Movies aren't finished, they're abandoned. And you have to make your peace with that.
David FincherRead
A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the film-makers. I think that The Game is a movie and I think Fight Club's a film. I think that Fight Club is more than the sum of its parts, whereas Panic Room is the sum of its parts. I didn't look at Panic Room and think, "Wow, this is gonna set the world on fire". These are footnote movies, guilty pleasure movies. Thrillers. Woman-trapped-in-a-house movies. They're not particularly important.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote distinguishes between movies and films, highlighting their differing purposes and impact.
David Fincher articulates the difference between a 'movie' and a 'film' by implying that movies are created primarily for entertainment and audience consumption, while films are crafted with depth and meaning for both viewers and creators. He uses his works, labeling 'Fight Club' as a film with significant artistic value and 'Panic Room' as a basic movie with little lasting importance, indicating that not all cinematic works hold equal weight or significance.
Themes
MovieFilmAudienceArtistic ValueEntertainmentCinema
In practice
Example use cases
In a film discussion, one might reference this quote to explain the artistic depth of certain films.
More from David Fincher
All quotes →You’ll find that the movie business is paid for by those mega movies. The movie business is paid for by Big Macs. By movies as product. Movie studios use that term “product” all the time. Product? You mean you have a lot of stories? No, we have a lot of product. You have stories.
David FincherRead
In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light.
David FincherRead
For a number of years, I'd been around the kind of people who financed movies and the kind of people who are there to make the deals for movies. But I'd always had this naive idea that everybody wants to make movies as good as they can be, which is stupid.
David FincherRead
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.
David FincherRead
The fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two.
David FincherRead
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