off San Francisco businessman (Michael Douglas) who receives an unusual gift from his young brother (Sean Penn), in which he becomes the main player of a roleplaying game that takes over his life.

Fight Club

The relative disappointment of The Game, however, did little to dim the excitement that accompanied Fincher's next project, Fight Club, a screen adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name about two men who open up a club devoted exclusively to bare knuckles fighting for males. Featuring a sterling cast that included Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, and Se7en collaborator Brad Pitt, the 1999 film was easily one of the most publicized of the year but was an early disappointment at the box-office and received mixed reviews. Fueled in equal measure by stylistic audacity and the spirit of disenfranchised machismo, Fight Club the film was panned by most critics (called "macho porn" by Roger Ebert) and alienated audiences leading to its box office failure in the United States.

However many critics and audiences later had a change of heart and the film appeared on many 'best of the year' lists and soon developed an enormous following. Entertainment Weekly, which had originally given the film a negative grade of D, later ranked the DVD #1 on its list of "The Top 50 DVDs You Need To Own." The DVD market, which was experiencing rapid growth at the time, caused Fight Club to not only break even, but actually become profitable. It now has one of the biggest cult followings in recent memory.

Panic Room

In 2002 he followed up with the thriller Panic Room, which introduced some innovative uses of computer graphics. While a stunning technical achievement with a good gross at the box office, the film was not as well received as Se7en, Fight Club or The Game. The story also follows a more conventional route for Fincher, despite some interesting visual techniques as a single mother (Jodie Foster) and her daughter hide away in a safe room in their new house, away from criminals (Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam and Jared Leto) bent on finding a missing fortune.

The Future

Zodiac

Zodiac is an adaptation of Robert Graysmith's books about the hunt for the Zodiac Killer. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox, Anthony Edwards and Mark Ruffalo. Recently, after several test screenings, it was revealed that the film's name has changed to The Chronicles. It is planned for a January 19th, 2007 release.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

A fantasy film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's short story of the same name. The film will reunite Fincher with Brad Pitt.

Torso

David Fincher is also attached to direct an adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis' graphic novel Torso.

Filmography

Theatrical films

Music videos

See also

External links

 

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