David Fincher: Mind Games is the definitive critical and visual survey of the Academy Award– and Golden Globe–nominated works of director David Fincher. From feature films Alien 3, Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and Mank through his MTV clips for Madonna and the Rolling Stones and the Netflix series House of Cards and Mindhunter, each chapter weaves production history with original critical analysis, as well as with behind the scenes photography, still-frames, and original illustrations from Little White Lies' international team of artists and graphic designers. Mind Games also features interviews with Fincher's frequent collaborators, including Jeff Cronenweth, Angus Wall, Laray Mayfield, Holt McCallany, Howard Shore and Erik Messerschmidt. Grouping Fincher's work around themes of procedure, imprisonment, paranoia, prestige and relationship dynamics, Mind Games is styled as an investigation into a filmmaker obsessed with investigation, and the design will shift to echo case files within a larger psychological profile.

An illustrated mid-career monograph exploring the 30-year creative journey of the 8-time Academy Award–nominated writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson has been described as "one of American film's modern masters" and "the foremost filmmaking talent of his generation." Anderson's ï¬?lms have received 25 Academy Award nominations, and he has worked closely with many of the most accomplished actors of our time, including Lesley Ann Manville, Julianne Moore, Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. In Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, Anderson’s entire career—from Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch Drunk Love (2002), There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), and Phantom Thread (2017) to his music videos for Radiohead to his early short ï¬?lms—is examined in illustrated detail for the ï¬?rst time. Anderson’s influences, his style, and the recurring themes of alienation, reinvention, ambition, and destiny that course through his movies are analyzed and supplemented by ï¬?rsthand interviews with Anderson’s closest collaborators—including producer JoAnne Sellar, actor Vicky Krieps, and composer Jonny Greenwood—and illuminated by ï¬?lm stills, archival photos, original illustrations, and an appropriately psychedelic design aesthetic. Masterworks is a tribute to the dreamers, drifters, and evil dentists who populate his world.

This is a concise and informative guide to the work of this innovative director. Produced with the director's full involvement, the book features new, in-depth interviews with David Fincher by author James Swallow.

David Fincher (b. 1962) did not go to film school and hates being defined as an auteur. He prefers to see himself as a craftsman, dutifully going about the art and business of making film. Trouble is, it's hard to be self-effacing when you are the director responsible for Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network. Along with Quentin Tarantino, Fincher is the most accomplished of the Generation X filmmakers to emerge in the early 1990s. This collection of interviews highlights Fincher's unwavering commitment to his craft as he evolved from an entrepreneurial music video director (Fincher helped Madonna become the undisputed queen of MTV) into an enterprising feature filmmaker. Fincher landed his first Hollywood blockbuster at twenty-seven with Alien3, but that film, handicapped by cost overruns and corporate mismanagement, taught Fincher that he needed absolute control over his work. Once he had it, with Se7en, he achieved instant box-office success and critical acclaim, as well as a close partnership with Brad Pitt that led to the cult favorite Fight Club. Fincher became circumspect in the 2000s after Panic Room, shooting ads and biding his time until Zodiac, when he returned to his mantra that “entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay.” Zodiac reinvigorated Fincher, inspiring a string of films—The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—that enthralled audiences and garnered his films dozens of Oscar nominations.

From the Bestselling Author of 'Zodiac' , 'Auto Focus' and 'Black Fire'. DAVID FINCHER WAS AFTER THE TRUTH. WITHOUT IT, HE WOULD NOT SHOOT ZODIAC. For nearly two decades, Hollywood had been trying to make a movie of Zodiac, and for nearly two decades, it had failed. In 2003, producer Brad Fischer, and screenwriter Jamie Vanderbilt attempted the undoable, and set their sights on the one filmmaker they felt unequalled for the helm: director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club). Fincher’s eye for detail, probing mind, and unrelenting quest for answers made him ideal. His personal connection to the case made him perfect. From Hollywood boardrooms to remote fog-shrouded crime scenes, they battle a huge script that refuses to be beaten, a case that refuses to be solved, and a running time and budget that threaten their film. Follow as they track down missing witnesses, gather the original investigators, visit the original crime scenes, discover boxes of Zodiac case files from an attic, unearth new clues, a videotape of the prime suspect’s police interrogation, and a surviving victim who doesn’t want to be found. To keep Fincher on board, and get their film greenlit, it will take cold leads, private eyes, new evidence, and most of all, perseverance. “He’s hooked. If he doesn’t make the film, he’ll solve the case.” —Detective Ken Narlow “SOMETHING DRAWS THE GIRL’S attention,” David Fincher said. The maverick director paused at the spot along the shore Captain Ken Narlow had indicated. Something was not right. Fincher looked down at the rocky ground and the steep slope of the rotting tree as if he had not seen them before. Without a word he wheeled and walked some distance around to the adjacent peninsula. The retired detectives watched the celebrated filmmaker follow the curve of land and circle to a little inlet on the other bank. His head was down as he took long, athletic strides. Suddenly, he knelt and studied the ground. He picked up a fistful of earth, let it drift between his fingers, and watched as the wind carried the reddish particles away. He looked up at the road high above where the victims’ car had been found, then looked back at the tree. Next, he tossed a few rocks in the air and gazed to the center of the lake where it was a couple hundred feet deep. Fincher wondered what other mysteries might be buried there. Further up, underneath the dam at Devil’s Gate, was the narrow point of Putah Creek. Fincher returned from his scouting trip and made an announcement. His voice was confident and clear, ringing out over the lake. “The other side of the little island out there is much more vertical than this side,” he said. “I think that is the actual murder site.” “Let’s go over and take a look,” Narlow said and started north with Jamie Vanderbilt. “I’m not one hundred percent convinced this is the place.” When Narlow reached the other side of the inlet, he clapped a hand to his forehead and then hailed Fincher and the rest of the men across the water. “My God!” he hollered, “I took you to the wrong spot!” In that arcane way he had of penetrating to the heart of a riddle, Fincher had discerned the truth. He became quiet as he began working the puzzle of the open taxi door, the blood that should have been elsewhere, a bloody print that belonged to no one, and the shot nobody heard. “David’s considered one of the touchiest and weirdest directors by executives, but as a writer I consider him the nicest and most normal of them all. But maybe the same thing that is wrong with him is wrong with me.” —Jamie Vanderbilt, screenwriter

This book represents the culmination of Thomas Elsaesser’s intense and passionate thinking about the Hollywood mind-game film from the previous two decades. In order to answer what the mind-game film is, why they exist, and how they function, Elsaesser maps the industrial-institutional challenges and constraints facing Hollywood, and the broader philosophic horizon within which American cinema thrives today. He demonstrates how the ‘Persistence of Hollywood’ continues as it has adapted to include new twists and turns, as well as revisions of past concerns, as film moves through the 21st century. Through examples such as Minority Report, Mulholland Drive, Source Code, and Back to the Future, Elsaesser explores how mind-game films challenge us and play games with our perception of reality, creating skepticism and (self-) doubt. He also highlights the mind-game film's tendency to intervene in a complex fashion in the political moment by questioning the dominant power’s intent to program both body and mind alike. Prescient and compelling, The Mind-Game Film will appeal to students, scholars, and enthusiasts of media studies, film studies, philosophy, and politics.

Released in 1999, Fight Club is David Fincher’s popular adaption of Chuck Palahniuk’s cult novel, and one of the most philosophically rich films of recent years. This is the first book to explore the varied philosophical aspects of the film. Beginning with an introduction by the editor that places the film and essays in context, each chapter explores a central theme of Fight Club from a philosophical perspective. Topics discussed include: Fight Club, Plato’s cave and Descartes’ cogito moral disintegration identity, gender and masculinity visuals and narration. Including annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Fight Club is essential reading for anyone interested in the film, as well as those studying philosophy and film studies.