David Fincher Hasn’t Watched ‘Fight Club’ In 20 Years & Doesn’t Get The Incel Love For It: “I’m Not Responsible For How People Interpret Things” https://t.co/gyF8FWOjnq pic.twitter.com/g6MU7WEtpW
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– On the notion that his films are predominately about troubled white, male outsider types (be they the creator of Facebook or serial killers), Fincher balked. “Who doesn’t think that they’re an outsider?” he retorted. “That’s the fundamental difference between me and Tim Burton. Tim Burton believes that Edward Scissorhands is an anomaly. I just don’t know anybody who doesn’t think, in some kind of way, that they’re Edward Scissorhands.”
– On resisting the auteur label: “I’m so bad at that,” he continued. “Because a) I don’t care. But b) At the point in time I was making “Fight Club,” people were saying: ‘How could you?’ And now you make something like “The Killer” and people go: ‘Why aren’t you doing it like your earlier, more important movies?’ I can’t win.”
– On Fight Club: “I haven’t seen it in 20 years. And I don’t want to.” And that’s partly because he doesn’t like to revisit his previous work. “It’s like looking at your grade school pictures, or something. ‘Yeah, I was there,’” joked the director. But he also disavows how “Fight Club” has become a beloved movie for white male malcontents like incels, the Proud Boys, and misogynistic types like Andrew Tate. “I’m not responsible for how people interpet things,” explained Fincher. Fincher distanced himself from that kind of response. “We didn’t make it for them, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or [Picasso’s] Guernica,” he continued. “It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence,” he says. “People who can’t understand that, I don’t know how to respond and I don’t know how to help them.”