David Fincher wasn’t ready to get on board.
He was the director of movies like Panic Room, and Se7en, and Fight Club. These were tense movies with action and violence. Now he was the first choice to direct a new project, about… computer geeks, and he just wasn’t sure.
So Fincher opened up the script for The Social Network, and read the first scene.
Two college students - Mark and Erica - are in a bar on Harvard Square. They’re talking. It’s not quite a conversation; it’s not quite a fight. It’s a simmering pot, about to boil over. Mark is increasingly condescending. Erica is increasingly agitated.
Fincher got to page eight, and said to himself, “If she doesn’t punch him in the face by the next page, I’m putting the script down.”
On page nine, Erica says to Mark:
You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.
Fincher then wrote a brief email Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter, that said, I’m going to direct The Social Network.
As I’ve suggested recently, the first step in any project is to ask yourself the question, is this worth doing?
That question can come in many forms. Is it a story worth telling? Is it a vision or an object that needs to be in the world?
Probably, though, the most accurate way to frame the question is, Will this thing let me go in peace?
I almost typed, “Can I let this go?,” but I realized phrasing it in that way makes it sound too romantic. The things that are worth doing - well, they’re often not up to you. In fact, often they things that are worth doing are the things that, when you are in your right mind, you would rather not do.
Something worth doing often comes to you at an inconvenient time, or it pushes against your better judgement, your minimal capacity for risk, or the plans you made.
But the things worth doing are the things that, when you try to walk away from them, they won’t let you go in peace.
More often then not, they hit you right in the face.
Aaron Sorkin once described David Fincher as, “the bully that you want on your side.”
After he agreed to direct The Social Network, Fincher worked with a line producer, going over the script scene by scene, to estimate costs.
He came up with a budget of $42 million. The studio initially offered half that amount.
Fincher dug in his heels, and refused to budge on his number until the studio blinked. He convinced them to pay what the film needed in order to work.
The studio also wanted to cut 30 pages from Sorkin’s script. Fincher fought them on that front, too. In the end, the film appeared exactly as Sorkin wrote it, with no improvised dialogue, and no cut scenes.
From the standpoint of the studio, Fincher was doing his job badly. That would be enough to turn most folks back to the straight and narrow, and to do things the safe way, the way they were supposed to do them.
But Fincher seemed got hit in the face by The Social Network. He couldn’t do it anyone else’s way. He had to do it the way the project needed to be done.
If you find yourself fighting for something against long odds, there’s a good chance that something worth doing has decided not to go peacefully.
I’ll be coming back in the future to talk more about The Social Network. I think it is a fantastic example (both within the story and in the making of the film itself) of many of the aspects of the creative process that I want to explore.
For now, revisiting it has made me appreciate what is possible when you find something worth doing, and commit to the completion of that thing.
Sorkin said something about the writing process that is true for the entire creative enterprise: You’re in the dark, with a flashlight, and you can only see to the edge of the glow. Beyond that, you just have to trust that the next good thing will come.
Under such circumstances, it would be easy and very understandable to just play it safe, and wait for help to come.
But sometimes you get grabbed in the darkness, and the thing just won’t let go.
There is no peace until you take another step, and then another.
And you see the edge of the light move a little farther.
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Finally - Here are two links to recent videos about The Social Network that got me thinking about some of the ideas in this post. I hope you enjoy: