I learned just to be a belligerent asshole, which was really: "You have to get what you need to get out of it." You have to fight for things you believe in, and you have to be smart about how you position it so that you don't just become white noise.

David Fincher

Categorized in : Believe Fighting Smart

You have a responsibility for the way you make the audience feel, and I want them to feel uncomfortable.

David Fincher

responsibility want way

People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.

David Fincher

two people thinking

Directing ain't about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn't want to go to film school. I didn't know what the point was. The fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two.

David Fincher

movie education school

In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behavior and we sculpt light.

David Fincher

film behavior light

I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about JAWS is that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.

David Fincher

swimming ocean gone

Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay.

David Fincher

medicine lying hands

People go to the movies to see things they haven’t seen before. Call me a radical.

David Fincher

radical call-me people

I don't think that digital technology will ever take away the humanity of storytelling, because storytelling is entirely, in and of itself, a wholly human concern.

David Fincher

technology humanity thinking

Everything seems really simple on paper until you take a camera out of the box.

David Fincher

cameras paper simple

I like characters who don't change, who don't learn from their mistakes.

David Fincher

dont-change mistake character

Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.

David Fincher

psychology cameras actors

A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the film-makers. I think that The Game is a movie and I think Fight Club's a film. I think that Fight Club is more than the sum of its parts, whereas Panic Room is the sum of its parts. I didn't look at Panic Room and think, "Wow, this is gonna set the world on fire". These are footnote movies, guilty pleasure movies. Thrillers. Woman-trapped-in-a-house movies. They're not particularly important.

David Fincher

fighting fire thinking

Sometimes people freak out when you shoot 40 takes of something. They start looking at you like, "What did I do wrong?", and its like "No. It's not wrong. It's just that we are going to try something different."

David Fincher

different trying people

My idea of professionalism is probably a lot of people's idea of obsessive.

David Fincher

professionalism people ideas

I think intelligence is totally subjective; it's like sexiness.

David Fincher

sexiness subjective thinking

We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's nothing to kill anymore, there's nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this everyman is created.

David Fincher

shopping fighting overcoming

The thing I always say to any writer that I'm working with is: Just make sure that in any argument, EVERYONE is right. I want every single person arguing a righteous side of the argument. That makes interesting drama.

David Fincher

sides drama interesting

I was always interested in films that scar.

David Fincher

scar film

How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.

David Fincher

one-day-at-a-time movie one-day

I want stuff to play as wide as possible. I want to be able to see... if I could play the whole thing in a master and it could be compelling enough, that'd be great. Then it simplifies my day, it simplifies life for the actors when you could just focus on that. But by the same token I don't want to be forced into coverage. So I want it to be as good from every angle and I need to get as many of the kind of shadings that I want from every angle.

David Fincher

focus want play