'Everyone told us and told us
'marriage is hard work.
'Not for me and Nick.'
'As you all know, my wife, Amy Elliott Dunne,
'disappeared three days ago.
'I had nothing to do with the disappearance of my wife.'
Did you kill your wife, Nick?
You ever hear the expression,
"The simplest answer's often the correct one"?
Actually, I've never found that to be true.
I'd never seen a story
that kind of traversed
three different terrain.
You know, it starts as
fundamentally a mystery,
and then it becomes this perverse, absurdist thriller,
and then it finally kind of becomes, um, satire.
And I hadn't seen that done.
This wasn't a conventional, like, leading-man performance,
where he's always smarter than everybody
and knows all the answers
and has the gun and gets the girl.
That it was a guy who...
Likeability was kind of anathema to David.
Even, you know, sort of this...
he thinks of it as obsequious and pandering for a character
to try and curry favour with the audience with his behaviour.
And so we see aspects of this guy's personality
that are clearly flawed, and we see him struggling.
'I will practise believing my husband loves me.
'But I could be wrong.'
And you think, "God, if I do this part I get to sort of do everything."
It's... You know, it's being every aspect of being a woman.
You know, you get to express the thing that's alluring
and the thing that's repellent and the...
You know, you get to create a facade, you get to strip it down.
It's... It's... It was... It's really exciting, that.
But daunting, absolutely. And also you read the book
and you think, when you're inside a character's head,
how are we going to express this in this film script?
How are we going to make that into action in a scene?
Er, and that's the sort of mastery of Gillian Flynn,
that's she's done that with her screenplay.
Because it's so much easier to understand a character
when you can...be inside their mind.
Amy? Who are you?
A, I'm an award-winning scrimshander.
B, I'm a moderately influential warlord.
C, I write personality quizzes for magazines.
Well, your hands are far too delicate for real scrimshaw work,
and I happen to be a charter subscriber
to Middling Warlord Weekly, so I'd recognise you.
I'm going to go with C.
And you.
Who are you?
I'm a huge movie buff, I always have been.
My dad's a film professor,
so I grew up thinking about movies
and talking about movies,
and to me, that was thrilling,
it was also... It was frightening
till David Fincher came aboard.
You know, it's a strange book.
The tone of it's a little off-kilter sometimes,
and it has these strange bursts of humour
amid all this kind of darkness,
and, you know, I worried, depending on the director,
it would have been a very different film than the book was, totally.
And then once David came aboard I felt entirely comfortable.
She had, uh, decided on...things that really supported this idea
of narcissism, and who we sort of narcissistically project
as the best version of ourselves in order to...
not ensnare, but seduce a mate.
And how this drama could be spun out of the resentment
that came from one or more of those parties deciding, um...
they didn't want to keep it up.
We've become...as a nation, very adept at transformations.
And we have all the tools. We have, you know,
cameras at our fingertips, we're very aware, suddenly, of...
Everybody, not just actors and models, are suddenly aware of,
you know, their best angles and things,
and they're editing their lives to be more enviable,
as they present their photos on Facebook, and...
um... And what does narcissism mean for relationships and marriage?
It means that instead of just being who you are in a selfless way,
you're requiring the other person to project the image of yourself
that you want to put across. And that is very, very different.
And I thought... That's an interesting idea,
and it's really well-articulated, and...
I could see myself sitting in a theatre watching this story unfold
and be, um, entertained with,
"I have no idea where this is going next."
That's not good enough for you? I hit her?!
It's not even close!
I trusted having him around, that was the great thing.
You work with a director you don't trust,
you have to rely on your own inner barometer.
But when you have a guy like David, you just go, like,
"Well, tell me what you think. Let's do that."
I expected David to be meaner.
I expected him to be...
cranky and super-focused
and a little aggro.
And instead, while he demanded excellence and while he...
That was the standard, was excellence,
so you were really nervous to, um, to have him approve of you...
Er, he was a very calming energy. He knows exactly what he wants.
Mr Dunne.
I know you! I saw you at the volunteer centre.
I wanted to help.
Well, I hope you don't mind me coming by.
I got address from this letter that you wrote my wife.
Amy and I believe in the lost art of letter-writing.
I always wondered why you kept in touch.
After...
everything.
She was my first serious girlfriend.
That's a strange question.
That's a rude question.
'I don't know how to think like an actor,'
so I leave that to them.
I feel like their contribution is...
of equal importance to mine,
of equal importance to the sound recordist's,
of equal importance to, um, you know,
the people who are booking the orchestra to...
You know what I mean? It's like we're all trying to do the best work
that we can, and anybody who can help you tell your story
is...is your best friend.
He forces you to really articulate everything,
like what you're trying to do and why it's there,
and if he disagrees with you he lets you know,
and, um, usually does it in a way that makes you laugh.
David's a very charming guy,
and so he's sort of like... gutting you,
but you're kind of laughing at the same time
because the way he explains it, you're kind of like,
"That's... Yeah, I guess you're absolutely right."
You know, he throws you curveballs.
You think you've got the meat of a scene
and he'll just come at it from another angle.
I mean, there was this time when I was...
You know, you see me in one part of the movie
and I'm exploring a house I've never been in before,
and the camera's on the back of me,
and he said, "I can see you're not impressed enough.
"I want you to be impressed by that vase."
And I thought, "Wow, OK. The camera's on the back of my head..."
And... And then you see it.
You know, he can see every part of your body language
or everything that's reading.
So, your wife has no friends here.
Is she kind of stand-offish?
Ivy League, rubs people the wrong way?
She's complicated. She's...
got very high standards.
That can make you crazy if you're not like that.
You seem pretty laid-back. Type B.
Speaking of which, Amy's blood type.
I don't know, I'd have to look it up at the house.
You don't know if she has friends, you don't know what she does all day
and you don't know your wife's blood type?
I remember that the feeling of a lot of these scenes
was of sort of, um...
being under siege. You know, always sort of being
overtly or implicitly, you know,
accused of something,
and feeling like the walls are closing in on you.
And I liked that this guy's weapon of choice
was sort of how he was raised, just be polite, be nice to people,
be ingratiating, and, you know, it becomes sort of absurdist
when he's kind of smiling...
People are taking your picture, they say smile, you smile,
if you're a nice guy.
And he sees himself that way,
so he's standing in front of this picture, his wife's missing poster,
and they're like, "Smile!" and he kind of smiles,
Quickly realises maybe that's a mistake,
but nonetheless, that kind of charm, to me,
is less charming than it is kind of...
a kneejerk personality sort of defence mechanism.
How was your marriage, Nick?
'Man of my dreams.
'This man of mine may kill me.'
What about my side?
"This man may kill me."
This man may truly...kill me.
Right now, in the marketplace, in the culture, this is
the only movie that's dealing with relationships and marriage
in this caustic and incendiary and provocative a way,
and so I hope that helps people be interested. It certainly...
I mean, this would be special and different because David made it,
but also because, you know,
you're not likely to see... certainly a full-blown studio movie
that takes this attitude towards relationships.
You know, I said to David, "Is this film like what you had in your head?"
and he said, "Well, no. That's the thing, it can never be,
"because you're always, you're dealing with real people,
"and you just have to go with
"the vision that's becoming, coming to life in front of you."
It's not a movie about your life or my life.
But it has to be built on a foundation of understanding,
and...and so you need the characters to feel...
realistic, but they're in service of something that, you know,
hopefully no-one has any experience with.