It is rare for a filmmaker of his caliber to make you come forty-five minutes before the indicated time. David Fincher is one of them: on time, always two steps ahead of schedule. At 61, this specimen of a cold-blooded director, mastermind Hollywood sharpshooter, is the author of fictional labyrinths as fascinating as The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007), The Social Network (2010) or Gone Girl (2014).
Visiting Paris to defend his latest feature film, The Killer, a Netflix exclusive where a lone gunman (played by Michael Fassbender) turns against his sponsors, the man does not lie to his reputation as a skillful speaker, affable and slick swashbuckler. With an art of speckled backhand that knows how to throw the question off its hinges.
How did you discover the French comic series “Le Tueur”, by Alexis “Matz” Nolent and Luc Jacamon (Casterman, 2008), and what made you want to adapt it?
It was simply sent to me, like everyone sends me anything relating to sociopathic killers [rires] ! It was around 2009, I had to work on Zodiac Or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). The nihilistic, sarcastic tone really caught my attention. We put it on the table with Paramount, who initially showed interest. But interest faded in the face of the fact that Zodiac Then Benjamin Button did not raise the slightest profit.
Later, when I was filming Mank (2020), I returned to the graphic novel which was now at 13 volumes. I gave it to Andrew Kevin Walker, my screenwriter, with the idea of making it a sort of Kill Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973), Law of the middle (Mike Hodges, 1970), or Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967). Six months later, we presented a pitch to Scott Stuber [producteur dirigeant de Netflix], who gave us the green light. That was good, because I was a little bored of narrative knitting. What I liked was tracing the film like a big brushstroke.
After “Mank”, a sophisticated and retro fiction about Hollywood in the 1940s, with “The Killer” you move on to a much more stripped-down, even rectilinear story. Did you want to take the opposite approach?
Netflix would probably not have appreciated it if I released eleven-page scenes on socialism in Hollywood like in Mank ! [rires] We have to change gear. Before Panic Room (2002), I had only made films ahead of the public, like The Game Or Fight Club. And then, sometimes it’s about forgetting narrative planning, to put the character in phase with the audience.
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