David Fincher has lots of ideas — Se7en
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, perhaps the most acclaimed director of his generation, has enjoyed a six-year hiatus while working on the TV shows House of Cards, Mindhunter and Love, Death & Robots.
The 58-year-old, who cut his teeth on music videos and TV adverts, made his film-making debut in 1992 with Alien3.
However due to consistent meddling from executives at 20th Century Fox 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.
Se7en, sometimes perceived as Fincher’s ‘first’ film, was released in 1995. Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman play David Mills and William Somserset respectively, two detectives on the hunt of a Dante-inspired serial killer who is following the Seven Deadly Sins.
Here are David Fincher’s ideas in Se7en (spoilers ahead, obviously):
Mills/Somerset walk and talk as they meet for the first time
“The walk and talk, it’s an interesting thing because I really wanted to make sure that, when you saw these two guys go through this whole 2 page, 2 and a half page dialogue scene, and you just sat with them, you didn’t cut it, it wasn’t like ‘this is a performance that is going to be made’ and you know when I look back on it now I wouldn’t shoot it as low although I love the idea of not really seeing the city around it, you kind of get an impression of the city.”
The ‘Gluttony’ victim has had a post-mortem performed
“I love the attitude of Reg who’s the coroner (Dr Santiago). He’s so kind of like ‘seen it and done it’ but I love how both Morgan and Brad — their faces don’t betray — it gives you this idea of, like, questioning, they’re constantly kind of looking at this thing like it’s evidence and I think that’s one of the great things about… if you can, you take an audience and put them in a room with a dead body — it makes uncomfortable to begin with but everybody seems to be kind of really working at like ‘well, how did this happen?’.”
An exasperated Mills receives the Cliff Notes guide to Dante and the Seven Deadly Sins
“I love the idea of being outside cars and looking into them instead of just immediately cutting to the inside, it kind of feels like you’re spying.
“You set up the thing, you see him come across the street, you know he gets in the car you don’t immediately cut inside to see what’s going on we kind of wait until we’re invited by action.”
Deleted scene about Mills’ ‘religious right upbringing’ and ‘thumb recall’
“I had this idea that I wanted to show Mills kind of, it’s not his fascism but (Pitt: a religious right upbringing) yeah, he’s was laying his cards on the table.
“There was this scene where Tracy’s gone away and Somerset and Mills are sitting there and they’re kind of just looking at each other and he’s had a few beers and Somerset has had a few glasses of wine and they’re just sitting there, they’re kind of sizing each other up and Mills says ‘thumb recall’ and Somerset says ‘how do you mean?’, he says ‘thumb recall’, he says ‘I don’t understand’, ‘for perpetrators of violent crimes you recall their thumbs.
“And he says ‘how would that work?’ and he goes ‘you’d certainly be able to spot ’em, you wouldn’t sell guns to them even if they could hold them — thumb recall.’ And Somerset goes ‘yeah maybe thumb recall’. It was this scene that Andy (Andrew Kevin Walker, writer of Se7en) and I cooked up and it was the first thing cut by New Line, they were like ‘you gotta get rid of the thumb recall, somebody’s going to take that idea and run with it and we’re going to get sued.”
Mills and Somerset fall sleep on sofa waiting for fingerprints from Greed scene
“I like the idea that Mills, when he goes to sleep, he doesn’t know where he ends up or what his body is doing, he’s like nuzzling into Somerset then he has this whole homophobic…(reaction)”
Mills and Somerset in the car together on their way to ‘Sloth’ victim
“I love the idea, the notion of this scene, just how kind of fragile life is and Mills puts his finger on it without even knowing… ‘what’s that guys name who died… he just got shot in the arm’.
“We always see people in movies shot in the arm and you know, Bruce Willis: ‘Go ahead! I’ll wrestle this helicopter to the ground, I just need a tourniquet!’ I love the idea, and it’s totally Andy Walker.”
Mills and Somerset chase John Doe after he spots them outside his apartment
“If every corner can hold somebody with a 9mm who’s gonna… it’s like you don’t come around those corners very… you don’t come around them with confidence. He’s scared.
“And there’s a lot of times in most action/cop movies they just seem… they get two guns in their hands and they run down the street and they blast away and they get the job done.
It’s a kind of ballet and it’s beautiful and it creates a mythic hero but I love the idea of the guy with clay feet who is going ‘I don’t want to get shot’ because that’s me, I understand that.”
Mills and Somerset both shave their chests together
Pitt: “What a sweet scene the calm before the storm, these guys are coming together to shave their chests together as men often do.”
Fincher replied: “It was a great idea that he had, that Walker came up with.”
Climactic showdown with John Doe set among power lines
“We picked this location because of the power lines, because we thought it would be so, originally they lose ground — they’re supposed to have communication to Morgan here and we wanted to have, when he got to the power lines, his voice cutting out so the guys in the helicopter can’t — John Doe has picked a place with these power lines so now it fucks up the radio frequency we thought this was a really, really good idea.
“So we go out there to shoot this and — of course — it’s true, you can’t cue the helicopters from the ground with the walkie talkies so we literally had to cue the actors by cell phone, to base camp and they would radio in to do this, so there was 2 minute delay.”
Much has been written about the end of Se7en — where an enraged Mills guns down John Doe in cold blood after discovering Doe has killed and beheaded his pregnant wife. For the record, Morgan Freeman says he wanted Somerset to kill John Doe, not Mills but Pitt was adamant his character would be the one.
And Fincher says he doesn’t even mind the coda after Mills kills John Doe although he hates the Hemingway quote: “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.”
Total number of ideas: 9
Film length: 127 minutes
Ratio of minutes to ideas: 14.1
Next up: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
