The directors of "Fight Club" and "The Lost Lover" tell the story of his 30 years of struggle to bring his father's "Mank" script to the screen.
More than an hour after the premiere of Fight Club in 1999, David Fincher slipped outside to breathe. When his brutal and violent black comedy was selected for the Venice Film Festival, the director didn't know what would happen, but no matter what the dream scene was, it was not what it looked like in reality. Someone started to leave the field early, and gradually turned into groups to leave. The only spectators who are still laughing are his heroes Brad Pitt and Edward Norton-although to be fair, the two have been mentally prepared in advance. The first non-PR film review once described Vinci's film as "an unbearable attack on personal dignity", with a fascist tendency, and the festival audience obviously did not show more enthusiasm.
"The clang of each scene has become too strong." Finch, now 58, told me through Zoom at home. He recalled that he was sitting on the outside steps watching a group of tiresome elderly women walk by, "Everyone wore at least one leopard print dress, just like the six Annies in The Graduate. Bancroft" One of them apparently recognized this terrible man from the United States and booed his companions. The companions looked over and shook their heads. "I knew then that what we did was wrong." He smiled proudly.
Vinci’s latest movie is very exciting-his first movie since "The Lost Lovers" in 2014, it is unlikely to cause many viewers to rush home because they were already there when they watched-"Man Gram is a film produced by Netflix. It was filmed before the outbreak, but editing, polishing, and online were all under lockdown conditions. It is set in the golden age of Hollywood and shot in monochrome on the screen. It tells the political tricks and personal grievances behind the "Citizen Kane" script: This film was released in 1941 and is still widely regarded as the greatest movie ever. The protagonist hero of "Mank" is not Orson Welles, the young director and star of "Citizen Kane" (he was only 25 years old when it was released), but Herman Mankiewicz played by Gary Oldman , An avid genius screenwriter and hopeless gambler drunkard, Wells asked him to write the script on his behalf.
The script of "Mank" was written by Finch's late father and journalist Jack Finch (died in 2003). He cultivated his son's love for movies since he was a child. "It's not that he set up such a course, but he told me,'Listen, if you want to watch "Western World" or "The Magnum", you have to adjust with good things'," he laughed road. "Dr. Strange Love" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" are among the early enlightenment movies, but "Citizen Kane" is the pinnacle. "When I told him that I was going to watch it in school, he said:'When you are ready to watch it, discuss it with me, because this is the best."
When Jack retired at the age of 60, he decided to write a movie by himself, so he sought guidance from his son. David Fincher was in his 20s at the time. As Madonna’s favorite music video producer, he was honing Your own skills. ("Vogue" and "Express Yourself" are two of Vinci's MV masterpieces) David suggested to use the twists and turns of the screenwriter story behind "Citizen Kane" as the theme. When his father started working, he went to Pinewood Studio to shoot "Alien" 3"-The process itself is not very smooth.
"When I came back, the script he wrote had a lot of content about this arrogant young director trampling on his collaborators. I thought,'Wait a minute, things are not that simple!'" He laughed. "Even if they give the key to the kingdom to a 25-year-old young man, they must make all the troops face the same direction." Over the next few years, Jack continued to modify the script. In the late 1990s, David sold scripts to various film companies. One of the big-name stars was Kevin Spacey. He worked with David on "The Seven Deadly Sins" and later reunited in "House of Cards." But Vinci's insistence on using black-and-white images in line with the characteristics of the times to make films is always a barrier to trading. When Jack was diagnosed with cancer in 2002, he had to accept the fact that he could not live to see the production of this movie.
It wasn't until last year that Vinci finished the second season of his serial killer drama "Psycho Hunter", and he was invited by Netflix to cast a new project, "Mank" did not enter a viable field. Streaming media services allow every specific detail. From letting the actors perform in the 1930s articulated style-what Vinci calls "the acting school of'know your lines, don't knock over the furniture'", to the gradual change between the scenes to the black passing in the studio. Turn off the lights to copy. The completed project is amazing-a personal tragedy, a Hollywood mystery, and an indictment of the disturbing American contract between power and entertainment. When I asked Vinci what his father thought about the movie, he laughed. "He would think we were too polite to Wells.
Since he only worked with scripts created by others before, Vinci had a deep understanding of the conflict of views between the screenwriter and the director. "Will Wells or Mankiewicz deserve the most credit for "Citizen Kane"?" He asked, "I don't care at all. Did they maximize each other's strengths? No doubt they are. You are. Always fight to death with the best wishes."
It makes sense for Netflix to let Vinci shoot "Mank". It was his political thriller "House of Cards" that he filmed for them in 2013 that established streaming media as a medium for the existence of mature and complicated stories that were the monopoly of Hollywood's gold rush in the 2000s. China has long been abandoned. Is he worried that his key role in the rise of Netflix might pave the way for the decline of old-fashioned cinemas?
"There is still nothing better than seeing the curtain open and 700 to 1,200 people sharing a great movie together," he said. "But it hasn’t been my experience for a long time. You know, now it’s,'Will you turn it off, please?' Or,'Can I ask you not to talk?" As for technical considerations, "I am Netflix’s quality control is more impressive than any other film company. Is each movie designed for people to watch within 45 feet? To be honest, no. We put a lot of thought on the screen of "The Lost Lover" , But for most people, I have no problem watching this story on the 65-inch screen at home."
In addition, he went on to say that it was the film company that gave up the site. "Our current reality is that there are five big studios"-this is a cunning godfather stunt-"I don't want to shoot anything that won't make them a billion dollars. They don't want to do mid-priced challenging content. Business. And this is exactly the movie I made. What the streamers do is to provide a platform for the kind of movies that truly reflect our culture and fight with big ideas: where is the key? What people do Feeling anxious and uncertain. These are movies that have died five years ago."
Almost six years ago, adaptation of Gillian Flynn's fascinating popular novel "The Lost Lover" was like the final stage of escape for Vinci. "If we hadn't pointed out the book's position on the "New York Times" bestseller list, it would be impossible to make a movie with a discordant and distressing ending.
However, Vinci still believes that even in our era of blockbuster supremacy, film companies will still draw inspiration from thought-driven films. "No one would have thought that they had a chance to achieve greater success with "Joker" than "The Dark Knight"," he said. "I don’t think anyone would look at the material and think, “Yeah, let’s combine Travis Bickel from "Taxi Driver" and Rupert Putin from "The King of Comedy." One, and then trapped him in the betrayal of the mentally ill and peddled it for $1 billion."
"We were able to make that movie in 1999. In my opinion, it is still a miracle."
He compared Warner Bros’s early Oscar public relations focus on "Joker" with the blood-drawing panic of Fox’s early screenings of "Fight Club". "Afterwards, people in the film company generally believed,'Our career is over. '. We were able to make that movie in 1999. In my opinion, it is still a miracle."
On the other hand, for "House of Cards", Netflix's data algorithm has always shown that the show will be loved by subscribers, although it is difficult to get universal high praise at the beginning. "People say,'Washington doesn't work like this! Everyone is scared stupid!" He remembered. Before the production started, he and the creator of the show, Beau Willimon, "Spent a summer in Washington, just going to restaurants, eavesdropping on conversations, and stealing information from them. People said,'This has become the most blatant. , The most stupid, the most obvious...'I thought at the time,'That's verbatim."
But now? In 2017, Spacey was accused of sexual harassment. Although the charges were later dropped, he was included in the final season of the show. Does Vinci feel that this scandal has tainted its legacy?
"I really don't know," he said. "I mean, I have a good impression of "Manhattan"-a romantic story between a 42-year-old writer and a 17-year-old girl filmed by Woody Allen in 1979-"This is a time-stained movie. Unbelievable movie. But from a purely cinematic point of view, you know, it’s hard for me..." He explained intermittently that he had been thinking about a miniseries on the theme of abolition of culture, which recorded A series of gruesome celebrities were exposed. "Its core is about how we measure apologies in modern society," he elaborated. "If you give a genuine apology from the heart, no one Believe, then did you not apologize at all? This is a disturbing thought. But we are living in a troubled era. "
Vinci would be the ideal filmmaker to negotiate these issues. After all, it was he who preempted the global emotional darkness with "The Seven Deadly Sins" in 1995-this haze and desperate new noir film, miraculously became the 7th highest grossing movie that year. "The "Seven Deadly Sins" can make that kind of money, for me, just like those who pay for it, it is a big shock." He said. "But the beauty is that we persevered." He happily recalled negotiating with the production company and the American Motion Picture Association-the American Censorship Board-on the carefully crafted brutal murder in the film, which we actually didn't even watch. To the occurrence of these murders.
"Everything is insinuating," he said. "Be able to say to the Motion Picture Association of America:'Well, we didn't show it, we just talked about it. If you see it, it's just in your dirty little head.' For more than an hour, you have the opportunity to touch the entire brain of others. And the space between what you show the audience and what they experience is the most interesting part of the whole transaction."
"Mank" goes live on Netflix on December 4th
The original link of The Telegraph interview:
David Fincher: film studios'don't want to make anything that can't make them a billion dollars'
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