Music Directors; David Fincher:

David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old, he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981 - 1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials and music videos after signing with N. Lee Lacy in Hollywood. He went on to found Propaganda in 1987 with fellow directors Dominic Sena, Greg Gold and Nigel Dick . Fincher has directed TV commercials for clients that include: Nike, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Heinekin, Pepsi, Levi's, Converse, AT & T, and Chanel. He has directed music videos for: Madonna, Sting, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson ,Aerosmith, George Michael, Iggy Pop , The Wallflowers, Billy Idol , Steve Winwood , The Motels and, most recently, A Perfect Circle.

Personal Quotes of Fincher:

I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me, I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about Jaws (1975) is the fact that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.

I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but somebody has to.

I have demons you can't even imagine.

Directing ain't about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn't want to go to film school. I didn't know what the point was. T

he fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two.

People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there're two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.

As a director, film is about how you dole out the information so that the audience stays with you when they're supposed to stay with you, behind you when they're supposed to stay behind you, and ahead of you when they're supposed to stay ahead of you.

"Belligerence certainly helps. And there's a requisite paranoia. There's fear--fear of failure--and an overwhelming urge to be liked." - [about the personality traits that helps in being a director]

I'm totally anti-commercialism. I would never do commercials where people hold the product by their head and tell you how great it is, I just wouldn't do that stuff. It's all inference ... The Levis commercials I did weren't really about jeans, the Nike commercials weren't about shoes. The 'Instant Karma' spot was some of the better stuff I got offered, an

d it was never about people going, "Buy this shoe, this shoe will change everything," because I think that's nonsense. Anybody looking outside themselves to make themselves whole is delusional and probably sick.

I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages.

I don't know anything about Academy consideration. I don't know what an awards movie is.

I have a philosophy about the two extremes of filmmaking. The first is the "Kubrick way," where you're at the end of an alley in which four guys are kicking the shit out of a wino. Hopefull

y, the audience members will know that such a scenario is morally wrong, even though it's not presented as if the viewer is the one being beaten up; it's more as if you're witnessing an event. Inversely, there's the "Spielberg way," where you're dropped into the middle of the action and you're going to live the experience vicariously - not only through what's happening, but through the emotional flow of what people are saying. It's a muchmore involved style. I find myself attracted to both styles at different times, but mostly I'm interested in just presenting something and letting people decide for themselves what they want to look at.

On Alien 3 (1992): There were a lot of enormously talented people working on that movie. It's just a movie starts from a unified concept, and once you've unified the concept it becomes veryeasy to see the things you're not going to spend money on. And if a movie is constantly in flux because you're having to please this vice-president ot that vice-president of production...I think a movie set's a fascist dictatorship - you have to go in and know what it is you want to do because you have to tell 90 people what it is you want to do and

it has to be convincing. Otherwise, when they start to question it, the horse can easily run away with you and it's bigger than you are. So that was a movie where the time was not taken upfront to say, "This is what we're doing, and all of this is what we're not doing." So as we were shooting, a lot of people - I suppose in an effort to make it "better" or "more commercial" or more like the other ones they liked as opposed to the one that you liked - took to being extremely helpful, so that this could be more James Cameron than James Cameron. And of course you're sitting

there going, "Guys, remember I don't have any guns. I don't have any tripod guns or flamethrowers or any of that shit!" If a movie gets off on a wrong foot, when you've never done it before you assume everyone is going to be there to help you right the ship, but really you're beholden to a lot of banana republics.

[On losing his father, Jack Fincher] I remember the experience of being there when he breathed his last breath. It was incredibly profound. When you lose someone who helped form you in lots of ways, who is your 'true north', you lose the barometer of your life. You're no longer trying to please someone, or you're no longer reacting against something. In many ways, you're truly alone.

Some of his work: