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Fincher has been hailed (and snubbed) for his visual virtuosity, his films have been recognized and awarded for their writing, editing, and cinematography – and of course I make use of my opportunity to compliment the director on behalf of countless fans on the extraordinary ambition evident in his work. Surprisingly, Fincher feels tethered to it.
"Look, it's sweet," he says. "I am happy that people look at the way things go together or how they fit, because I look at that as my fundamental responsibility. I don't pride myself in technical virtuosity or finesse. I'm crippled by it. Brad Pitt said a funny thing. He said, he watches me watch the monitor, and 'I can actually see you flinch, when something...' – Because I find myself, I'm watching and I'm in the moment, and I am watching her... and I am watching her eyes... and she looks over to him... and then all of a sudden this thing happens, and you go: 'Oh God! If I could just get rid of this distraction.'"
"I picked everything in that room, I picked the chairs, I picked the wall-color, I put the lights where they are, I was here yesterday, making sure that everything balances. I have done all these things in my head, and then when you can actually do that and loose yourself in what's going on, and be concentrating on how one person is telling this story, and they are giving this moment, and the other person is picking it up at exactly the right place, and you are lost in it, and all of a sudden – doink! – this thing happens. You cut to camera and the shot should be three millimeters wider or something. And you go, 'God, if I could just carry the energy of that thing into the next shot.' So I appreciate that people don't have to go through that. They can see the final thing for what the intent is. They can be lost in it. But I'd be lying if I said it turned out exactly the way I imagined."
Which of course reminds me of an infamous Fincher quote, that has come to be one of my favorites over the years. As I come to find out, it holds just as much truth as it doesn't: "People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there're two, maybe. And the other one is wrong."
"Yeah, well the context for this was – and I was being funny – I kind of don't know how not to do it the way that I would do it," Fincher says. Within a second, he is up, staging another scene, making his point. "You watch what is happening here, then this person comes in, they do this, they say this, then she has to enter, and they have already talked about this. So we are seeing this from their point of view, so we need to be over them, certainly for a lot of it, and then we need to figure out a way to keep her at a distance." Fincher sits back down, retracing his argument. "So, yeah, I think that was in response to somebody saying, 'Don't you think there are a lot of different ways to do this?' And I was like, 'I don't know of them.' It's the horrible thing: You get into the interpersonal side of making movies, and the movie studio says, 'I don't know how to see your point of view'." Fincher chuckles. "I get paid to see my point of view, I get paid to see it one way. And I get paid to be able to elucidate what that perspective is. I am fundamentally against this notion of auteurism. I think it worked for those guys. I think the Yippiekayee guys from the 1960s got a lot of mileage out of it. But your point of view is all you've got. Your take on things. And so I was saying that, no, you cannot do anything other than what you do. Martin Scorsese once said an interesting thing to me, 'The things you do badly are as much part of your style as the things you do well.' And I can look at stuff that's been done by other filmmakers, and I go, 'Why are they doing it this way? Why is it so simplistic?' And that may be the thing that this filmmaker looks at and goes, 'I have to, at this moment, be so blunt and so simple in the presentation, so this is what I am going to do.' And that may be the thing that rubs me raw: That I may look at it and go, 'Ugh, why do you have to be so close? Why wouldn't this shot include another person? Why wouldn't there be a move to it?' But they may go, 'Look, I can do all this stuff around it, and in the end what I really want is to not have anything embroidered or filigreed around this moment.' So that's a choice that they make. That's their thing. I may look at that and go, well, that's that storyteller's shortcomings, is they don't chose to make this moment, or juice this moment, or pull this moment – but that's what it is."
"Anyway, I think it was something I said about an idea of perspective. And I was basically trying to say, 'I don't think you cannot have a perspective.' You answer 3000 questions a day, all about, what do you want? What do you want to see? Where do you want to see it from? Where should we put the money? Should we paint this with nine layers of lackeur, or should we...? – And that's what you get paid to do. You get paid to say, 'This is where we are going to spend the money, and this is where we are not.' Because we don't get to build the whole f—ing world, we only get to build the pieces of it that we see. So, no I don't think there's a thousand ways to skin a cat – I think there is a couple. And most of the time you shoot for two or three different ways, and you go, 'Duh!, here's the one. This is how it shakes out'."
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