After growing up in Ashland, Oregon, Fincher wanted to be a director since he was 8 years old. However, he finally decided to get into the film business in 1983, when he saw The Empire Strikes Back, and signed up with Industrial Light & Magic, going on to work on Return of the Jedi, ironically enough.
However, he left ILM to cut his teeth with directing. But since the Spielbergs of the world were keeping him out, and he had no experience for the executives to see, he decided to go into commercials, and then on to music videos, which were a ne art form since MTV had started to go into the national subconscious, also founding the Propeganda video-production house in 1986.
Fincher did ads for the likes of Pepsi and Nike, but his real nadir was some of the music videos he made. As well as Paula Abdul and Aerosmith, Fincher directed Madonna videos, such as Vogue and Express Yourself, and picked up numerous awards for his work, as well as George Michael's Freedom '90, significantly raising his stock.
So he debuted on the screen in 1992 with Alien³, a complete unknown to everyone, yet with a $40m budget, which confused many who didn't realise his pedigree. Unfortunatly, those who wanted another Aliens (which was basically everyone) promptly panned the movie. Well, they hadn't forseen the debacle that was Alien Resurrection. However, many people's opinions are changing now, for his later work, and the aforemeantioned waste of celluloid and Sigorney Weaver.
He didn't return until 1995 with Se7en, a film based upon a serial killer using the Seven Deadly Sinsa as his Modus Operandi. The film was a surprise hit, despite featuring the now dream pairing of Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey, as well as A List man Brad Pitt and then-unknown Gwynneth Paltrow. Suddenly Fincher had an injection of confidence from the studios.
Next stop was The Game in 1997, starring Michael Douglas as a businessman who gets involved in a twisted game of cat and mouse. However, the film seems to have slipped past unnoticed in comparison to his earlier features, so back to the drawing board it was.
Another hiatus, but this time he profited. Fight Club exploded onto the screens in 1999 to mass critical acclaim and gaining a cult audience, as well as plenty of analytical points discussed over many a beer. However, it somehow didn't manage a good box office or any awards, despite being the most intelligent release of the year and having more gritty realism and good quality writing than the main releases of the summer (ie the odious Star Wars saga making it's return and the ever overrated The Matrix), so most cinema viewers were out of money in the post-summer period it emerged in, which was a huge shame for a film of such class. And you'd think that Brad Pitt would be some kind of a draw for the popcorn munching brigade...
Anyway, Fincher is certainly not resting his laurels afterwards. After numerous projects being linked with Fincher, including Rendezvous with Rama, The Black Dahliaand Passengers, he finally added ink to the dotted line for The Panic Room. The only other thing I need is info on The Beat of the Live Drum (1985). Any help?
Official Site/ Fan Site/ David Fincher Film Society.
The show was a string of segments featuring any the various members of the cast spouting diatribes against their intended targets, and both well informed and hysterical they were too. They also edited stock film footage (such as a montage of Carol Vorderman admitting '...I really get on your tits' taken from the numerous shows she fronted at the time), or added images to them to give a wholly different meaning (Clinton getting a blow job during a meeting with Blair instantly springs to mind). The best example was The Minature Area (with a Mr. Tony Blair doll gobbling up the scenery), where Baynham got 'security footage' of various high profile targets behind the scenes and after a full blown media blitz (Portillo moonwalking after giving a speech and Wallace shoving Gromit's face into a turd he just laid on the carpet). The experiment into class sizes also merits a meantion.
Following the initial success, it moved to Friday night (ie The Friday Night Armistice, to go with the earlier point) as part of the major satire section of the BBC2 Comedy Zone (usually headed by Have I Got News For You), to build on it's popularity. And it worked. The format was the same, but since the formula was so successful, there was no problem with this. They even had the alternative '97 Election broadcast alongside the 'real' one on BBC1-chronicalling th 6 LONG weeks of campaigning by both sides.
After Blair's landslide, he became the focus of a lot of their acid wit-especially the New Labour policy creator, All Mouth And No Trousers, as well as giving more realistic edits to the policy card they doled out. As well as giving New Labour a well deserved castigating, the Clinton scandal got a lot of coverage (including Baynham starting the Joke Amnesty by reeling off a whole list of them in the space of a minute)-Iannucci went on to make Clinton: His Struggle With Dirt, a quasi-documentry set 20 years later that included a new language-Nord Americans. Kosovo also got a rather heavy pasting, although the show was not on air during the actual bombing.
Even the Winter Olympics-if Great Britain actually won anything, Blair would be rushed to the podium to take the credit, as with everything else (they never forgave him for the 'Cool Brittainnia' thing). William Hague seemed to volunteer for this, with their weekly 'Popularity Rating'-ranging from Mr Bean (higher than Christ), down to whatever lows could be dragged from the news that week. They even stretched into manufacturing their own girl band on a whim-The Dummies. Literally, a group of dummies. A wig block, mannequin and crash test dummy (among others) probably sound better than The Spice Girls anyway...
However, since then they haven't resurfaced. Iannucci has been writing for other people, Baynham turned up in Still Crazy and voicing Bob and Margret, whilst Schneider has turned up in various places (he's had small roles in The Saint and Mission: Impossible to his name), so whether or not another series surfaces remains in doubt. Meaning we have to watch The 11 O'Clock Show all week on Channel 4 to get a mite of the humor at 4 times the length-but at least Ali G isn't on it any more...
