David Fincher has lots of ideas — The Social Network
Next month 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.
Released in 2010, based on a script by Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network, a drama about the creation of Facebook, is often thought to be Fincher’s masterpiece and the best film of the 2010s.
It stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg who is being sued by both his best friend and Harvard rivals whom he agreed to help with a project similar to Facebook.
Here are David Fincher’s ideas in The Social Network (spoilers ahead, obviously):
Jesse’s walk after speaking to Andrew Garfield outside the Jewish/Caribbean party
“So I loved Jessie’s walk. He worked a lot on this idea that Mark was a fencer but he also wanted to get this kind of… not only good posture and sort of upright in terms of his posture but it was also this being lost in his head, this notion of somebody who’s just so deep in thought that they don’t realise they’re in the snow in flip flops and they don’t realise they’re in cargo shorts.”
Aaron Sorkin ‘works with a very fine brush’
“He works with a very fine brush, he doesn’t get a lot of credit for it but he does plant these little ideas and pays them off sort of throughout, the way that he doles out information, it’s to be admired, it’s very skilful.
“He gets a lot of credit for being amusing and being one of the great cinematic smartasses but he also, he’s very good about the blind stitch, he’s very good at stuff that holds the fabric of it together.
“And I like the idea that both Mark and Eduardo are sort of connected on this idea that they do want to make a good impression on their parents, they aren’t unlike the Winklevoss’, it’s not just about them, they want to have pride and they want to have pride and authorship over what they’re doing in their lives and I think that Aaron is able to do that in a very deft way.”
The ‘Hand Covers Bruise’ triptych during Winklevoss deposition
“Here’s the second of the triptychs where Hand Covers Bruise is used and the notion here was it has this sort of undercurrent of dissonant frustration… not anger, anger is too easy a word, but a kind of impatience and frustration and then it was this kind of piano line over that’s so childlike.
“And I thought it was so important because we’re talking about kids, we’re not talking about adults.”
Aaron Sorkin’s idea that Mark being spurned drove him to Facebook
“Hats off to Aaron to come up with this idea that that’s the thing that fuels his… I mean, it may not be the truth, it may not have anything to do with who Mark Zuckerberg is but, in the context of this story, I think it’s important that we relate to why he’s pushing, why he’s continually trying to do better.”
Mark’s meeting with ad buyers goes very badly
“Aaron loved the idea of somebody whose disdain for someone else is described as ‘almost a gag reflex’.”
Hackers getting drunk in a computer orgy
“We just loved the idea of this bacchanal that’s taking place with all these hackers and… unsupervised at the end of the hall there’s this giant alcohol-fuelled hacking orgy happening.”
Filming at the Henley Royal Regatta
“Henley Royal Regatta were incredibly good to us and they allowed us to actually shoot the race at Henley. I had no idea how huge the HRR was, I’d only seen photos of it and a lot of them are telephoto so you don’t really get the idea of this mile and a half of grandstands and corporate sponsors.”
Mark and Eduardo confrontation in California
“This was a scene that was designed to be a oner. I knew I was going to do this beginning part where he closes the door because I love the idea of, you know, walking 10ft to have some privacy and yet there’s still this cacophony of bullshit happening in the other room, they’re playing video games, the girls are screaming, they’re having a great time and you want to have it out with your partner/friend you’ve come out to see and I knew that this was going to happen in basically one take and that I would just button it at the end with ‘how’s that going so far’ and then him asking the question ‘wait a minute, what do you mean get left behind’?”
Eduardo’s girlfriend makes a dramatic exit
“I love the notion of a character who has left by making this incredible impression, setting fire to this guy’s apartment and waltzing out o there and finally he hears the words that he wants to hear from Zuckerberg, he finally hears ‘get your ass on a plane I need my CFO’ and he’s moved beyond any description and he wheels around and she’s still there. Such a great construction in that.”
‘All creation myths need a devil’
“I now know, I didn’t know at the time of shooting… that it was one of the communication directors at Facebook who actually offered the idea that ‘creation myths need a devil’ and I thought that makes so much sense. It was a great thing for Aaron to be able to lock onto and go this frames it, this is our other bookend.”
The Social Network as a ‘John Hughes movie’
“When I first talked to Trent (Reznor, who along with Atticus Ross wrote the score for The Social Network) I talked to him about the idea, seriously, I said you know it has to be like Risky Business or it has to be a John Hughes movie, it’s a coming of age movie. It’s a little bit of these 80s synthesiser thing and he laughed and I laughed but it did kind of inform a lot of the places we were going.”
Total number of ideas: 11
Film length: 120minutes
Ratio of minutes to ideas: 10.9
Next up: The Game
