Fincher, David

views updated May 29 2018

FINCHER, David

Nationality: American. Born: Colorado, 1963; raised in San Rafael, California. Career: Worked at an animation company as a teen; worked at Industrial Light and Magic, c. 1981–85; director of TV commercials and music videos for bands such as Aerosmith, Madonna, and Paula Abdul; founded Propaganda Films production company. Awards: Fantosporto International Fantasy Film Award for Best Film, for Se7en, 1996. Office: Propaganda Films, 940 North Mansfield Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038. Agent: Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

Films as Director:

1985: The Beat of the Live Drum
1992: Alien 3
1995: Se7en (Seven)
1997: The Game
1999: Fight Club

Other Films:

1983: Twice upon a Time (Korty, Swenson) (special photographic effects); Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi (Marquand) (assistant cameraman: miniature and optical effects unit)
1984: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg) (matte photography); The NeverEnding Story (Die Unendliche Geschichte) (Petersen) (matte photography assistant)
1999: Being John Malkovich (Jonze) (uncredited ro as Christopher Bing)

Publications

By FINCHER: articles—

Interview in Sight and Sound (London), January 1996.

Rouyer, Philippe, "Seven," interview in Positif (Paris), no. 420, February 1996.

Eimer, David, "Game Boy," interview in Time Out (London), no. 1416, 8 October 1997.

Probst, Christopher, "Playing for Keeps on The Game," interview in American Cinematographer (Hollywood), vol. 78. n0. 9, September 1997.

Vachaud, Laurent, and Christian Viviani, "David Fincher: Le film d'action est sur le déclin," interview in Positif (Paris), no. 443, January 1998.

On FINCHER: articles—

Taubin, Amy, and John Wrathall, "The Allure of Decay/Seven," in Sight and Sound (London), vol. 6, no. 1, January 1996.

Rolling Stone, 17 October 1996.

Rolling Stone, 3 April 1997.

Entertainment Weekly, 19 September 1997.

National Review, 13 October 1997.

New York Times, 31 August 1997.

Smith, Gavin, article in Film Comment (New York), September-October 1999.

* * *

David Fincher is a devotee of darkness. Scene after scene in his films takes place in cramped, sparsely lit rooms where malignancy seems to hang in the air like ineradicable damp. For the shadows that pervade his films are moral and psychological no less than physical. Using darkness as a metaphor for evil and danger is hardly original—it is the entire basis of film noir, for a start—but Fincher brings to the banal equation a degree of emotional intensity that reinvigorates it. The darkness in his films is organic, the element in which his characters swim. When the Narrator in Fight Club quits his bland, Ikea-styled apartment to move into the derelict Victorian mansion where Tyler Durden lives, it's clear that he's coming home. This leaky ruin, squalid and underlit, is where he spiritually belongs.

On the face of it Fincher, with his dark sensibility and nervy, MTV-honed style, should have been the ideal director to take on Alien 3. It was the Alien series, after all, that had brought shadows into space, grafting the conventions of the Old-Dark-House horror movie on to a genre previously typified by brightly lit sets and gleaming, sterile surfaces. But Fincher found himself mired in a hopelessly jinxed project that had already chewed up and spat out two previous directors—not to mention a cinematographer, a small army of writers, and a lot of studio money. "I got hired for a personal vision," he later recounted, "and was railroaded into something else. I had never been devalued or lied to or treated so badly. . . . I thought I'd rather die of colon cancer than do another movie."

The experience evidently left its scars; even with three far more accomplished films to his credit, Fincher claims not to enjoy directing at all, describing it as "kind of a masochistic endeavor." Something of this penchant for willed self-torment transfers itself to his characters, haunted as they are by their demonic alter egos to the point of possession. The actions and character of John Doe (Kevin Spacey), the sadistic serial killer in Se7en, increasingly obsess Brad Pitt's young homicide detective until Doe is able to direct the cop's will, using him as an instrument to complete his own murderous design. In The Game Michael Douglas's rich banker becomes a puppet, jerked this way and that in the devious scheme devised by his scapegrace younger brother. The pattern is even there in embryo (literally) in the flawed Alien 3, with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) impregnated by the Alien; but it reaches its logical conclusion in Fight Club, where Edward Norton's Narrator and the dangerous, charismatic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt again), disciple and manipulative guru, turn out to be one and the same person.

This view of people as constantly in thrall to their dark side, ever vulnerable to takeover by their worst submerged instincts, might seem intolerably bleak were it not for the sense of subversive glee that underpins Fincher's work. Gavin Smith, writing of Fight Club (though his comments apply, to a lesser degree, to the earlier films), refers to "a mocking sense of flux and liminality in its attitudes both formally and conceptually . . . insolence towards cinematic codes and conventions concerning authenticity and the narrative representation of space and time." Fincher plays sophisticated mind-games with his audience, taking their cine-literacy for granted and teasing them to follow him as he switches between different levels of subjective and objective reality, just as John Doe cruelly teases the detectives on his trail. At their most achieved, his films contrive to have it both ways, being at once grim metaphysical statements of the human condition and intricate ludic conundrums set in hermetically enclosed worlds. Unsettlingly pleasurable, they at once defy us to take them seriously and challenge us not to.

This kind of conceptual balancing-act requires the highest degree of precisely gauged scripting. When it's lacking, as in John Brancato and Michael Ferris's not-quite-cunning-enough screenplay for The Game, the movie lapses into ingenious spectator sport—diverting, but ultimately uninvolving. But at their most sublimely ambiguous, Fincher's films can set up disquieting tensions in the viewer—as shown by the outraged reactions of certain critics to Se7en and Fight Club. Fincher talks of being "drawn to things that begin to dismantle the architecture, not of movies, but of the pact that a movie that's responsible entertainment makes with an audience." Such disruptive tactics are never likely to make for commercial smash-hits. But if this self-styled "malcontent and miscreant" can resist pressure to tone down the edginess and mordant humour in favour of something less disturbing, his future films—and his influence on mainstream Hollywood cinema—promise to be, at the least, highly stimulating.

—Philip Kemp

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers Kemp, Philip

Fincher, David 1962–

views updated Jun 11 2018

Fincher, David 1962–

PERSONAL

Born May 10, 1962, in Denver, CO; son of Jack Fincher (a writer and bureau chief for Life magazine); married Donya Farentino (divorced); children: Phelix Imogen (daughter). Education: Graduated from Ashland High School, Ashland, Oregon.

Addresses: Agent—Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

Career: Director and producer. Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), camera operator and crew member, c. 1981–84; Propaganda Films (a production company), cofounder, 1987. Filmed numerous television commercials for various organizations and products, including the American Cancer Society, Nike, Hondo, Pepsi, Budweiser, Levi's, AT&T, Coca-Cola, and Hewlett-Packard, beginning 1985; director of music videos, beginning 1986.

Awards, Honors: MTV Music Video Award, best director, 1989, for Madonna's "Express Yourself"; MTV Music Video Award, best director, 1990, for Madonna's "Vogue"; Saturn Award nomination, best director, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, 1993, for Alien 3; Grammy Award, best music video—short form, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, 1995, for the Rolling Stones' "Love Is Strong"; Saturn Award, best director, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, Hochi Film Award, best foreign language film, International Fantasy Film Award, best film, Fantasporto, 1996, Blue Ribbon Award, best foreign language film, 1997, Video Premiere Award nomination, best DVD audio commentary, DVD Exclusive Awards, 2001, all for Seven; Online Film Critics Society Award nomination, best director, 1999, for Fight Club; Directors Guild of America Award, 2004, for outstanding director achievement in commercials.

CREDITS

Film Work:

Special photographic effects artist, Twice Upon a Time (animated), Warner Bros., 1983.

Assistant camera operator in miniature and optical effects unit, Return of the Jedi (also known as Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi), Twentieth Century-Fox, 1983.

Matte photography artist, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Paramount, 1984.

Matte photography assistant: ILM, The NeverEnding Story (also known as Die Unendliche Geschchte), 1984.

Director, The Beat of the Live Drum, 1985.

Director, Alien 3, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1992.

Director, Seven (also known as Se7en), New Line Cinema, 1995.

Director, The Game, Polygram Filmed Entertainment, 1997.

Director, Fight Club, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1999.

Second unit director, Star Wars: Episode I (also known as Star Wars: The Balance of the Force, Star Wars: The Beginning, and Star Wars: Genesis), Twentieth Century-Fox, 1999.

Director, Rendezvous with Rama, 1999.

Executive producer, The Hire: Ambush (short), BMW Films, 2001.

Executive producer, The Hire: Chosen (short), BMW Films, 2001.

Executive producer, The Hire: The Follow (short), BMW Films, 2001.

(Uncredited) Executive producer, The Car Thief and the Hit Man, 2001.

Executive producer, The Hire: Star (short), BMW Films, 2001.

Executive producer, The Hire: Powder Keg (short), BMW Films, 2001.

Executive producer, The Hire: Ticker (short), BMW Films, 2002.

Director, Panic Room, Columbia TriStar, 2002.

Executive producer, Lords of Dogtown, TriStar, 2005.

Executive producer, Love and Other Disasters, 2006.

Producer and director, Zodiac, Paramount, 2006.

Also worked on The Blue Iguana, Paramount, 1988.

Film Appearances:

Christopher Bing, Being John Malkovich, USA Films, 1999.

Himself, On Location: Fight Club (documentary short), Twentieth Century-Fox, 2000.

Film director, Full Frontal, 2002.

Himself, The Making of "Alien 3" (documentary), Twentieth Century-Fox Home Entertainment, 2003.

Himself, Shooting "Panic Room" (documentary), Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, 2004.

Television Appearances; Specials:

(Uncredited) Himself, The Making of "Alien 3" (documentary), 1992.

Himself, Alien Evolution (documentary), Channel 4, 2001.

Himself, Murder by Numbers (documentary), IFC, 2001.

Himself, The Making of "Panic Room" (documentary), 2002.

Television Appearances; Pilots:

Himself, The Henry Rollins Show, IFC, 2004.

Television Appearances; Episodic:

Himself, Henry's Film Corner, IFC, 2004.

RECORDINGS

Music Videos (as Director):

Paula Abdul's "The Way That You Love Me," 1988.

Steve Winwood's "Roll with It," 1988.

Paula Abdul's "Straight Up," 1989.

Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl," 1989.

Paula Abdul's "Cold Hearted," 1989.

Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun," 1989.

Madonna's "Express Yourself," 1989.

Madonna's "Oh Father," 1990.

Madonna's "Bad Girl," 1993.

Michael Jackson's "Who Is It?," Dangerous: The Short Films (also known as Michael Jackson—Dangerous: The Short Films), 1993.

Aerosmith, "Big Ones You Can Look At," 1994.

Rolling Stones's "Love Is Strong," 1994.

Sting's "Englishman in New York," The Best of Sting: Fields of Gold 1984–1994, 1994.

Madonna's "Bad Girl," The Video Collection 93:99, 1999.

George Michael's "Freedom '90," Ladies & Gentleman: The Best of George Michael, 1999.

A Perfect Circle's "Judith," 2000.

Video Hits: Paula Abdul, EMI Distribution, 2005.

Nine Inch Nails' "Only," 2005.

Also directed Madonna's "Vogue"; the Wallflowers's "6th Avenue Heartbreak"; Billy Idol's "Rock the Cradle of Love"; Don Henley's "The End of Innocence"; Johnny Hates Jazz's "Shattered Dreams" and "Heart of Gold."