David Fincher was asked about incels being a fan of Tyler Durden from Fight Club: “I’m not responsible for how people interpret things”

David Fincher was asked about incels being a fan of Tyler Durden from Fight Club. 

“I’m not responsible for how people interpret things”

“We didn’t make it for them … people see what they want to see” 

“It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence. People who can’t understand that … I don’t know how to help them”.

How does he feel about that? “We didn’t make it for them, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or [Picasso’s] Guernica.”

He is implying that it might just be in the eye of the beholder, but Fight Club was overtly tapping into this vein of resentful, disempowered masculinity, wasn’t it? “It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence,” he says. “People who can’t understand that, I don’t know how to respond and I don’t know how to help them.”

Rather than growing up, it looks like Fincher is having fun – albeit in a highly controlled, Fincheresque way. He is in a particularly relaxed mode when we meet at a hotel in London. He looks healthy and he is full of wit and energy, almost as if this isn’t the umpteenth interview he has done in his 40-year career.

Despite being one of the most renowned and distinctive film-makers in the business, Fincher is not comfortable with being described as an “auteur”, or even an artist. “There’s this fallacy that film directors come in and explain exactly what it is that they want to see and then they go to their trailer,” he says. “And then it’s presented to them and they make a few revisions, and then it’s trapped in aspic for all eternity. That’s just not it. It’s much more sock puppetry and daycare and plumbing – you know, pouring concrete. It’s a lot more physical labour than people probably imagine.”

Nevertheless, with The Killer, he says: “I just didn’t want to take it quite as seriously.” He describes the film as “like a good B-movie”: lean, gripping and, despite some bone-crunching action, surprisingly funny. Michael Fassbender’s lone‑wolf hitman is almost comical in his fastidiousness, from his defiantly un-Bond dress code (“like a German tourist”), to his reusable folding cup to take on jobs, to his playlist of Smiths songs. But his well-laid plans go off the rails, forcing him to break his own rule: “Anticipate, don’t improvise.”