David Fincher (Biographical Note)

Joshua Paris

5/10/09

Ms. Brown

Biographical Note

David Fincher

David Fincher was born on August 28th of 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and grew up in Marin County, California. Reportedly it were Spielberg's "Jaws", Ridley Scotts "Alien" and a 'Making Of' featurette on "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid" that made him want to become a filmmaker. Fincher earned his first hands-on experience working for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley, when he was only 18 years old. Since none other than George Lucas lived in Fincher's neighborhood, he went on to work for Lucas' visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), where he quickly assembled such namely titles as "Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi" (1983) and "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom" (1984) to this filmography. And to this day the experience of having worked behind the camera before taking the director's chair can be witnessed in Fincher's perfectionism and competence all across the board of filmmaking. David Fincher left ILM in 1984 to pursue his own career, directing music videos and tv-commercials. One of his earliest, if not even his very first work was the now infamous commercial "Smoking Fetus" for the American Cancer Society -- at only 22 years of age! Fincher was offered to direct Rick Springfield's concert film "Beat Of The Live Drum" and a few of his music videos, worked for The Motels and Sting and his career took off and reached an early climax towards the end of the 1980's, working for clients that included Nike, Coca-Cola, AT&T and pop-superstars Madonna, George Michael, Billy Idol, Foreigner and Michael Jackson.
In 1987, at age 25, Fincher co-founded production company Propaganda Films with (among others) director Dominic Sena, which was a platform not only for producing high-quality music promos but also feature films such as "Wild At Heart", "Red Rock West" and "Being John Malkovich".