110: David Fincher

No one makes movies the way David Fincher does. Alex and Nick discuss Fincher’s obsessive filmmaking process, B-movies vs. sentimental films, “Alien³” being better than people remember, “Se7en” being better than ever, Fincher’s dry humor, “The Social Network” as a contender for Best Film of the Century, the most difficult film David Fincher ever made, and so much more.
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram and Letterboxd.
Watch Alex's films at http://alexwithrow.com/
Watch Nick's films at https://www.nicholasdostal.com/
Send us mailbag questions at whatareyouwatchingpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

0:00

There's a moment described at the end of the scene where Nick Dunne has to reach into his duffel bag or his backpack and get out a baseball cap that he's bought at the airport. And he puts it on and walks away in hopes that people don't recognize him from the television and put together that that's him, that he's in their presence. And I really want it to be Yankee's cap. But being from Boston and not being very professional as an actor, Ben refused to wear a Yankees cap. And we, I mean, did not come to blows, but we had to shut down production for four days as we negotiated with Patrick Whitesell over what would be the best thing for the movie, what Patrick thought would be the best way to meet the requirements of the production and something that his client could live with, which I thought was entirely unprofessional. Hey, everyone, Welcome to What are you watching? I'm Alex witt throw. I'm joined by my best man, Nick Dostal. How are you doing there? Amazing, Amy. Oh, man, I love that one. I love that one. That might be one of my favorite ones so far. You were amazing. Yes, it was tough. Honestly, You know, I didn't. What? You never want to make it too obvious. The hours a week that I spend thinking about this. I mean, it takes up so much of my time. Other people use social media. This is all I'm doing. I'm just coming up. I'm just sitting there for like hours trying to think of these names. I thought this one worked well. Well, and I think it takes me like 10 seconds to think of it, but sometimes I want it to be like deeper cuts. I mean, people who know Fincher know who amazing Amy is, obviously, or people who know Gillian Flynn. But yeah, exactly. Would you like to hear runners up? Yes, But let me respond with how I'm feeling about being pleased, to be precise. Oh, yeah. I'm excited to be here. Be very precise. Yeah, that's the thing. We're actually welcome to the David Fincher podcast that whenever this comes out, whenever I decide we actually started recording this in like 2020 and we've been chipping away at it ever since. Yeah, it's true. We take after take after take. Nick's like Nick's take on the game. I haven't liked it, you know, for three years. So I'm like, watch it again. And we just keep redoing it. No, Jokic, we'll get it. We're going to get into all this about the Fincher process, how some, including me, consider him to be a modern day Kubrick. Oh man. Hmm interesting. I've never really Oh yeah put that that comparison to in my brain is is a is all the Twitter. Yeah well we'll get I can elaborate more on that but what were some of your runner ups. Cameron Winklevoss Yeah okay I think that one was what The laugh. That's what I want. I always want to laugh and I do that one with a hit because a little secret is that you, you've always disliked Armie Hammer, I mean, and now after the news about him and he's like, what? Working in the fucking Cayman Islands or something. I'm not joking. You can Google this. Really? Now You love him. That's what he's doing. Yeah. Now. Now you love him. Now you have all these text messages came out and you're like, Well, I really respect you, Jesus. I didn't know what he was all about. I should have gone with one of the Winklevoss. I thought that was. That was good. That was really. That was it. It was that are amazing, Amy. But sometimes the the funny ones you reject. Well, I mean, maybe you're just not funny. I'm fucking hilarious. All right, Well, since I opened the door for Kubrick, let me just get to that by way of introducing David Fincher here. Yeah. I've always felt that because Kubrick, his main allegiance, always lied in initially visual effects. That's why he takes. Yeah, four years to make 2001 a space Odyssey with our computers using just using just visual trickery, like literal in-camera trickery, pens floating on strings, like just crazy practical stuff. And then later he got so into building sets, building worlds. He passed away before computer effects really became a thing if he was still around. It's exactly the stuff we're going to talk about. If you all think you know about David Fincher's precision, this goes so much deeper than a hundred takes to film for the opening a social network. That's where it begins. And that's that is a high demand on the actors, the demands this man puts on his editors, his sound mixers. I've never heard of anything like it. Is it all necessary? I'm not ingrained enough in the professional film world to make that determination. I would never say make that determination about Kubrick either. I probably don't want every single director to make a movie this way, or else we would have so few movies like I don't even know how Fincher releases a movie out Sleep. You watch one of his making guns. You're like, How do you ever make a decision? Yeah, but yeah, there's there is a precision in all of his work, a direct link to him where you go, All right, This guy wants me to know that I'm watching a David Fincher movie. He wants me to know that he micromanaged every single facet of this pre-production, production and post-production so that he's taking all the credit and all the blame. Not to say he's a credit hog. He's not. Actually, he is very quick to give credit and he's very quick to put all the bad stuff on himself and be like, Yeah, whatever. That was my fault. If you think there's a bad performance in a David Fincher movie that's on him because he shot that damn scene and that performance a gazillion times and spent forever picking the take. It's just like with Kubrick, Is Tom Cruise Bad and Eyes Wide Shut? Not to us, but to a lot of people he is, but that's the exact performance Kubrick wanted, you know. And it also stems from his introduction to film being on film sets and learning every single job that there was Kubrick being into effects. That's how Fincher got his start to. The dude got started working for ILM, George Lucas's company. He worked on the effects for Return of the Jedi for Temple of Doom. Like, that's how he got into it. He moved to commercials, moved to music videos, and then comes Alien three by way of that. But and it's not just music videos. It's like some of these still most iconic music videos ever made. And he got this reputation by being a perfectionist, but it wasn't like I'm a perfectionist. What I say is, God, listen to everything. It's like if maybe if we pay attention to my vision, I'll give you one of the best music videos of all time. And people like Madonna, Paula Abdul, George Michael, they all identified this and they're like, Cool, yeah, he can do mine. I'm so excited that he brought this up. Oh, yeah, I love that. David Fincher has this ten year music video career ahead of anything that he's done before making a movie. Yeah, and this was during the era where music videos were actually a thing. Huge. And this guy directed some of the most iconic artists of the time. Oh, my God. And I watched a bunch of them just to kind of get a feel for cool because I thought I was like, you know, you always had some directors that that started doing some music videos. Michael Bay Yeah. Spike Jones A lot of yeah, a lot of a lot of guys of his generation did. Gore Verbinski There's a lot. Michel Gondry Yeah, his catalog is crazy, Crazy. So I just wanted to I'm glad you brought up because I didn't think it would be fair to push forward with David Fincher unless we gave some credit to His Holiness. Your music video history before he even touched a feature. Yeah, that's it. You want to do that now or. No, I just did it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, Rick Springfield, Paula Abdul, Madonna. I mentioned Don Henley. So Don Henley, Aerosmith, George Michael. I mentioned Michael Jackson. Like these are big, big people and these music videos still hold up. It sucks that music videos aren't a thing. I used to love them. God is is so intriguing to me that he pretty much lived in the world of pop. Yeah. And his sensibility as an artist seems to be the antithesis of pop. It does. It does, largely. But then he still acts like the guys behind Nine Inch Nails doing his music, which I know is in pop, but it's like he has I don't know. He's one of the most interesting pop culture figures that we have. And we're I yeah. What was your first exposure to him? What was the first time you saw a movie by him? And then kind of an addendum is when did you realize, okay, that's one of my guys. So the first one that I saw from him was definitely Fight Club. Oh, that was some introduction. Yeah. I didn't seen. Okay. Yeah, Yeah. Seven took me a while to get to. Yeah. So I don't even think when I first saw Fight Club it even registered to me who the director was, because I think that was the case for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. I had not seen anything previous to it. It was just Fight Club was just this phenomenon of a movie and it took everyone by storm and I saw it and I at the time was on board with it. I was just sort of like, I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen so much. I'm I'm sure. But we'll talk about when we get into the movie. But that was my introduction to him. And then I think Zodiac was probably from then on. Zodiac was the one where I was like, Oh, this is the new David Fincher movie. Because up until when I saw Fight Club in like 99 or 2000, I didn't see it in theaters. I saw it on DVD. So it must have been 2000. I had seen all of his work except for the game up until Zodiac. So Zodiac was the one where I was like, Oh, this is the new Fincher, Right? This is going to be so good. And obviously it was. We did a whole entire episode on it. Damn right, Love Zodiac. So mine was seeing seven by Myself summer of 1998. I this was not one I saw in the theater. I mean, my parents let me watch whatever, but they they had some restrictions. I mean, I wasn't allowed to watch this shit when it came out in 1995. Yeah, understandable. Yeah. This was one of those things where I was just like Home Alone. One of those weird nights when you're, like, home alone on a Friday, even though you're young. And I. It just terrified me. I remember it ending and, like, having to turn on all the lights and never having never seen something like that before. I mean, granted, I was 12, but being like, Oh my God. And then right there clicking in because I was already movie mad. So clicking and going, What else is this guy done? Yeah, and I'm going to see whatever else this guy does. So by the time Fight Club is coming around again, we will get to this. But Fight Club was a huge box office bomb. It just absolutely tanked. No one went to it. I saw it once in the theater. I made my mom take me. We were like the only people in there and it was the sun it opened. That was one that so many people, yourself included, found it on DVD, found it on video, and it just circled and kept playing and playing and playing. But I was the annoying one in my high school. Yeah. Cool. You guys like Fight Club? You got to go back to seven and then you got to go back to this even weirder little thing called the game that no one talks about. So yeah, I was basically I was in from the beginning and you know, when we do our director episodes, we both do our damnedest to watch as much as we can by the filmmaker eye. Something clicks in me and I'm always like, Oh yeah, I'm going to catch up with that and that, and then I'm good on the rest. And of course I end up watching everything like you jump three weeks ahead and I've watched everything, some for some movies. I'm like, All right, I'm going to have to get to that. Like, I don't want to skip anything. So I'm glad to get to that. And it's going to be might be a bit of a slog or whatever. Even with Scorsese Z, I watched all 25 and I don't love all 25, so I'm like a and might be a slug. I am not flipping out head over heels about every David Fincher movie, but I have had just a ball for the past three weeks doing this. I've watched every movie, I've watched every single special feature. I have all the DVD and Blu rays. I've listened to every commentary and have never gotten bored and just I've kept learning. That's why I love him so much, much like Kubrick. The more you watch the, there's always more shit to investigate now with every movie, not with every scene, but when he hits. Oh my God, there's just I'm going to talk about some trivia today for movies that are very popular and it's trivia that I've never known. And I will be very curious to know if you have or the listeners have. I was just my mind was blown. These movies 30 years old it's like with the fog there's also one thing besides this trivia that you're about to just like, you know, like lay down on all of well, I'm going to do it as I'm going to do as we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm also very curious because of of all of the work that you've done is like one thing that you've been texting me over the course of this whole entire like prep is Fincher sense of humor. Oh, my God. And I feel like this is a thing that that honestly only doing the kind of work that you do that you can pick up on. Because not everyone watches David Fincher interviews. And if you do and I have his his humor comes out a little bit, but so much of what you've latched on to that is transferring in his movies is this dry humor that may not even necessarily come across very obvious, but because of the commentaries, you're like, you had this like access to kind of be like, Oh, this is totally him being. He thinks this is really funny and kind of like throwing out some of those because I pick up on them. But I feel like you have like a really good sense of this because you've been saying how funny you think this guy is. To me. That's so funny. Ha ha. That you bring this up because I don't even have any. I have a few notes. I don't have many notes, period, but I have a few notes along the way, barely touching on the humor in his films, but David Fincher himself, So part of this perfectionist thing and we're going to get to this a lot like because another prompt I have is how do we feel about his process, about, you know, yeah, all the takes, the precision, the control freak being particular micromanager perfection is demanding exacting. David Fincher by pretty much everyone's account on every special feature in every interview I've read when he walks into a room, he's the smartest person in it. If you listen to a commentary or just watch a special feature from him, he knows more than every single technician does. He is telling the cinematographer, We're going to use this lens on this camera and this lens on this camera. He is telling the art director and the project designer how the fucking lights should look under the cabinets in Panic room. This is someone who has his hand in everything now. Is he always right? Is the smartest person always right? I don't know. We're here talking about art. There's so many different light fixtures you could pick to go under a cabinet. There are measurable light fixtures you could pick does the average viewer, and we see what a few frames of it does the average viewer care? Probably not. But he fixates on everything. This is not a man who, when he watches a take, he goes, Oh, yeah, let's cut, because that's the best performance he watches to take. And then goes through all the audio of every takes and listens for the best sentence delivery. And then if needed, he'll air that in. And then when he's picked the right sentence, he goes by syllable, by syllable, every line of dialog, every Fincher film, and is looking for the best syllable reading. I've never done that. I cannot even fathom doing that for every single. I mean, can you imagine doing that for Sorkin dialog? Oh, he's an obsessive, but I'm so glad that he's an obsessive of my favorite art form. Like, I love it. He's just so exacting. So most people are not going to watch a Fincher movie and be like, Oh yeah, that was a laugh out loud comedy. But yeah, if you watch seven with me, you are going to hear me die laughing at Brad Pitt so often. You know, it'd be great for me if we didn't start out kicking each other in the balls like I get all of the humor. So, yeah, when you watch an interview or listen to a commentary with David Fincher, it's a type of humor where his voice does not change. His voice always stays the same. It is incredibly dry and I have a funny I had no idea I was going to bring this up. He makes what is very clear to me is a joke on the Gone Girl commentary in which he says that he wanted Ben Affleck in one scene to wear a Yankees cap. But because Ben Affleck is so unprofessional and refused to wear a Yankees cap, they had to close down production for four days and the studio had to get involved. And that's how unprofessional Ben Affleck is. And he says it in that cadence. Now, when this movie came out, I'm not lying. I was watching that with a friend with the commentary on and he believed it. And we had to pause the commentary and we got into an argument and I was like, no, dude, that's his dry sense of humor. And he goes, No, he's like, Ben Affleck sucks. Like, you closed production down for four days. And I'm like, Do you have any idea how much money it costs to close down production for four days on a movie this size? That would never happen. These people would never work again. He's joking. So that's a type of Uber. Yes. It could literally provoke, you know, a hard discussions amongst friends. And I love it. I love his sense of humor so much. I just love it. He admitted in the press like this was in an article two days ago. He said, hell no, I haven't watched Fight Club in 20 years and I probably never will again. Do you look at your old school photos? And it's like, That's hilarious to me. I mean, we have Marty who's like in doing the press for Killers of the Flower Moon. Every single interview Marty does, he's asked about his previous work, you know, to talk to me about how this relates to so-and-so movie from 30 years ago or so. So movies from 40 years ago. And he's a good sport and does it centers like, I don't fucking know. I haven't seen it in 20 years. I just love it bad. So yeah, yeah, I do. I think he's very, very funny. I think he has my exact I wish I was as smart as him to have that sense of humor, but it's a sense of humor that I laugh at a lot. Oh, my God. He's just he's hilarious to me. And in the commentary for the game, he's like, Yeah, you know, a lot of people, they get confused about film. It's just it's pretty simple. Like you're an actor, you play the oboe, I'm the conductor, I'm conducting all of you. There are so many different musicians. You're one is the quicker you can make an actor understand that, the better it's going to be for everyone. This isn't a guy who, like, wants collaboration, you know, He has collaborators that he works with. But this is a guy I firmly think, that has a vision and knows exactly what he wants. With everything from the way a syllable sounds down to a light fixture, he may not know it and go, All right, the light fixtures I want. Yeah. If you go to this IKEA page. Yeah, no click. Go down. All right. It's that one. He may not know that, but he you know, if you show him 500, he's like, That's the one that's in my head. Yep. That's the syllable that's in my head. That's why I think he does hundreds of takes. It's because he's not. He knows what he wants. He just. But he will know it when he sees it. You'll know it when he sees it, when he sees it, and only Fincher can see it. So Jake Gyllenhaal, you can throw your hissy fits. I listen to your Zodiac commentary. Oh, boy. I wish I would have listened to that before we did our episode. I mean, the dude just sounds traumatized that Fincher made him do all these takes, and it's like, What did you think you were signing up for? So, yeah, we're going to talk about all this. But yes, love it. Love. Fincher What do you how do you feel about his filmmaking process? And I just rambled for a while, like, how do you feel about the position? And, you know, how do you think it would be to work for him as far as the precision goes? I think you said it best where there's it's good that we have someone like him, and it probably wouldn't be good if everyone was like him. The reason why Fincher movies are the way they are is because of that precision and not everyone can get the type of money he can get from studio. I mean part it. Let's let's be clear part of the reason why he's able to be this precise is because he is. Fincher Yes. Yes, he is a director on an elite level that when he's making a movie, he gets to negotiate as best he can, the amount of money it's going to take. And he has some clout to be like, No, I'm going to need so many more days than the average director. I'm going to need so many more of this, all of this, because I'm going to shoot this one scene for at least two days. So that's not something that everyone can do. And yes, he will say, I need $90 million, 100 shooting days and I swear to God I will not spend $0.01 more or go one hour over end. He never has. He's never gone over budget or overtime because that's how good he is at line item ing his productions and going, I know exactly how much time I need. If you don't give that to him, then you're not going to get a Fincher movie. That's that's that So and that's fair to like be like, Listen, I'm not going to be sloppy about this. I'm not going to waste time. I'm just going to take time. Yeah, big difference. So I love that. And I and that's not something because I know, you know, this is always really funny to talk about the acting part of this because fucking the actors, they, they, they tend to always use David Fincher's multiple takes as a sarcastic comment or they'll like you'll hear often like, what are we going to do? We can do Fincher style and we're just going to do this a bunch of times. If I know that that's what I'm getting myself into, then I need to prepare differently. Yeah, going into it, you can't prepare yourself for that. There's no way that you can just sit down and be like, Okay, I'm about to start a Fincher movie in a month or so, so I got to get ready. But you do need to understand you're going to be doing something that is going to task you and test you in ways that you've never been tested in and not so different from the same way you had to prepare for a Clint Eastwood. Where? Okay, holy shit. I'm about to start production on a Clint Eastwood movie where I'm only going to get two takes. Max. Yep. Like to hit this. So what do I need to do to, like, prepare myself mentally, energetically for this? My favorite interview I ever heard about an actor talking about Fincher's process of the multiple takes was Andrew Garfield on the Sam Jones podcast. He talked about how it's hard because, you know, you have to get to this idea where like after seven takes that's just warmup. Yeah, but the tendency for actors is let's hit the ground running and let's try to do our best. Let's make every take perfect and then as takes go on, you start to feel like you're fucking up. You start to feel like, take four. Oh shit. I feel like I feel like take two was really good. Your actor brain will start telling you what you think you've done. He goes by Take 20. You just start to sort of I don't know if it was take 20 that he said but he but at a certain number you just give up you've you've tried as an actor you've you've given your emotional capacity, you've, you've delivered you've and then and then at a certain point you're like, fuck it, man. I don't have anything left. So I'm just going to say these lines and blah, blah, blah. And then at a certain point you just lose all sense of anything and you're just doing. And that's what Fincher is trying to get at. Yeah. And, and Garfield was saying that when that would start to happen, it you just reach a whole other level that you just weren't you're not aware of as an actor and you're just operating and you're just doing it. And things are happening in ways that you could have never planned for, prepared for, and that's what you're trying to get at. So he really enjoyed it, but he did seem like you just have to know that that's what that is and you just have to just give yourself to it and not complain and not try to fight it. And that would be the best that. So I like it for the same reason that we're talking about it. I'm like, I wouldn't want to do that all the time. But if I'm working for a guy who is this good at what he does, let's go. Yeah. And when you made your point is that you said, like an actor, they'll be thinking in their head, Oh, I was good in take two or I was good and take eight. And this is how so many actors think they're thinking. I just gave a good performance. Yeah, but you may not have the entire movie in mind. The direct. That's the director's job to have the entire movie in mind. So while you're sitting here screaming and sobbing and crying like Andrew Garfield did with the line, this is on the special features on Social Network. The line I was your only friend. He delivered that a lot of times with sobs, with tears and, you know, and they liked it. And then that is not the take they went with in the movie because it just didn't fit the movie. So it's like, Hey, you can work yourself up to those sobs in tears 12 times. But that may not be what Fincher thinks fits for the entire movie That may be giving your character just a little too much sympathy. I know it was hard and he and Garfield understands that. It sounds like, honestly, the only movie he's really had difficult times on with this stuff is Zodiac, because those three guys were they were not ready for it and they they just weren't in it to one degree or another, kind of ruined them. And they've talked about it to varying degrees. But like even Robert Downey Jr, the next year he's off to comic book land. And yeah, he is just now returning to us like he's he didn't you know it's very demanding but my favorite explanation of it is Rooney Mara who went directly from Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. So demanding, so many shooting days, so much preparation, take after take after take really hard material directly to Steven Soderbergh. Side effects, where she's getting three takes max and she's like, I have to bend to what they do. And there, believe me, there is a difference with Fincher. Three is nothing. You, Mase will still be rehearsing like, Yeah, three with Soderbergh, is it? So it's a totally, you know, you have to adapt to their style and I love that. Just get on board and cool, you'll have a good time with it. But let's get into this to this filmography, because we do it. He's made 12 movies, he's made 12. We're going to talk about 11 today because we do have the killer Wait till now, but we have the killer coming out the latest. David Fincher movie that Netflix is producing. Yeah, we're going to start all the way. It's beginning. We start with the very troubled beginning that everyone agrees was troubled. Even David Fincher. It's very rare when we do directors episodes where we talk about a movie that's that the director is completely written off and just wants no part of and doesn't want any credit for. But that is David Fincher with his first film, Alien Three, released in 1992. I have some thoughts on this one. I none of which are going to be too profound. I think it is the least effective film he's made. I think most everyone would agree with that. In the release of The Killer, there are a lot of lists flying around of David Fincher ranked. This is almost certainly ranked last, if it's even ranked at all, because some people just out and out skip it. But, you know, we kind of touched on it because I never seen that. I can't even call it the director's cut. But the longer cut, which is like a half hour longer, it was much better. I liked it. I had to buy the special, you know, 4K six pack of all the movies. But what I realized watching is, you know, this is this guy's first movie, okay? His first movie, and a lot of other directors from his generation did not start this big. This is a first movie with a $60 million budget. It's a big swing. For better or worse. It was going to be a big swing. Fincher is not an idiot. He loves Alien. He loves aliens. Is a third movie ever better than the first two? No, but he he wants to switch into features. But like Soderbergh and Tarantino, their first movies were made for $1.2 million. Alexander Payne. His first movie, it was made for $2 million. Spike Lee His first movie was made for 175,000. Yeah, those four guys have all gone on to win Oscars. Fincher has never won an Oscar. I'm just trying to say his material was a huge swing for his first movie. That's it. And I appreciate that. That's all. He put it all on the line from the get and didn't work out to his liking. But, you know, without Alien three, we do not have the film the Fincher process. We do not have I'm doing this my way or the highway, and that's pretty much what he's insisted on to different degrees every movie since. But from Fight Club On, it is a David Fincher show and it's it's almost like a fool's errand. Like you're trying to. Exactly. You're coming off of Ridley Scott and James Cameron. Yeah. And who who just redefined genres with both of these movies. Mm hmm. The action sci fi horror thing, Every one of those movies uniquely redefined what it was. So here you go. We have a brand new script that wasn't even really derived from the source like the other two were. Well, the Wikipedia page is like, great, because it's like, so and so, scripts, so and so script. So I mean, there was like ten different versions of this thing. Exactly. Yeah. So you know that if that's the case, this isn't all that great to start. I mean, I and no disrespect, but at the time we just were a director for hire. We're going to give it to this music video. Guy. Exactly. And, and you know what, though? My take. It's not that bad. It's not. This is bad. Not it's not. It's not better than one or two. No, no. But it's not that bad. You know what? The sets are huge and they're fucking cool. Yeah, tomography is cool. Like the shaved head, the bar codes. That was all Fincher's idea. It's. It's not a bad movie. It's not my favorite. It's far from my favorite Fincher movie. It's easily the worst experience he ever had making a movie, but it is a far cry from one of the worst movies ever made. Yeah, not in that. Not the epic disaster that some claim it to me. It's just not. It's not. That's the distinction that I want to make, because the legacy is that this movie is just a complete abomination. And I think there's actually other movies in that franchise that are worse than the fourth one is, Yeah, here's one with what it's like. She's a clone now. I don't know. And the fourth game in my my 4K set, I was like, I don't need that shit, man. Or maybe it's a Blu ray set. I shouldn't talk at a turn I could look at. Anyway, it does have Michael Winkle, though, so I mean, there is some some bonus points to it. Well, even that it has a great kill because someone gets sucked through like a tiny window in the spacecraft and he gets like, sucked out of it. And it's like not it's an alien that happens to Alien. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that like, twice, literally. But you know what Node is in there? It's always to hurt. But yeah, I like that movie less than Alien three, certainly. Absolutely. Yeah. So, so that's, that's really all I got for this one is that it's he did what he could do and for someone's debut movie set up for failure you could do worse. Yeah. And it made money. It made 160 million on a 60 million budget. Like, again, it's not going to never going to have the cultural, financial critical cachet of the first two. But yes, it was a legitimate director for hire movie. And yeah, he basically cast it out in editing. He's like, I want nothing to do with this. He has nothing to do with the the assembly of the longer cut, nothing to do with the special features. You just see him in the background some of the time. But it was a terrible experience. One, he said a lot of things about it, but at the time he said I'd he disavowed filmmaking, saying I'd rather die of colon cancer than make another movie. And. Fincher Is that whether that's part of his humor, which it kind of sounds like it is, he's no stranger to making broad statements like that. But few years later, we have this hero of cinema. It's a hero of cinema because he's never really had any controversy behind him, like, say, peers like Harvey Weinstein. Mm hmm. But in the nineties, there's a really big producer in Hollywood named Mike DeLuca. He's still making movies today, but he worked for a small company called New Line Cinema. And what Mike DeLuca did there is he foster new talent and he encouraged that new talent to make good movies. He is the one who went to David Fincher and said, I know how Alien three win, but I have this funky little script called seven that I think you would be perfect for it. He is the one who gave Paul Thomas Anderson a shot on Boogie Nights after PTA had a horrible experience on Hard eight. Mike DeLuca is responsible through New Line Cinema for American History X Magnolia Below your favorite movie? Important guy. Wow. Yeah. Fincher did not have all of the Fincher isms on seven. He still did a lot of takes, but he did not have full control. I'm not sure if Mike DeLuca gave him full cut, but after seven and after the game, he builds up his clout. He delivers his movies on time, on budget. They make money. Seven was a fucking smash hit. I again, because I wasn't around. Like, this is a time when adults, like, went to movies. This movie made so much money. It's crazy. But without Mike DeLuca, we may not have the venture that we have today, and I just that's how I want to start the seven conversation. We have been no stranger to saying, I don't want to speak for you, but that seven is damn near our favorite movie of 1995, one of my favorite movies of the nineties and it is my favorite Fincher film. I'm not. You know, we usually save our rankings to the last, but it's stupid to even hold it back. Like, why bury the lead? Why put the head in the box on this one? Let's just come right out and say it. This is absolutely I love David Fincher. I love his movies. He's made more polished movies than this one. He certainly has. Rewatching this, like twice in the past two weeks. I'm like, this fucking thing, man. This thing still has it. I love it. I love this film. I'm glad we're I'm glad we're we're getting this out of the way right now because I feel the exact Why not? You know, why not? It is my number one. Fincher As we get into our rankings later, there's no movie in the history of my watching and movies that I've learned more about how to make a movie than seven. That's awesome, man. So I took a film class in high school because I had all I did was watch movies. But I never like I never really thought about the art form of it. This is how ridiculous it was. Like I was watching movies all the time, enjoying them, taking them in, getting something out of them. But I never looked at them artfully. Mm hmm. Until she's like, I want you to take a scene from a movie and I want you to break everything down from the performance to the sound to the editing, to everything. And I was like, Oh, wow, I've never really thought of a movie like this. And so I did the gluttony scene, Correct. Any of what you had to do is you had to play the scene on this TV screen in front of the class and do like a pause, talk about and everything like that. And when I started looking at a movie from this way, it changed the way I looked at movies. So this is the first movie that I've ever done this with, and I can do it forever. I'm thinking like you all the time. The thing that you just described is what was like born into me. And I have no idea why. Like from when I started watching movies, that's how I was breaking them down. But I mean, I kind of love this exercise. I love that she taught this like this cool exercise, but I love it that you picked that. But this is first time this was the first movie that I kind of like learned about the art of making a movie cut. And when we do that, when we're young, we develop such close relationships to this movie, these movies that them the mood that it instills from the beginning, just all of it is, Oh, my God, all of it. The dread, the turmoil. And this I mean, we talk about feel bad, like it's like the hippest, coolest, feel bad movie I've ever seen. But Fincher and his DVDs, these are largely responsible for helping to educate me so much on the art form, all of his commentaries. And then he has extensive making of features on almost all of his seven doesn't really have that because DVDs weren't a thing when it was becoming a thing, but when the DVD era was thriving, we got from like basically Fight Club to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. All those Blu rays and DVDs are incredible. And then by Gone Girl, it's like, Who cares about these DVDs anymore? He gives us a commentary, but there's no making of. Then for Mank, there's just no physical media, which is like, so criminal to me. I own every single Fincher movie on disc and it's like, God, I would love to. I don't know what making of Mank or talk to me about the sound design. Talk to me about what you did with it. Talk to me about all the stuff. Back to seven, though. This is an American crime masterpiece. It's not an Oscar movie, I think. Well, I'm going to mention this a lot as we go through his work. Yeah, Sometimes he has gone out of his way to make a sentimental heartstrings Oscar movie. Sometimes he doesn't. Seven is not that it is. Can I set out to make a great serial killer movie? And in the process, he perhaps made the best serial killer movie where you see like, one murder, you know, and it's in a wide shot toward the end. Everything else is just crime scenes. It's brilliant. It's fucking brilliant. It really is. And this is I've said it before, but this is The Knick, though. So where are you watching Note Perfect award is seal of approval. There we go. It is. It is. It is. It is. There's not one false note across the board in this movie in any sort of way. Don't you love a my So like my mom's sense of humor perfectly. I'll never forget watching this with her. And when the phone rings and Aaliyah returns and he picks it up because it's not in my desk like, Oh my God, I just like, laughed so much that I love shadow Meals, like. And you know what? This is one, if not my favorite Gwyneth Paltrow performance. I really like the softness she brings to it. I love her first scene when she's like, William, meet David. It's yeah, that's like such a good, realistic line of. Like these cops who no one wants to stand down, you know, no one wants to be show like any vulnerability or anything. And then here you are. Yeah, you're at my house for dinner. So excuse me while I go wrestle with my dog. That's why I love this movie. Because it lives as much in the quiet moments as it does in the big moments, you know? Yeah, it does. And if you do, Owen, because I think a lot of people probably do own these movies and a lot of people maybe have never thought to put in that second disc. If you aren't interested, what's really cool about seven is that they include a lot of deleted scenes or storyboards for deleted scenes, and there's a very different first and final 5 minutes of this movie that present a very different tone of it. And they they made all the right decisions. They really did, because it could have gone any number of ways. They shot it entirely new opening like the beginning of the movie as is, is not what was scripted. And, you know, I just love that he's gone back and tinkered with some of his films, usually for the better for me, but he's never touched this one. And that speaks to it, you know, 95, What a fucking year. What a year favorite. David Fincher. Favorite Michael Mann. I mean, it's it's just a great year. Moving on. I can't believe that's all we're going to spend on seven. But this ones, it's like, what else can you say? All right, one one question. What is the most if you had to envision how they all went down, what's the worst death in the movie? Oh, man. Oh, because we we see one. We see wrath. But then how would be the worst way to go? I mean, is bad. You know what I missed in gluttony or what I'd forgotten until this viewing to make his stomach burst, he ended up, like, kicking him in the stomach. Yeah. To finally make it burst. They say that in the autopsy, I was like, Yeah, the arc. The autopsy is actually the most gruesome, like, stuff of like, what's that holds up? The stomach, I hear, is they have no idea what you're talking. That idiot. He's a gentleman. We have ourselves a homicide. Like, Oh, my God, It's so. It's free, market free. But just look at it. It's like, you fucking clown, idiot. God, I'll answer your question. But there's a scene in the office between Charlie, Hermie, Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt where if you just watch the way the camera moves the entire time, it's perfect editing. Perfect. It's perfect when it decides to punch in. Yep. Yep. And, and the power dynamic between all of them, it's just masterful. I have studied when I have needed because a lot of people find this hard to believe. The hardest scenes to pull off in movies are conversations. I'm not joking. How do you shoot this in a way that's original? How do we cut on it? Is it more important that we see that person delivering the news or more important that we see a person receiving the news? It's very, very difficult. He is one of the best people to study for for this for conversations, dinner, table, this or that, because they never get boring in it. So what and and another thing about Fincher sorry, but another thing about him is this dude is a technician like he doesn't try to he obeys film laws like he doesn't break the quote unquote line. He doesn't These are what his crew talks about a lot. Like he's just precise, but he obeys film structure, He obeys film laws. He's not doing like crazy stuff. And that's another reason, like he's just someone who's making movies at the most precise expert way possible. I mean, even though he didn't die, I think sloth. Oh, he's dead now. I mean, he dies eventually. He dies. I mean, he's. Yeah, yeah. Because they're like, you know, if you shine a flashlight. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I love that actor too. He said a lot. You know, he swallowed a bit of his tongue and go, Yeah, yeah, I will never forget that. Just just seem to clearly, like, reach down there. Oh, it's like it's it's the most terrifying scene. Like, I think if I had to go with, like, the worst scare of my life, it's that and it gets me every time I can't look at it. This must be the first one. Look dated exactly one year ago today. I got a hair sample. I got a stool sample. I got this, I got fingernail slap madness. You got what you deserved. He's alive. His life, Tucker. The life that comes down to your. It's just so. It's. It's so good. It's so it does. Why seven works is also every time that I watch it, the noise. Lord knows how many times you made him do it. But the noise that Morgan Freeman makes when he figures out what's in the box, it's a guttural like, Oh, like that is exactly how the audience is supposed to feel like when you hear the new and and you're like, you're literally thinking, what is in the box? Like, what's in the fucking box, dude? And he's running, Throw your gun down. It's like, this is it. If you can manage to show this movie to someone who's never seen it, what a fucking treat. I mean, it's like a morbid treat, but it is. It's just a delight because they're like, Wait, how? And it's fucking twisted as the movie is. He's explained to us. He's had a guy explain to us what he had to do to achieve the lust murder. We have been told explicit horrors that John Doe is done. You still don't think he would have done this? Yeah. You know, boom. You're like, Oh, my God. It's like one of the great all time endings. Like, it's just it's. It's so good that lust killing is pretty, pretty disturbing. Oh, I did not when I was 12. I didn't understand that. And honestly, it took me like, I think my brother had to watch the movie and probably very crudely explain to me what what that was like. I remember pausing the Polaroid and being like, I don't get this. Like, can someone explain to me? And that was definitely my brother. It was like, All right, let me tell you how this goes. And, you know, I remember showing seven to my college girlfriend and great date night. Yeah, great date night. Great. Like you never seen seven. Oh, man. Let's watch it. And we got to that scene and we had to turn it off. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm not. Yeah, I mean, she should be like, that's. It's such a completely awful and disturbing thing, but I'll never forget that. I was like, Oh, wow, we're having to turn off the movie right now. And again, the commentary so great because David Fincher is like, This is Leland Orser as the lust victim, we had to keep that thing on him all day. It was it was a tough day for Leland because, you know, he's like, Get this thing off of me. Get it? Yeah, it is great. We love him. Like, you know, it's. You're very bad things, guy Like, Oh, yeah, performance. He knows how to cast so well. I always love his you know you will see character actors are supporting players pop up occasionally they'll do repeat performances and Fincher movies with the exception of Brad Pitt, you do not see stars returning because of the demands. Like he it's a one it's a one stop shop usually. And I think they all understand that at this point. You know, like even Jared Leto's done too. But supporting is what I mean. Supporting performance is a cutter. He's never been a lead. He's been second, third and fight club. He is maybe like eighth on the call sheet. He's probably third or fourth in Panic Room. You'll get John. I love John Gates. He plays Ed in Zodiac and he plays Zuckerberg's lawyer in the Social. I love that guy. You know, he'll you'll see that Charles Dance was an Alien three and he played William Randolph Hearst in Mank. So you'll you'll see you know Rooney Mara small part and social network she's a star and dragon tattoo and then she hasn't been in a movie ever since. So yeah, the game is like the the forgotten stepchild of David Fincher. No one talks about it. No one remembers it. When we're gearing up to do a director podcast, I'll talk to my dad and go and, you know, he's a big Fincher fan. Had had had no recollection of the game, had never remembered seeing it. I was describing it to him, who's in it? And he's like, I have no idea what this movie is. And that's really common criterion did really well buy the movie by picking it up and releasing it a few years ago. I own it. This is just one of those twisty, weird movies that I stick up for constantly. I absolutely love it. I think it's Fincher's least discussed film. I think a lot of people think Fincher went from seven to Fight Club and that's like, Yeah, and that's the thing that's in the middle of his career. But right here you have like this imperfect, I will say imperfect, twisty Kafka s Hitchcock thing where it's like a guy is caught in this endless loop of misfortune, then he cannot get his way out of it. There's something about that that I love. I imagine still, the issue that a lot of people have with this are in its last ten, 15 minutes. And that's, you know, as Fincher has said about a lot of his movies, a bit of a swing and a miss. And I'm not even here to like argue with that. Almost always when I talk to people about this movie, it is with the ending, but I think it's imperfect. But yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. At any rate. All right. Well, that's great that we're talking about it, because the biggest issue that I have, because is the end. This is what this is what everyone always says. And it's kind of it maybe it's a little bit of like an overthinking because once you get into the well, how they do this and how they do this and how they do this and how that match up, you can apply that to the entire movie. Oh, yeah. The ending that I have an issue with, with this movie, and I guess it's tricky because I'm saying it's the least seen Fincher film, but we're trying to talk about the ending. So I guess like you can skip ahead a few minutes until you hear us talking about Fight Club, but the final coda on the street near the car. Oh yeah, I do. With falling off the building. That to me, I don't have a problem with. Oh, no, I don't have a problem with the falling off the building. My. Oh, so it's, it's that coda that you have an. Okay, so do I. So let's open it up. Let's go. My issue with the movie. Well, number one, let me just say, the first time I saw it, I really liked the first two thirds. And I started getting into that. What just said about, like the logistics of how this would actually go, like if someone. Sure put this on that got in my way. I did away with that with the second viewing, and I had a much more enjoyable time with the movie from start until the last 5 minutes. But he's just okay with all of this. Like he just had like, like everyone just comes around and like, there's no like, and I'm, and I can't believe I'm saying this because I don't think like this when it comes to storytelling, but I'm like, What did he learn? Like, what was the point of all of this? If he just comes around and is like, that was a good one. Yeah, yeah, you guys really got me. Like, like there was like, I think he's learned stuff, like he talks to Armin mueller stall and he's like, apologizing. I think he's learned a little bit about humility, but I think that this is what you take issue with, because I, I just don't like the stuff out on the street. You know, Michael Douglas kind of had a bit of a solved all this in the commentary. He goes, When I am standing up off that big like raft that inflatable thing. And Sean Penn goes, Ladies and gentlemen, my brother. So and so. He wanted the movie to end there. There's a wide shot of everyone cheering. And Michael Douglas is like, You should have just ended there. You should, should have been it. Yeah. And and I went, So there's no signing the bill. There's nothing like that. But I kind of went, yeah, that is better that, that preserves your twilight zone ness, which is what he was going for better. So when he goes, you know, ladies and gentlemen, my brother, you still get the joke of I went to Mexico and all I got is this stupid tweet, which is like fucking hilarious to me. Yeah, love that gag. And then yet you go up in the wide and then we're left sitting there going, Wait, what? Yeah. Huh? This is all it's in the explanation that kills it a little for me. Yeah, but I, but I, but I do want to be clear. I don't have an issue with, like shooting the brother and falling off the building. No class. That's fine with me. All that circumstance, all that, the whole movie is that if you have an issue with that. Yeah, you have an issue with the whole movie. I do think, you know, the movie's 128 minutes long, maybe 120 would have been a good thing here. You just make a hard cut. So this is interesting. We actually agree. I thought we were going to disagree, but we're yeah, we're in full agreement. For the first time ever, you and I are in full agreement. Full agreement? Yeah. I mean, that's a great cut, because if he would have had, like his brother come out with this shirt and then in like everyone who was a part of it is coming up to him, it's almost like that cheesy, like flashbulb moment. Yeah, yeah. We're just stuck on Douglas's face as he's just processing it all like we are. And then you leave it. Dude, if you cut the credits right after that, I'm, like, getting chills. That's fucking rad. It's a really cool. Really cool. Yeah. And yeah, because that gives it he fucking it helps pay for half of the fucking thing. Yeah. He's like, it wasn't cheap. You want to split it. Oh you old so-and-so up at some point I forgot how I think someone did the math and I think it was like, I forget. I think it was 40 million or something. I don't know. Yeah, it was some ridiculous just. Yeah. And then, and then the other part is like the part where when he goes out to get the girl at the end, she's on her way to do this again. I Know that now. And he's like, Yeah, I'll just go with you. Like I'm this, I'm almost worth$1,000,000,000. Like, I don't buy it. I thought, I'm going to go have a drink with you at the airport. Like, yeah, the air like, huh? Yeah. But that part has always been silly to me. I've never liked that. And the alternative alternate ending was him just walking out of the hotel room and walking. Walking out of the hotel onto the street and walking down the street alone. I like that better. I don't. That could have been better. She should have. Christine. Claire, Derek Hair UNGAR. I like her performance, but she should have been used as she was, which was like just a utility as part of his game. Yeah. I don't. I don't need any fucking romance. Keep going now. We don't need that. But okay, so I agree with you there. But there is one tiny little reach that I had to bring up that it doesn't ruin anything, but it is a bit of a reach. Go for it. So it's the scene. It's the scene where he's in the restaurant with his ex-wife and then he sees on the TV that actor who is the crazy guy James Report. Yeah. Yep. And he's doing the like the aspirin commercial. Yep. And he goes, He's an actor. He's an actor, and he rips out the Yellow pages, and then he just goes to the Chinese restaurant. I watched this last night. I was like, How the hell did he figure out where this guy is with the Chinese food? And you have to go back to the very beginning when he shows up there and he literally hands on the bag Chinese like, Oh, you ever played Chinatown in Chinatown? Now, this is my issue is like, okay, movie logic wise, you have to place that in here. So I can't necessarily argue it, but it's such a completely dismiss set moment by the actors to where I'm like, I don't think I can make that connection that like I'm walking into if I'm Michael Douglas character, I'm walking into this place being like, it's piqued my interest. What am I doing here? I don't like the way I'm being treated. I'm holding Chinese food. I don't give a shit where this is from, but the own. And after everything you've been through, you see the one guy and you're like, I know how I'm going to find him because damn it, that Chinese place will know who he is. Yes. I'm like, okay, that's it's a it's a bit of a stretch. And my argument, my counter is that the game has enough funds to where they put that commercial on in the restaurant for him to for him to see. They want him to make the connection. And honestly I think none of this is in the movie, but I think if he hadn't made the leap, they would have kept planting seeds along the way or been like, Here's another commercial for you. Here's commercial of him doing the Chinese doing a commercial for the Chinese restaurant. So but I think because he's a sharp guy, he gets it. But he a part of we did we've kind of shitting the ending a little bit but part of even reborn being like, I'm so glad you did that because if you didn't, I was going to have to push you. Makes me believe that there are contingencies involved of like plan BS plant seeds. There's divers in the water in case he drowns, you know, all, all that stuff. But yeah, like that. The whole movie is a reach in that way like it is. And it seems like every little thing has to happen and it's fine. It doesn't ruin it for me at all. But that was the one out of all of the different things where you could examine this movie. And that's fair. It's it's a lot of connections. Then he goes and he's arguing with the woman at the Chinese restaurant that he turns around and sees them on the wall and it's. Yeah, yes, of course, it's an hour later. And I don't think an audience is going to register that tiny moment because the actors didn't. Maybe if they made a big enough deal, like if Douglas said something like when he said, Oh, it's the best food in Chinatown, Douglas would be like looking at the bag and being like, Well, this. No, it's this. But yeah, some. Fincher also doesn't treat his audiences. He doesn't spoon feed his audiences. He does like, which is one thing that makes rewatching his movies so fun because I know I saw the game directly after I watched seven. Like I probably rented it the next night. So I'm like, What the hell else is this guy done? And that of course, I definitely would not have caught that. But the second time you do and you're like, Oh fuck that. Is it Like the game has so much that's of the guy that tells him about the ink blotch on his, you know, coat is the guy he signs the bill with. Like he has all of that stuff and yeah, okay. So I was going to say, knowing about the ending, do you have like a fun ride with it? Because I think this is like a ride and I think it's actually like a really cool, dark, kind of twisty movie. I love what Sean Penn's doing in it. Like, Oh, kind of being like the smarmy guy in the beginning. He is. He's like, and cool to see him come in when he was like his star was I mean, he was a movie star. Come in, play like, you know, the second, third lead. I just I love that Douglas kills it like, he's so fun to watch. Oh, God, Michael Douglas is so good at it. And he had a great time making the movie. So it was really hard because a lot of the movie was shattering nights, so that's hard just filming at night. But he did not have an issue with the Fincher process at all. He said, The one thing I ask of directors is that when I come out of my trailer and show up on set, that's my time. Everyone else has had their time. The technicians have their time to set up the shot, the director, everyone has their time. But when I come out, I'm not waiting. They're on set like I'm permitted my five, ten, 20 minutes to get into my mode. And then once we say action, then it's my time with the director. And if he needs me to do 60 take takes of it, then I'm doing 60 takes of it. If he needs me to do three, then I'll do three. He the pros. It's always the pros who like, don't you know, they've never really complained about this stuff. It's, you know, Yeah, a movie. And the next movie we're talking about, the commentary is very because they have Fincher, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt on there together. And I'm like, this may have been a mistake to put all of you on here together because the two of you vibe really well. One of you seems to have had a lot of difficulty. But yeah, so another thing I want to say about the game and their good working relationship and my affinity for Fincher's humor, I think parts of this movie are funny as shit and I've always wondered if that was on purpose. And I'm listening to it and to the commentary. And Michael Douglas is like, No, Fincher and I work so hard to put literal screwball humor into the movie, like constantly getting drinks spilled on him, the pen licking, unable to open his briefcase and always slipping out in the hallway like you're watching it. You're like, Oh, this Mr. Business Man here is kind of coming on. Well, the most tightly wound guy, even his fucking birthday cupcake is, like, hermetically sealed this perfect crystal glass that probably costs more than every dish I currently own. The great Carol Baker is has made Baby Doll. Baby doll. God, I love her kindergarten cop. I love her. I so I love this movie. I absolutely love it. To me, one thing I will say in favor of the ending because clearly decisions were made and this is what they did. They presented it, is that it does end with a whisper in some of his movies, Do Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ends with a Whisper seven Ends with a Bang Fight Club ends with a bang in the form of several buildings exploding. Sometimes he does end with a whisper. And when I accept it as that, I can appreciate it a little bit more. But I still. I love the game. I really do. Very, very fun ride. David Fincher has made 11 films so far. The 12th one is being released in select theaters this week. You're probably going to have to go to an Alamo or Landmark to see it because the killer is going to be premiering on Netflix. AMC, Regal. Those bastards won't pick it up. You got to go to Alamo. I love Alamo. I would own stock in Alamo. I love them. Go to them all the week. Whatever schlub David Fincher is made 1212 movies. His films have been nominated for 40 Academy Awards. His films have won nine Academy Awards. And I still think that David Fincher at the top of his obituary will say the director of Fight Club. This is probably true. A lot of people. The David Fincher film to end all David Fincher films. What I want to say is because of the reputation that it has received since it's been released, I think I've actually ended up turning my back on it a little bit and just thank God I open my heart, rewatched it twice for this podcast and actually like it more now than I have probably for like the past 15 years. Because now knowing more about like mental health, oh, Tyler comes around when moral is introduced because he needs Tyler to respond to Marley. I guess I never really I have watched this and examined it, but I was also younger, examining it, you know, seriously at the age I am now, I liked it better. I respected it more. I agree. I actually very cool. I was really taken with this movie. Like I said, when I did see it in that cult following that it developed because I really related to at a young age, Edward Norton Oh yeah, even though I was not an adult, but I really did not enjoy growing up in high school. So I very much latched on to movies and characters where they had a complete dissatisfaction with their reality and developed a very, very cynical and sarcastic mask for it. That's interesting. I get it. I identify with characters who are like just beaten down by life and I was like, Oh, I get this, so I get it. I get you're identifying with this sense of like isolation stuff. I yeah and and I really I into Edward Norton's credit I really enjoyed his performance in this I really his cadence his the deadpan just like dead when the snooty cat and the sneaky dog you know Yeah yeah all of it I just really really I still when I watch it, it's my favorite part aspect of the movie is connecting to this character's dissatisfaction of life through Edward Norton's performance. So but that being said, the movie does still lose me a little bit in the third act. Absolutely. Once Project Mayhem is introduced I'm yeah, that's you're exhausting yourself. I felt that since the first time I saw the movie opening weekend in the theater, and I felt that when I watched it yesterday with the commentary on and I still felt that I'm like, it does start to lag a little bit. It's you. This is a movie that is 139 minutes and you feel that length. It does. It doesn't sound long by today's standards, but you feel it running over 2 hours. You're like, okay, man, okay, let's let's bring it home. Let's bring it home. Yeah, let's go. When we and I felt this even the first time I saw it, when we get the big reveal and I don't want to say what it is in case there is anyone who has not seen the movie, because far be it for us. And what are you watching to spoil what is supposed to be one of the biggest, coolest reveals for for a 24 year old movie I am Jack's complete lack of surprise find yeah spoiler. Sure. Whatever. I mean, come on. Yes. Yes, you're right. You're right. We do. We we work very hard to not spoil stuff, but yeah. So once the reveal happens. Yeah, there's still 2520 minutes to go and the reveal, I was just sort of like, Oh, okay. But instead of it washing over me in a way where I was like, Oh my God, I'm putting things together. You do go off, but I don't know if it has the effect that maybe was desired. I don't know. And this is completely subjective because there are a bunch of people that are like, Oh my God, that was like one of the coolest moments in movie history to me. So yeah, that could be. It is interesting how, you know, that would be like the ending of the movie for a lot of other movies. But yeah, is it still has a whole other essentially a whole other act to go And one thing a piece of trivia that I call it's not really even trivia the opening montage, when Norton's like going from this airport to this place and he's in this hotel single serving friends. He's like sitting on his hotel bed. He has his pants off. He, like, plops a mint in the air, catches it in his mouth, and then all the hotel workers on the TV are like, Welcome, Tyler Durden is right there, like all the way to the right. He's just all there. I never caught that before it. I was like, Shit. It's so there's always little things like that to kind of See, I know all the flashes, you know, those quick freak flashes, but I never knew he was like, actually on the TV. Hilarious. So yes, stuff like that. And man, let me tell you, we're talking about like this DVD, this to this DVD set, which I'm looking at, which so many people had. It was just everywhere. This is also one of the first commentaries I listen to. And you just can't go wrong turning on because David Fincher on his solo commentaries, folks, is very he's very technical. So we'll focus a lot on technical stuff. But it's him Edward Norton and Brad Pitt in a room together, and then Helena Bonham Carter was recorded elsewhere and they are looping her in occasionally. And Norton just like talking about Nietzsche and talking about like all this heady stuff. And Pitt's like, were the Dust Brothers high the whole time they made this music. Like it's, you know, it's it's a totally different and because Fincher's so serious and technical in his solo commentaries, it just makes him die laughing the entire time. I mean, the first scene Pitt's like, seems a bit dark, isn't it? Finch Like, I can't see a damn thing like you could it? You had to make it this dark, so it's so funny. So you hear, like, Norton constantly going, Yeah, this one took a lot of times to do and. Pitt I can just imagine kind of leaning back and being like, Oh, like at one point Norton goes like, I can't believe you went with that take. Like, it's really interesting what he did that and Pitt's like, because it's better. It's better. Yeah. You really feel like how Pitt, Pitt and Fincher are more because of Pitt's like, looser kind of attitude, how he could adapt to something like Fincher style a bit more. And everyone seems like they got on really well, don't get me wrong, but you're just hearing, you know, kind of two very, very different actors. Yeah. Talk in the same room about their process with the director and it's I don't think the commentary and and the commentary was recorded specifically for the DVD. So Norton in particular has negative reviews memorized, and he is constantly bringing up the critics names. And then he goes in on Rosie O'Donnell and he's like, She shouldn't have ruined the whole movie on national television. Like, can't fucking believe that It's it's wild. Like, you would not get a commentary like this nowadays, but there it is still on my DVD. The audio is kind of crappy quality like they didn't care about like it sounds like it was recorded like at a shoe box. I love it. I just. I love this shit, man. I love a fight club. So final thoughts on Fight Club? It's like I do appreciate the movie now more than I've gotten How to like to pop Starbucks. We're so cool because we're going to rage the machine thing and kind of looked at it more as like a lonely, loser type deal, which is kind of weird this time. Yeah. And then, yeah, some of the project me himself does does lose me a bit. But you know, again that's, that's, that's all the thing. I love the movie I have. I still find whenever I watch it it's, it, it does to me what it did the very first time I saw it still. And I think that's why a lot of people really still gravitate towards this one. Yeah. Because they connect with it. But yeah, I do think the movie, I think as a as a full film does lose me a little bit in that third act. The good outweighs the bad with it and it's not even bad. It's just it's not, it's not the same as the first two thirds. Yeah, it's just the pace changes. I mean, yeah, it just tonally shifts to Yeah, I guess the argument would be as well. Yeah. This is all intentional. Like you're supposed to enter in their Jack's, you know, frame of view and be like, I don't understand what's going on. Where's Tyler? Like, what's going on? Every place I've been, I've felt like I was already there a week earlier. I mean, but then there are still some aspects of that that I like. Like that dude with the head brace. He's like, You were standing right there a week ago. So I love that. Oh, yeah, it's just test or like, I just loved it. And it might have the most iconic actual ending of any Fincher movie. Yeah, I mean, like, he really nailed it. Like the Pixies. I mean, you talk about a studio. Wouldn't have even considered that two years later. I mean, are you joking? Like it wouldn't because of. Yeah, buildings collapsing like it was. Oh, yeah. And it's a real like, fuck you ending like, what's up with you ending If you start with like, what is the next day look like in this reality? Like it's total chaos. It's, it's absolute interesting. You know? It is. And I mean that's a great line. Like, you met me in a very strange time of my life. It rained the whole day. Really. It's it's great. It's just really, you know. But I do think it is we have a prompt for this later. We go through our Fincher awards, so to speak. Yeah, but you put in you put in one. That's your favorite title sequence. Oh, yeah. This is my least favorite. Oh, God. I didn't know where this was going. Yeah, with the the music and, like, going through Jack's brain and then out to the gut and everything. Yeah, well, I haven't been. We haven't been talking about the title sequences as we go because we are going to save a little section at the end. I have them written out just really basic descriptions. But yeah, David Fincher puts sometimes a lot of thought into his title sequences. Some of them are strictly graphical, like This and Girl Dragon Tattoo. Yeah, some of them really tell a whole narrative like seven you're actually watching John Doe, like in his element. And then there's a narrative being told with the, Well, we'll get to that toward the end. But yeah, I like hearing that. I thought you were going to say this is your favorite and I was going to be nice and be like, Ooh, this one does not rank highly for me, you know, It's kind of like a like a skip on my DVD. I go, It's in complete shit. And the music fine. The Dust Brothers with their music is great, but it's just that I think it might have just been the CGI at the time. Yeah, I didn't like the color palette. I was like the fonts. I'm like, Oh, I'm not really feeling any of this for the tone of what we're about to see. All the credits in the game are so cool with the puzzle pieces like Falling. It looks so cool. I love. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah. Oh my God, what a cool credit sequences. I'm so excited to talk about its next movie because when we picked Fincher to talk about this, Panic Room was probably the movie least excited to talk about because my thoughts on Panic Room have always been I appreciate it, but it's it doesn't I appreciate it in what he was trying to do. He was trying to make a very intentional B-movie thriller. Rear Window Meets Straw Dogs. Always liked it, always appreciated it. It's just been always lesser. Fincher to me until I have no idea why. It took me 21 years to do this until I fully researched it for this episode. And I'm here to tell you, and I'm going to tell you after because I want to know broadly what you think of the movie. I had no idea if you would have told me, Hey, trivia question What does David Fincher think the hardest movie ever made was? What is David Fincher's first assistant director? Bob Wagner, who's worked on most of his movies? What does this sound mixer worked on? Most of his movies? Well, do all of his collaborators agree was the hardest movie? And I'm like Zodiac. I mean, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? No, by long and far it is Panic Room. It was so difficult to make that some of them still can't even talk about it. Like in the special features for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, They're like, Yeah, Panic. Panic Room was a that was a different thing. And I finally investigated this. I owned the single disc DVD and I went on eBay and bought the three disc DVD set because this film not available on Blu ray yet. There's a lot of David Fincher movies that some are on Blu ray, some a lot of them are not on 4K. I think that's because he's such a perfectionist. He doesn't. These special features are extensive, and I want to hear what you think about the movie first. But once I get into this board it list of all the shit this movie went through, it'll make anyone appreciate the movie more. I was like, And it just gets crazier and crazier and crazier. It's nuts. But what do you think of Pettigrew before doing all this stuff? Like just as a movie? It's so crazy you say that because I never would have thought that I always liked this movie. Same here. I always thought it was just a fun Hitchcockian. There we go. I guess I get to use that word now. Thank you. Well, I said Rear window meat, straw dog. So I kind of stole it from. Well, I was going to say it before you said it. Yes. I almost picked that lottery number. Deb, it is. No, it is. It's it's a very deliberate ode to Hitchcock. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I think it's honestly one of his funnier movies. Like, it's hilarious. Leno cracks me up and I love him. How about Raoul? I love Raoul. Yeah. Jared Leto is such a fucking idiot. There is such an idiot. I love this scene where they're, like, hitting this sledgehammer. We're going after the blow by blow force when it's like you fucking said, if it was that easy, you'd think I'd make a living. Oh, God, it is funny. It is. It's just. There's not really, like, the only thing that is about this movie that is like that. Father. Useless. I know. Just walking in and the husband ex-husband getting. I've always really I always really kind of looked at this movie as this is not meant to be in like that Zodiac social network like this this big legacy movie of like, oh, this is going to be the best movie of my career reference in the and everything from the title sequence. Oh, this title sequence is so fucking cool. Like they just let you know immediately. Oh, this is supposed to be over the top. It's supposed to be not meant to be taken in such a like an, a seven type of way. Like we're, we're, we can have fun with this one. And, and the movie lets you know that the entire time. So I always, I always enjoyed it. Good good. Yeah like yeah he's definitely use this movie to experiment a lot with computer graphics computer animation that whole you know trip through the kitchen which they called the big shot. There's like there's a really long just special feature explaining how they did that. I know many people are going out buying three disc DVD sets for one. Nobody in the I understand nobody is. It's just me. I guess that's why I had to do it on eBay. And you know what? There's about 3 hours of material on there. I watched them all. I watched them all in one sitting. Here's what I learned. Here's the cliff version, people. Here we go. Bear with like, you're amazing. David Kemp wrote the script. It's knocking around Hollywood. Ridley Scott is attached to direct. Forest Whitaker considers directing. Then Fincher decides to do it while casting is going on. The apartment set is being built. That thing is massive. They built the entire set out the street, the neighbor across the street, the entire house. It's all built out. So they have full control. Once they're in the house. In that movie, the entire movie takes place on a soundstage. All the rain is manufactured, the backyard, all of it. It's massive. It's all one big set. It takes them months, if not longer than a year to do this. I believe it was 14 months. During this time, the effects team also begins the very arduous process of something called pre visualization. This is where you can design the entire movie in a computer. You can show the cast and crew this is how the camera's going to move. This is, how I want the actors to move. It's a very, very useful tool that was new in 22. Now this is what they use like instead of storyboards. It's essentially on crack. These pre visualizations took a very long time to create. This concept is called Pre-viz for Short. The film cinematographer Darius Kanji, who film Seven and Bardo, we talked about him a lot in the Bardo episode. He is very heavily involved in the pre visualization. The movie is cast, and it's a go picture. It's starring Nicole Kidman as the mom and Hayden Panettiere as the daughter. One month before filming, Panettiere drops out and she's quickly replaced by newcomer Kristen Stewart. Heard of her Filming Begins January 2001. Filming begins a few weeks into filming. Cinematographer for Darius Kanji, who is nominated for shooting a video just a few years earlier, is fired off the movie. This is a big deal. That does not happen. It's basically been written off as creative differences, but I don't know what happened, but all the pre-viz that had been developed. Fincher has to explain all that to someone new. Oh, get someone completely on board. He hires Conrad W Hall, son of legendary Conrad Hall. Yep. Who shot Quinn? Luke Cassidy. American Beauty Road to Perdition. Conrad Hall actually accepted his Road to Perdition Oscar because his dad had passed away by then. A few weeks after that, Nicole Kidman re-injured her knee while filming Panic Room. This is an injury she first incurred filming Moulin Rouge a year earlier. Her injury so bad she has to drop out of the movie. While everyone scrambles. They find Jodie Foster. She was supposed to be the president of the Cannes Film Festival that year. She drops out of that and has one week before beginning filming on Panic Room. All the free visualizations that have been done are for an actress that is a foot taller than Jodie Foster. They have to take all of this into account and they have to. So it's not that the work is ruined, it's that all with the pre-viz. You're literally you can type in, you know, equations and shit into a computer so that the camera can move. So now you're doing motion control shots. All of this has been thought out based on Nicole Kidman's height. They get Jodie Foster. Five weeks into filming with Foster, she tells David Fincher that she's pregnant. She has to take time off. They film around her. They film with her stunt double, they film with other characters. But if you've seen the movie, Jodie Foster's damn near in every frame. Foster returns in September 2001 to reshoot the very beginning of the movie. All the stuff outside and take up shots around the house. They have to do reshoots in November 2001. Keep in mind, the movie's being edited, the effects are being worked on. It is released finally in theaters in March 22, one month later than scheduled. But again, this is something that began filming in January 2001. Wow. And is finished filming in November 2001. So just all that shit. I had no idea. I no idea about the fired cinematographer. I knew that Nicole, I thought Nicole Kidman had to drop out right before filming began. I forgot she was filming. Just it was all this shit. And those are the Cliff Notes version. Like, as you're going through the amount of time it took and effort and all the computer like effects in the movie are still really cool by today's standards. All that shit was new. Like they were making it up in 2001 22. So it's just wild and all that made me appreciate the movie that much more. I had no idea, that was all a set. I assumed that the apartment was the set, but I didn't know. Yeah, Outside was a set like all that. And the apartment is huge when you go watch this making of, it's like it's a four stories. They have a working elevator in it like it's crazy and it's just hilarious to go watch this and there's so many problems to deal with. There's so many macro issues. Fincher is just walking around the set and he focuses on the light fixture under the cabinet and he's like, Yeah, well, we're going to change that out. And it's like, What? It's great. It's Great to see how they put that big shot together, weaving in nine real shots that lasts, you know, anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds and stitching those with the movement, the the computer graphics shots. It's like it's brilliant. It's a really, really impressive movie that is kind of like the game in that not really talked about a lot. No, Oscar Love didn't make a ton of money and no one really talks about it. But yeah, I had a lot of fun researching. That was my most fun one. It was this episode. Yeah, just a lot of crazy shit, right? That's so insane. Oh, my God. I can't even. I wonder why he got fired. From what I can gather, Darius can't. He said he had an issue with a crew member, which to me means, something got, like, physical. Perhaps. Fincher is much more just kind of general about it. Like, Oh, yeah, we just had some creative differences and as much more like, plausible as what will be will be, I don't know. But that's for the amount of work that went into it. It's not like production on this movie started the day they started filming. They were working on it for. I mean, it sounds like right after Fight Club, they just started working on this. So, yeah, it's it's wild, but it's one of my favorite Fincher stories and Fight Club has so many set up so many locations and he very intentionally goes, I want everything in one house, I want everything in one location. I need to make it easier on myself. Oops, oops. It's so much harder. It's the hardest movie he's ever had to make. Yeah, that's real crazy. Crazy. I never would have thought never, Never would've thought. As Fincher was going, we didn't have too many breaks. And it doesn't it seems like, Hey, give the guy some slack. He's just five years off. But at the time, loving, loving the game, loving, fight, club loving, Panic Room. I was like, Why do we have to wait five years for Zodiac? Wow. Was it worth the wait? I mean, come to find out not to jump ahead. But the whole time he's planning Curious case of Benjamin Button and that's what he's doing and he's doing molds of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's faces. He's doing all this crazy stuff. So that's what he was doing. And before it could officially be a go movie, he gets in Zodiac, which we talked about all the way back on episode 33, one early Pod for us. Yeah, early podcast is episode. It's a fun yep, it's a fun episode to listen to because that was before I knew that Nick was a liar. Oh, dirty, rotten liar. Oh, because the very next episode, Episode 34, is the top ten films of 1973. So dynamic of the podcast completely changed after that. If you go listen Episode 33, we're still friends now. We're quote unquote friends. So. So you're such a fun to listen to. It's fun to do. So you're saying that I'm Jesus and I and I died and now I resurrected. And as what? You're Jesus. I'm the fucking devil here to do devil's shit. This Zodiac love this movie. I mean, we talked about it. It was a while ago. So we're going to we're going to talk about it now. But this is interesting in researching Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo in particular, but also Robert Downey Jr had a hell of a time making this movie. Not in the best ways. I don't it seems strange to me because David Fincher was absolutely a thing. People knew his movies. He was talked about people even by Zodiac. I knew the guy's process. I knew that he did so many takes. So, you know, a lot has been made of why this may have been happening that Jake Gyllenhaal is coming off being the star of Jarhead, where he's like, pumped up and enraged the whole time. And maybe he was bringing some of that on the Zodiac and centers like, nah, not vibing any of that man. Like, it's just not going to work. So and what I want to say is none of that plays in the performance because they're so brilliant. I might even argue this is some of their best. Like you, if someone made a case for either of them that this is their best work, I would hear the argument and go, Yeah, okay, it's fair. That's what the whole thing about. Like talking about the making of movies does it even, you know, if we're just talking about the work itself, everyone in it is great. And this is a another American crime masterpiece by David Fincher. It's just as good as you want it to be. Every single time I watch it and one where the five minute longer director's cut, which boosts it from 157 minutes to 162, which like, What the fuck is wrong with you? Paramount Just let him do it. So do like who cares is so much better. It is such a necessary five. Every edition is better and noticeable. And yeah, this is one where you know it's a little long, but I love putting it on any time. I love this movie. Holy Christ. It might be his most well-done movie up until this point. And then and that's that's even saying seven, you know because well done and our favorite are not one in the scenes you talk about but this is his first movie based on real things based on fact, things that could have happened. The movie's very careful to say this did not everything in this movie did happen this way, including and it's very careful to say, hey, guess what? We don't actually know who the hell did that stuff we are. You know lending one way pretty aggressively, but no one knows for sure. Still to this day, no one knows for sure, including Robert Graysmith, even though he may think he knows. But yeah I think it's his most well, his best made film to date of the movie that he's made. Yes. And I say that even above seven. But again. Well, May doesn't necessarily mean favorite. This movie's perfectly well-made, which is why it still lives on. And which is why year after year, people like us are making jokes like his movie. Some of his movies have been nominated for a lot of Oscars. This didn't get a one. And it's really bad. Like every time I watch it, I like everything about the movies. Perfect. Like, you guys are just ridiculous. And like we talked about, this was a banner year or 2007. It was. It was. It was. And the fact that this movie, like you watch any of those movies and you put Zodiac up to all of them. Yep, it's right there, if not better. But I mean, I yeah, that's a tough one. Well, we talked about we did our favorite episodes of to I don't know if it's better than no country or There Will be Blood but it's better than Juno, Atonement, Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It's better than Michael Clayton. I love Michael Clayton and all those were nominated for Oscars and I could go on and on. Love them like fucking rocks. Fucking rocks. We got to do that one. We got to do. We got to do Deep Dive Michael Clayton episode. That that could be a fun commentary or commentary. That's fine with me. We got to do that. The main thing I alluded to it in my introduction, I always knew of how much a perfectionist David Fincher was in post-production through all aspects of filmmaking, but post-production, like that's where there's never ending choices. And you can watch the special features for Zodiac or any of the movies after Zodiac and see like Zodiac, they shot digitally, but you let David Fincher start shooting digitally. Now we're getting into like take 90, all that stuff, and they watch all of these. The editor has to watch all of these. So The editor of this movie was Angus Wall, and this is a name you're going to hear a lot basically from here on out. He's won two Oscars editing David Fincher films, though not for Zodiac, because it received zero Oscar nominations. Angus Wall has this technique of editing. I didn't know any of this before researching this episode calls it split screen. I'll use an example from Zodiac. It's a big one, but the conversation where they are interviewing Arthur Lee Allen at his place of work. So we got four people in there. It's a four way conversation. Three cops interviewing one suspected criminal. The knives I had in my car with the blood on them. That blood came from a chicken that I killed for dinner. But I had knives in my car that weekend. Maybe Bill, and called the other officer on me. Well, we'll be checking in on that. Oh, well, let me ask you something else. Were you ever in Southern California at any time in 1966, just about the riverside killing? Yes, I guess I was there around that time. I used to go down there a lot. I like the auto races. I was just a chicken. It was just a chicken in my car. That blood. God, I love God. I love him so much. What Angus was able to do is if four of them are on in the frame at one time, he's able to digitally put splits in the frame that we cannot see. So if it's take 18, John, Carol Lynch can be doing take 18. But Mark Ruffalo is actually his head is doing take 57 because that's the delivery he likes. So he can pick which take he uses per actor and none of us are the wiser. Wow. Not only that, once he gets it, once the takes are decided. And these takes are based on I mean, he's approving every take. He's he's making sure every eyeline matches Once the takes are approved of the visual takes, then you go in to the sentences. And a lot of his movies are ADR, where the actors are recording everything later. And if you listen really closely to Fincher's movies. You can kind of hear this. There's like an echo ness or a hollowness to him intentionally by design, but then he's going through and he goes, All right, I like take 57 and Mark Ruffalo the best in terms of how he looks. But I want to hear his take 19 because his take 19 was delivered. The audio is the best of that. So then they pull up 19 and then they go, All right, He didn't say the word wristwatch right there. So we need to go find let's pull from take 28 the way he says wristwatch. I don't like the way he ends with. Watch there. Let's get watch from Take 87. So wrist is four and that's everything. That's every sentence, every take, every line of every David Fincher movie. I'm not even talking about the fucking effects. It has to come in to it. The computer effects. I'm not talking about how loud the music has to be. It took them forever to sound. Mix that scene of Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg in the club and the social Network yelling. It's the one on once in a once in a century. All these shit idea It took them forever to sound mix that like it is the literal antithesis of how Christopher Nolan works, where he is only using production sound he's not using in the case Oppenheimer Any computer graphics? What is in the camera is there. What I'm describing now, Christopher Nolan would have a fucking heart attack. Tried to edit his movie this being like, Wait, you use it. Different take from different actors in the same scene and you would do that digitally. I don't think he'd shit it on it. I think he'd go, Wow, like I good on you, man. I can't believe. But I know, I don't know. But I have a very strong inclination that if Kubrick were alive and had his hands on this technology, he'd be doing the same thing. Yeah. So when I tell you that you're watching a David Fincher film in Zodiac is really the first time they doing this because of digital technology. But seeing them do this live in the special features for damn near every movie going forward, is this just one aspect? It's just the editing in the movie. That's it. Well, I'm not talking about costumes. How much he has his hand in that as an editor. That is what I mostly do now. It's what I do for my professional career. I'm mostly editing. I'm in the field shooting sometimes, but I'm mostly editing. I learned all about sound mixing from doing this podcast. I have to sound mix a lot to think about doing. This is I just can't imagine. I understand how they're doing it, but to actually do it, I have no fucking clue how a movie of his gets released. I have no idea how you release two movies as big as Zodiac and Benjamin Button. One year part. I have no idea how you do it. None. This. What? Do I agree with all of this? I don't think that matters. I would never make a movie this way. I wouldn't. Yeah, but it makes me appreciate him so much more. He is virtually and, literally the only person I know making movies this way. The only one. And keep doing it. Please. For the love of God, don't stop. I absolutely love it. It is a level of obsession. I've never heard of from anyone. My brain is just mush right now. Can you imagine that? I could do the audio for that. I could like ADR. Yeah. Yeah. Slipping in. And actually, I had to do that on a few lines because like a mike rubs against clothes, so like, you can't hear it. Sometimes you have to do that stuff, but to do it constantly with each sentence cannot fathom, cannot fathom each how long it takes each sentence. Oh, you go look at that, then break down the editing of that social network. It wasn't even the editing. It was the sound mixing of them in that club so much thought goes into this stuff. This is not, Oh, yeah, put your camera here. Let's do it. Oh, yeah. You know, give it to me when you have a chance. When I look at it and I look at Fincher making a movie, I'm like, Oh, this is a fucking job. This is this guy's job. This is this guy's livelihood. We consume it as entertainment, but this is this man's career. And he is very, very dedicated to it to an absurd degree. But, you know, that's what he says. He's like. If people I just read an interview him as it relates to Michael Fassbender with the killer, they got on great. He was still making them do 100 takes and stuff. But he goes, If you're not on board, you're not on board. But if you step into it and you want to do this thing with me, all's I'm asking you to do is do your job more. I'm asking you to act more. Yeah, like you said, it's not wasteful. It's just more of it. Yeah. Yeah, I just. I was waiting a place to describe this split screen editing. This is perfect. Yeah, it's been used more extensively as they've gone on, and they were, like, flirting with it in Zodiac. And that's when. They first started doing it. This Angus Wall guy, like, you see him talking about it, it's like Jesus, but little teaser. There is a movie from David Fincher's career that broke Angus Wall and he has not edited film since it broke him. Well, I'm sure. I'm sure we're going to get to it. Oh, we will get to it. We will. But that's a little teaser. But to know that he created this process and I don't want to put too much stock in don't know if it broke him, but I know from firsthand account because he told us on the making of that he had a tremendously difficult time making. But yeah it is zodiac where the look of Fincher that that digital look that very very polished very polished very stabilized, very young. Yeah. It starts in Zodiac. I think it starts a little bit in Panic Room. In some ways, I would say panic room, but in panic room, it was used to like for those cool effect scenes like the big shot Zodiac, the whole thing, Zodiac signs, the whole movie. It's like this. Yeah. And and from this point on, with pretty much the exception of Mank, was that's done in a whole different way with black and white and all this and that. But that color palette that does exist in all of Fincher's movies but now is just heightened to this level. The the yellows and the greens and the blues all become these very what we've come to know is Fincher esque. Look, it starts off with Zodiac. You should see him in a scene in the making of picking cars to be on the street in a background. He's like, All right, I need like eight cars to sell this. And he doesn't go, I need eight cars that are period appropriate. To sell this, I need eight period appropriate cars to sell this. You can use, of course, no white, no black. You can go grays, tans, dark blue, of course not regular blue. And someone goes red and he just shoots them a look and squint his eyes as if to be like, Why the fuck would you just asked me that question? You think a red car can be in the background of the shot? And he goes, No. And it's like, Oh, I mean, sorry. Like, I didn't know. Like that's how specific he is to his color palette. In the background of background cars out of focus. That's how specific he is. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 2008. I can just say right here, right up top. This is to me, the least effective David Fincher film on an emotional level, which is a weird thing to say because I think it is his most emotional film. Yeah, and I, I do appreciate everything David Fincher does, but I have learned that it is harder for me to appreciate when he dips into sentiment. And I don't think he likes sentiment. I don't think he there's always been a level of like detachment for me in and kind of watching the making of this movie, which is called The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button. And it's like really good. It's longer than the movie in the movie's already long. And so it's so big and long. And I actually liked it more than the movie itself. And what I learned is that I think he was just interested to do this for, the effects and like what he could do with it. Yes, all the effects, even by today's standards. Oh, you hate it. You don't like. Yeah, Yeah. Okay. I am watching it and I'm like oh, I don't like this at all. In terms of the look of the CGI and I get it's remark ability and I get in some degree that does hold, but this just goes against my whole entire CGI point of view. In general, I can't attach myself emotionally to anything I'm seeing right now, so that has always been my as well. I'm always respond more to like the subtleties of the work and seeing how they're aging him. Just are de-aging him a little bit or a little bit here, a little bit there. The stuff with him, like as the old man, I'm like, Is this supposed to be funny? Because it's just silly to me and it still looks silly. And some of the sentiment in it, like I've listened to this commentary and he again, maybe this is his sense of humor, but like when Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are hugging or kissing, he'll go, Oh God, I hate sentiment so much. And then just gets quiet and it's like, Well, this is your movie, dude like to do. So I think it's really long. I think it takes a while to get going. I think it takes a while to end. It's just it's the one I've seen the least. And I really wasn't a fan in the theater. I'm not really a fan now. I did buy it because I wanted to watch all the special features and listen to the commentary and stuff. And as always, just like with Panic Room, I'm so much more impressed with Fincher's process. I'm much more impressed with this movie, how they made it. It did take them forever. It was not idle work between Panic Room and Zodiac. He was working a lot on this. Everyone had to be on board. But I don't know, just all it's not. It's just not for me. To me, the movie works best when the ages are at where there's the least amount of CGI. Yes. When in the apartment they don't match the floor mats on the floor. That's an amazing sequence. You would think that the story of this movie would intrigue me because. I love the story of a life lived like it's that sentimentality to me always echoes. But for this movie, it just doesn't. Except for those moments where they're really at their present ages in real life. That's where it connects to me. But there are two shots of this movie that are some of my favorite shots. Wow. There's a shot of Cate Blanchett. She's dancing for Brad Pitt and she does this ballerina like pose her the length of her body takes up the entire frame. I remember watching that moment and I was like, Oh, my God, this is the beauty of like the human body of like what it can do. And it's elegance. And then there's this scene of Brad Pitt driving a motorcycle. Oh, I know exactly the one. You know, that goes up to him. He looks so fucking cool on that little thing. It's so cool. And and both of those, though, echo a certain sort of moment in time in life where? All right, Everything's fucking going for me. I love the best. I look, I like I'm in the prime of everything. Like these were like the little sense in echoes that I got. But they were all just from really just the cinematography of like, the way that that was supposed to go. But those, I think, were where the movie succeeds or least that's where I connect with the movie, because I know a lot of people actually really like this movie. I know a lot of people do, and that's well deserved and justified. And again, like I know you're not big in giving letter, but I just do it as a way to like, make reference point. I think it's pretty obvious where this one's going to be on my overall Fincher list, and I'll remind people my grade, I would still give this movie a B or B-minus. I'm not slouching on it. I don't think it's a bad movie. I don't think it's a bad movie in terms of like 28 movies. If we were doing a top ten of 28, it might pop up on there. I don't know. But when I'm just looking at Fincher's body of work, I'm going, That's a replay. That's a replay. Seven again for the hundredth time. Sure, why not? Curious case of Benjamin Button like fuck. Okay. I got to had to make time to like, okay, I got to do this. That's all. That's all I'm saying. It's just it's not as easy to. Digest But I wasn't aware of any of this. But watching that making of that making up starts with Fincher talking into the camera for a pretty extended time, saying he didn't understand this material of the movie, the story or the script until his dad died. And then when his dad died, he realized it and he got it and he goes, This is not a love story. This is a death story. Yeah. So that's how he was selling it to people. But still, I think it is by far his most sentimental movie and by far his most. The pace of it is very laborious. Like it takes time to connect things. It just it's like I said, it takes like, we're in that hospital, like the first 5 minutes, like it takes time to get stuff going. And usually when I think of Fincher, I think, Cut, sharp, cut, sharp, Go, jump, jump. And this is not this is not that at all. For whatever it's worth, the this script could not have been more different from the actual true short story. I actually read it. I read the short story yesterday. So today is very, very short. Incredibly, very short. Yeah. It took no time at all. And I was like, Honestly, it makes me like the movie maybe a little less because I'm like, You didn't that fucking long, man. Exactly. That's exactly what I thought, too. Opening cool, like production logos with the buttons following. But then the only David Fincher movie with no opening credits. So this is what I'm talking about. I'm like, We love you for your opening credits. You don't have any here. Like, it just it's a very different Fincher vibe for me. Sometimes you want to see one of your favorite directors, just come on home and tackle something that maybe is right in their wheelhouse, like a seven or Zodiac. And sometimes you see the of your favorite filmmakers, probably the best director of serial serial killer movies ever making a movie about the start of Facebook. And you go, Yes, well, let's just put our trust in the movie Gods. Aaron Sorkin's writing it, David Fincher's directing it. I believe I saw this the day it came out October 1st 2010. I thought while watching it, not only are we set for like a new era of movies, and this is going to define the best, a new era of movies, I thought, right then I should you not? I wonder if this will be remembered as one of the best movies of the decade, and you jump ten years later, and I think a lot of people still think it is the best movie of the 2010. I think talking about the Social network, of course, endlessly Rewatchable endlessly loved this movie. I think this is David Fincher's most well-done movie. Yeah, I think a lot of people would agree. Yup. And I think it's also it might be his most important movie. Well, interesting when you look at his legacy at a certain point like when people like what you just said think about what the best movie of the 20 tens is. There needs to be a a reason for that. And that reason is not just because, oh, it's the best movie. It's like, what is the movie saying? Because that's what we carry over our time and we events are we're currently in a fucking disaster socially in America, at least when it comes to social media and all of this stuff. And oh, they're doing bad everywhere, trust me. Yeah, they're doing. But it's a problem. It's just it's a problem. But this movie was made before. It was actually a problem. This was just, Oh, we're making a movie about this this new communication thing on the and just this particular story of the guy who started it and where it's come. And I think the resonance of this movie, it's still relevant today. And I think that's why it's one of the more, more important movies I think, of maybe even this whole entire century. This century. Yeah. Yeah. Top 25 of the century so far coming January 1st, 2025. So excited for called it early. Yeah I know. It's good. It's a it's a big one. We can get as creative as we want, but this is definitely going to make it has to make both of our lists. Like it's just, you know. Fincher Sometimes he does this to be cute and I think this is very intentional, that this movie is exactly 120 minutes long, that he is the standard that, you know, at some point we all agreed movies are 2 hours long. So it's in the under it's like, oh, it's slightly shorter. If it's any over, it's like, okay, we're going a little bit, you know, this is 2010 now. It's like movies are 3 hours long and that's okay. But hundred and 20 minutes, he wants to make a poppy entertaining movie about college kids creating this weird thing on the Internet. I love the fact that all the young cast really vibed with Fincher's process. They knew what the deal was. He actually sat Justin Timberlake down and he's like, look, if you're the guy who's going to show up late and, like, be hung over from the night before, only want to do ten takes because you have something to get to, don't do this movie like please don't. I need and you describe to them what you need. And then Timberlake did it and he did really good like he did not enough he did great things I can say about this movie and talking about computer effects CGI one of the best CGI feats I still have ever seen is that he fucking put Armie Hammer's head in someone else's body. And you can never tell throughout the entire movie. You couldn't tell in the theater. I that dude. I thought those were twins. I thought, those are twin actors. It took me like weeks of figuring out, Wait, they did what? And that had never been done before. And it still looks like other people have tried it since. And it doesn't look as good. Hell, I don't understand how, but yeah, he's one of the greatest practitioners of practical computer graphics in his movies and this is a really good example of it. Yeah, when he's not going overboard. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, yes, those aren't like he's not putting them into like, practical situations, but like making someone else's head, you know, putting it on their body or something. It's but yeah, this, the way that, this thing moves. And honestly, I wouldn't have thought someone as rigid in their process of making movies would vibe with someone as rigid in the way they write their movies is Aaron Sorkin. But to watch these special features and to see them not argue, but debate about, Oh, is that like a hanging modifier? Or there, you know, I mean, yeah, Fincher knows about Cabinet light fixtures, but he also knows perfect, proper grammar and like, how to put it. It's just it's wild and it's always something. Note too. Just speeding up your dialog. Yep. Trying to communicate how many words you have to say but still have the emotion, but keep the pace. It's a really, really tricky thing and you feel it a little bit. That's why you get that opening scene with Rooney and Jesse Eisenberg. Perfect. It's almost Shakespearean in the sense that you have to your ear has to get used to it. Yeah, like that scene is like 7 minutes. Yeah, it's 7 minutes. And I remember it being like 12. And I couldn't believe it was only seven. And I was like, Wow. The amount of dialog that these two get after is remarkable and it's something that I do think that you don't really fully appreciate that scene until the second time you've seen it, because yeah, the first time you are just tuning in and you've missed probably quite a bit of whatever they're talking about because you're like, Holy shit, hang, I got to sit down. Like, these guys are fucking talking a mile a minute. I'm going back to. Wait, wait. Is this right? Yes. Okay, then wait. I apologize. Okay. I have to go. Yes, I'm sorry. I mean, I appreciate that, but I have to give someone. You don't have to study. You don't have to study. Let's just talk. I can't. Why? Because it is exhausting. Getting you is like dating a Stairmaster. All I meant is that you're not likely to. Currently. I wasn't making a comment on your parents. I was just saying that you got to be you. I was stating a fact. That's how long. If it's to that, of course I have to go study. You don't have to study. Why are you saying it or because you go to be you can get some food. I'm sorry. Crushingly impressed with my education. I'm sorry I don't have a rowboat. So we're even. I think we should just be friends. I don't want friends. I was just being polite. I have no intention of you friends from under some pressure right now from my O.C. class. And if you could just order some food, I think we should. But by the time that that scene's. You've got everything you need to get. And for the rest of the movie, you are not thinking about how fast they're talking. But guarantee you, you, you, you randomly that movie on a random scene and like your TV comes on, you're like, whoa, these guys are talking real fast and they sell it so well. Everyone in the movies tells it so well. There's Some a lot of interesting things about this movie. Angus Wall did do the editing for it, but now Kirk Baxter is on with him and they win an Oscar for this. Edit it together, win the Oscar and the editing. This is one of my favorite just edited movies of because it kind of introduced a younger audience to the Rashomon style of filmmaking. You're cutting back. I mean, this thing is unapologetic and it's cuts to those depositions. You're like, Wait, where the hell am I? Like, Mm mm. They admit the editors admit that this is a pretty like breeze to edit. It had its challenges, but once they locked into the, into the structure, it kind of like the puzzle pieces came into place and they clicked it. Now, another huge addition to the David Fincher world is bringing on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to do the music, and they going to do the music for all the subsequent movies, and they have become the biggest, like Top of the Line collaborators with Fincher. And it starts here. They also win an Oscar for their work and hearing them talk about their process. They're like, We were doing demos and sending them to Fincher and he liked them and we were like, Wow This is going to be easy. And then they nearly killed themselves over that, the one where they're in the rowing competition that the Winklevoss loses that amazing track that when I saw the movie, I thought they were like remixing Mozart. Literally. I thought they like had some Mozart song and that's what it was. And then in the Hall of the Mountain King that one is the one. Oh, yeah. I'm like, Beat them to death. And it's only 2 minutes and 21 seconds and I just love that. But yeah, great movie. That doesn't really is without fault in my opinion. In every aspect There's a really cool the score that we're talking about. Oh, it's one of my favorite examples of score. I think I brought it up in our score episode. The three notes that occur throughout the whole entire movie. When you first hear them in the very beginning when we're watching Jesse Eisenberg run throughout the campus, they're very clean, they're very pure, they're very like innocent. And that's the whole entire point, because what you're watching is the degradation of a friendship. And then those three notes will come back when the at different places where that friendship is starting to break and the notes are now distorted. They're not the same clean ones, but from the four. And then by the time that you get to the end and when it's all gone, they're so faint, you can barely even hear them. I mean, they actually they literally move the microphones away from the recording equipment on purpose. Yeah, it happens when he's running. In the beginning during the I was your only friend scene and then during the Scream lawyer up asshole thing. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, so sparse and it's just it's a perfect way to, like, help you latch on and identify with the character. Most people don't identify this when they're watching it, but subconsciously you do this. It's all these small things. If you pull all of these small details off, you get a masterpiece that may or may not define a century or a decade of films. Yeah, so fucking good. One thing I haven't been going through all the Oscar nominations as we go we have touched on it, but I don't know if it's Shakespeare in Love or Saving Private Ryan, but one scene was behind The King's Speech, and you just feel him all over it. You feel him all over like, Yeah, Colin Firth beats Jesse Eisenberg for best Actor. Okay. Tom Hooper Beating Fincher for director is absurd. I mean, they gave Spielberg director for Saving Private Ryan like that was terrible at the time. That is aged. I don't know if an Oscar has aged worse since, honestly like it is. And Fincher's Matt, when you go back and look, he's like, Give me the fuck out of here. Because then by the time picture comes up, we knew it was going to be King's Speech and it was, um, it was a real big gaffe. It was it was a shame that they must have something against Fincher. They've they have awarded, like some of his movies to the Oscars, but never him. But yeah, that was I just wanted to bring that up to the 2010 Oscars. Very bad for that reason. Like The King's Speech is just as just not a good movie. Talk about a TV movie in the Social Network. It's like everyone loved that movie. It was really, really dumb I mean, when you look at the movies of that year, 2010 had some really good movies. A lot of them were nominated for the Academy Award. And it's so to look at that ten list and just be like, Oh, which one would you pick now looking back? Oh yeah, that's it's so easy as the Social network. And then you find out what did you're like Well but yeah I mean genuinely one of the ones where I think The King's Speech was the least deserving of the nominated movies that year. But I don't want to harp on that for too long as we could be here forever. We still have a few more movies to go, moving right along to one of the biggest, nastiest, darkest movies, maybe the darkest movie he's made so far. Yeah, is a remake of the hugely popular Swedish film itself, an adaptation of the hugely popular book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I cannot believe he made this movie right out to the Social Network, just in terms of like Social Network 2010 Dragon Tattoo, released in 2011. I don't know how you do that with movies, especially with his level of specificity. And yeah, this is the darkest movie David Fincher has made. I Think seven in the Game are like esthetically dark and totally dark, of course, But there are aspects of this movie that are just so evil and their banality. I mean, the the attacks are so grotesque because they are designed to be. David Fincher was studying Irreversible and going, Oh, that's where we're going. That's the bar he's giving Irreversible to Rooney Mara and going, This is where we're going. So if you're on board with this, you're on board with it. He's he's telling people he was saying he was doing press for the Social Network, Oscar Press and it had come out that like, you're going to be directing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And people are asking him about it and he's like, look, I'm not talking about it, but just know I'm going there. Like, if I'm doing this, I'm pushing it. And he does. And they I mean, God damn, some scenes this movie are fucking tough. Yeah, immensely difficult movie, Immensely challenging movie. It's a big movie. It feels very Swedish in some ways too. And a lot of ways I Oh, that sparseness like the. The emotional sparseness. Yeah. Yeah. Which is very, very Swedish. And it just feels how social network was so tight. This, you know, you really do feel those extra 40 minutes because this movie is 50 minutes long and I, I actually I don't know if the way I'm selling it makes it sound like I like it. I really, really appreciate this movie and I like it. And I'm like, it's just a lot. It's a lot to take in. It's a lot to stomach from how grim it is to the amount of just story that's being thrown at us. Yeah, it's a lot. I, I completely agree with everything you're saying. The I like the Swedish one. I think overall it was just this story was just it's a dark story. So I was like, all right. And then when you when you watch this one, I loved the look of this movie, The Blues I think this is these are my favorite use of of Fincher's blues. And I mean, Rooney Mara, there's there's a there's a making of there's like a three hour and 40 minute making of this movie on YouTube. Oh, they must have thought about this weird stuff together. Well, I have the Blu ray, so I watch them all. I think what they've done is literally stitch together piles pre single special feature because the making of is like 230, like it's no slouch. But yeah, I've watched, I watched every special feature for it and you know what's cool is that another thing I'll say really quick about if you're working with Fincher you can't do the method thing. You can't be a method actor sticking it. Nope. Went as soon as Cutter said Rooney Mara will just like look into the making up camera and go cut. I really need a cigaret like she's she's just herself. She's totally normal again. It's not like she's she is not staying as Lisbeth every single waking moment of the day. And I think that helps. And she would be the first to admit that it was a very challenging movie to make. But she's vibing with Fincher style. She's not complaining. It's not like that, you know? No. And you can't argue with what's delivered, though. Like, that isn't what it is. It's one of the more iconic performances from. A David Fincher movie. Yeah. Yeah. It's one I mean, you can make a case that maybe it's the best. Like, it's so, so good. And she did not have small shoes to fill. Noomi Rapace is really good in the original way. She's very good there. There are a few things that stick out, the first one being the entire time they're making this movie the way that everyone is participating in it behind and in front of the camera, they are operating under the assumption that they are making these three movies, that they just they're like the next two are coming. And even watching the making Up feature, he is directing her with some motivation like, No, that's because you have a twin and like, so he's bringing stuff up that we never see because they didn't get to film those movies. And that's just a huge bummer to me. Like, I get it. I get that. I mean, it made a decent amount of money, but I guess it didn't make as much as they want. It costs 90 million. It made 239 million. Like, that's not it's not tiny. But I was really bummed when it became apparent after this movie was released that they weren't going to do the other two and that the rights were just going to be like whatever, you know, given to someone else. And then a few years later, we got that one starring Claire Foy, which is not good. And I go, Oh, yeah, but you know, Fincher is a lot to deal with. I'm sure for everyone. It's definitely a studio, but I'm glad we at least got this one. And I'm glad he went as hard as he did. But I just want to mention that about the sequels. It's so it's so interesting. Also, like talk about attention to detail. Fincher, too, says creating all of the still photos for this movie required its own crew. Like doing that? Paraphrasing. Great. Yeah, we had to have like all these photographers out there shooting from this angle, from this angle, getting all this. Then we have to put them all in order on a computer and everything. And he's like, He can't even talk about it because of how difficult it was to set everything up. Similarly, Curt Baxter and Angus Wall are just being interviewed and they're talking to this and they're like, Yeah, Social Network just kind of clicked together. It was a puzzle, but all the puzzle pieces came together. Nothing will ever be harder ever to edit than Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Like nothing. This is the and Angus Wall has not edited a film. He has not like any movie, any movie. And he said he's done some shorts. He's not edited a movie sentence. And I don't know if that's like Curt Baxter still edits his movies, but they're like the split screen thing and using. That's what it seemed like. It really got turned onto hyper full effect. But everything about this movie was difficult to make, just filming it, editing it, everything. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, This isn't even as prominent, not remotely prominent of a score as social network. They say this is the hardest one they've had to do just in term. I don't know. It just it seems like this one was really a challenge for everyone. The what? The weather conditions, how cold it was having to work with a Swedish crew, which, you know, American crews, Swedish crews are not used to a director having to film like a train stopping in front of the camera like 70 times. And they're like, yeah, what the fuck is going on here? This we usually do this two or three times. Like, what is this? And you have to get everyone kind of on board. And somehow all that plays, somehow all of that plays in the movie. And I love it. Like, I mean, when he fucking starts playing Enya in that basement and you're like, What is this? This whole contraption, this whole torture contraption? I yeah, it's a tough movie to quote unquote love and appreciate. Well, they push it far. Jesus. Yeah. Oh, yes, I know. Oh, here we go. All right, on to something. Yeah. So Siri is so dark Girl with the Dragon tattoo so intense. And then, you know, there's this book floating around. It's not a particularly well written book, but it's getting bought a lot. It's getting picked up in airports. It's being read on beaches. It's called Gone Girl. It's this really popular thing that of sweeps for a little bit. It's this huge sensation. And they get David Fincher attached to direct this movie. And I'm thinking, All right, man, I trust you. I didn't know if you could pull off the Facebook movie. I thought it was a real big gamble to take on that beloved Swedish material. So let's go let's do it. And then what is made is, in my opinion, the best Lifetime movie, Lifetime Wishes they can make. Yes, I love everything about this movie showed. It to Ali last week. She had never seen it. She didn't know anything about it. Wow. Did she like it? I did not know. She going to love it too much. She cannot stop talking about. And then I watched it yesterday with his commentary, Fincher's commentary. It was just like, Yeah, I really love this thing. There is a looseness to it, but it is a little longer, but it's just it doesn't take itself as seriously as some of his other work to the point where, I mean, we're going to get to it, but it really doesn't take itself seriously at all at times. And then we're just like on the bed. There's a fucking scalpel across the neck and you're like, What? We're at by like, what fucking movie? That's what Ali did. She was like, Wait, what? Like, what's going on? She leave that seat at the fade and get the music. It's. It's a great, great Fincher sequence. Fuck yeah. Come on, girl. Let's do it. I love this movie. I love this movie. Was I remember when it came out in 2014 not being excited at all about it. I wasn't. I was excited because it was Fincher, but it was it was a yeah, it was excitement. I was like, All right, man, here we go. And what I ended up going through was just one of the most fun times I've ever in the movie. Like, it's seriously, like, I completely latched on to that lifetime and what you just said. Yeah, it is. It's the most well-done Lifetime movie ever made. I love Ben Affleck in this movie so much. It's probably my favorite performance he's ever done. Same here. And I had a note if someone said that that's not even that big of a stretch, but I think it's my favorite onscreen performance from him. His aloofness is just like perfect, but like home, like, I don't know, he's the perfect guy in this scenario. And I remember really relating to him in this movie and God, it moves even the like the score. When Affleck puts it together, he's like, when he goes home and I love that so much. And then because Ali, that's my wife. Nick Yes, because she's not a a movie person. You know, when people are movie people, sometimes I have to accept it. They're going to do a little second screening and they're going to be on their phone. Occasionally. There's this thing to answer this thing. And that was happening. She was into it, but that was happening. But there are a lot of questions like, oh, he pushed her. Like I mean, I don't really like him that much. He's kind of an idiot. As soon as that fucking Coogle montage starts, the phone went away. And that's an hour end of the movie. So there's 90 minutes left and she did not look at her phone ever again. And she goes, Oh, I thought this was like some true crime thing. And I go, Yeah, so did I. I had no idea. And it is so difficult to change the entire narrative of your movie one hour in. So like you're your second act is a complete restructure. You have led us down this path, you know, and the entire pace in the movie changes. It starts to get much more rapid and we're moving, the music changes. It is a great shift. It's just it's a great heel turn and you're like, fuck. And then by the time you get to the central murder, the main murder in the movie, Ali was like, she just dumbfounded. And she doesn't get like that with movies a lot. And she went, What the fuck? And I go, Yeah, like she had no idea where it was going. And no one does. Like, it's just so cool. Every time I watch that death scene, I'm like, God damn this thing. So. Oh, bad. I like that you use a wrestling term just now. You probably even realize you did it. Which one he'll turn at? All right, All right, All right. Well, anyway, I'm glad I am, too. I'm glad I use it to Jesus. But seriously, like a 180, you just. Oh, God. It's really. Yeah, The entire pace changes. And we're talking about Affleck. He has, like, a flatness to his delivery that seems that can kind of like, lose you. And then you get it. And it just that flatness helps punctuate the moments of genuine terror. Yeah, well, you know, the flatness is a perfect way to say it, because it affects every moment where there is something outside of it. So like the best example is like when he has to about when he's about to go on TV for his interview. But then that information just comes out and it completely chair changes the whole narrative of what they were trying to defend. You get this thing where he's like, Now I got this, don't worry about it. And then I love that scene where the reporter, she looks like she's just so chomping at the bit to like, just like, rip him a new asshole and he just sits there and he's like, All right, I gotcha. And then it turns out that he fucking nailed the part because he knew I just have to fuck her over. Which is why they make the cut to not show the interview. Yeah, which frustrated a lot of people, but narratively it makes sense to watch that through Amy's eyes because he's the one who has to receive it. That's who it's for. And just say No, I love Sela Ward. Not technically, yes, but she's definitely doing Diane Sawyer. But I just love Sela Ward and she plays that so well. So you have Missy Pile doing the Nancy Grace thing, and she's great too. But yeah, they're both those are great. Like everyone of the movie's great. Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry. I love Carrie Coon. Yeah, I like Carrie Coon is fantastic. Like, oh, I love very deliberate casting all around. Like, yeah, yeah. And it just all works. It's all really perfect. It's it's a movie that I just I cannot say enough good things about. I love it. There's a really cool if, if we're getting a little bit of the filmmaking. I was watching this episode of the director's chair and they were talking about a scene from this movie where when it's the scene where Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike meet their characters at the party. Yeah. And he goes, I just wanted to show how there's two completely individual people meeting for the first time. So he splits the screen completely 5050. And then according to, you know, when Ben Affleck's character has more control of the scene, more of the frame goes on him, and then she takes it, it goes on her, and then she like just a way of thinking about how you're going to compose your your structure. All this about who's got the power. Yeah. And that's what this whole entire movie's about, right? So what narratively speaks to everything when you watch it, how they break it down on that YouTube channel, it just seems so easy. Exactly. All this stuff and the way that with all these making is in the commentaries I'm talking about, he has a way of explaining things very like just what I was saying with the sound mixing, like changing syllables. I'm going, I know. Okay, he explained in a way that I know how to do it. I couldn't do it. I don't possess those skills. But then, yeah, you start thinking about it and you're like, Oh, that's quote unquote easy. It's actually not easy at all. It requires so much thinking and so much planning. It just comes out effortlessly. And keep in mind, when you're watching that scene, they could easily be reacting to different takes like it. We probably are not watching this. Just one take. We're watching different takes. That's what's crazy. And we are none the wiser. And the only person who has the magic ingredient, the recipe, the only person who can solve the puzzle is Fincher, because he's the only one who knows what syllable he wants to hear. It's crazy. It's crazy. It must be so weird. Especially being in a Fincher movie. Like since he's adapted this style, watching your performance and just being like, Yeah, that's that's. It's not even me up there anymore. Basically. Yep. Take six years off. It's tough looking at his filmography. I know there's other stuff in there, and now he's developing House of Cards. Developing Mindhunter. I know this is a movie podcast. Not trying to slight that work, but it takes us six years to get to Mank and it sounds like the movie he wanted to make a long time. He wanted to make it. After the game, his dad wrote the screenplay. Jack Fincher takes him a while to make it, and basically it seems like no one was going to give him the money to do this until Netflix. So he had to do House of Cards for Netflix, had to do Mindhunter for Netflix, and then they gave him the money to make Mank I like Mank better than Benjamin Button, but I think he's still in his sentimental vibe. I think this is a movie made much like Benjamin Button to honor his father. And I cannot come on, I can't disparage that at all. And I, mank in a lot of ways, feels like a sentimental thing where, like, there's no grand action set piece. And I may have been a little too critical of that in the past. But now I'm like, Oh, that's not the point that the set pieces in this movie are conversations. And now, knowing what we know about Fincher, him filming like a ten minute conversation with, I don't know, maybe 15 different people speaking at any given time, must have just taken days and days. And I really appreciate that. Yeah, it's a good movie, but like Benjamin Button, this is not one that gets a ton of replay for me, a ton of rewatch ability. And I am very upset that it doesn't seem like this is ever going to be presented on physical media. So we're never going to get to making of never going to get a commentary. And even though it's not my favorite Fincher film, I would absolutely buy it if it was out. But I guess it's just going to live on Netflix forever. That sucks. I just want to point out how different this conversation is compared to when 2020 happened and you were on the Mank train. That's true. I think there is a thing, a such a thing as a covert movie. I'm starting to learn this now that, of course, it came out. When we were deep in COVID, it was like, Holy fuck, I haven't seen a good movie all year. Like, Dude, if you look at the Oscars for 2020, I mean, it is it's just really bad. And I guess they had to go with what they had to go with, but that it's it's not a good crop of films to me at all. So in the vein of giving us nothing, I mean very little there was Mank there was a new Fincher film, and I think I was more overexcited, like it made my top five of 2020 and it still would today because there's nothing from that year that's like, really worth remembering. But I'm not as high up on it as I was in 2020. But then I actually actually in the year since called on it and now I'm just a little warmer to it. And I, I get what he was going for. And I mean Arliss Howard is Louis B mayer. Charles Dance's, William Randolph Hearst. These are amazing performances. Amanda Seyfried is Marion DAVIES. I love all these. So yeah, there's a lot in the movie to appreciate, but it is not one of his most Rewatchable movies. It just isn't. No, it isn't. I remember when you were really big on it, and because I hadn't seen it yet and I remember I watched it in parts and I just I remember really liking it and I just remember. But but not liking it for exactly the reasons you're talking about as it was what you were, what we were given that year. And I was like, is to release. It was like, Oh, finally something good, something at least, well paid something company Exactly it because it's so well-made and some of those scenes are just are so captivating to watch. But yeah, like when you put it with the rest of his work, it doesn't feel quite like everything else. It was just a respite from what we were getting at the time. Yeah, yeah. And I will also say that there's some issue of the two narratives because I think all the flashbacks move so well. Then all the stuff with him in bed, which is like, yeah, I don't know, a quarter of the movie. It just, it drags when you've seen the movie three times already and it's like, okay, I get it. This is all Sweden sentiment, all there that is. Again, all the flashbacks are so like tough and cold and kind of nasty and that everything, everything when he's writing the screenplay is very sentimental. And I get all that again, not hating on it, but it just it's not one of the most rewatchable movies to me. I'm glad he got to make it. It seemed like he wanted to make it for forever. So, you know, good on him for sure. Yeah, that's the filmography. That's it is coming out. They get the new David Fincher film. We're going to do a full episode on it just to read it for Oppenheimer. We're going to come in. I'm excited. I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah, it's just great. Good. Another David Fincher movie. I hope he doesn't. You know, I'm glad he went. It is Beacon TV, but please just make a movie for us every three years. So I would love it. I would absolutely love it. Now we're going get on to some fun stuff, though. Collaborators. Yeah, I'm looking forward to fun facts. It's going to be good. I want to talk about some of the collaborators just really because I did not. I mentioned some key ones along the way, but I would say arguably his biggest collaborator is a producer named S.N. Scharf. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I probably am not. This is a producer who's produced every David Fincher movie from the Game to the Killer and has also been married to David Fincher since 1996. So I love that. I never knew that. I did not know that until yesterday that, like Christopher Nolan produces, all of his movies with his wife, Emma Thomas, I had no idea that David Fincher did that as well. That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. And as I go through the collaborators, I'm not talking about like every person that works on a David Fincher film, just if they've, you know, dipped back in once or twice if they've suited up. And once more to the breach, Dear friends, Darius Conti did shoot seven and do it very well and help develop Panic room so shot some of it. He does share credit on the movie Harris Reedus I love you. Rest in peace. He shot the game in Zodiac. So dark. What a great esthetic. I love him. Jeff Cronin with huge director, too. Fincher shot Fight Club, Social Network, Tattoo, Gone Girl. It's a big deal. Now. His new guy seems to be Eric Messerschmidt, who is the only cinematographer to ever win an Oscar for shooting a David Fincher film. He won an Oscar for Mank. That's awesome. He also shot the killer, also shot Mindhunter. He seems to be Fincher's new guy, and I'm here for it. But those are all. He's always had good collaborations with his DP's. Always he tells them what to do with you. Sign on to David Fincher movie. You're being told what to do. You're not being asked your opinion. I was just going to say, because it's it's very, very clear that when you watch any David Fincher movie that as esthetic, that you're getting that look, that vibe is always the. And when you've got a group of DP's that you just listed. Yeah, yeah. You're watching Fincher's vision, not necessarily the cinematographers vision, which is crazy one. I also loved it. Some have like reunion tours, like, you know, Jeff Cronin with works with him after the game. You know here's to me this does the game Jeff Cronenworth does fight Club Harris V does Zodiac Jeff Cronenworth does Dragon Tattoo. So hell it's not like it doesn't seem like there's necessarily bad blood like groups. Yeah, you're just moving around. Score did talk about Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. They've done Social Network, Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl Mank The Killer. I also want to give a shout out to Howard Shore who established a dark mood with seven The Game and Panic Room that I really, really love. Howard Shore Like Yes, you did the score for Silence of the Lambs and there's some I can feel some similarities in that score and particularly like seven and I there's a very different mood that I really love like those shrieks he has at the end of seven just, you know, love them. Hugely important collaborators to David Fincher, his editors. James Haygood, he edited The Game Fight Club and Panic Room. Angus Wall comes on and we have Benjamin Button, Social Network and Dragon Tattoo. Curt Baxter edited Benjamin Button, Social Network and Dragon Tattoo, Now Social Network and Dragon Tattoo. They won Oscars four back to back. That's crazy. That's it's crazy really good Like that's not an easy feat. I don't even know if that's ever been done before. Back to back editing Oscars. But after Dragon Tattoo, Angus Wall has apparently tapped out. So Curt Baxter edited Gone Girl, Mank the Killer. Now here's a big one, maybe a big one that no one talks about. Wren Kelsey This is a sound mixer, sound editor, sound designer who has done the sound for every single David Fincher film since seven. He is on a lot of the special features. He has been nominated for nine Oscars. He is not. But this is a collaborator that Fincher says he trusts implicitly. And Wren Kelsey, This guy will just put stuff in just like add little things that help little or big things. It's his decision in the social network to win. We're on computers. We're not hearing like click, click, click all the stupid shit that are computers. We're hearing like hard drives or keyboards like what you would actually hear. That's all him Brilliant. That's so cool. I love this collaborative, some fun David Fincher facts here. Longest film. Benjamin Button is the longest at 166 Minutes. Dragon Tattoo 158 minutes. Zodiac Director's Cut 162. The original cut 157 Minutes and then Gone Girl 149 minutes. And I want to bring that up because Gone girl just doesn't feel ideally that shorter than Dragon Tattoo. It just doesn't. It feels like it's so much shorter. It feels like Dragon Ball, a much bigger disparity there. But no. Gone girls two and a half hours long gone girl Feels like 2 hours. Yep, it does. It really, really does. That's exactly why I wanted to bring that up. That's. I agree. I totally agree. That's wild. Most Benjamin Button cost 167 million. And then second was Dragon Tattoo with 90 million. So he always works with studio budgets. Again, not an indie filmmaker a lot of his peers started. He's always working with someone else's money. Biggest hit DO What's the biggest hit of his career? What's the movie that's made the most money? I'm going to say Gone girl Good job. Gone girl 369 million. God, that's crazy. Benjamin Button at 335 million. But with a way bigger budget. Yeah. Listen to this shit. With a $34 million budget, seven x $327 million. What the fuck? That is what adults went to the movies. Seven takes $327 million on 1995. Money. Oh, my God, Love it. We used to be a country. It's crazy. Yeah, seriously. Most Oscar nominations. Benjamin Button had 13, Mank had ten. My I know most Oscar wins. Benjamin Button and Social Network both had three. We're going to rank them all right here. So here's what I want to say. I don't think I've ever been more excited to do rankings because we're very in agreement on this. So I don't know. I know if they're going to they won't be exact because you and I do feel I know we feel differently about one movie in particular, but I'm curious. That's true. How they how they line up. But yeah, we'll go we'll just go down in order. I think we're going to have one difference. And I think it's going to be one placement difference. Number 11 Memorial. Well, it's going to be me because I always do this because I carry this fucking show you do on back. It's what my back hurts every day from you carrying the weight. I'll take the bullet. I hope we agree on 11. I mean, I hope now number 11 is alien three. Yes. Okay. Come on. That's what's so cool about us. Filmographies. Because like everyone agrees on this, it even he would agree. Yeah, he'd go, okay, yeah, you got me. So that is my number 11 as well. All right, number ten. Number ten. Here we go. Top ten, baby. I'll take top ten. David Fincher. Yeah. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Same for me. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. All right, Benji, That's Benjamin Button number ten. Number nine, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Oh, we're different here. We're very different, girl. Different here. Okay. All right, all right. I don't think it's possible for me to give anything besides maybe Alien three anything lower than a B-plus. That's what I'm saying. So I think I would probably give the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I think that A-minus. Okay, interesting that it's that. I mean, that's cool that it's nine. Okay. My number nine is Mank. Yeah, I actually did that. So that's your eight? That's My eight. Perfect. Perfect. My number eight is Panic Room. Oh, yeah. My number seven is Panic Room. So now I'm chasing you. Jason, You're number seven is Panic Room. My number seven Fight Club. Yeah, Yeah. Different. Yeah, we're different. Yeah, we're different here. Yeah, yeah. Fight Club. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm with that. I'm fine with Fight Club being. No, I don't have that too. Yeah, well, you should be number six. I would. You. Number six for me is the game. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I honestly thought the game might have taken your dragon tattoo spot, so I kind of like this. I thought the game might be a little higher, but I liked it at six. I. That's fine. That's fine. I had a lot of fun with that movie, especially the second time around. As much as a problem as I have with the ending. It doesn't deter me from the whole movie experience. Yeah. Yeah. I love the White Rabbit coming up over there and that's. That's great. Just a callback to that song. Oh, yeah. Anytime that song's used in a movie, you think it would be, like, too much, But the people do it really well. It's like you've just. I mean, this is a year later. Is fear and loathing. That's like, what are the best uses of White Rabbit? And he uses it. Well, it's just it's use. Well, it's so good, so good. It's a great song. So the game is your number six. My number six, The Girl with the Dragon tattoo. Wow. That's high up. Yeah, Yeah, I know. That's high up there. I know. Wow. We have. Yeah, we're going to be we still have our top fives are going to be pretty, pretty similar. Number five for you. Number five for me is club. Okay? It is in the top five. Yeah. That's not that much difference. It's a two spot difference. I like it just to spot difference, but it isn't the top five. But it sounds we're Oh no we're, we're going to the same movies in the top three but maybe a different order. My number four is the game. I love the game. Oh, I love it. I'm afraid. I mean, usually fans of the podcast know I am like, I don't know. I'm a fan of their earlier work, but I will often say that with Director Love made the top of my Tarantino. Not all of them. Hollywood's really highly ranked, but it's true. The first three Tarantino the beginning of Nolan like with memento I yeah I will tend to latch on Wes Anderson bottle Rocket Tenenbaums anyway yeah the game number four true Yeah. Yeah. All right. Number four for me is gone. Girl. Wait a minute. I skipped my number five like an asshole. I was like, How did I just get ahead? Oh, God damn it. I'm leaving it in the Air Force it up. I fucked it all up. Number five for me is God, girl Oh, my God. Love, God. Girl, Love God, girl. Okay, Number five for me is God. Girl that we go to your number four, which is gone. Girl God, Girl yes, yes. Idiot. I love. I love that this is so high for both of us. So yeah, I knew Gone Girl was going to be my top five. I knew it then my number four take a wild guess. It's the game and my top four. I don't know I just love like I know I mentioned this sometimes, but I love like when directors like I love their earlier work. What if I just did the whole monologue again? Yeah, you just did the whole thing. You just not talk about it. The whole monologue. Top 30, baby. Here we go. Top three. Number three, Zodiac. Nice. Nice. I figure it's not yours. It's not. My third is Social Network. Yeah. Yep, yep. So we're going to switch it up. Should we finish it out like Wheel of Fortune here? You're number two O number two, baby. The Social Network. Yes, it is. And number one, there it is seven, let's say the same time. Oh, you see, I say it, let's hug it. There is not as much disparity here as I thought. I'll do mine. 11 Alien 310 Benjamin Button nine. Mank eight Panic Room seven Fight Club six Dragon Tattoo five Gone Girl for the Game three Social Network two Zodiac one seven All right. 11 Alien 310 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button nine The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Eight Mank seven. Room six. The Game Number five Fight Club four Gone Girl three Zodiac two The Social Network and Number one seven. Love It. I love that we share the number one Bottom two in the same top ones. The same top three are the same. Just a different order, which is awesome. Yeah, that's great. Just different orders. All right. We're going to move quickly because we've been keeping here, people here while we're going to do the David Fincher Oscars. But the way we're going to do it is we have categories and we're just going to pick our favorite. That's all exactly what we did for Nolan. Just going to pick our favorite. I did start with best title sequence and very quick, just to give people a little bit of a reminder in seven it's meeting John Doe, it's like so iconic, you know, the the music and the game. It's it's just visual credits. It's like the puzzle pieces falling in Fight Club. It I am Jack's brain panic room has the floating city titles which are so cool yeah zodiac where it's narrative We're following the envelope into the office. Yeah Benjamin Button has none. Harvard is more is a lot like Zodiac. Like we're following him through the campus That energy and keeping the energy up. Dragon Tattoo feels an update of Fight Club where you're updating that style and doing a much better version of it. Leather Dark Smoke. Immigrant Song. Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin. So Good And Then Gone Girl is very different. Oh, sharp cuts across the neighborhood. Yes. Okay. You're really you're kind of setting a story here. Mank is an old school scroll that I just really, really love. Yeah. Favorite title sequence. I'll do my first because I think it might. It sounds like it's going to surprise you. Oh, you want to go first right here. Oh, go for no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. For the first time ever, ever. You take the brunt of this. My favorite title sequence. No bullshit. It's Panic Room. I love that. Oh, I love those. Because it wasn't just like titles they had to actually make. Like, those are all visual effects shots. The footage is actually real. They, like, went on different buildings around New York and shot that. So that's real. But all the words in it are I just I love I was so impressed when they did that. I love his opening credits sequences, but that one yeah, if I had to pick, I'd probably pick that one. I love it there. Great. For me, it has to be seven. Yes. I mean, that's such a close second cut. I love it. Those images so disturbing. Yeah. And you cut with those sounds and then you don't even really realize that it's some crazy version of, the Nine Inch Nails, right? You don't. And so you just get that last line. You get me closer to God, and you're like, Oh, my God. That was what? That was the entire time like, it's just so cool. Very music videos. Yeah, exactly. He's like, Go do. I'm going to go do it. Yeah. Three minute music video. Surprise, surprise. It works All, right? Best editing. Pick any David Fincher movie. Here we go. Go for it. It it's seven seven. Best editing for me. I love it. Yeah. I went with Social Network here. I can't even imagine how they did The Social Network, especially after you've explained like the split screen thing, right? I can't wrap my head around either. When watched seven. That's old school. Very filmmaking editing done to perfection. So I can I'm like, Oh, look at the way that cut like like so that's the only reason I'm picking that I'm sure social network is a great is probably a more achieve a higher achievement in editing but just me personally I have to go with seven four. Yeah, it's all personal. These are like just our personal picks, that's all. These aren't the real Academy Awards because it's, you know. Yeah, of course. Of course. All Right. Best score, social net. Same here, same here. Was listening to it yesterday as I did some notes for this thing just still hits What a great Oscar. And that was the one the Oscars were like, Oh shit, we can't ignore this because they refuse to nominate Jonny Greenwood for There Will Be Blood. Like they they were not a fan of these rockers coming in and taking these nominations. They weren't. They were like, pissed by it. And then with this one they go, Yeah, you can't. You can't turn your back. Can't ignore that. Yeah. King's speech in when that fucking Oscar. Yeah it's at best. Cinematography is hard though. This is hard. I don't know. This one's very hard. I tossed. All right, you go, you go. I thought you were going to go first for these, Wolf. I could have just went with editing and score for cinematography for me. Harris, I miss you. It's Zodiac. Oh, it's. That was my second choice. Yeah, it was. I came on with seven. Yeah, I mean, I could do seven for damn near all of these, honestly, because almost all of them exactly like Zodiac is going to digital. But I love just the gritty, you know, movie nerd territory here. But the gritty grain of the film Suck of seven. Like, I just love that shit. That's the old school. Yeah. Yeah, it's the old school way. Of course. Of course. So I get it supporting actress. Not a lot of supporting actresses in David Fincher movies, but I went with I was just trying to have a little fun and I went with Chloe 70 and Zodiac I really like her now. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, yeah. I really, I don't know. I just like her. It's definitely a supporting performance. Like, she is not in the movie that much, but I always like their chemistry that first date and then how they pass with time. You know, now they got kids and now they're sleeping in separate bedrooms. Yeah. There are a lot of cool deep cuts. Yeah. Maybe it wasn't fair to say there aren't a lot like there. There are. There are a few here that you could pick, so. Yeah, but I wouldn't that maybe that maybe I need to rethink. You have to call me out. If this is not a supporting actress, this is more on the actress side of things. Maybe it is. In which case I'll revise. But her supporting actress. I went with Helena Bonham Carter for Fight Club. No, that's fair. That's supporting. And she was my kind of my first choice. I went, Oh, yeah, I got to go with that. And then, you know, nothing can take away anything from that. I just found out yesterday that she did that she was actually smoking and she was a two pack a day smoker in real life. And she got up to it three pack a day smoker. That's that's a lot of smoke. And baby, God damn, not again that's a lot of smoke. No joke. I'm glad she's still kickin with that a lot. Jesus. Yes. Seriously, supporting actor is a little bit more to grasp on to here. I do love Arliss Howard Mank, but I went I did a Zodiac kind of hand in hand here for the supporting. I went with Robert Downey Jr and Zodiac. I love him in it. Oh, this is it. This is interesting. And I guess you do have to call me out on this one, too. Oh, I'm sorry to say what you want to say about it. No, that's it. I'm done. No, no, that's it. Oh, I've talked about how I like him in it, and I do think his career changed for a while after it. Maybe he's back. Like doing drama with Oppenheimer. I don't know. I think he should have been nominated for this. I. I went with Pitt from Fight Club as a supporting actor on this. Maybe that's a little to accounts, but it's a meaty one. But it does count. He is supporting me. That one. Edward Norton is the star. That's but I love Brad Pitt in Fight Club Then my, my my runner up for more of a supporting actor would be Andrew Garfield from Social Network. He's so good in that he should have been nominated for that as well. He really should have. I thought it was going to be. He should have been. That's a great pick. I love him. That movie, Best Actress, Rooney Mara, A Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Yeah, kind of. I'm not taking anything away from Rosamund Pike Gone girl, but. Nope. Even Jodie Foster in Panic Room. Hey. Oh, Sigourney Weaver in Alien three, I think is really. Parts of it are really good. Yes, she's great in it. Come on. Come on, Rooney. Mara's like, I want you to do best actor first. I'm really curious to hear what you're going to say. Oh, God, my glasses. But no, I just. I do want to say I want to double back and wait. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Earlier is that I think Rooney Mara is the the iconic David Fincher acting performance of anything male or female, Male or female. That's yeah, that's a great statement. I probably would agree. Yeah, she really does Best actor I've thought a lot about. So by and I stand by what I'm going to say I stand fucking by my actor in a David Fincher performance is Ben Affleck from Gone Girl. Oh, I like it. I like it. I could support that. I could support that. Yeah, I fucking love it. I Think he's I think he's absolutely flawless in that he might be my runner up. I'm actually going with Brad Pitt and seven. I love Brad Pitt seven. That's the Oh yeah I mean it's a good yeah yeah this I you know I had to get some seven love in there because I realized it wasn't popping up a lot of my Oscars. But yeah that's, that's one I would go with but I can't I'm not mad at Ben Affleck at all. Yeah. Best screenplay, you know, might seem a little social. Yes. Yes. Social network I was I was going to go for. Yeah. No I'm glad it's the same It's like sometimes it's just it's not obvious. It's like, come on, this is this movie is kind of a it's a love letter to it. Screenplay. The screenplay is the star that. Yeah, I think I really do. It is. Yeah, That's actually 100 accurate. Yeah. Now, best director is tough because I don't know if I misspoke earlier when I said the Social Network is the best director David Fincher movie. I, I don't know, man. This is really, really hard. I think I have to go with Zodiac. I think I do for Best Director. Wow. Yeah. And it's runner up the Social Network. It is, but Zodiac, like, I think crying when I think of David Fincher and he brought it all together and it's so big. It's just so big and the story is so iconic and you did it. You made them you made a movie that made everyone happy, just not, you know, the people who decide Oscar nominations. But all the rest of us continue to be happy by it. It was that was my I couldn't decide it was between that and what I picked, which I did Picked Social Network. Yeah. Fair. Fair. So we are very blessed. That was your second. Yeah. Now, I assume our best picture is the same. Barring any envelope gate shocks, it's going to be seven for me I won one social network. I think seven is a perfect movie. I think Social Network is a perfect movie. But if I'm looking at, I go, You're saying, Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Seven's personally my favorite, but I think Social Network is the best picture he's made. Yeah, that's totally fair. That means it does. It does. Seven was never going to get nominated for picture director never made a shitload of money, but no one ever thought it would get nominated really for any Oscars. Got nominated for one social network was like yes, it's a much more mature. It's a much more kind of austere, whatever you want to subscribe to it. And that was like, okay, I'm done playing around. I don't know if he made that as his Oscar movie, but that was his movie and you guys screwed him. And I think, like I said before, I think it's like the most important movie he's made. So I that's why I stand by, because I think it's a good pick. Yeah. If you're just thinking the Oscars. Yeah. If I could give any David Fincher movie a Best Picture Oscar, I would give it to Social Network If I'm just saying me. My favorite Fincher movie is 700, yeah. No, but yeah, I mean, yeah. Taking everything into consideration for sure. That was great. That's a lot of fun. Fun to talk about it. We agree a lot on Fincher. Yeah, all my awards for the moviemaking all either went to Social Network or seven. I didn't have any outliers in that. Well, that means you love it. Does it ever? I do. What do you watching? We've arrived. We've kept people long enough. Guess who's going to go first? So it's amazing. Amy here I so. Okay, I'm going to be I'm pulling a you right here and I'm doing something we don't do because I saw something. Don't know if we talked about it, but I can't stop thinking about Amy. What have I done? What do I do? What do you do? You listen. No, but you said you're pulling a me. What do I do? Oh, yeah, I'm. I know. I'm listening right now. I skip. I skipped ahead in my thought train. I'm picking a television situation here. All right, fine. Yeah, but you did it. You did it recently. It depends. I have picked shows that are one and dozens like are six episodes or ten episodes. I don't pick series. I pick like a mini series. Do whatever you want. It's your time. It's your time. You're. What are you watching? Time is your time Could pick what you want. All right, here's what I'm doing. I'm just I'm talking about one episode in one episode only from a TV show. What is it? I want it out. And it's because he's a highlight of this of this podcast episode as the one and only Brad Pitt. And I am trying to tell everyone for the love God Watch Season three's last episode of the show. Dave and I watched this and wanted to text you about it so bad that I didn't even know you watch the show. I've had to wait on it. I bet before I told you about it's like months ago, I was like, You have to fucking see. This is a great call. I fully support it, fully support it. So I was so I watched that show. I'm a fan of that show, but I had it ruined. If someone watched all of season three before I started watching it and just like kind of just like I'm about to do, let the cat out of the bad bag. Brad shows up, but I didn't know to what context he shows up. I thought he just did a tiny little cameo on this show for no reason. What I ended up watching was something I could have never, ever in my wildest dreams imagine what I was kind of remarkable. And it makes me love him on a level that I didn't think that I could love him more already. I cannot stop thinking about it. I've watched this episode twice just because I was like, I can't not stop watching this. And that is my What are you watching? Recommendation? That's a great one. I dying laughing at that when I saw it just, you know, a few months ago and I texted you and then and then we were talking on the phone you're like, is that the thing with Brad Pitt. No, at all. You knew. But still, the fact that the impact was not lessened and it's still as hilarious. Yes, it's no small part. It's no small cameo. It's no small part in it. It's great. And that show hysterical. I love that show. Hysterical. So in ranking David Fincher, as we just did, I'm going to make a slight amendment. And that is number four. The killer. Whoa. Yeah. You acted like you never saw it. I know, I know, I know. I saw number four. Number four. Ben, I'm not. I'm not. I don't want to say too much and I'm not trying to oversell it. This thing is it was exactly what I wanted from a David Fincher movie. This movie will not be nominated for any Oscars. It is not trying to be nominated for Oscars. He very intentionally made a fun, propulsive B-movie thriller. That is what this is. I clearly when he ventures into this mode and I had I had the absolute time of my life seeing it at Alamo because it's going to be on Netflix. This is exactly what I had to do with Mank a few years ago. I had to go see it at Alamo because it's the only one playing it. So I went and saw it. It was a packed theater. What I'm going to say is the only thing I'm going to say. This movie, a lot of reviews are talking about this in every one of my theater knew this, too. This movie is fucking hysterical. And it is his humor personified. And I want to say one other thing. God, I sound like an asshole because I never do this. Best actor Michael Fassbender, the killer for David Fincher. Not this Oscar season. I'm talking the Fincher Oscars. Oh, okay. Okay. The Fincher Oscars. We just said I have it written right here. I have the best actor Michael Fassbender, the killer number two, Brad Pitt for seven. That's all I'm going to say. We're going to do a whole episode on it. You still have to see it. I will have seen it more than once by the time we record our podcast on it, because I'm going I already have plans to see it one other time. I just I absolutely loved it. I would be after this conversation, I would be near belligerent if you just didn't like it. I cannot foresee that being the case, but it's exactly what I wanted the whole time I'm watching it. I'm going, I hope they're going to, in their press for it, say this is based heavily on Jean-Pierre Melville's The Samurai, Lust Samurai. And that was their main influence. And I love that movie. And was like, okay, I get what you're doing here. I just loved it. So that's my What are you watching? Good. Have a lot more to say next episode. But Neil, you just inspired me to do something because. You have you have pitched Jean-Pierre Melville to me a long time ago. Would you recommend that I watch the Samurai before I see the killer? Yeah, absolutely. If you have enough time. It is not a remake or anything. It just it lives in that world. The people I found out, Michael Fassbinder rewatched Last Samurai, The Samurai, and then went to his agents. You know, Mike's Michael Fassbinder's been racing in LeMans. He raced LeMans twice. That's his passion is car racing. Passion is not acting. So he is it's taken a very active step back from acting. And this is his first movie back. And he literally sent the samurai to his agent and went, Can we find something like this? And they found the script for the killer and they went, Well, perfect. Let's go, let's do it. Just lives. It's not the samurai is not as funny as the killer. But you know, the killer takes place in 2020. Three of the samurai was made. The samurai was made in the sixties. So there's differences there. But yeah, if you want to know, like, what world you're stepping into. I have it in our outline for the killer. We're going to talk about some of our favorite hitman in movies, some of our favorite assassins. That's definitely going to be in mind. Jean-Pierre Melville is in my. He barely got mentioned. Our favorite directors episode. I love him. He did not make many films, but he's one. You'll watch his movies and be like, Tarantino stole that exact line of dialog and Reservoir Dogs. Like, I'm not saying like, put some copy and paste on it, some flavor like it's word for word, that sentence and you see the influence so much, just so much. His movies have been remade so much. I love Jean-Pierre Melville and all of his movies are on Criterion. They're all right there. But The Samurai is a much more serious film tonally in every aspect than the killer. But yeah, the killer is a return to form from a director. I will see. Do anything. But it's one that again, I was only saying the only reason I was bummed watching it is because I went number one, no one's going to see this in the theater. They're going to wait till Netflix and we're going to talk about it on that episode. There's so many reasons to see this in the theater. And then I doubt this gets the physical media, and that sucks because I want to know how he did this because he makes it look so easy. The movie looks like it was so easy to make, and I'm reading an interview with him and they're like, So do you still do the thing? Where you get to do like, takes is like, Oh yeah, Fassbinder did 100 takes that. Yeah, It's just I don't know how to do it in the other way. That's the way I do it. And they know what they're getting themselves into and that's what we do. I'm there to have them act, not hurt. I'm not there to have them sit in their trailers. They're there to act. Amen. And they'll see the killer, if you can. And then join us on the next pod. I'm so glad we agreed on so much. FINCHER Listeners, let us know what you think of Fincher on Letterboxd, on Instagram, on old Twitter at W AIW Underscore podcast. But as always, thank you for listening and happy watching. You met me in a very strange time when you've been all year. Okay. Hey everyone. Thanks again for listening. You can watch my films and read my movie blog at Alex Withrow dot com. Nicholas Dose Dotcom is where you can find all of Nick's film work. Send us mailbag questions at What Are You Watching Podcast at gmail.com or find us on Twitter, Instagram and box at w aiw underscore podcast next is all about David Fincher's The Killer, which is David Fincher at his most. David Fincher. It's in theaters now. It'll be on Netflix November 10th. I loved this movie. Stay tuned Many later and.