David Fincher’s bizarre tension Jake Gyllenhaal: “He was being nibbled to death by ducks”
Hollywood history is littered with strange feuds. Actors fighting with directors, producers, and their co-stars is par for the course in a world full of egos and fragile states of mind, where seemingly minute incidents can lead to all-out war. One such example is the rivalry between director David Fincher and actor Jake Gyllenhaal, which began on the set of the 2007 film Zodiac.
Fincher’s take on the infamous ‘Zodiac Killer’ is widely regarded as one of the greatest thrillers of modern times. Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, an author and journalist working in the 1960s and ’70s to uncover the mysterious figure behind a series of brutal murders in the San Francisco Bay Area. The film also stars Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo, Brian Cox, and Chloë Sevigny and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
For all the good it did, Zodiac was also responsible for fracturing the relationship between Fincher and his lead actor. When asked by the New York Times what happened between him and Gyllenhaal, the director gave his side of the story. “Jake was in the unenviable position of being very young and having a lot of people vie for his attention while working for someone who does not allow you to take a day off,” he explained. “I think Jake’s philosophy was informed by – look, he’d made a bunch of movies, even as a child, but I don’t think he’d ever been asked to concentrate on minutiae, and I think he was very distracted.”
According to Fincher, Gyllenhaal – who was in his mid-20s while making Zodiac – was particularly occupied by promoting the movie Jarhead, which he believed was going to be a massive hit. “Every weekend, he was being pulled to go to the Santa Barbara film festival and the Palm Springs film festival and the Catalina film festival,” said the filmmaker. “When he’d show up for work, he was very scattered.”
Fincher didn’t hold the young actor solely responsible for his inflated sense of importance. “His managers and his silly agents who were all coming to his trailer at lunch to talk to him about the cover of GQ and this and that,” he added. “He was being nibbled to death by ducks and not particularly smart ducks. They got in his vision, and it was hard for him to hit the fastball.”
Gyllenhaal wasn’t the only Zodiac actor Fincher rubbed up the wrong way. In a separate New York Times piece, Robert Downey Jr explained that he wanted to “garrote” Fincher on several occasions while on the film. “I think I’m a perfect person to work for him because I understand gulags,” he said, giving the most backhanded compliment of all time.
Both Downey and Gyllenhaal vowed never to work with Fincher again immediately following the Zodiac debacle. However, according to the Fight Club maestro, they have since reconciled, with the latter offering him an apology. “Not that I needed an apology,” the director curtly added.
When explaining his behaviour, Fincher concluded, “There are definitely times when I can be confrontational if I see someone slacking. People go through rough patches all the time. I do. So, I try to be compassionate about it. But it’s $400,000. A day. And we might not get a chance to come back and do it again.”
