When last we checked in on David Fincher’s noble quest to win an Oscar, the Benjamin Button director was attempting to silence his critics by hitting them really hard in the chest (“That’s for you, for not greenlighting the movie when you had a chance,” he reportedly told one smacked studio exec). So what’s he been up to since? Well, last night, during a Button-pegged Q&A at Lincoln Center, Fincher regaled an audience with bawdy anecdotes virtually guaranteed to win over any on-the-fence Academy voters (“When we were shooting the newsroom scenes in Zodiac, I remember turning to the first assistant director and saying, ‘All the women who work here are stacked.’ There weren’t that many breast implants in all of California in 1969!”).
Fincher talked about charming Paramount into funding his version of the Button screenplay (“‘That’s a phone book.’ ‘No, it’s the movie we want to make!’”), and about how careful he was with his $150 million budget (“We made $3.5 million worth of mistakes”). And when an eager fan asked about the possibility of a sequel to Se7en, one of the director’s best-loved films, he quipped, “I would be less interested in that than I would in having cigarettes put out in my eyes.” We can’t wait for his acceptance speech!
Fincher gives fans an earful [Variety]
