David Fincher has plenty on his plate, but apparently, he’s also been kicking around an intriguing nonfiction project with filmmaker and critic Kent Jones: a contemporary successor of sorts to Jones’ acclaimed documentary “Hitchcock/Truffaut.” And one filmmaker Fincher thinks could make an ideal subject is John Carpenter.
Speaking to The Film Stage about his new film “Late Fame,” Jones revealed that he and Fincher have been discussing something Fincher described as “sort of like Hitchcock/Truffaut for the 21st century.” The basic idea would be to revisit the kind of extended filmmaker interrogation at the center of François Truffaut’s landmark conversations with Alfred Hitchcock, but through the prism of how filmmaking has radically changed in the decades since.
According to Jones, the conversations have included looking at different filmmakers who might be suitable subjects. It was Fincher who brought up Carpenter. Fincher suggested Carpenter because he has “really stuck to his guns” while remaining a “really, really formidable filmmaker,” Jones recalled.
That connection makes a certain amount of sense. Jones has written extensively about Carpenter, while Fincher has long been one of the directors most fascinated by the intersection of technology, craft, and control—the exact changes Jones says the potential project would examine.
Jones directed the 2015 documentary “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” which explored the legendary conversations between Hitchcock and Truffaut and their enormous influence on subsequent generations of filmmakers. Fincher himself appeared in the documentary alongside Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, and others, discussing Hitchcock’s work and legacy.
Fincher also has some history with this particular strain of cinephile nonfiction. He executive produced Netflix’s “Voir,” the 2021 series of visual essays devoted to movies and the intensely personal ways audiences connect with them. He was also a producer on “Is That Black Enough for You?!?”, critic Elvis Mitchell’s expansive 2022 documentary about Black cinema of the 1970s, alongside Steven Soderbergh. Both projects essentially functioned as acts of cinematic preservation and appreciation, making the idea of Fincher helping Jones build another filmmaker-focused documentary around Carpenter feel like a natural extension of his nonfiction interests.
However, it’s worth stressing that nothing appears to be formally underway yet. Jones characterized the idea as something he and Fincher have simply been talking about and repeatedly described his involvement as only “potentially” happening.
Still, the concept is compelling. The original Hitchcock-Truffaut conversations were largely concerned with the grammar and mechanics of filmmaking—camera placement, editing, actors, suspense, visual storytelling—and Jones suggested a contemporary version could similarly grapple with what digital cameras, new lighting technology, and other technical advances have done to the filmmaking process.
Carpenter would certainly provide no shortage of material. The filmmaker behind “Halloween,” “The Thing,” “Escape From New York,” “They Live,” and “Big Trouble In Little China” also represents precisely the kind of fiercely individual career Fincher appears interested in examining.
Whether the conversations between Fincher and Jones eventually turn into an actual film remains to be seen. But a feature-length discussion with Carpenter about five decades of moviemaking, conceived by the people behind “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” sounds like something cinephiles probably wouldn’t need much convincing to watch.
