MINDHUNTER WAS EPIC, and anyone who says otherwise should have their Netflix privileges revoked.
And like most productions of its calibre, the cast gave a blood, sweat and tears response to the director’s demands.
In the case of four episodes of Mindhunter, the director was David Fincher, who is known throughout the industry for his fastidious approach to his projects.
And with Seven, Fight Club, and Gone Girl to his name, it clearly works.
But Christ alive, we don’t know how the cast did it.
Speaking at a FYC event on Friday, David revealed that a nine-minute scene took 11 hours to shoot such was the intensity of his demands.
Referring to a scene featuring Jonathan Groff, who played FBI Agent Holden Ford, Holt McCallany, who played FBI Agent Bill Tench, and Happy Anderson, who played serial killer Jerry Brudos, David gave an insight into the process.
The scene with Happy was 11 pages. We had three cameras outside the cage, and we’d do a nine-and-a-half-minute take. Then I’d walk in with a yellow pad filled with single-spaced notes: [to Groff] ‘OK, that’s a joke, you can’t toss that off. And this? This is a statement. Make sure that’s a statement.’ And Jonathan would be there going, ‘Okay, Okay.’ Then we’d do another nine-minute take and he’d do all that stuff I asked, and I’d go to Holt and go over four pages of notes with him. And Happy was like, ‘What? We’re really going to do this every time?
And yes, they were.
We didn’t have a break, well we broke for lunch — I would say we did it 75 times in the day.
But by the sounds of things, they eventually got into it.
Indeed, Holt said David’s approach worked to the actors’ advantage.
I find when you do something over and over again, you discover things. When you guys would say ‘take 14’ or ‘take 20,’ suddenly something becomes apparent to you that you didn’t really realize. It’s not that we were making huge changes, but the subtle adjustments we made or small adjustments David will give you can make a big difference in the way a scene plays out. So I’m a fan of doing a lot of takes.
