[HN Gopher] David Fincher, the Unhappiest Auteur
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David Fincher, the Unhappiest Auteur
Author : prismatic
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-01-01 21:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| Keyframe wrote:
| I was in film&tv for a long time. You know, Fincher himself put
| it really well. I'll paraphrase and add a bit to it along with
| something Zemeckis said. Any audiovisual work of sufficient
| scale, let alone film, is a collaborative process. You can't do
| it alone, you can't finance it alone, yet your name ends up tied
| to it. Whether you write it yourself or not, as a director it's
| your interpretation, and every single shooting day (and pre and
| post) starts with your vision and over the course of that day
| there are compromises after compromises. You not only have to do
| your craft, but also give guidance (even when you don't have it)
| and power through compromises. How well your vision will be
| delivered is directly proportional to how many compromises you're
| ready to take. Every single person on that shoot day has their
| input and 'what they think', from an actor to a grip that pushes
| dolly and everyone has something to say.. yet, at the end of the
| day they're already on the next production and you're stuck with
| footage that will bear your name. It's one of the most
| challenging things I've been involved with. Put those words into
| context around Alien 3. Young guy, big production and budget - of
| course he'll listen to everyone since, well.. insecurity!
|
| One thing Tarantino said about Fincher though is there's a
| difference between directors like him and Fincher. I agree but
| it's not negative how he portrayed it. It's one thing to write
| your own film and then direct it and the other for someone else
| to write it and you interpret it. Take what you will from it, I
| don't take it as negative but different.
| chokeartist wrote:
| > Put those words into context around Alien 3. Young guy, big
| production and budget - of course he'll listen to everyone
| since, well.. insecurity!
|
| Alien 3 was my first thought when I saw David Fincher in this
| headline. As flawed as that movie was, I still really enjoyed
| it. I can tell he legitimately tried to make it a legitimate
| "art" piece in his mind.
|
| Your commentary about him being young+big money... is
| absolutely correct. Alien 3 could have had 3x the box market
| pop if there was a more collaborative process in my view.
|
| Oh well, you live and you learn. Personal bias: I have enjoyed
| pretty much every one of David Fincher's movies.
| morley wrote:
| I wish there were more literature about film directors as
| managers, as opposed to visionaries. A lot of film workers talk
| about their favorite directors as "knowing exactly what they
| want" or "having a clear vision," but it's harder to know how
| they get what they want, or how they express their vision, or
| how they navigate situations where their vision is wrong or
| conflicts with someone else's. Or simply how they do that at
| 4am at the end of a 14-hour work day. I like the stories about
| how Tarantino will make everyone say "because we love making
| movies" as a rallying cry. I wish there were more stories like
| that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just like every other job, some directors are better than
| others at certain aspects. Some are great with getting talent
| to perform, some are great with camera work, and some are
| visionaries. Just like any CEO/founder of a start-up, to have
| a successful film, you have to staff up with people that are
| strong where you are weak. A director that is great with
| talent but less in the camera dept hires a great DP. A strong
| Assitant Director can keep the day to day management going
| while the visionary director focuses on the 30,000' view.
| [deleted]
| justin66 wrote:
| > Put those words into context around Alien 3. Young guy, big
| production and budget - of course he'll listen to everyone
| since, well.. insecurity!
|
| Where are you getting this? The story about Alien 3's
| production has been told from a few different points of view
| and I've never heard it said that Fincher took too much advice.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Fincher himself, he spoke about it, I think on The Game,
| commentary track. You can also hear what he thinks about
| actors there and their input. Something along the lines of
| they're a color, but I'm the painter.
| dlkinney wrote:
| He also feels the same way about the technical crew; the
| lighting crew, at least. Don't remember where I read it,
| but he said he lights his stuff primarily with flat
| overhead lighting these days because he doesn't want the
| DP/lighting to "waste time" getting lights just right for a
| shot.
|
| While I immensely enjoy his films, it seems that he has
| great distain for the fact that filmmaking is a community
| effort, and simultaneously doesn't have it in himself to
| fight for his choices, so he just eliminates choice where
| he can.
|
| Watching his progression over the years, I feel like the
| penultimate David Fincher film would be sans-actors and
| camera movement, followed by a film of raw script text
| pages with his red marker notes scribbled on them.
| goto11 wrote:
| I think his issue with Alien 3 was he was forced by the studio
| to compromise his vision, not that he listened to much or was
| insecure. Unless you have "final cut" in the contract, the
| studio can and probably will force you to make changes against
| your will.
| golemotron wrote:
| This is all reminiscent of David Lynch and Dune. It was his
| first big box movie and someone else's material.
| Grakel wrote:
| This article feels written for a high school audience in both
| reading level and content knowledge, it's a bit strange.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/mutpV
| l33tbro wrote:
| A director in many ways is just a curator - assembling the right
| artists who they feel will be capable of recognising and
| contributing to a stated sensibility. Establishing and empowering
| those artists, while, simultaneously, ensuring the thematic and
| aesthetic coherency of the finished work _is_ the craft.
|
| Fincher's technical acumen and understanding of screen
| performance is exceptional. While his work can be hit or miss
| (just my opinion), he is almost inarguably one of the finest
| directors to practice in this medium of all time.
| pas wrote:
| So ... how do producers factor into this? Isn't the production
| team that brings in the artists? Or they try to bring in the
| artists that the director wishes? Or the director has a soft
| veto during casting?
| megameter wrote:
| Producers are the more influential overall, in terms of the
| business metrics(budget, schedule, box office). They get to
| make a lot of key decisions, if only through vetos.
|
| What a director does is more akin to structuring the day-to-
| day focus. A director who has taken to relaxing intent on
| some broad aspects of the production is going to have a
| smoother production, be more agreeable, be easy to hire
| again. But a director who is more stringent may deliver a
| product that coheres better. It's a kind of balancing act on
| the part of the producer to not end up with a staff full of
| prima donnas fighting for control and wasting money through
| indecision and resume-driven development.
| cm2187 wrote:
| How do you measure performance when movies are released straight
| to streaming? Are there "streaming box offices" already?
| objclxt wrote:
| Internally obviously Netflix et al have all the metrics they
| need, and goal on things like minutes watched and completed
| watchings.
|
| Externally, there are companies like Nielsen that attempt to
| derive ratings for steaming media (via surveys, paying people
| to install plugins, using audio fingerprinting etc), but it's
| not clear how accurate they actually are.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't think you do. You read the marketing about how well a
| film has done and decide whether you believe it. The only
| people who actually know are the distributors, and they have
| paid teams who spend all day trying to get stories published
| about how well the films are doing.
| rainworld wrote:
| Speaking of Fincher and streaming, I found Mank, as released by
| Netflix, completely unwatchable because of overwhelming
| compression artifacts induced by artficial grain. I hope there
| will be a Blu-ray release at some point.
| billjings wrote:
| Surprising. What platform? How much bandwidth? Now I need to
| watch Mann....was the artificial grain just pure noise of some
| kind?
| rainworld wrote:
| Netflix _Ultra HD_ at the highest bitrate. The 1080p version
| on the standard plan appears to be heavily DNR'd.
|
| It's not really surprising, though. Think of the HBO ident;
| noise just does not compress well. I've encountered
| (supposedly well-encoded) 40+GB BRs of old b/w movies with
| obvious, distracting artifacts.
|
| But then, most people can't tell the difference.
|
| As for the source of the problem, I'm sure it looked a lot
| like real film grain on the reference monitor, but on _my_
| screen it looks a bit embarrassing.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Now that AT&T owns Warner and HBO I expect to see tons of
| crossover ads: promoting the each new movie and the fact that it
| will be on HBO Max.
|
| HBO will get new signups, the movie will get a marketing bill
| that keeps it in the red forever, and directors + actors with
| backend deals will get nothing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The most beautiful part of vertical integration; being able to
| buy services from yourself at whatever arbitrary price you set
| lets you make the units with contingent liabilities worth the
| least.
| sho wrote:
| The industry needs to change. Charging all movies the same is
| ridiculous and just totally counter to all reality about their
| audience. We have fast food and gourmet, why wouldn't we have
| that with cinema too?
|
| I suppose I could be reluctantly convinced to part with $5 or $10
| for the latest predictable comic book CGI-fest. I'll pay much
| more for Fincher, or anyone else I actually respect. Trying to
| charge the same for mass-market lowest-common-denominator marvel
| or transformers nonsense as something aimed for the _sniff_ art
| crowd _sniff_ just sounds unsustainable. There needs to be a
| free-floating price, just like any other product with different
| markets.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I suppose I could be reluctantly convinced to part with $5 or
| $10 for the latest predictable comic book CGI-fest.
|
| You'd probably never get that chance if prices floated; those
| films go out to a market that bases their social life on
| consuming genre fiction and for whom seeing them is not
| optional. Prices would shoot up to $40 a ticket, and marketing
| would just be laser-targeted towards that audience, who would
| pay like putting money into the collection tray at church.
| Kickstarter has proved that 5-10% of that audience would be
| willing to pay multiples of that (2x to probably 50x) extra
| without anything in return but exclusive tokens that are
| evidence that they paid.
|
| IMO, mostly middle-of-the-road, highly-competent directors like
| Fincher would be in trouble in that world, since they are both
| going for a general audience and relying on a general media
| narrative of genius and award potential to market their films.
| Genre movies withdrawing from general reviewers and general
| marketing (like awards shows) reduces the impact of those
| awards, and leaves them as a _de facto_ genre themselves - like
| mainstream literary fiction. Maybe able to crank out one or two
| films that crack the top 10 every year and barely self-
| supporting on average; highly dependent on government and
| institutional support.
|
| Talent graduates from mainstream non-genre awards-show films
| _to_ comic book films, not vice-versa, which is why awards
| shows are desperately trying to get those films into every
| category, as a means to market those traditional blockbusters
| to genre fans.
|
| > mass-market lowest-common-denominator marvel or transformers
| nonsense
|
| So, tl;dr, IMO Fincher is the mass-market lowest-common-
| denominator choice, and bombastic genre trash targets a small
| inelastic market that would still be sustainable at a far
| higher price point. The number who would pay a premium for
| Fincher wouldn't be enough to support his budgets and
| marketing. Mainstream Fincher films would only survive given
| away for a token (or in order to market something else.) 20M
| people would pay $60 for The Avengers 8, but 400M might be
| willing to pay $3 for Mank or watch it for free if you put it
| on all of some brand's devices as a promotion (like a U2 album,
| or Netflix.)
|
| Of course Fincher would be (and probably is) highly desired in
| genre films, so in that world he'd probably be charging $100
| per to 40M fans for _The Incredulous Spider-Man: Sapphire
| Empire 's Revenge Chapter II_ or _The New Fast More Furious
| 19._
| sho wrote:
| I can't reply to all of this but I will say - I paid to go
| see the Avengers finale movies - despite seeing none of the
| preceding films - purely because I felt a kind of social
| obligation. Like it or not, _Avengers_ was part of the
| zeitgeist and I just felt compelled to go see both of them.
| Part of the shared cultural experience or something.
|
| The movies were just ludicrous but I don't regret it. _snap_
| golemotron wrote:
| That happens right now with streaming services. They jack up
| the prices for premium movies.
| goto11 wrote:
| People like different things.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Equating Marvel with Tranformers shows a lack of understanding.
|
| They're both "fun entertainment" but while one is a cynical
| money grab the other has a commitment to quality. Quality fun
| may seem paradoxical to some snobs but it is definitely
| possible.
| bshimmin wrote:
| This is an interesting but problematic idea.
|
| Firstly, I'm not certain of how the economics would play out:
| the "marvel or transformers nonsense" (and boy is it nonsense)
| tends to cost a lot of money to make, because they feature
| famous actors and they're end-to-end expensive CGI; arthouse
| films tend to be a lot cheaper because they feature less CGI,
| and sometimes the actors involved will work for less money
| because the films are more "worthy", or they like the director.
| More people watch the superhero drivel than the arthouse films,
| for sure, so perhaps it would all balance out, but it's
| unclear.
|
| Secondly, while I broadly love Terrence Malick, if I'd paid
| PS20 for "Knight of Cups" (which was dire), I would have to
| think very, very hard about parting with another PS20 for his
| next film unless the notices were very good. I think you'd end
| up with a minuscule audience if you started marking up arthouse
| films in this way.
|
| Unrelatedly, I have to admit that "Mank" sounds really boring
| and I'm not eager to watch it, even though I have a Netflix
| subscription and I've enjoyed many of Fincher's previous films
| (hell, I even liked "Alien 3").
| goto11 wrote:
| If you are a fan of Citizen Kane and the whole mythos around
| this movie, you might enjoy Mank. If not, you will probably
| find it quite boring and pointless.
|
| Fincher is certainly no art house director. He makes big-
| budget movies with stars like Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck. He is
| kind of like Steven Spielberg - a director so talented in the
| craft he elevates rater middlebrow material to be uniquely
| enjoyable. Fincher just gets a bit more respect because he is
| "dark". But dark does not mean deep. For example Seven is
| really quite silly and contrived, but his excellence at
| directing makes us forget that.
| sho wrote:
| > Fincher [..] is kind of like Steven Spielberg [..] just
| gets a bit more respect because he is "dark"
|
| So he's a great director like Spielberg - but he's in a
| different genre and willing to tackle less family friendly
| subjects. Sorry was this meant to be a criticism?
|
| They're both great. Get off your high horse. Great cinema
| is great cinema. If you can't appreciate them both, there's
| something wrong with your taste in movies. Sounds like you
| don't like them just because they're popular, which is
| lame.
|
| Of course Fincher isn't "art house" - although Mank is
| moving in that direction. But he's certainly not a
| multiplex pleaser. There's a lot of different genres and a
| fan base for all of them. The challenge is finding a model
| that makes this work.
| cjaybo wrote:
| > Get off your high horse
|
| > there's something wrong with your taste in movies
|
| Ironically, your comment is the only condescending one in
| this thread. Thanks for throwing a minor fit over one
| person's shared opinion.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| It's like we read different comments. goto11 called one
| an excellent director and the other talented. I get the
| impression they like both and that their comment
| wasn't...whatever you thought it was.
| sho wrote:
| Hm. Maybe I imagined it but I got a definite negative
| undertone. Eg:
|
| > dark does not mean deep
|
| Well I thought _The Social Network_ and _Zodiac_ were
| thoughtful and at least somewhat deep. I guess this can
| just turn into a "deepness" competition but eh, I liked
| them.
| pas wrote:
| Wasn't the Zodiac brutally simple, the typical Fincher-
| like precision, almost sterile presentation of the story,
| with almost perfect linearity? I mean, I love that movie,
| but I love it especially because it's not "deep". (It
| doesn't mean there are no interesting
| questions/plotlines, of course there is the whole who-
| was-really-the-killer question. Of course there's the
| whole personal drama of the main character.) But compared
| to Seven - I think - there's a lot less abstract/social
| commentary and symbolism. (Even though it's full of the
| killer's code symbols.)
| goto11 wrote:
| I do like them both very much, and find both incredibly
| talented. Sorry if my comment came of as negative towards
| them. (But I also like Marvel movies, for what it's
| worth.) Just wanted to point out Fincher is not art
| cinema as the top comment suggested. (And Spielberg is
| not just family friendly subjects either.)
|
| I don't know about "multiplex pleaser" - Gone Girl,
| Finchers previous movie, "topped the box office for two
| consecutive weekends" according to Wikipedia.
| jasonv wrote:
| Just watched The Game last night. Very silly and contrived,
| but for my son... who'd not seen it before, it was riveting
| before the ending. He tried to make sense of it, and I
| assured him, aside from Easter eggs, trying to make the
| movie make sense would be folly. As an example of a film
| maker in command though, it's a good example of the
| director playing the audience like a fiddle.
| gregmac wrote:
| > The industry needs to change.
|
| Ticket prices for cinema likely pale in comparison to the
| changes as a result of technology improvements and COVID.
|
| In the past two decades we've gone from the biggest home
| screens being a huge heavy CRT or mediocre projection screen,
| to large 1080p or 4k LCD and OLED displays. The average TV size
| was 25" in 2000, now approaching 50". [1] Audio has similar
| improvements, with not only built-in TV audio being better, but
| now with soundbars, subwoofers, wireless options, Atmos, etc
| it's much more common to have decent or excellent sound.
|
| What does post-COVID theatre look like? I can't imagine it has
| zero effect.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/961283/united-states-
| ave...
| coldtea wrote:
| > _The industry needs to change. Charging all movies the same
| is ridiculous and just totally counter to all reality about
| their audience. We have fast food and gourmet, why wouldn 't we
| have that with cinema too?_
|
| That might kill "serious" movies even faster. The people that
| like to watch them don't necessarily have more income.
| sho wrote:
| You might be right. I was just trying to offer a data point
| and offering a speculative extrapolation.
|
| If I've decided to "make a night of" a movie, the ticket
| price is almost irrelevant. I guess I'm applying a very
| narrow stereotype but most of the "serious movie lovers" I
| know are fairly well paid. I'll pay for quality. Transformers
| - I wouldn't go even if it was free.
|
| I just feel like there's something being squeezed out of the
| equation here.
| coldtea wrote:
| The average low income worker might not have the education
| / cultural upbringing for "serious" movies, and the typical
| audience might be college educated and middle/upper-middle
| class, but I think that many with the education and/or
| culture are still penny-pinching in these days, whether
| they are college-educated or not.
|
| > _I just feel like there 's something being squeezed out
| of the equation here._
|
| As a European I'd add "state funding for the arts".
|
| It's in no way more of a no-no than state funding for space
| is (which is how everything major has ever been achieved
| there, from NASA to Space-X, a state outsourcing/subsidy
| business if there ever was one).
| sho wrote:
| So how about highbrow art forms like Opera? They're
| generally supported by the state. How many factory
| workers can afford to go?
|
| I'm not even sure what point I'm making here. I think it
| would be a good thing if the Opera cost $10.
| coldtea wrote:
| In Europe Opera has historically also been (and still
| remains, but less so) also middle and working class
| entertainment.
|
| Here's a quote I've found - it appears it was popular
| with US folky types too:
|
| Significantly, the opera house was the "first musical
| institution to open its doors to the general public"
| (Zelochow, 1993: 261).The first opera house opened in
| Venice in 1637: it presented "commercial opera run for
| profit . . . offering the new, up-to-date entertainment
| to anyone who could afford a ticket" (Raynor, 1972: 169).
| By the end of the century Venice had sixteen opera houses
| open to the general public. Interestingly, as Henry
| Raynor observes, "The Venetian audience consisted of all
| social classes" (ibid: 171). Bernard Zelochow argues that
| this remained the case throughout the next two centuries.
|
| By the late eighteenth century and in the nineteenth
| century the opera played a preeminent role in the
| cultural life of Europe. The opera was enjoyed and
| understood by a broad cross-section of urban Europeans
| and Americans.The opera house became the meeting place of
| all social classes in society. . . . The absence of the
| concept of a classical repertoire is an index of the
| popularity and vigor of opera as a mode of communication
| and entertainment. (Zelochow, 1993: 262)
|
| By the nineteenth century, then, opera was established as
| a widely available form of popular entertainment consumed
| by people of all social classes. As Lawrence W. Levine
| explains, referring specifically to the US (but also the
| case in most of Europe), opera was an integral part of a
| shared public culture, "performed in a variety of
| settings, [it] enjoyed great popularity, and [was] shared
| by a broad segment of the population" (Levine, 1988: 85).
|
| For example, on returning to the United States in the
| late 1860s from England, where he had been American
| Consul, George Makepeace Towle noted how "Lucretia Borgia
| and Faust,The Barber of Seville and Don Giovanni are
| everywhere popular; you may hear their airs in the
| drawing room and concert halls, as well as whistled by
| the street boys and ground out on the hand organs"
| (quoted in Levine, 1988: 99-100).
| sailfast wrote:
| European opera houses offer standing room tickets at
| these prices or less in my experience. (Vienna, and
| others)
| leviathant wrote:
| The last opera I saw in Philadelphia at the Academy of
| Music, we sat next to a guy who was almost a comic book
| caricature of a blue collar worker. He loved coming to
| the opera; if you do it right, it costs about as much as
| a movie ticket.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Being well-paid probably correlates to having the time and
| energy to explore stuff like that. Any time I set out to
| explore niche TV and movies, the "I could be doing things
| to become less broke" thought likes to intrude.
| coldtea wrote:
| This wasn't/isn't the only case, though.
|
| Imagine Tarantino working as a video-store clerk, but
| still having a huge thing for movie history ("serious"
| and camp).
|
| Or poor creatives, writers, etc. that love such works,
| but make shit.
|
| (In Europe the "peniless artist" stereotype/reality is a
| very real thing, in music/theater/writing/painting/and so
| on, and those people do like such movies).
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