David Fincher is 60!
August 28, 1962 in the city of Denver, Colorado, USA, in the family of Howard Kelly Fincher, also known as Jack, the head of the bureau of Life magazine, and his wife Claire, a mental health nurse who specialized in the treatment of drug addiction, a son was born - David Andrew Leo. When David was two years old, his family moved from Denver to Marin County, California. It just so happened that two doors from the Fincher house George Lucas lived, the future creator of "Star Wars". This circumstance played a certain role in the fate of David Fincher.
Shortly before David entered high school, the Fincher family moved again, this time to Ashland, Oregon. There, in the life of young David, another event occurred that seriously influenced his future fate. Namely, he saw George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid", and then also a documentary about how this George Roy Hill's film was made. David Fincher later reminisced about his viewing experience.
"I was eight years old and I saw a documentary on the making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It had never occurred to me that movies didn't take place in real time. I knew that they were fake, I knew that the people were acting, but it had never occurred to me that it could take, good God, four months to make a movie! It showed the entire company with all these rental horses and moving trailers to shoot a scene on top of a train. They would hire somebody who looked like Robert Redford to jump onto the train. It never occurred to me that there were hours between each of these shots. The actual circus of it was invisible, as it should be, but in seeing that I became obsessed with the idea of “How?” It was the ultimate magic trick. The notion that 24 still photographs are shown in such quick succession that movement is imparted from it – wow! And I thought that there would never be anything that would be as interesting as that to do with the rest of my life."
It was after this that David got a movie camera and began to shoot everything, constantly improving his skills as a cameraman. That is why David Fincher, after graduating from high school, returned to Marin County in 1981, where, thanks to his acquaintance with George Lucas, he got a job at his special effects company Industrial Light & Magic as an assistant cameraman. Two years later, on his own initiative, he filmed a commercial aimed at preventing cancer. The video attracted the attention of the American Cancer Society, and, as a result, made the name of David Fincher famous in the advertising business. The video launched his lucrative career: he began directing television commercials for Nike, Coca-Cola, Chanel and Levi's, which he alternated with directing award-winning music videos for artists such as Madonna, George Michael and The Rolling Stones.
It is difficult to say how the fate of David Fincher would have developed if, in 1989, 20th Century Fox had not offered him to shoot the second sequel to the fantastic blockbuster "Alien". (Apparently, none of the venerable directors took on, and the film company decided to pass on the blame on novice's shoulders.) In 1993, the film "Alien 3" was released on the screens, which almost buried the film career of a novice director: against the background of the previous Ridley Scott's "Alien" and James Cameron's "Aliens", David Fincher's first full-length feature film looked, to put it mildly, mediocre. But it was this failure that provoked the young director, and his next picture - "Se7en" - made a real sensation in the cinema.
By his 60th birthday, David Fincher has 11 full-length feature films in his filmography, not counting the huge number of commercials, video clips and video documentaries. 6 films out of these 11 were entered the Golden Thousand. Thanks to this indicator, David Fincher is included in the list of the 100 greatest directors of world cinema, compiled by FilmGourmand. David Fincher has won 70 film awards as a director, the most prestigious of which are the BAFTA Award, the French Academy Award Cesar and the American Golden Globe (all three for "The Social Network").
Today, on the day of the 60th anniversary of the outstanding film director, I want to remind the fans of his work the frames from his best films included in the Golden Thousand.
