“Gone Girl” director David Fincher spoke candidly to Playboy magazine about Ben Affleck’s casting, his dislike of superhero films and more.
Fincher spoke about the film “Gone Girl,” which is an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel. The movie stars Affleck (Nick Dunne) and Rosamund Pike (Amy Dunne) slated to hit theaters on Oct. 3. Check out the best snippets from Fincher’s interview with Playboy below.
Fincher on choosing Affleck and Pike to star in "Gone Girl":
“I offer everything to Brad, not because I’m pathetic, but because he’s good for so many things. Both Brad [Pitt] and Ben have a default 'affable' setting. Neither wants you to be uncomfortable. You cast movies based on critical scenes. In 'Gone Girl' there’s a smile the guy has to give when the local press asks him to stand next to a poster of his missing wife. I flipped through Google Images and found about 50 shots of Affleck giving that kind of smile in public situations. You look at them and know he’s trying to make people comfortable in the moment, but by doing that he’s making himself vulnerable to people having other perceptions about him.”
Why Fincher isn’t a fan of the superhero movie genre:
“I find it dull. I like to anticipate the energy of a movie audience that’s waiting for the curtain to come up and thinking, Well, one thing we don’t know about this guy is that we don’t know how bad it can get.”
Fincher on the alterations made to adapt "Gone Girl" onto the big screen:
“There are certainly a lot of elements in Gillian’s book that are well-trod in my movies, like the procedural aspect, people putting together clues and things like that. It’s also a very naughty book. But my thought when I first read it was, F---, how do you throw away two thirds of this and still end up with the same journey? How do you still play with the Scott Peterson aspect [the notorious case in which Peterson murdered his pregnant wife] - which we all know is the jumping-off point - but make it about something bigger and more universal?”
Fincher on the “Gone Girl” view on marriage:
“I think Gillian’s book is talking about marriage and hiding it in an absurdist confection. When you peel back the layers and get to the kernel, you think, Wow, I feel queasy for a whole different set of reasons than I thought I would. …They’re about disturbing ideas and very disturbed people and their facades of normalcy. There are moments when you find yourself torn by what the characters in 'Gone Girl' have done in service of their urges. They’re kind of irredeemable and yet intensely human.”
