How David Fincher Put Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike Through the Relationship
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WORLD EXCLUSIVE ON-SET ACCESS HOW DAVID FINCHER PUT BEN AFFLECK AND ROSAMUND PIKE THROUGH THE RELATIONSHIP FROM HELL IN GONE GIRL WORDS NEV PIERCE 62 EMPIRE OCTOBER 2014 empireonline.com OCTOBER 2014 EMPIRE 63 “I WANT IT TO BE MORALLY REPELLENT.” DAVID FINCHER WANT TO MAKE didn’t discuss plot or structure. “It was BRIEFING adaptation process wondering when she’d since 2002’s Die Another Day, but still • Above left: David finger at everybody. It used to be just actors is talking about a lot of different things. a date movie that results more about the nature of the characters, be replaced as screenwriter, but stayed the remains oddly unknowable, is probably Fincher directs — not just actors, anyone in the public Hopefully, the big thing is this idea of who Rosamund Pike as in at least 15 million who they were, the nature of marriage. One GONE course. “I think he really respects writers, tired of the Grace Kelly comparison the imperilled Amy. eye, politicians, whatever. But even we construct these facades to be and how divorces.” David Fincher thing we clicked on immediately was we coming from a writer,” she says (Fincher’s but, sod it, there are worse people to be Above: Carrie Coon, politicians — look at the way politicians exhausting it becomes keeping them up.” grins. The 51 year-old filmmaker — grey- wanted to keep the dark humour. I think GIRL late father, Jack, was a journalist and compared to. Fincher had seen her in who plays Nick’s sister are groomed for the camera now and In his sparse office, at the studio, Margo, and Neil Patrick flecked beard, two types of glasses, stood on a lot of directors would be very nervous author). It also helped, no doubt, that she Pride & Prejudice, An Education and Harris, who plays Amy’s understand about performance.” Fincher shows Empire a scene on his set at RED Studios Hollywood, December about maintaining that. I knew from RELEASED: October 3 has a journalist’s facility with deadlines, Jack Reacher and liked that he couldn’t creepy ex, Desi, during Understanding image and what it is to laptop, from near the finale. Holy shit. 2013 — may no longer be the punkish MTV all his other films that he wouldn’t be cutting and being unsentimental over nail down her age or her nature — he cast a table-read. be in the public eye is part of what made Gone Girl is going to reveal an aspect DIRECTOR: David Fincher auteur who put Gwyneth’s head in a box, afraid to allow that sort of mischievous, your creation. (“She was so prepared to for her “opacity” and the need for whoever Affleck right for the other part. As did his of Affleck you haven’t fully seen before. but he still delights in making mischief. dark, nasty humour in it.” Gone Girl is STARRING: Rosamund slaughter darlings,” says Fincher. “It was played Amy to be “a pretty deep well”. inherent likability. As Flynn says, “Like, Walking back to the set, Fincher talks “I’m not as contrarian as I used to be,” he ruthlessly funny, though it’ll be intriguing Pike, Ben Affleck, Tyler shocking.”) Indeed, the slow death of For her, working with Fincher was an ‘I’d still maybe grab a beer with him. He about why he cast the Argo star. “Ben was Perry, Neil Patrick Harris, journalism formed part of the novel — obvious appeal, but so was the theme. may have killed his wife, but, you know...’” dying to do it and I originally thought, contends. “I don’t know that my work is to see how many people get the joke Carrie Coon, Scoot really a reaction against anything anymore. (how many people, initially, realised Fight McNairy, Kim Dickens both the leads have been laid off from “That aspect of marriage as a con game, You imagine that part of the appeal for ‘He’s too big a movie star’... But then It’s just, you know, ‘What movie would Club was a comedy?). Months later, over magazines and move to Middle America or whatever,” she says. “The idea that Fincher, too, was taking that nice young I just thought, ‘He is that guy.’ Watch him I want to see that no-one is going to make?’” breakfast in Soho in London, Fincher will STORY: When Amy Dunne from New York. we perform a sort of ideal version of man Ben Affleck and doing terrible things do it. He’s so much smarter than he kind (Pike) goes missing, Given the success of the book, talk about trying to define the tone of this presumed dead, a media ourselves that the other person wants. We with him. “I liked the idea of the audience of lets on. I think he would much rather someone, somewhere, would likely have movie, and how he settled on the 1977 circus gathers around her perhaps belie our true nature in order to coming in going, ‘I know what this is,’ and have you discount him. And I think that’s given Gone Girl a crack. Though it’s National Lampoon album “That’s Not husband Nick (Affleck) about the fate of these perform the ideal.” Editing oneself, says then it goes horrendously off the rails — what Nick does. When in doubt: grin.” — and before long, he THE FILM IS unlikely they’d have kept Gillian Flynn Funny, That’s Sick”. “We were constantly finds himself the prime two storytellers, as the beautiful, bright Pike, is something most twentysomethings for everybody involved,” says the director. On the stage, the scene is Nick exploring to adapt her novel, or made the already trying to walk that line. I want it to work suspect. So… did he or Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) disappears she knows — “the sort of Facebook “I think that’s the thing that puts you in the aftermath of Amy’s disappearance — sinister source material even more and live in the area of slightly tongue-in- didn’t he? on her fifth wedding anniversary and her generation” — are more comfortable with lockstep with the protagonist. Unlike The either trying to solve it, or spinning a line troubling. This is a thriller that grips, but cheek, but also morally repellent.” OOH, I’VE READ THIS husband Nick (Ben Affleck) is suspected of than people of her age (her indeterminate Game (his third feature), where you never to his sister, Margo (Carrie Coon). You also insinuates — it gets into your spine. Flynn’s book is almost relentlessly BOOK! Good for you. So her murder. As the media scrum intensifies vintage is actually 1979). “When you talk had a chance to get ahead of it. I think will get to decide. He opens a package and “If you had asked me who I wanted punishing in its twists and tension, but you’ll know that author and Nick endures the ire of everyone, to someone in their thirties they find it that was the mistake of it. The fun of it sits down in weary silence. It is, roughly, Gillian Flynn (who wrote to direct Gone Girl, it would have been also startlingly insightful on relationships the script) structured it including his own family, the film slips into a bit more troubling.” for the filmmaker is not the fun of it for take 26 when the chair collapses. There’s David,” says Flynn, who worked for and the images we present to strangers, around parallel ‘Him’ flashback to show how the couple met- Auerbach/Contour Images by Getty Frederic Rosamumd Pike: Russo. Affleck: John Ben It was this notion that formed the basis the audience. I think the fun of this movie a hush, as Affleck picks himself up. Then Entertainment Weekly before breaking intimates and even ourselves. Plenty of and ‘Her’ first-person cute and then fell apart. The roles required of many conversations with Fincher. “David is, ‘Oh, I get what...’, ‘He’s likable’, ‘He — “I should stop eating!” — laughter. through as a novelist. When they first met, people got it: more than two million narratives. an everyman and someone ethereal. and I talked a lot about living in an age of couldn’t have...’ and then you go down Fincher shouts over, with reference to Fincher had read her initial script, but they copies sold. She spent a good deal of the Pike, who has been in the public eye page: Previous rampant narcissism. And he’s pointing a the rabbit hole and you realise that this his leading man’s superhero training > 64 EMPIRE OCTOBER 2014 empireonline.com subscribe at www.empireonline.com/sub OCTOBER 2014 EMPIRE 65 • It’s in his kiss: Ben Affleck’s Nick embraces Pike’s Amy. BEN AFFLECK ON PLAYING ROSAMUND PIKE ON NICK, DATE MOVIE DIVORCE PLAYING AMY, DAMN GOOD AND ROSAMUND PIKE… ADVICE AND BEN AFFLECK… Fincher wants Gone Girl to be a date movie that Fincher wants Gone Girl to be a date movie that could cause divorce. What would be your actual could cause divorce. What would be your actual ideal date movie? ideal date movie? I actually think this is the perfect date movie, not because I think Bond is the classic date movie. I mean, I’d probably I think it’ll result in divorce — I think that’s just David’s be more likely to see Fight Club or Let The Right One fantasy — but because it’s the kind of movie that a In… I remember the worst date movie I saw was a Lukas husband and wife could talk about afterwards.