David Fincher has lots of ideas — Gone Girl
In December David Fincher’s new film Mank is released on Netflix. The period drama about the creation of Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane was written by Fincher’s late father Jack, and marks the director’s return to film-making.
Fincher has enjoyed a six-year hiatus following the release of Gone Girl in 2014.
The 58-year-old made his film-making debut in 1992 with Alien3 however due to consistent meddling from executives he disavowed the finished product.
Since then he has made 9 feature length films, each one released with a director’s commentary.
Listening to Fincher’s commentaries one thing is clear — he loves his films bristling with ideas. With almost every scene, even with some specific shots, he is trying to present an idea. And he loves to talk about it.
Gone Girl was Fincher’s last film, released in 2014.
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike play Nick and Amy Dunne, an unhappily married, childless couple. And when Amy goes missing in suspicious circumstances, Nick quickly becomes the prime suspect — but all is not as it seems.
Here are David Fincher’s ideas in Gone Girl (spoilers ahead, obviously):
Flashback to Amy and Nick meeting
“I really liked the dialogue in this scene, I really liked the notion of this studied effervescence or studied witticisms and the notion of this idealised pick up.
“When I read the script I thought it was very funny in that it was self conscious and yet it’s two people sort of testing each other and what you don’t take into account when you read a script like this for the first time is how many impressions the marketing guy is going to have to make to the audience in order to deliver them into the cinema to watch these two characters meet.”
Amy and Nick kiss in a ‘sugar storm’
I love the idea of romance amongst garbage, this reminds me of the Sid and Nancy poster, they’re kissing and there’s garbage cans and paper towels and stuff being strewn and flying through the air behind them.
The Dunne house is ‘bigger on the inside’ — but that’s a good thing
“We kind of got the idea that maybe ultimately it didn’t matter, that what we were talking about was a relationship that had… you know two people had become estranged and that maybe it was a good thing to have a lot of real estate so that you really look at it and you become very aware of the fact that these are two people who don’t have their own kids.
“You know he has his own office, she has her own office, they have a room for the cat box, there’s a lot of space here that’s vacant and there’s vacancies in their lives.”
The diary device to tell Amy’s story
“So the device of the diaries, the subjectivity of Amy Dunne’s view of her marriage… she has to speak to you, possibly from beyond the grave, she has to whisper to you in your ear and tell you what was going on in her marriage and I was daunted when I read the book that a satisfactory device could be found that would be cinematic.
“And I opened the first draft of the script and I started reading it and this idea of seeing these manicured hands and beautiful handwriting as she lets you in on her deepest, most intimate thoughts.
“It was so straight forward and the way that she connected the time frames as to where we are in their marriage and where we are in her disappointment, the fact that it was sort of signposted by these different pens that we would see in her hand, it was such a beautiful, simple fun idea. And then we see them later being tossed out the window of the car, they sort of mark the evolution of her vitriol.”
Casting Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunne
“I kind of had this idea that I really wanted Carolyn Besette (Calvin Klein publicist and wife of JFK Jr),that was kind of my vision of Amy or the person who kept lodging in my thinking. So when Rosamund’s name came up obviously she’s statuesque, she was stunning to look at, she had all that… the ‘arm piece’, the ‘prize’, she had all those things already physically.
“And I ‘d seen 3 or 4 of the movies she had been in over the course of 6 or 8 years and I kept sort of hitting my head against the wall trying to figure out what was my impression of her from those movies and I realised I didn’t have one… I had an idea of what she looked like, I had an idea of how that could be interpreted, how her physical presence could be interpreted but I didn’t really have a sense of who she was as a human or a sense of who she was as an actor and that’s a weird thing.”
Nick Dunne’s dad scratching his arm
“Leonard (Kelly-Young) who plays Ben’s father came up with this idea that he really wanted to be scratching his arm all the time and I was ‘okay’ and that’s another thing, you just see little behavioural moments in the wide shots just past other important bits of dialogue that are going on.
“But I like these little moments where an actor sort of invests in this notion and does their little thing even though that’s not what the scenes about, it’s just happening tangentially.”
A marriage falling apart through their anniversaries
“I love the idea somebody’s marriage sort of fall apart in what they do every year for their anniversary and I thought that the gimmick of the treasure hunt as this thing that they always do and how it grows from being something that he likes to be a part of, to something he’s dreading even knowing about.”
Nick wakes up with a hangover
“This notion that Gillian had that we meet this guy the day after his wife had gone missing, we stay at his sister’s house and he drank all night and I love the idea that she says to him ‘no, you wanna look like that’ it’s the first time that anybody is discussing the appearances of the distraught husband.
“Especially because it comes on the heels of a scene where she says to him, you know, ‘whoever took her is bound to bring her back’ and now we see them comfortably hunkered down in her house.”
Introducing Neil Patrick Harris as Desi
“I love the idea of introducing the stalker ex-boyfriend in this prom picture, they seem so happy, they’re so skinny and happy and youthful and clueless.”
Marriage falling apart
“This is an extension of the meet-cute, this is a diary entry that’s talking about the idealised notion of what soulmates are supposed to behave like to one another and that they have this moment where they disagree about how something is handled and yet find their way through it and you see that dramatised in their relationship and it’s a very, very important notion, it’s an important idea to see behaviourally represented and it’s very nicely drawn.
“I love the idea of her coming to him, you know, at 5 o’clock in the morning just before the sun’s risen and they have slept on the day bed for whatever reason and they have this very, very quiet intimate conversation about things that are worrying her and things that she thinks he needs to start taking seriously.”
The Jaws-esque search for ‘missing’ Amy
“I love the notion of somebody going missing and needing a search party and having a appeal for public help. I love the fact that it became this sort of… something to do on this summer day in this small town.
“The kids sort of running to get to the common room to hear where they’re supposed to go and walk single file and tramp through the underbrush and look for remains. Couldn’t help but remind me a little bit of Jaws.”
Andie, Nick’s mistress, enters the narrative
“I like the idea of introducing Andie as this kind of werewolf that comes in the back door and will not… (she) just mauls him and obviously it’s not something resists very much.”
Tolerating a failing marriage
“I love when Ben turns to Rosamund and he puts his hand on the newel post and you really get this idea of like ‘I know that if I just tolerate whatever is coming next long enough, if I look like I’m attentive I’ll be able to leave and I’ll be able to go out with my girlfriend, so yeah, honey of course I’m really listening to you and you have my undivided attention’.”
Detectives investigate a mall gone bust
“This was an idea that was in the book and it was something that I felt was really important to the texture of this small town in middle America. And I love the idea of the mall gone bust and we didn’t find a mall that we could shoot in in Missouri but we found there was a mall in central LA that has got to be one million square feet and the pictures of this grand escalator that has been completely picked like a carcass and I loved this location even though there’s no way there’s a mall this size in North Carthage (the fictional town Gone Girl is set in).”
Nick smuggling Andie out of his sister’s house
“In the rehearsing of this notion, okay, you’ve got to get her dressed because she’s still groggier than you are and you have to be the responsible adult here and it started to look so perverse, the notion of this 6'5” man dressing this tiny voluptuous mistress, it almost looked like he was getting her ready for a school bus, it was so Lolita-esque.”
Being told Amy was pregnant at bandstand appeal
“One of the most important aspects of sound design is to make sure that you’re building toward a greater understanding of the environment because for the most part sound design is about the environment and one of the things that Ren Klyce (sound design) is so great at is the character of different environments, so we had this idea to have a baby cry right as somebody says ‘what did you do to your pregnant wife?’ and there was this awkward pause and then a baby just… a baby begins to weep and I love the idea, every creature that’s pro-life in this moment is being asked to weigh in on the tragedy of this lost woman.”
Nick Dunne says credit card fraud is a felony
“I love the idea of Nick Dunne finally sort of pointing out to the police ‘wait a minute, this is a felony, we have to do something about this’, it’s like, ‘dude, what do you think murder is?. Are you confused about what the circumstances here are?”.
The ‘cool girl speech’ as the movie flips
“There’s an inevitability to the idea that this movie is nowhere near as simple as just ‘the pregnant wife victim’. And this speech, the cool-girl speech which gonna be sort of tacked onto bring the audience up to speed on ‘this is what you’ve really been watching’. It’s a very tricky moment.”
Cutting the trailer without giving away the twist
“The one shot that I did allow was the underwater shot (of Amy’s body) because I felt… I like the idea of it setting the stage for did he or did he not kill his wife, not is she dead or not. I felt like that footage helped us make the question more pointed.”
Post-it notes
“I love the idea of the post it notes, I love the idea that this is not something Boney does where she shows up… but it’s also something that Amy uses, it shows her attachment to the criminal unfolding or unwrapping.. .criminal origami. And I love the idea of going through a calendar that says ‘oh and by this date should you have killed yourself?’.”
Your life being the subject of 60 Minutes
“So, the idea of your life being suddenly run on 60 minutes or an aspect, a question mark of your life is now food for network news, I thought Gillian (Flynn, author of Gone Girl who also wrote screenplay) came up with a really fun way of doing that which is he walks by Sharon Schieber on a big plasma screen TV in an airport.”
Tanner Bolt is the right guy for Nick
“You have to prove that Nick’s gone to the right guy and I love the idea of, he says his name and Tanner types it into his Blackberry and 5 seconds later it’s like ‘here’s the guy’s home address’ and you just go ‘wow, that was good’.”
Scoot McNairy ‘wouldn’t good in the yard’
“Scoot McNairy was a last minute addition, I love the idea of a character who describes himself, like ‘do I look like I would do good on the yard?’, I love the idea of somebody saying ‘can you imagine me in prison?’ and that was basically all we were looking for, was an actor who could wear that line and you would go ‘no, I guess I understand, you would definitely plead guilty to avoid that.”
Scoot doesn’t look like a rapist
“And I love the idea of you’re going to meet the person who may or may not have raped Amy and then you meet Scoot and Scoot’s like ‘me? Do I look like a rapist?’ like, I needed somebody you would look at and go ‘he’s a lot of things but a rapist he’s not’. He makes half of his case just by showing up in this scene.”
Neighbour goes onto TV to badmouth Nick
“I love the idea of putting Noelle Hawthorne (crazy neighbour) on Ellen Abbott (TV show host) and I love the idea of giving her all these things to talk about that are, of course, of interest to her, she’s sort of launching her program at the same time as Ellen Abbott, there’s a lot of co-opting going on in this sequence and they happen right next to each other in these sort of modest panels.”
Nick’s business, The Bar, is busier than ever
“And I love this idea, this is definitely a scene that we probably could have cut but the notion that the bar he runs is overflowing with looky-loos who want to get their selfies in front the bar where that guy may have killed that woman.”
Amy counting money in her cabin/motel
“And I love this little scene, I love the idea that her television doesn’t work which is the only reason she’s booting up with Greta.”
Amy screams into pillow after being robbed
“This was something that she came up with on the day, her scream into the pillow. I loved the idea of this kind of anger boiling underneath this very lovely and controlled exterior.”
Nick being prepped by Tanner Bolt for his TV interview
“It’s a very funny scene, I really like the idea, if you’ve ever been prepped for deposition… this is the amusing version.”
Skipping ahead of Nick’s showpiece interview
“I love the notion of leading up to this big moment and then you cut away from the big moment and people are talking about it and you’ve got to wait to experience it with the character for who it was all intended and who it was all produced for. It’s a really smart attention to chronology as it relates to storytelling.”
Amy watching Nick’s interview next to Desi
“There’s a moment here where Neil picks up a bottle of wine and loudly pours himself another glass because he’s tired of the television getting all the attention. I love the idea that wine pouring could be distracting for her and she actually gets sort of pissed off at him.”
Nick confronted with the diary as evidence against him
“I appreciate in this scene, I mean there’s a lot of talking and there’s a lot of stuff that has to get covered in this scene and there’s a lot of moves and when you shoot a scene like you’ve got to have people who are committed to the idea of getting all these ideas across and finding places for them. At what point is Tanner Bolt going to be shifty, at what point is he going to look and really take in what Boney is trying to.. cage Nick.”
Amy preparing for her fake rape
“I thought it was a great idea to show her torturing her wrists so that you could really see how she could have those ligature marks and they would be believable. And we know from the scene with Scoot that she knows what she’s doing, as it relates to ligature. And then we decided to take it a little bit further.”
Amy murders Desi
“It’s messy… and the idea of somebody being slaughtered like a lamb in the middle of coitus was… it was dirty work but somebody had to do it.”
Amy speaking to the FBI after coming home
“One of my favourite little moments in the movie is when Rosamund starts to tell the story of her abuse at the hands of Desi to the FBI and she gets to ‘shave me’ and everybody in the room looks like it’s the most uncomfortable thing that they’ve ever heard.
“Obviously the FBI has probably heard worse but I love the idea of everyone’s palpable discomfort at the idea of being shaved, it’s so pornographic.”
Cuts from locked door to Nick with the cat
“It’s one of my favourite cuts we go from the locked door to the man with his cat and you really get the idea, he really does not know where this is going.”
Amy co-opts his cat
“It’s subtle thing that may be stupid but I do like the idea that the very next morning she’s co-opted his cat — turncoat.”
Nick trapped in his home by ‘Mrs Danvers’
“This is a scene on the day when we were shooting this I could not stop laughing because the idea of him being trapped in his own home by Mrs Danvers…”
Why continue with their sham marriage
“It pushes him into this kind of honesty where he says ‘why do you want it, what is it about this that you even want’ and he rattled a lot of.
“Ben, when he gets on a roll, can get angry and he went on this kind of roll about you know,’ yes, we loved each other but look what happened, look where we are now and look what it is,’ and Rosamund just said ‘well, that’s marriage’ and I thought ‘mmm maybe not that reading but that’s a pretty powerful idea that that what it’s all about’.
“That it is about knowing your limitations and knowing the things that you’re attracted to and knowing they’re unhealthy to you and knowing that they don’t necessarily lead to the most… I just thought it certainly illuminated for me what this relationship was about.”
Total number of ideas: 40
Film length: 149 minutes
Ratio of minutes to ideas: 3.7
Next up: Fight Club
