“What the fuck was that?”: Matt Damon Watched Ben Affleck Go Through Absolute Torture in ‘Gone Girl’
Matt Damon paid his best buddy Ben Affleck a visit when he was shooting the 2014 psychological thriller Gone Girl. He was shocked by the extent film director David Fincher’s perfectionism could go.
The Air actor revealed in the Bill Simmons Podcast that his experience on set was extremely troubling. Fincher has a reputation for going above and beyond to have things the way he wants, which oftentimes means doing a scene over and over again. Several anecdotes from his set reveal him to be particular to a painful degree. But when Matt Damon saw his best friend go through that, he was concerned.
David Fincher’s Way of Working Freightened Matt Damon
Four-time Academy Award-nominated director David Fincher‘s reputation certainly precedes him. He primarily makes psychological thrillers and working with him sounds like a thrilling experience in itself.
As Matt Damon recalls his visit on the set of Gone Girl, he reveals how the director’s meticulousness is in overdrive when he is working. Damon sat behind Fincher as Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike walked along the bookshelf and the scene ends with them kissing. Damon recounts the instance:
“It’s like a 90-second shot. Fincher’s got this big monitor in front of him where everything is exactly as it’s going to appear in the movie and he’s sitting there. I’m behind him and I’ve got headphones on so I can hear the scene,”
Damon says that as Fincher called action, a background artist walked across in a way that really bothered the director. And he starts yelling anything but Cut, keeping the scene going even though he is dissatisfied with the beginning itself.
“Ben and Rosamund enter the bookstore and the scene’s about to start, but Fincher is already monologuing. He’s going: ‘Who the fuck walks like that?’ It was the background artist. It just instantly caught his eye, like: ‘What the fuck was that? Who the fuck walks like that? Nobody walks like that.’
A bit like this, which would seem insignificant, completely ruined it for Fincher. A small scene where there was no possibility of things going wrong had to be redone.
David Fincher Was in the Right
Even as Damon was traumatized by Fincher’s reaction, he did not say that it was uncalled for. The background artist did have a less-than-natural walk, but definitely not something to have a mild meltdown over. He said that Fincher was in the right but such temperament and annoyance “ruined the whole thing” for Damon. He continued,
“Now Ben and Rosamund are on the other side of this bookstore and they’re doing the scene, but Fincher’s still talking about this and I’m sitting there going: ‘they’re definitely gonna do the scene again, this take is completely shot’. They get through the whole scene and they’re acting their hearts out and it’s great, but it doesn’t matter. The scene ended before it began.”
Two of the best actors are giving their all to a scene in what is to become one of the most popular movies of the year, and the director claimed the take ruined even before they appear. Ouch!
Gone Girl is available for streaming on Hulu.
Source: Digital Fix
