Planning a home invasion
It's too long," director David Finc-her2 sighs. "Nothing's worth it. "
He's wrong, of course. Fincher is exhausted, because he spent nine months on The Panic Room—from a $3 million script by David Koepp3— but there is a payoff : He has artfully reinvented the woman-in-jeopardy genre and created a Hitchcockian, close-quarters thrill ride that, at times, feels like a shot of adrenaline to the heart5. And, to make things better,
Jodie Foster is unnervingly good6. It's a perfect suspense flick7 and the first must-see of the year.But, why did it take almost a year to complete, given the careful planning and a new pre-visualization technique that's the talk of town8?
Utilizing a crack computer-engineering team (Pixel Liberation Front), Fincher made the four-story set he would create on a soundstage—before he shot a frame of film9. He worked out camera angles—moving virtual walls and stair-cases—and details of split-screen images10 and tracking shots" , even editing before he or his actors got on set. " We were able to show the actors sequences in advance. It was a great time saver," says Fincher.
Three months of rehearsals12 didn't help. They began when Nicole Kidman13 signed on to the picture. She lasted about two weeks before her knee, injured while shooting Moulin Rouge, gave out14 and rehearsals restarted with Foster. Then, four months into the shoot, Fincher's star announced she was pregnant with her second child.
"There were a lot of naps on this set," says Foster, with a laugh.
Those rehearsals included three days of work with Foster's costars Forest Whi-taker, Jared Leto and Dwight Yoakam—on props15 alone!
"They bring these two bags in," Fincher explains, "one bag has sheet-metal-
working kind of stuff, and this bag has wood-working and electrical kind of stuff. Then there's the drill16. What would you keep in the drill bag? Okay, bring in the technical advisor for drilling the safe17. How would he lay the tools out? We had to do rehearsals for that kind of stuff, so we could figure out where we were going to shoot. "
And then there are those magnificent tracking shots — including a five-minute break-in sequence — that are breathtaking in their technical method. Some of those shots took a day. "Or three," says Whitaker.
But in spite of his technical skill, the spooks and scares that you have double-checking the alarm and every lock in your house about 1 ,000 times, Fincher says the movie's really all about something else.
"Divorce," he says, stroking his stubbly chin. "The destruction of the home. One party is always after the money, and the other party's willing to allow whatever has to be destroyed to protect the children. "
The film has grossed18 $74. 1 million so far.
Born in 1962 , probably inspired by the work of George Lucas, Fincher got his first major industry job at Lucas' own Industrial Lights and Magic. His directorial debut Alien 3 was a great disappointment, but the next film Seven made the relatively unknown Fincher one of Hollywood's hottest new commodities.
With his dark, offbeat19 vision — made famous in such films as Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Fincher has been mulling20 several other post-Panic pro-jects, including the dark restaurant film Seared for New Line21 , Regency's supernatural thriller Stay and Warner Bros. ' comic-book adaptation Hard Boiled. Seared is on track22 for a fall start and Hard Boiled is in development for a 2004 release.
