David Fincher Shares What He Enjoys and Hates About Filmmaking and Explains Why He Loves The Montage
David Fincher recently sat down with Steven Soderbergh during a panel at the Tribeca Film Festival to talk about movies. During that conversation, Fincher talked about remastering Se7en, the parts of the filmmaking process that he enjoys and hates, and he explains why he love the montage.
The first thing he touches on, though, is the fact that he does not like to rewatch his old movies, explaining: “I don’t. I’m not brave. I’m fundamentally like, look, no, I can’t. It’s like looking at middle school pictures. I don’t want to even acknowledge that.”
When he does have to rewatch them, though, it’s during the process of remastering them, which is what he’s currently doing with Se7en. When talking about that remastering process, he explains the kinds of problems that he’s looking to fix:
“There’s a lot of sh*t that needs to be fixed because there’s a lot of stuff that we now can. But, I’m fundamentally against the idea of changing what it is. You can fix…if there’s something egregious that needs to be addressed. But, you know, I’m not going to take all the guns out of people’s hands and put flashlights in.”
When asked by Soderbergh what Fincher considers to be the fun part of the filmmaking process, the director said:
“I love rehearsal. I love talking to people about the intention. I love haggling over every single word and what the script means and listening to people read it and hearing their ideas. I love casting. I love the casting process. I love designing the movie. I love sitting with, you know, the production designer, the director of photography, and, you know, talking about what do we want to say and where do we want people’s attention, and what are the things that we have to underline.”
As for his least favorite part of the process, it’s the actual aspect of shooting the film, one of the most important elements of filmmaking. He went on to say:
“By the time it gets to the shooting…I find it to be unnecessary. I would much rather love to just workshop it and then have someone else take it over after all these conversations, and bring it home… But you’ve got to be there.”
As they continued their conversation, Soderbergh asked about the montage sequence in Fight Club, and it’s here that Fincher explains why he loves a good montage:
“I love the montage because it’s you know, it’s pure cinema. It’s inference. It’s like, this goes against this, as quickly as we can possibly make a point and get the f*ck out of dodge.”
A lot of film fans enjoy a good montage! They can be a lot of fun! The filmmakers were also asked questions by aspiring filmmakers when asked about “compromise and weathering disappointment in an increasingly complicated landscape.” Fincher said: “Stick to it. It’s easier to make something now, something that looks really good, for not a lot of money. But it’s harder to get it seen. It’s harder to get bought.”
He added: “When I started a long time ago, it was really hard to get the money to make something, even cheaply. Because film costs money. It was hard to make stuff cheap and look good. But if you did manage to do that you had a better shot at people actually seeing it or buying it.”
Source: Deadline