David Leo Fincher (born August 28, 1962) is an American music video and film director known for his dark and stylish portraits of the human experience, particularly Fight Club (film) and Se7en.
Born in Denver, Colorado, Fincher was raised in Marin County, California. He moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens where he graduated from Ashland High School.
Inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Fincher began making movies at age eight with an 8 mm camera. Filmmaking seemed the perfect outlet for a kid who could spend all day drawing and loved to make sculptures, take pictures and tape-record. Fincher eschewed the film school route, getting a job loading cameras and doing other hands-on work for John Korty's Korty Films. He next got a job at Industrial Light and Magic in 1980 with his first screen credit being for Return of the Jedi, and stayed until 1984. He left ILM to direct a dark commercial for the American Cancer Society, a grim hint of things to come, showing a fetus smoking a cigarette. This quickly brought Fincher to the attention of producers in LA and he got the chance to direct the documentary The Beat of the Live Drum featuring Rick Springfield in 1985. Though he would continue to direct spots for companies like Revlon, Converse, Nike, Pepsi, Sony, and Levi's, Fincher soon discovered that the slightly expanded format of music videos was an even better place to try things out.
With his sights set on a directing career, he joined the talent management and advertising and video-production company Propaganda Films and started off directing music videos and commercials. Directors such as Meiert Avis, David Kellogg, Michael Bay, Antoine Fuqua, Neil LaBute, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek, Michel Gondry, Zack Snyder, Gore Verbinski, and Alex Proyas among others honed their talents at Propaganda before moving on to feature films.
Fincher directed big budget music videos for artists such as Madonna (including "Express Yourself", "Vogue" and "Bad Girl"), Billy Idol ("Cradle of Love"), Jody Watley, Rick Springfield, Steve Winwood, George Michael, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Paula Abdul, the Rolling Stones (including "Love Is Strong"), Nine Inch Nails ("Only"), the Wallflowers, The Outfield and A Perfect Circle, as well as commercials. Like a number of other music video directors, he then moved into film.
Fincher's feature debut was Alien³ (1992), which was then the most expensive picture ever made by a first time director. Unfortunately the film was not a pleasant experience for Fincher, having had a difficult time with the people at 20th Century Fox, who built sets without a finished script and made production a nightmare. While it received an Oscar nomination for special effects, the film was not well received by critics or movie goers. Depressed and disillusioned, Fincher retreated back into the world of commercial and music video directing, earning a Grammy for the Rolling Stones' "Love Is Strong" (1994). On the 9-disc Alien Quadrilogy box-set released in 2003, Fincher was the one director from the entire franchise who declined to participate in the box-set, even to record a commentary track. On the DVDs for Fight Club and Panic Room, if the user views Fincher's selected filmography, Alien³ is omitted.
Fate finally came knocking on Fincher's door with Andrew Kevin Walker's screenplay for a grisly detective story titled Se7en (1995). The relentlessly grim story of two detectives (played in the movie by Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) tracking down a serial killer who bases his killings on the seven deadly sins. The movie grossed more than $100 million domestically (over $300 million internationally), making Fincher a "hot" director. The chairman of New Line Cinema, Michael DeLuca, originally refused to allow filming of the shocking climactic scene before Fincher convinced him otherwise. He argued that the scene was such a crucial part of Se7en, that 30 years later, someone flipping through the channels on late night TV would run to tell his friends about the "head in a box" movie he'd seen the night before -- it being the one crucial element that would stick in the minds of all who saw it.
Next came the dark adventure film, The Game (1997), a nightmarish, Twilight Zone-style thriller which projected the same sense of suffocating enclosure and mounting despair as had Se7en. The film boasted almost as much feel-bad cynicism as Se7en, but failed to get the warm reception enjoyed by its predecessor. The story itself focuses on a closed off San Francisco businessman (Michael Douglas) who receives an unusual gift from his young brother (Sean Penn), in which he becomes the main player of a roleplaying game that takes over his life. It has in recent years become a cult film.
Fight Club was a screen adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name about two men who open up a club devoted exclusively to bare knuckle fighting for males. Featuring Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, and Se7en collaborator Brad Pitt, the 1999 film was easily one of the most publicized of the year but was an early disappointment at the box-office and received mixed reviews. Fight Club was panned by most critics (called "macho porn" by Roger Ebert) and alienated audiences leading to its box office failure in the United States.
However many critics and audiences later had a change of heart and the film appeared on many 'best of the year' lists and soon developed a following. Entertainment Weekly, which had originally given the film a negative grade of D, later ranked the DVD #1 on its list of "The Top 50 DVDs You Need To Own." The DVD market, which was experiencing rapid growth at the time, caused Fight Club to not only break even, but actually become profitable. It is now in the top 250 films of all time on IMDB at number 28, along with Se7en.
In 2002 he followed up with the thriller Panic Room, which introduced some innovative uses of computer graphics. Though the film had good gross at the box office, it was not as well received as Se7en, Fight Club or The Game. The story follows a more conventional route for Fincher, as a single mother (Jodie Foster) and her daughter hide away in a safe room in their new house, away from criminals (Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam and Fight Club collaborator Jared Leto) bent on finding a missing fortune.
Zodiac is an adaptation of Robert Graysmith's books about the hunt for the Zodiac Killer. The 2007 film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards, and Brian Cox. It was one of the best-reviewed films of 2007; however, it has so far struggled at the box office.
A fantasy film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's short story of the same name. The film will unite Fincher with Brad Pitt for the third time. The film started shooting in November 2006 in New Orleans. Both Zodiac and this film are co-productions of Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures.
David Fincher is also attached to direct an adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis' graphic novel Torso.
David Fincher has long been attached to do an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 1972 sci-fi book, Rendezvous with Rama. It was brought to his attention by Se7en star Morgan Freeman, whose company, Revelations Entertainment has optioned it. The film was originally to have been made by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, but after being bought out by Universal Pictures, the film has since moved over to Paramount Pictures (which currently has a joint venture with Universal for international distribution of the 2 studios' films, United International Pictures). It has since been in development.
The production company Impacts Entertainment has optioned a story by Scott Corwon. The story had been in development with Paramount Pictures, but was picked-up by Impacts when the original option period expired. The project is currently in development with a target date for principal photography to commence in 2009. Like many of David Fincher's previous projects - most notably including The Game and Zodiac - the story is set in San Francisco, CA.
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Fincher was attached to direct Mission Impossible 3 before pulling out to work on Lords of Dogtown, which he also subsequently dropped. The former was ultimately directed by J.J. Abrams whilst the latter made its way to the screen under the supervision of Catherine Hardwicke.
Fincher lived with and was married to Donya Fiorentino from 1990-1995. They had a daughter together (Phelix b. 1994)
A recurring item in (most of) David Fincher's films is the Number 14.
Whether this recurrence is intentional has not been stated by David Fincher.
Fincher is an enthusiastic fan of the film Withnail and I. He attempted to reunite the principal cast members in Alien 3. Paul McGann and Ralph Brown agreed but Richard E. Grant was unavailable at the time.
