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On the other hand, no matter how 'reductive' and 'stupid' these branding activities may arguably be, they are a good share, as Fincher admits, of why – despite debates over running time, final cut and his infamously uncompromising nature – he keeps getting greenlights. "There is no doubt that that is part of why they put up with me. I am not easy to get along with. But I am saying to you, 100 million dollars, that's the pain threshold in Hollywood. When you are talking about a 100 million dollars, you better be f—ing serious. When we're talking about 40 million dollars, that is a low to medium budget movie."
Yes, 40 million. That was last year's Oscar favorite The Social Network. Now, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is looking at an estimated budget of exactly that 100 million dollar Hollywood pain threshold. And you can rest assured: Fincher is 'f—ing serious'.
At the time of our meeting, Fincher and his Academy Award winning editors, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, are working around the clock to get to that final cut – against a definitive deadline a mere two months away. "We gotta have a movie out in December! We're not making a movie, we're making a release date," Fincher says. And he's only half joking.
If you are familiar with Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millennium trilogy, it appears a perfect match of director and material. The first book, Dragon Tattoo, is a brutal thriller, centered around a murder mystery, riddled with themes of misogyny, rape, racism, serial killing – "...and ultimately it is a kind of love story," Fincher adds, "in some weird f–ed up way. It's not a serial killer movie. That is one of the elements of it, but it is really those two characters [Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist]. What he and she have is really interesting. It cuts across generations, it's very non-conventional in Hollywood terms, of what gets them into the sack and, ultimately, what breaks them up."
The novels have sold in excess of 60 million copies, a graphic-novel adaptation is on the way, a Lisbeth Salander inspired H&M collection is due in December: The film is riding a wave of mainstream attention, which almost should guarantee a box-office hit. Yet it is looking at a running time of just more than two and a half hours, an R-rating, and promises to be the 'feel bad movie of Christmas.' And whether that is good or bad or completely irrelevant for Fincher's release, there's already a series of Swedish-language films based on the same trilogy of novels.
"I know," Fincher says, "we are playing into the European, and certainly the Swedish, predisposition that this is just a gigantic, monetary landgrab. You're coopting a phenomenon. Now, there is plenty of reason to believe that we can make it equally entertaining of a movie. But the resentment is already engendered, in a weird way. It's bizarre. But then there are British television shows, like The Office, that are being remade as American television shows. And we speak the same f—ing language." This is just as true for another of Fincher's slated projects: a reimagining of BBC's House of Cards.
But Hollywood is a different ballgame, as Fincher insists. In Sweden you have highly educated people, guys with Master's Degrees, pulling focus, working multiple positions. In Hollywood you have highly skilled but highly specialized people. "The American film industry is like the American auto industry: You got people who do one thing, and they do it great, and you don't have to tell them how to do that one thing. But you need a lot of people, because everybody does one thing. One guy does this, the other guy does this, the next guy does this. On my movies, Dolly Grip is important. I mean: We will wait for Michael Brennan. We want to start shooting at the beginning of January. Brennan is not available until February? So we'll start in February! He can save you three days of shooting over the course of the production, he's that good. When you are in sync with somebody like that, and they have your kind of aesthetic." Fincher spontaneously swings out of his chair and stages a scene. "I can say, 'I want the camera to start here and it's going to come around, and it's going to be over the shoulder.' And [Brennan] is watching, and he knows, that camera is 33 inches off the ground."
American films are more expensive, but they are (often) for a reason. "We shot 78 days in Sweden, and I believe by the end of it the Swedish crew saw the difference between take 6 and take 30. At the beginning they were definitely rolling their eyes. They were like, 'Hey, we made the first Dragon Tattoo for 15 million bucks', and I said, 'I realize that. But we're doing something different. It's going to be handled in a different way.' So at the beginning the Swedes were very much like, 'How could you possibly take this long to make a movie?' And by the middle of the shoot they were like, 'I get what the difference is. I get what it is to have these choices.'"
Nonetheless, the experience appears to inspire Fincher. He has talked about digital filmmaking on various occasions before; about the revolution in computer technology; about highly affordable post-production software. "I think the Swedish film industry is probably more like the future. The directors of the future are going to come from YouTube. I'm telling you, Steven Spielberg tells me, 'check this out!' – and he's watching YouTube. People are sending him links to stuff. Here's some dude in Argentina, who's made some short, and he's watching it on Vimeo or whatever. It's totally decentralized."
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