The Yahoo Movies Interview: Gillian Flynn on 'Gone Girl,' 'Game of Thrones,' and Great Cheesy Movies
Gillian Flynn’s wildly successful psychological thriller Gone Girl (No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list for eight weeks; 7 million copies sold) explores the very dark places that relationships can go, through the unhappily married Nick and Amy Dunne — he an underachieving horndog, she a wife that only Machiavelli could love. Like Amy, Flynn is a multitasker: In the past year and a half, she had her second child, completed a seemingly endless book tour, and finished the screenplay for the David Fincher-directed film of her novel. The film, which stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, opens on Friday. If the 43-year-old Flynn shares anything else with her creation, it’s a devastating wit and a clever pragmatism, but, fortunately for her husband, the comparisons stop there.
Flynn and I worked together in the early aughts at Entertainment Weekly, where she began as a writer and graduated to TV critic before getting laid off in a round of cost-cutting (a fate Nick shares in the book). I immediately liked her quiet ballsiness, her dry (and sometimes goofy) sense of humor, and her unvarnished lack of pretense. Her taste skewed more typically male than female — she’s a fantasy geek who revered Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, and who binges on super-campy D-movie oddities. When she’s interviewed, she’s often described as “nice,” which is altogether too vanilla for Flynn (even if she does use the word “neat” un-ironically). As friendly as she is, she’s also undoubtedly the mastermind behind three deeply twisted novels: The first two, Sharp Objects (2006) and the award-winning Dark Places (2009), are, if not as cunningly constructed as Gone Girl, breathtakingly creepy, with two delectably warped female antiheroines.
It’s curious how hard it is for people to believe that a woman who lives quietly and happily in Chicago with her family (lawyer-husband Brett Nolan, their 4-year-old son Flynn, and 2-month-old daughter Veronica) can so effectively fabricate treachery. Fans of her novels expect Flynn to, as she once put it, “come in and set the room on fire, have tattoos and a whiskey bottle.” While her affection for very bad behavior might spring from some unrequited fantasies (the kind we all entertain, if we’re being honest), it likely has more to do with a voracious, lifelong appetite for both movies (a passion sparked by her film-professor father) and mystery novels by Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith.
We met a few hours before last week’s splashy premiere of Gone Girl at the New York Film Festival. (Note: If you haven’t read Gone Girl or Dark Places, this interview contains potential spoilers.)
Although Gone Girl the movie is very much your voice, you can’t mistake it for anything other than a David Fincher film. You wrote the script before he was hired. How much did it change when he signed on?
I wrote the first draft — that was the deal — and then I waited to be fired [lLaughs]. I reported about movies for EW; I know how this works! I had my say, and I felt good about it.
With Fincher, it got bigger and richer. I was very worried about keeping it at a certain number of pages, or the proper length. He wanted scenes added back, to layer it up a bit. He pushed me to make every scene do more. And there were a couple that made me realize, “Oh, this is going to be an R-rated movie [laughs]. I guess I gave you the PG-13.”
Did you collaborate in person?
I met him when we signed on, and he came to Chicago once. Otherwise it was all by phone until rehearsals — but five-hour phone calls! My ear would be raw at the end — you know, when it literally hurts to remove the phone from your ear? I was trying to take notes with one hand, and we’d go off track just talking about the nature of these characters and marriage and relationships.
What was the process?
I would send him updated versions, and he’d send it back to me with yellow highlights for areas he wanted to discuss. I would look at the highlights for a day or two trying to guess what the notes would be —getting my defense all ready [laughs] — and half the time it would be something like, “I don’t think Go [Nick’s sister] would ride a bike.” And I’d be, like, “That’s all it was?” But he was very good about knowing when a scene wasn’t doing enough, [saying], “This scene can’t just be about funny, it has to move the plot forward.” And just the way he is with actors, he likes to have a lot of takes. David likes options — to blow it up and then whittle it down. It was like working with a really good magazine editor — one who can help you articulate what you’re trying to do.
Ben Affleck, Patrick Fugit, David Clennon, Lisa Banes, and Kim Dickens in Gone Girl.
Does Fincher have a good sense of humor?
He has a great sense of humor.
You wouldn’t necessarily know that from his films.
No. Well, but what I like about his films is the dark bursts of humor when you don’t really expect it. And you’re laughing and you think, “Am I the weirdo?” We talked about that with Gone Girl, trying to keep the dark humor — that people will be laughing in parts because of what they’ve been through in their own relationships. We wanted it to be like you’re buying a movie ticket for yourself and another for all your baggage.
[And] he’s extremely funny and a really gracious guy. He constantly went out of his way to make me feel comfortable as a first-time screenwriter. He sent me all the dailies and was kind enough to involve me in even little things. At one point he emailed me [and asked], “Does Amy have to drive a Festiva?” I emailed back, “Yes, she does!” I was totally joking around — I know nothing about cars. Two days later, he emails a picture of the Festiva Amy runs away in: “I hope you’re happy. These things are fucking impossible to film in. They’re so goddamn small!”
He’s such a completist about everything. For the book party scene he said, “I want all 25 Amazing Amy titles — what are they?” [Amy’s parents had gotten rich creating a children’s franchise loosely based on their daughter.] I was, like, "Amazing Amy Pulls a Train, Amazing Amy Gets Her First Yeast Infection." … They just got dirtier and dirtier.
Affleck and director David Fincher on the Gone Girl set.
So then he starts shooting, and suddenly your characters are Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. Did their performances change your perceptions of Nick and Amy in any way?
The voices of the characters had been in my head for so long, and until I was in rehearsals last August it had just been me and my husband saying the lines to each other: “Is this line not working because it’s not working or because we’re such bad actors?” [Laughs.] To hear proper actors — they were breathing new life into the words, and you could see what worked and what didn’t. I didn’t picture Ben when I was writing the book, but when it started to become a movie, that’s immediately who I thought of.
You’ve said that you don’t imagine actors when you’re writing characters, and I was surprised given all those years at EW, where casting books was almost a job requirement.
I love casting other people’s books, but I find it dangerous with my own characters. If you start picking up the mannerisms of an actor, what you think they might do, it influences the writing. I want them to be their own people. So as soon as someone starts to tiptoe into my head, I’m, like, “No, no, get out!” It might be why I made Nick blond in the book, because it was the opposite of what I was thinking. It was a way of keeping certain actors out of my head.
Was there a scene you really loved that you had to cut?
Not a scene so much as characters. I miss Nick’s mom. Their relationship informed a lot about Nick. And I think everyone misses Desi’s mom. I love that we could keep Tommy O’Hara [one of Amy’s exes], the guy Scoot McNairy plays. I’ve always had a soft spot for him. That was something that we kept going back and forth on — “Take it out, just take it out!” “No, put it back in!”
Despite all the speculation, the ending of the film is the same as the book.
The idea that it had changed came from an EW story, actually. It was a quote by Ben that was misunderstood. He said I had thrown out the whole third act. And, yeah, I was fiddling around a lot with the third act of the screenplay, but I wasn’t changing the ending. So that was misconstrued; it got picked up by all the aggregation sites, with people guessing what the new ending was. And then it was attributed to me: “Flynn says [she’s changing the ending].” Eventually, I did a Reddit Q&A where I said it had been greatly exaggerated, and it became: “Flynn is stepping back from her original comments.” And I was like, “I never said it!” [laughs]
The deviousness and unreliability of the media is one of Gone Girl’s themes, and here you are a victim of it!
I don’t feel as if I’ve been misquoted with any maliciousness. I haven’t had that moment where I thought something was a total lie. But you do feel like, when you’ve been misunderstood, that you have no control over it. Nowadays it gets picked up and lives forever. I kind of enjoyed watching the rumors about the new endings, though. It showed that people were really excited about it. For me, I’d been talking about the ending ever since the goddamn book came out. People either really loved it or hated it and there didn’t seem to be any in between.
As a former critic yourself, did you read all the reviews when the book came out?
I did. I’m a Nosy Parker. I don’t go too far into the comments section — then it can be people being mean for the sake of being mean. But so far nothing has bothered me. I think it’s because I was on the other side of it. Ultimately I know it’s not this monolithic judgment for or against me. It’s one person at their desk in their sweatpants eating their tuna salad sandwich, just like I used to [laughs]. If it’s a good bad review — if it’s articulated well, then I think, Well, that’s that person’s opinion.
Affleck and Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl.
I hope you won’t be offended if I say that, while I thoroughly enjoyed Gone Girl, it didn’t get under my skin the way your first two novels did.
No, I get that. I don’t necessarily think that Gone Girl is the best of the three; it’s the one that took off. For me, the greatest part of that success is that it’s brought people to the other two books.
As a massive Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, I was excited to hear that Marti Noxon is creating a one-hour series based on Sharp Objects, a novel you wrote while still at EW. [Plot: A self-harming newspaper journalist, Camille Preaker, returns to her hometown to investigate a series of brutal murders.] Noxon seems perfect for the book’s mordant, gothic tone.
She’s just as cool as you think she’d be, as well as incredibly gracious and funny. She’d been circling around Sharp Objects for years, so I’m glad she’s finally doing it.
You’re working on a TV show yourself — an HBO version of the BBC series Utopia, which Fincher will direct. I can see why you were attracted to it. The original show is a dark thriller about a group of comic book nerds who find a manuscript of a graphic novel that predicts awful events. That plays right into another of your obsessions, graphic novels. What are some of your favorites?
I love Black Hole and Chris Ware’s stuff and The Underwater Welder, which came out a few years ago. A few months ago, I got to do a cartoon with [Watchmen creator] Dave Gibbons for The Guardian. I got to Skype with him and I was, like, “I’m not gonna fangirl you.” And then, of course, I did. He was so sweet. My first books were graphic illustrations of things like Dracula.
I remember those!
I would kill to find that series, because I have such good memories of it.
The movie adaptation of Dark Places comes out next year. For those who haven’t read the book, it’s about a woman, Libby Day, who survives the massacre of her family — a crime she had accused her brother Ben of committing.
I’m really excited about it. The film is very moody, and the cast is great. Charlize Theron plays Libby, and are you familiar with Corey Stoll? He’s got three scenes in the movie, and they’re heartbreaking. He plays grownup Ben.
Stoll was my favorite part of the first season of House of Cards, and he’s on an FX show that I’m really enjoying, The Strain. He wears a humdinger of a hairpiece.
I don’t know that show.
The writing is pretty lame, but it’s good fun. It’s right up your cheesy-movie alley. Speaking of which, I’ve heard you have a soft spot for a film called Tiptoes.
[Laughs] I saw it at Sundance seven or eight years back, when I was still going for EW. Gary Oldman pretends to be a dwarf; he’s on his knees for the whole movie. It’s fascinatingly awful.
Gary Oldman and Kate Beckinsale in Tiptoes.
I have a special fondness for C.H.U.D. Have you seen it?
Yes, Daniel Stern! I’m a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and discovered a lot of my favorite bad movies through that, like Manos: The Hands of Fate and Mitchell, with Joe Don Baker. He plays the least sexy kind of sexy, unsexy cop ever, who somehow gets to sleep with Linda Evans. Hoyt Axton sings the theme song. It will get into your head, like an earworm. I also love The Room.
Do you still watch a lot of TV?
It’s more movies now. I just had another baby in August, so it’s been a kooky year. This was supposed to be our calm year: “In 2014, we’ll regroup and be really mellow.” Whoops. Anyway, movies and books I’ll never stop, but I’ve fallen behind on TV. In fact, I was happy when our DVR blew up; it was a relief not having to watch all the stuff stacked up on it. We did Netflix all seven seasons of 30 Rock when I was up for nighttime feedings. Taking it all in at once made me realize how consistently hilarious it was, and how smart it was about gender politics and race — there were sharper things in it than on a lot of dramas. It’s so good.
Certainly it had the best jokes of any show — they completely stand on their own.
There was one I had forgotten about that my husband and I now repeat back and forth. Liz Lemon is trying to get into meditation, and she’s in the elevator with Jack, who’s of course making fun of her. She says, “I’ve got my meditation candles,” and she looks at the bottom of one to see what scent it is [she mimics Liz Lemon’s disappointment face]: “Oh, Summer Horse Grave!” The three greatest words ever put together!
Any 2014 movie recommendations?
Summer was a bummer. The ones I wanted to get into weren’t very good. The surprise was Edge of Tomorrow. I had a really good time at that — it’s what a great action movie should be. And no one seems to have seen it. Mostly my movie-watching is Netflixing. I don’t know what it is about having a kid, but right afterward, everything goes dark. Let me just put on Z. Maybe I’ll watch Exterminating Angel. Let’s enjoy Un Chien Andalou. Yes, that’s exactly what I should be watching right now.
What’s your scariest movie scene? Other than Gary Oldman on his knees, of course.
It’s going to sound on the nose to say a David Fincher movie, but it really is Zodiac's executioner scene. That's what Fincher does that's great: The “No, I shouldn't be afraid” thing, [with a character] wanting reason in the face of an unreasonable situation — and then, that moment of violence. Every once in a while I just mull over that scene when I want to scare myself — which I do sometimes for fun [laughs]. Also Psycho — the overhead shot, where you see the mother come out on the steps, gives me absolute chills. I enjoy the waiting part, the dread, like Rosemary’s Baby, where you spend the whole time trying to look around corners.
Jaws is scary like that — until you actually see the shark.
I love Jaws!
Nothing freaks me out more than Robert Shaw’s Indianapolis scene — and he’s just talking.
[In Robert Shaw’s droning Irish accent] “He’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye.” [Laughs.]
Robert Shaw in Jaws.
I’m assuming you’re a Game of Thrones fan.
Yes, very much so.
Me, too, though I have a Jon Snow problem. As played by Kit Harington, he’s a wimp.
He’s going to be around for a while, so you’d best warm to him. I love the actor who plays Littlefinger — Aidan Gillen from The Wire. And I love the fact that most of the women aren’t overly “Hollywood-ized”; they’re just good, charismatic actresses. They look like they have real lives, not like they moonlight as supermodels. The woman who plays Reek’s sister [Gemma Whelan] — she’s such a badass!
There was that odd ruckus about the scene last season where Jaime rapes Cersei — that it was unnecessarily gratuitous.
Half of the point of Game of Thrones is that no woman is entirely safe, and that’s what that period is supposed to feel like.
Far more upsetting is the relentless victimization and sexual abuse of women and children on contemporary procedurals — like True Detective’s dead women decorated with deer antlers. That strikes me as more gratuitous and disturbing than a fantasy show that takes place during a time when rape was commonplace.
And we also know that one of the weapons of war is rape, so unfortunately that part feels very real.
I’m often confused by the arguments of so-called feminists — like the preposterous accusations by some that your writing is misogynistic.
Because my characters aren’t likable, I hate women? To me, it says something a little concerning that a female character can be dark, but only if people are watching them having pain inflicted on them.
Did you happen to see the Swedish version of The Bridge? It has a terrific female character — a cop who is the opposite of nurturing, who is tough, fearless, and into no-strings sex. But even she is saddled with Asperger’s, because God forbid she should be that way by choice. If she were just a bitch who likes sex, she’d have to be punished.
Yeah, there has to be some sort of explanation for that kind of behavior, or some kind of redemption. I was kind of proud that [Dark Places character] Libby Day’s biggest arc was that she could go to a birthday party for [her off-putting acolyte] Lyle at the end of the book. She might reconcile with her brother, though possibly not; but she would have a friend in the weirdo who really liked her. I thought, “That’s all I’m giving her, that one bit of humanity, because that’s life. She’s not going to change.”
What sticks in your craw when it comes to female villains? What’s the most common mistake?
Too often they’re villains in a dismissible way. They’re so campy or over the top that it doesn’t feel like anything you’d see in real life or take seriously. I love Robin Wright’s character in House of Cards, because she’s a bona fide villain. She’s a not-nice person in a believable way; you can see her working in the world.
Robin Wright in House of Cards.
I often wonder if Breaking Bad would have been a hit if the main character had been a woman. I don’t think Americans would accept such an irredeemably despicable female antihero.
I’ve wondered if Harry Potter would have been as big if it was Harriet Potter. Now that I’ve written a screenplay — and raising a son in particular — I’m looking at story content and realizing how limited women are onscreen. You watch cartoons, and the girls are only allowed to be the helpers and the supporters. The more I think about it, the more infuriating it becomes. Part of it is that you need more women making these films and more men who wouldn’t be afraid to watch. I think women are very ambidextrous. We don’t think twice about reading a book or a movie starring guys. But for guys it’s, like, “Oh my God, that’s a woman thing.” So with my son, I very carefully portion out the female heroes and characters to make sure he’s getting an equal amount.
What kind of female characters attract you?
I’ve never been interested in watching or reading anything because it’s the hero’s story. I don’t feel the need to be inspired by the character or learn a lesson. I feel the need to be engaged by them. I’ve got other places to look for role models than in a book or a movie — my mom, for instance. So to me it’s more interesting that women feel rounded and fully alive.
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Photo Credits: 20th Century Fox, Netflix, Universal Pictures/Kobal Collection
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