legendarily troubled Alien3, Fincher quickly established himself as a top Hollywood director with a run of classics including Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac. In 2010 Fincher released what many consider his masterpiece, the drama The Social Network, featuring an Oscar-winning script by Aaron Sorkin.
In the years since The Social Network made Fincher a major Oscars player, the director has seen his feature film output slow to a crawl, with only two movies to his name: the thrillers The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl. Fincher of course has been very active in series television, helping bring Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane.
Fincher’s Mank indeed has received strong reviews and is likely to garner a lot of awards buzz in this most bizarre of awards seasons, but don’t be surprised if Fincher isn’t too enthused about the possibility of winning hardware for his movie. Speaking recently to Total Film (via Games Radar), Fincher talked about his disdain for the whole concept of awards season and how the very idea of seasons helps film executives program audiences’ expectations in a way Fincher clearly thinks is unhealthy. He said:
"There’s really only two seasons for movies. There’s ‘spandex summer’ and there’s ‘affliction winter’. You’re making your movie for one of two seasons. And if you miss, you’ll fall into one of those other two seasons, which are nominally dumping grounds. Does that make sense?”
Though Fincher does it to being a “jaded f—k” when it comes to such things, he points out that due to his long experience in film he is “an informed, jaded f—k.” Whether Fincher’s point-of-view is jaded or not, it’s true that Hollywood has created a release schedule where the summer is dominated by franchise movies while the winter becomes the place for Oscar bait, films that have clearly been crafted with awards recognition in mind. The tropes of Oscar bait movies are indeed as ingrained as the clichés of summer blockbusters, much to the evident dismay of Fincher.
That Fincher chooses to call out Oscar bait films as much as big franchise movies is in fact interesting, as in recent years several filmmakers have gotten themselves in trouble by just slamming superhero movies, the most notable example being Netflix where there’s no first-weekend box office pressure and filmmakers have greater freedom to pursue their ion projects without direct studio meddling. It will be interesting to see how much Mank breaks the Oscar bait mold, and whether it indeed gets attention from the Academy.
Source: Total Film (via Games Radar)
