Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo on the brutal David Fincher scene that required 45 takes
David Fincher is perhaps the one director working today who could justly be called an heir to Stanley Kubrick.
Every film Fincher makes, from his all-time greats like Seven and The Social Network to his most recent effort, The Killer, is a technical masterpiece. He uses every tool in the director’s playbook to create visceral, captivating cinematic experiences that are very clearly the work of a dedicated, meticulous perfectionist.
Fincher is a driven director who doesn’t do things by halves. He micromanages every aspect of his productions and is known to put actors through dozens and dozens of takes for a single scene. It’s been said that The Social Network‘s legendary opening scene took 99 takes, while Amanda Seyfried was allegedly made to do around 200 takes of a particular scene for Mank.
These qualities have made Fincher one of the finest filmmakers in modern cinema… but they have also made him one of the hardest directors to work with. Two people who can definitely testify to this are Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo.
During a recent ‘Actors on Actors’ session for Variety, Downey Jr and Ruffalo sat down together to discuss their careers so far. The pair, who are friends in real life (not surprising given how well they work together on-screen) reminisced on their time working with Fincher on his excellent 2007 true crime thriller Zodiac, which chronicles the ultimately unsuccessful hunt for the Zodiac Killer, who remains unidentified to this day.
Specifically, the two of them discuss a scene set in a newsroom, which Fincher was doing as a one-shot. They’d already been shooting for a long time and had around 45 takes done already. Fincher asked Downey Jr if he thought they “had it” yet, and Downey Jr, feeling a “bit mischievous”, said they didn’t. Fincher then proceeded to delete all 45 takes and start over anew.
Ruffalo remarked that Fincher invented the ‘delete’ button for digital cinema after this. He might’ve been saying it in jest, but honestly? Given Fincher’s reputation, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if it’s true. It has been said that, during the same shoot, he reportedly deleted up to 70 takes in front of Jake Gyllenhaal, the film’s lead, in order to make the actor cry.
It’s nice that the pair are able to laugh about Zodiac now, for it is said to have been a difficult shoot. Downey Jr likened filming under Fincher to being “in a gulag” and is rumoured to have left jars of urine around the set to protest Fincher’s policy of not allowing bathroom breaks. Tellingly, neither Downey Jr nor Ruffalo have ever reunited with Fincher.
