David Fincher interview

The first album David Fincher bought was Burt Bacharach’s soundtrack to Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. The film itself made the eight-year old boy decide he had to be a director. His first gig was working at FX house Industrial Light & Magic, before he started making music videos for everyone from Madonna to The Rolling Stones and made his feature debut with Alien. He recovered from that experience to become one of the most visionary filmmakers working today. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, his seventh feature, garnered three Oscars. “It’ll take me five years to process the maelstrom of nonsense that was part and parcel of that experience,” he says, laughing. “But I’m happy with the movie...”

Empire: What did your mum make of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button?

David Fincher: My mom really liked it, which is probably not good news! Although I live for her opinion. You know, mom said all the right things: “Your father would have loved it!” She’s a little sentimental.

E: Who did you watch your first R-rated movie with?

D: I’m trying to think. I’m sure The Godfather was an R, right? They shoot a man’s eye out! So I’m going to say it was that. I was ten! There was a theatre in San Anselmo [in California]. My friend Scott Urquart, his older sister was the manager of it. It was awesome! We’d go in the side door and watch whatever the hell we wanted.

E: And be scarred for life!

D: Exactly. My parents wouldn’t let me see Taxi Driver. I had to sneak off and see that. Saw The Exorcist and my parents found out when I couldn’t sleep for three weeks. “Why won’t you sleep?” “I don’t know, I just... I just feel like... everything’s a little weird tonight. Don’t you think we should turn the lights on?”

E: Were you a big reader, growing up?

D: No. I know — it’s sad! You tend to feel differently about reading things when your dad’s a writer. It wasn’t as fun, for some reason. I guess it was easier to go to the movies — and remember, at the time, there were a lot of really great movies. And that was something my father and I loved to do together.

E: What do you remember watching together?

D: I loved the Monty Python movies. Loved. I made my dad drive us 45 minutes to see And Now For Something Completely Different. He was like, “All these skits are in the TV show!”
But he loved Holy Grail.

E: Who would you say has been the biggest influence on your career?

D: I’d probably say [manager] Josh Donen. He gave me the book for Fight Club and found me Panic Room. Actually it was sort of, “I’ve read this script and you won’t want to do it, because it all takes place in one house” and — of course — as soon as somebody says you won’t want to do it because of some limitation I’m like, “Why? That could be kinda cool; maybe someone could really do something with that!” And then, you know, he put together Zodiac. So Josh and Ceán [Chaffin, Fincher’s partner]. Both those.

E: Do you remember the first album you bought?

D: The first album I bought? You know what, I’m going to bet you it was the soundtrack to Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, Burt Bacharach’s. I know it was. I was eight. That was probably the first.

E: That’s something to listen to whenever you’re feeling down…

D: It’s amazing and it’s so weird that it works! [starts humming ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’] Oh my God! I can’t believe they’re going to have ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’! That’s the one thing Bob Wagner [Fincher’s regular assistant director] and I always argue about. It’s like, “Yeah, it’s a great movie but can you get past ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’?” And I, of course, can, and I don’t know why that is…

E: George Lucas lived near you when you were growing up and you went on to work at Industrial Light + Magic, but did you ever have any dealings with him?

D: Never. He was, you know, he was just a thing that we all aspired to be: a guy in charge of his own world.

E: You made a music video with The Rolling Stones. Were you nervous about working with them?

D: This is a true story. The Rolling Stones was, I think, the first concert I ever went to, when I was about 10 years old. I liked this song I was going to do the video for, ‘Love Is Strong’. I thought it was a kind of cool, nasty little Stones [number]. You know, you could imagine it coming out of a jukebox. Like, “Yeah! /That’s a Stones song!” So that’s why I agreed to do it and I ended up having one, five-minute, conversation with Mick and a couple of conversations with managers and I trundled off to Vancouver.

E: Where they were touring?

D: Yeah. Then it was about a week of being tortured by third-hand hearsay about, “Well, they don’t like this and they don’t like that and can you come up with something for this?” And I was like, “Hey man, I don’t tell you how to make your records, let me make the video that I know how to make…” There were so many hierarchical levels to get through. I remember kind of being fed up and I got this call to say, “Hey you should come down to the rehearsal and meet with them and walk them through it one last time.” I said, “All right.” I was kinda pissed off. And I’m about ready to just go, “You know what? Fuck this! You guys have such clear ideas about what it is you want to do, you go ahead!” I was pretty fed up. And I remember pulling into this arena and all of a sudden I hear [hums opening bars of ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’] And it just sends shivers! All of a sudden you go, “That’s why I’m here! I’d totally forgotten why I’m here, I’d totally forgotten why I’m putting up with all this bullshit: because of /that/!” And all of my wanting to tell everybody off just kind of melted [laughs]. How great, how fortunate am I?

E: What other director would you love to watch work?

D: Um, oh, I don’t know. You know, I’ve seen Steven Spielberg work. That’s pretty impressive. I’ve seen Martin Scorsese work – that was interesting. It’s like he’s feeding the editing room. He’s not leaving it there on the floor, he’s collecting… I haven’t been on that many sets. I’ve been on my friend’s sets. Which of course is always agonising because you sit there and you go, you know, “Give me a B camera, let me help you out”, because you see them pulling their hair out, going, “I don’t have the time, I can’t shoot this or that!”

E: People like Spike Jonze or Steven Soderbergh…

D: Yeah or Mark [Romanek, director of One Hour Photo]. Steven not so much, because it’s all so quiet. He runs an amazing set. His world that he’s made for himself and the way that it works is very impressive.

E: What was the most important thing you learned from making The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button?

D: Oh, I don’t know! I don’t know what I learned. But I’m happy with the movie. It’s nice to be happy with your movies. It’s painful when you want to be in the line of people with socks filled with horse manure, who want to just beat that movie. You don’t want to be the person who wants to be in that line, to tear your own movie apart!

E: What sort of music inspires you?

D: I’m back into a little bit of a Beatles kick, I don’t know why. The weird thing is when you’re growing up and you’re four years old, you’re like, “Oh, that’s a good song and I like that...” Then next year comes another and the next year and every six months there’s a new album. You know, now I’m middle-aged and I look back on the stuff I was doing when I was 27, which sucked ass, and then you look at The Beatles and you go, “Their whole career lasted seven years!”

E: Hang on, didn’t you make Seven when you were 25 or something?

D: No, no, I was at least 30! That’s still depressing. (Laughs) A friend of mine likes to say, “Remember, when Mozart was your age he’d been dead for 12 years!”

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is out on DVD and Blu-ray on 8 June.

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