Director David Fincher is an icon when it comes to psychological thrillers (in my humble opinion), but you may know that he’s also defined by his purposeful visual storytelling and meticulous attention to detail.
As one of my favourite directors to date, I love reading about the intricacies of Fincher’s filmmaking and behind the scenes facts that make the movies so much more enjoyable, so I wanted to share with you some of my favourite revelations!
A lot of David Fincher film spoilers ahead: You’ve been warned!
1. One of the sets in Se7en was based on a real crime scene.
2. Detective Mills wasn't supposed to have a broken arm in Se7en.
3. Meat Loaf wore elevated shoes to play Bob in Fight Club.
4. Robert Downey Jr. asked for the straw trick to be included in Zodiac.
5. The John Doe notebooks in Se7en were real props created especially for the film.
6. There’s an interesting nod to the Swedish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Fincher’s reboot.
7. The “diabetic” reveal in Panic Room was subtly hinted at throughout the film.
8. Gone Girl production was shut down for four days because Ben Affleck refused to wear a NY Yankees baseball cap.
9. The rain in Se7en was due to Fincher’s contingency plan.
10. It took 12 hours to film the Fight Club sex scene.
11. The first scene of The Social Network took 99 takes.
12. Marla Singer’s phone number in Fight Club was the same one in Christopher Nolan’s Memento.
13. In Se7en, Mills' gun was firing Mexican blanks (which was not a choice of Fincher’s).
14. There’s a restaurant in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which had previously been used for a Daniel Craig film.
15. Fincher asked for Michael Douglas’s input as to whether or not Deborah Kara Unger should get the role in The Game.
16. Fincher relented having to do this scene in Panic Room.
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In Panic Room, there’s a sequence where Jodie Foster’s character tries to grab the phone but accidentally knocks it further away, and knocks over a lamp. When Fincher read the script he hated it but was convinced by the writer, David Koepp, because he stressed how the scene would work for a movie like this. In the DVD commentary, Fincher said he relented but decided he could only do it in slow motion. “If you’re gonna pander, pander”.
17. There’s an array of clever and subtle references to Citizen Kane in Mank.
18. All of the blood in Zodiac was added digitally.
19. There’s a Tyler Durden easter egg in The Social Network.
20. Fincher sent stern selfies to Rosamund Pike when filming Gone Girl.
21. The helicopter POV scenes in Se7en are all looking down at doubles
22. Edward Norton really did punch Brad Pitt in Fight Club.
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“I want you to hit me as hard as you can,” says Brad Pitt to Edward Norton in a hazy scene outside of a bar, and that’s exactly what Norton did. Before the scene played out, Fincher secretly went up to Norton and told him to really hit Pitt, and to connect with him somewhere. The end game? Norton went straight for the ear and Pitt’s reaction in the film is all genuine!
23. There’s more to the camerawork than meets the eye when it comes to Panic Room.
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Not only is the camerawork in Panic Room swift and stylish, but it also symbolizes something pretty interesting, particularly in the sequence where the camera moves through the house and each individual room. At first, the smooth sequence acts as a map of the house and raises tensions when audiences realize how close the burglars are to the two women in the house, but, the permeability of the camera also represents the burglars' aims and acts in contrast to their own failed efforts. The burglars become desperate to get into the panic room and they can’t do this as easily or effortlessly as the camera does.
24. The cast were genuinely frightened in the “Sloth” murder scene in Se7en.
25. There’s a nod to Fight Club in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
26. There’s a lot of Sony product placement in Panic Room
27. Fincher altered the opening credits of The Game because of the teaser the marketing department put out.
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If you’ve read a few of Fincher’s interviews, you may know there’s a small history of some friction between his vision for his film versus the marketing departments. For The Game’s initial teaser, the clip featured the marionette puppet being tortured, but the marketing department had other ideas and released, in Fincher’s words, “a crumbling face puzzle piece thing.” In the DVD commentary, Fincher stated he then added puzzle pieces to the opening credits so that the second teaser would bear a connection to the film, similar to the puppet that appears later in the movie.
28. Amy and Desi’s sex scene in Gone Girl was shot over two days.
29. Meg’s fear of small spaces is hinted at early on in Panic Room.
30. There’s a Starbucks cup in every Fight Club scene.
31. Fincher had to fight to keep spoilers out of the Gone Girl trailer.
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The whole reason Gone Girl works as a story is all down to that first, spoiler-free watch, and that’s why Fincher fought with studio executives to ensure the trailer didn’t give away the plotline. In the DVD commentary, Fincher said the studio was worried about audience tracking and someone suggested they use the shot of the female protagonist, Amy, returning home covered in blood, which Fincher shut down and won. He knew that even a brief shot of Amy outside of the norm would hint that something was amiss!
32. The “What’s in the box?” ending in Se7en was an accident.
33. Fincher wasn’t allowed to film on the Harvard campus for The Social Network.
34. The production team flew Oak trees into Lake Berryessa for Zodiac.
35. In Zodiac, San Francisco was created using CGI.
36. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton really learned how to make soap for Fight Club.
