With “The Killer,” David Fincher finds himself in familiar territory: working again with “Se7en” scribe Andrew Kevin Walker on a lean, mean adaptation of a pulpy crime plot. And how well Fincher excels in fare like that–whether it’s stuff like “Panic Room” or his take on airport reads like “Gone Girl“–is why he’s one of his generation’s most beloved filmmakers. But in new interviews with The Guardian and GQ UK, Fincher revealed he doesn’t view his filmography as an cohesive auteurist paradigm, nor does he understand the love incels have for “Fight Club.” In fact, he hasn’t watched his 1999 film in 20 years.
“I’ve always liked B-movies,” Fincher told The Guardian about taking on “The Killer,” but he doesn’t see his new film as a return to form of sorts for him. “And “Fight Club” to “Panic Room,” what’s that about? I don’t know, it’s kind of where your interests take you. And I spend a lot of time developing three or four things for every one thing I end up doing.” And for that reason Fincher doesn’t think there’s enough consistency across his work for him to be considered an auteur. “How do you put “Fight Club” and “Panic Room” back to back?” Or for that matter, how does someone film “Alien 3” then “Se7en“? Or “Zodiac,” “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button,” “The Social Network,” and “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” in a span of less than five years?
That range is another reason why Fincher resists the auteur label. “I’m so bad at that,” he continued. “Because a) I don’t care. But b) At the point in time I was making “Fight Club,” people were saying: ‘How could you?’ And now you make something like “The Killer” and people go: ‘Why aren’t you doing it like your earlier, more important movies?’ I can’t win.” Fincher may have a distinct visual style, but maybe he’s right that the similarities between his films is superficial at best.
As for the notion that his films are predominately about troubled white, male outsider types (be they the creator of Facebook or serial killers), Fincher balked. “Who doesn’t think that they’re an outsider?” he retorted. “That’s the fundamental difference between me and Tim Burton. Tim Burton believes that Edward Scissorhands is an anomaly. I just don’t know anybody who doesn’t think, in some kind of way, that they’re Edward Scissorhands.”
Which leads to Fincher’s stance on “Fight Club,” his 1999 adaptation of Chuck Pahlinuk‘s 1996 novel of the same name. Fincher told GQ UK, “I haven’t seen it in 20 years. And I don’t want to.” And that’s partly because he doesn’t like to revisit his previous work. “It’s like looking at your grade school pictures, or something. ‘Yeah, I was there,'” joked the director. But he also disavows how “Fight Club” has become a beloved movie for white male malcontents like incels, the Proud Boys, and misogynistic types like Andrew Tate. “I’m not responsible for how people interpet things,” explained Fincher.
For Fincher, the film he made in 1999 that bombed with audiences is different from the one now touted as a tract for masculine supremacy. “Language evolves. Symbols evolve,” he added, but did acknowledge how his work has been co-opted: “It’s one of the many touchstones in their lexicography.” Does that make him uncomfortable? Fincher distanced himself from that kind of response. “We didn’t make it for them, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or [Picasso’s] Guernica,” he continued. “It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence,” he says. “People who can’t understand that, I don’t know how to respond and I don’t know how to help them.”
From the sounds of things, Fincher isn’t all that interested in how audiences receive his work, but instead keeps looking ahead to the next project that will help him evolve his craft. With “The Killer,” he’s made another slick, good-looking crime movie, but who’s to say that bears any serious relation to his older films? And given his comments, it’ll be curious to see what Fincher attaches himself to next. “Mank” was certainly a surprise, but also a passion project for him and his father. But whatever it ends up being, it will certainly be Fincher feature, and one that, like “Fight Club,” he may never watch again after completing it.
