David Fincher interview from the Times-Picayune
Camera ready
Famed filmmaker praises New Orleans as a movie town
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
By Doug MacCash
Post-Katrina New Orleans is ready for its close-up.
"People here have real faces, like human beings," director David Fincher said of the New Orleans extras who've fleshed out the scenes of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the big-budget motion picture starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett that's nearing completion after four months of shooting in and around the Crescent City.
Unlike the pool of camera-conscious Hollywood extras he's used to, New Orleanians lack the "weird nose job, and that lip thing," Fincher said. "They look like they have real lives."
Fincher, the renowned director of contemporary noir classics such as "Se7en," "Fight Club" and the newly released "Zodiac," addressed 250 communications and film students Sunday afternoon at the University of New Orleans Performing Arts Center. The intimate two-chair format was similar to the Bravo TV series "Inside the Actor's Studio," with university provost and film critic Rick Barton posing questions.
Fincher, 44, was raised in Marin County, Calif. -- George Lucas was a childhood neighbor -- during a filmmaking boom in that part of the state. Once, he said, his grade-school classmates came to school with their heads shaved, having been extras in a science fiction movie.
Inspired by the 1969 movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," he edged his way into movie-making, first as a special effects technician at Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic (on "Return of the Jedi"), then as a television commercial director (Nike, Coca-Cola, Levi's) and music video director (George Michael, Paula Abdul, the Rolling Stones). In 1992 he directed his first feature, "Alien 3," a production marked by studio meddling and critical drubbing.
Fincher, wearing a chocolate-colored suede jacket, suppressed a cough throughout Sunday's interview, but nonetheless charmed the crowd with wry, expletive-laced recollections of behind-the-scenes filmmaking. He warned his eager audience that the process may not be as rewarding as they imagine.
"It's hard to go through all the nonsense of getting a movie made," he said, citing the early mornings and bad coffee. "The only satisfaction you can get is by doing the work the best you can. . . . There is no actual ego justification for the self-mutilation we put ourselves through."
He laid part of the hardship at the feet of actors.
"I don't believe in coddling actors," he said, referring to his demanding shooting schedule. "We pay them enough. . . . I don't want (to hear about) their hangovers, being tired or being cranky."
Fincher recalled that perennial bad-boy Robert Downey Jr. complained of the long hours and fast pace on "Zodiac." The director joked that one sure technique for getting actors to leave their trailers was to lure them with a fishing line baited with a mirror or cell phone.
"Actors want to be liked," Fincher said. "I don't believe in that; it's obsequious."
As the director groused conspiratorially, audience members, many dressed with Spielbergian insouciance in baseball caps and worn tennis shoes, guffawed with approval.
Not everyone on the other side of the camera came in for disdain. "Benjamin Button" star Brad Pitt, who also starred in "Se7en" and "Fight Club," is a Fincher favorite.
"There's something amazing about him," Fincher said. "He can say horrible (things) and if he smiles at you, you say, 'Oh, OK.'
"I trust him. When he says I've got to do this this way, you go, 'OK.' "
No matter how profitable, studio executives, Fincher lamented, are rarely pleased with the outcome of a film. The critically acclaimed "Zodiac" was based on the frustrating real-life pursuit of a 1960s and '70s serial killer who was never caught. Fincher said that although he'd warned executives repeatedly that "Zodiac" would have a much different tone than his 1995 edge-of-your-seat cop thriller "Se7en," executives were disappointed that "Zodiac" didn't mirror the fictional action film.
"When they saw it, they said, 'It's not "Se7en." These people just sit in a room and drink coffee from Styrofoam cups.' "
He seems to anticipate a similar misunderstanding when "Benjamin Button" is finished. Loosely based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, it is the tale of a man magically born at age 80 and who gets younger as time goes by. Or, as Fincher described it, it's about a newborn who looks like "a cross between Einstein and a Shar-Pei," but, "because of his good fortune, gets to be Brad Pitt."
Along his reverse-chronological path, Button/Pitt falls in love with a woman who ages normally (Cate Blanchett), which led studio executives to embrace the project as a simple love story. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Fincher feels the story is a bit darker and more complex.
"I think it's a story about death," he said, "to love somebody enough to be there when they breathe their last breath."
Fincher said his father died two years ago at about the same time some of his friends were having their first child.
"It's easy to have babies; it's hard to be there when somebody dies," he said.
Fincher said he considered shooting the Victorian-era period piece in Baltimore, where the short story was set, but decided on the Crescent City instead.
"We looked at Baltimore," he said. "It lacked a certain warmth. It lacked the sense of history and patina of New Orleans."
Fincher praised New Orleans as a location, noting that both rural and urban sets were easily available. To realize the city's "enormous potential," as a movie-making magnet, Fincher said, "you need four or five large, workable sound stages, an influx of cash to make a real workable physical plant."
Asked to discuss the complications of filmmaking in the post-Katrina environment, Fincher minimized the hardship.
"The challenges of shooting after Katrina," he said, "were the same as for anybody moving back: getting labor, getting plywood."
. . . . . . .
Art critic Doug MacCash can be reached at dmaccash@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3481.
Famed filmmaker praises New Orleans as a movie town
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
By Doug MacCash
Post-Katrina New Orleans is ready for its close-up.
"People here have real faces, like human beings," director David Fincher said of the New Orleans extras who've fleshed out the scenes of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the big-budget motion picture starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett that's nearing completion after four months of shooting in and around the Crescent City.
Unlike the pool of camera-conscious Hollywood extras he's used to, New Orleanians lack the "weird nose job, and that lip thing," Fincher said. "They look like they have real lives."
Fincher, the renowned director of contemporary noir classics such as "Se7en," "Fight Club" and the newly released "Zodiac," addressed 250 communications and film students Sunday afternoon at the University of New Orleans Performing Arts Center. The intimate two-chair format was similar to the Bravo TV series "Inside the Actor's Studio," with university provost and film critic Rick Barton posing questions.
Fincher, 44, was raised in Marin County, Calif. -- George Lucas was a childhood neighbor -- during a filmmaking boom in that part of the state. Once, he said, his grade-school classmates came to school with their heads shaved, having been extras in a science fiction movie.
Inspired by the 1969 movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," he edged his way into movie-making, first as a special effects technician at Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic (on "Return of the Jedi"), then as a television commercial director (Nike, Coca-Cola, Levi's) and music video director (George Michael, Paula Abdul, the Rolling Stones). In 1992 he directed his first feature, "Alien 3," a production marked by studio meddling and critical drubbing.
Fincher, wearing a chocolate-colored suede jacket, suppressed a cough throughout Sunday's interview, but nonetheless charmed the crowd with wry, expletive-laced recollections of behind-the-scenes filmmaking. He warned his eager audience that the process may not be as rewarding as they imagine.
"It's hard to go through all the nonsense of getting a movie made," he said, citing the early mornings and bad coffee. "The only satisfaction you can get is by doing the work the best you can. . . . There is no actual ego justification for the self-mutilation we put ourselves through."
He laid part of the hardship at the feet of actors.
"I don't believe in coddling actors," he said, referring to his demanding shooting schedule. "We pay them enough. . . . I don't want (to hear about) their hangovers, being tired or being cranky."
Fincher recalled that perennial bad-boy Robert Downey Jr. complained of the long hours and fast pace on "Zodiac." The director joked that one sure technique for getting actors to leave their trailers was to lure them with a fishing line baited with a mirror or cell phone.
"Actors want to be liked," Fincher said. "I don't believe in that; it's obsequious."
As the director groused conspiratorially, audience members, many dressed with Spielbergian insouciance in baseball caps and worn tennis shoes, guffawed with approval.
Not everyone on the other side of the camera came in for disdain. "Benjamin Button" star Brad Pitt, who also starred in "Se7en" and "Fight Club," is a Fincher favorite.
"There's something amazing about him," Fincher said. "He can say horrible (things) and if he smiles at you, you say, 'Oh, OK.'
"I trust him. When he says I've got to do this this way, you go, 'OK.' "
No matter how profitable, studio executives, Fincher lamented, are rarely pleased with the outcome of a film. The critically acclaimed "Zodiac" was based on the frustrating real-life pursuit of a 1960s and '70s serial killer who was never caught. Fincher said that although he'd warned executives repeatedly that "Zodiac" would have a much different tone than his 1995 edge-of-your-seat cop thriller "Se7en," executives were disappointed that "Zodiac" didn't mirror the fictional action film.
"When they saw it, they said, 'It's not "Se7en." These people just sit in a room and drink coffee from Styrofoam cups.' "
He seems to anticipate a similar misunderstanding when "Benjamin Button" is finished. Loosely based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, it is the tale of a man magically born at age 80 and who gets younger as time goes by. Or, as Fincher described it, it's about a newborn who looks like "a cross between Einstein and a Shar-Pei," but, "because of his good fortune, gets to be Brad Pitt."
Along his reverse-chronological path, Button/Pitt falls in love with a woman who ages normally (Cate Blanchett), which led studio executives to embrace the project as a simple love story. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Fincher feels the story is a bit darker and more complex.
"I think it's a story about death," he said, "to love somebody enough to be there when they breathe their last breath."
Fincher said his father died two years ago at about the same time some of his friends were having their first child.
"It's easy to have babies; it's hard to be there when somebody dies," he said.
Fincher said he considered shooting the Victorian-era period piece in Baltimore, where the short story was set, but decided on the Crescent City instead.
"We looked at Baltimore," he said. "It lacked a certain warmth. It lacked the sense of history and patina of New Orleans."
Fincher praised New Orleans as a location, noting that both rural and urban sets were easily available. To realize the city's "enormous potential," as a movie-making magnet, Fincher said, "you need four or five large, workable sound stages, an influx of cash to make a real workable physical plant."
Asked to discuss the complications of filmmaking in the post-Katrina environment, Fincher minimized the hardship.
"The challenges of shooting after Katrina," he said, "were the same as for anybody moving back: getting labor, getting plywood."
. . . . . . .
Art critic Doug MacCash can be reached at dmaccash@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3481.
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