David Fincher has lots of ideas — The Game
Today David Fincher’s 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.
Following on from the surprise success of Se7en, David Fincher released The Game in 1997, a paranoiac thriller starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn.
Editor’s note: The Game commentary on the Criterion edition also features Michael Douglas, screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris, digital animation supervisor Richard “Dr.” Baily, production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, and visual effects supervisor Kevin Haug and thus is not as idea heavy as others.
Here are David Fincher’s ideas in The Game (spoilers ahead, obviously):
The Game begins with home movies of Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas)
“One of the things that was interesting about the script was Ferris and Brancato (screenwriters) had this idea that you could set the movie up with these home movies and then the home movies would become the flashbacks.”
The Game is a an ‘open movie’
“The idea, the style of the movie, was to do something that was much more open, much simpler so that you kind of go, you know, the director’s job is to cast these actors, give them the lines to come in and say, have them come in and say them as convincingly as possible and not to… you cut to somebody’s face the audience knows you’ve taken some time out, you’ve done something, you’ve lost something, you’ve gone to something that excises other aspects of the room to showcase this one thing, there’s something behind it, there’s a reason.”
The production design of Consumer Recreation Services (CRS) is important
“Production design is a key element to CRS because one of the things you have to do with CRS in a very short amount of time is present the idea that they know more than you. One of the things Jeff (production designer Jeffrey Beecroft)and I talked about over and over and over again was you wanted… in CRS you didn’t want it to seem secretive, you want to see it open and you want to see all these things going on, you want to see that there’s computers involved in this endeavour and high technology… these guys have figured it out, they’ve done their homework and they know more than you.”
Van Orton is left in the theatre alone
“I just like the idea of being left in a theatre, you know, it’s like… and again it cuts down to like ‘you’re not done with the movie until the movie is done with you’ kinda thing. And you’re sitting there and you have this weird test and you don’t know how the test works and yet it also seems like the people who are running the test are off getting a coffee or something and you’re asking these questions and no one can answer them and it’s just this sort of idea of like ‘who’s minding the store?’”
CRS is a ‘weird sect’
“I love the idea of this kind of weird, you know, sect or kind of actor. You have like movie stars or movie actors, you have television actors, you have commercial actors, you have models and then you have the CRS guys, who are like hardcore, those guys are like on call 24 hours a day.
“They might get a call for no reason at all ‘okay you’re a paramedic today put this on and here’s some bogus speak, here’s some bullshit stuff you can say on your index card now go say that’. I love this idea that there was this weird kind of secret counter-culture.”
‘All this stuff’s legit’
“I like the idea of roping somebody in that’s, he’s not… the guy falls down and pretends to have a heart attack and they’re hoping he’s going to stop and try and give CPR or stop and help but he doesn’t so she has to come back and push that along and then she says ‘get help, get help’ and they send a police car by and he flags a police car down and the police calls the fake ambulance and the ambulance shows up but from the audience’s point of view from Michael Douglas’s point of view all this stuff is happening, all this stuff’s legit.”
‘This is going too far’
“What I liked was the idea of — instead of a guy who is, a man of action, was the idea that you know the accountant with a gun trapped in the backseat and trying to figure out ‘how can this be part of it?’ this seems a little.. this is going too far.”
Van Orton ‘coming out of the ground’
“Originally he wakes up in a garbage heap which I always thought was pretty great but, keeping with the idea of rebirth, it was good for him to come out of a mausoleum. The idea of being in a crypt dressed in your finest white linens ready for south of the border… you know… burial.
“I liked the idea of him literally coming out of the ground of it being like, he wakes up with coffee grounds up his nose but I.. I just thought it was almost too much, it was little too ugly. And I liked the idea of waking up in this enclosed space and popping the lid off and finding out you’re in a coffin. It seemed to me to be one of those just icky ideas, that you just go.. just the realization of that would make you (shudder noise).”
Van Orton pawning the watch to get home
“I liked the idea that he, they’re watching him, they’re down the street, he’s gone to the American Embassy and somebody in here is walking by him and hears what he’s doing and comes back out says ‘he’s pawned the watch’ and they’re like ‘fine’, but there’s some other, you know, they have another plan for him, if he can’t figure it out but he does, he’s not a dummy, he’ll figure it out and he does figure out a way to get across the border and get back and I love the fact that he has to give up the watch.
“I liked the idea that he does it on his own, we had CRS giving him his watch back at the end but I liked the fact that he doesn’t get it, that he’s fine in parting with it.”
Deborah Kara Unger has been playing the game for so many years
“And then she has a little slip up which she actually did she just fucked up a line and I just liked the idea of someone who’s been playing the game for so many years they’re not really aware, they’ve told so many lies they don’t know what the truth is so when he asks her ‘where are you from?’ she’s like ‘Oh did I say that, I didn’t mean to’.”
Total number of ideas: 10
Film length: 128 minutes
Ratio of minutes to ideas: 12.8
My Criterion edition of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has got lost in the post and I will write it up once it arrives
