SHADOWS OF THE PAST
DAVID FINCHER IS in a Los Angeles studio housing a recreation of the dining room of Hearst Castle, San Simeon. It is Friday, January 31, 2020, and he has a night shoot ahead, but has eked out rehearsal time this afternoon for a crucial scene due to film the following week. Gary Oldman, in ’30s suit trousers and half-buttoned shirt (dressed partially for comfort, partially for the part), has rounded the table and stopped less than a yard away from Empire as his character — Herman Mankiewicz: screenwriter, raconteur, genius, drunk — addresses a circus-themed dinner party. Arliss Howard is at the table, playing legendary MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer, alongside Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst, the real-life model for cinema’s great publishing playboy, Charles Foster Kane.
After a couple more run-throughs, Fincher suggests Oldman quicken a little, to take about ten seconds out of the epic, eight-minute scene. He then steps closer to his star to stress the importance of nailing a locked-in, consistent master shot because of all the various angles and close-ups to come. “The key here,” says Fincher, “and the reason I’m going to be a dick about this, is if you repeat a word — if you add a stutter or anything — it’s going to fuck up everything.”
Fincher is forthright, but not without purpose. Just as Orson Welles had overwhelming creative control on , so he has ultimate authority here. It has takenis his 11th feature, but the first he ever imagined. It has screened infinite times at the cinema in his head.
