A Fincher sandwich. Brangelina brung the bread.If you foolishly expected Brad to pop up for a cameo, you're forgiven on account of your totally understandable great love of David Fincher movies, in which Brad often stars (Se7en, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). They're friends in real life and only one year apart in age. But for now, no new movie collaborations are on the docket. 
<--- Finche! r winning an MTV Award for Se7en (1995). It wasn't the first time MTV honored him but more on that later.Beyond the obvious and uncurious case of Brad Pitt, does the popular director even favor repeat actors? He's not visibly a creature of habit like Woody Allen, previously featured in this new series, but he does reuse actors, like favorite daubs of paint on his auteurial palette. Let's investigate!The David Fincher Acting Hierarchy(Quantitatively Speaking)4 Films. There's a three way tie for the top honor, each beating Brad Pitt by one film, albeit with much smaller roles than Brad's movie star status would allow. 
- Richmond Arquette. Yes, that's the least famous member of the Arquette clan (brother to Alexis, David, Rosanna & Patricia). Fincher always gives him tiny rol! es but some are key: he makes the dread box delivery at the en! d of Se7 en, makes the first two kills in Zodiac and also appears in Fight Club and Benjamin Button.
- Bob Stephenson, who you might reconize as a series regular from TV's Jericho or The Forgotten, is part of the SWAT team in Se7en, a security officer in Fight Club and a killer in both The Game and Zodiac.
- Christopher John Fields stretches the furthest back with the director, all the way to Fincher's debut feature Alien³ (1992) where he played "Rains" the 3rd victim of that familiar acid-blooded beastie. He's the one that gets a shower of blood in his face from the beastie as it chomps up his best buddy in front of him. Gross! He also appears in The Game as Detective Boyle, Fight Club's dry cleaning man and he's a copy editor in Zodiac.
- ! Brad Pitt delivered his two best performances, Se7en (1995) and Fight Club (1999), under the director's guidance. Their third union for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), though a substantial hit, didn't deliver in the same way. It's one of Pitt's duller performances, Oscar nomination be damned, and entire scenes are stolen from him by the make up f/x and the supporting actors.
! - Holt McCallany is the tattooed prisoner who tri! es to ra pe Ripley in Alien³ (clearly he had never seen Alien or Aliens) and he's also one of Tyler Durden's disciples/bruisers in Fight Club.
- Jared Leto Remember that Fight Club line "I felt like destroying something beautiful?" used in connection with the destruction of Jared Leto's dreamy face? Leto and Fincher both obviously took that to heart in subsequent projects, too like Panic Room. (What a strange career Leto has had since the teen heartthrob days.) And think of the visual beating Brad Pitt takes in every Fincher film! Fincher definitely wants to destroy his beauty.
- Elias Koteas is one of dozens of cops caught up in the Zodiac case and he's also in Button.
- Rooney Mara is onscreen now in The Social Network and so good in it, too. Like "Mark Zuckerberg" we'll be refreshing our screens until she returns in Fincher's version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
- Paul Schulze, is probably best known as Nurse Jackie's pharmacist / lover. He appears in both Panic Room and Zodiac (with hair!)
- Charles S Dutton is the prison colony's spiritual leader in Alien³ and a cop in Se7en
- Andrew Kevin Walker is the screenwriter of Se7en but he also acts in the film (he plays "Sloth" ... shudder). He's also in Panic Room as "Sleepy Neighbor". Hee.
- John Getz is Zuckerberg's lawyer in The Social Network and Templeton Peck in Zodiac. Poor man is always shot sitting behind a desk. Does he have legs?
- John Casini is one of the cops in Se7en and a "man in airport" in The Game.
1 Film. Hundreds of people share this distin! ction but the two actresses we'd really like to see David Finc! her rete am with are Helena Bonham-Carter who was so against-type revelatory in Fight Club and Nicole Kidman who was supposed to get locked up in that Panic Room but ended up just being a disembodied voice on a phone in the same film.
To come full circle from his music video days, wouldn't it be fun to see three actors Fincher used there in one of his feature films? Why not cast Christopher Walken (Madonna's "Bad Girl"), Elijah Wood (Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl" when he was only 8!) or the egregiously underused Lesley Ann Warren (Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun") in a future movie?Finally... We must dedicate this list to the woman who introduced us to one of our favorite directors. David Fincher famously built his visual rep on a series of gargantuan Madonna music videos (Finc! her won an MTV Video Award for "Express Yourself" though the big M did not) before escaping to feature films. 
Most people went to see Alien³ because it was the third in a franchise. I went to see it because I wanted to see if the man behind the frankly incredible images in Express Yourself, Oh Father, Vogue and Bad Girl had a feature career in him. He clearly did though most critics and audiences were not impressed. That movie needs a critical reevaluation because it was plain as day even then that he was already a cinematic wizard. My suspicion is that the shockingly nasty and merciless tone threw people off and he lost them in the opening shots by killing off Newt. It was always going to be roughly received, no matter how well made, coming after James Cameron's untoppable Aliens (only among the greatest action fil! ms ever made) but the tonal shift further chilled that inevita! bly cool response.Madonna - Express YourselfUploaded by foxysoul. - Explore more music videos.The immortal Madonna video in which Fincher and Mo pay homage to silent masterpiece Metropolis.The second woman we reluctantly must dedicate this to is Paula Abdul since she's also a 4 time Fincher graduate. His videos for her aren't as good but he didn't have as much to work with, you know?
This series is about director's actor preferences but we'd like to note that Fincher, like most great auteurs reuses behind the scenes personell as well. Frequent collaborators include composer Howard Shore (3 films), editors James Haygood (3 films) and Angus Wall (4 films), cinematographer Jeff Cronenwerth (4 films), and production designer Donald Graham Burt (the past 4 films).If you enjoyed this article, pass it on to your [ahem] Social Networks. ! Wink! Nudge!** 
Great classic films, best all time movies
No comments:
Post a Comment