*** Official "PANIC ROOM" Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Mick Wright]

A ? about Fincher.......do his Gothic tones have anything to do with him possibly being Manic depressive, or is he just being cool?

I'd guess the former. He tends to be a method director, even taking on the persona of each film's protagonist. The Se7en Criterion laser disc had a segment of photos of him on the set, with captions that joked how much he looked like John Doe during the shoot. During the promotion of Fight Club he frequently claimed in interviews that he didn't enjoy his job at all, much like Jack (or anyone in that movie).

 

[Brian Perry]

I also thought the product placement for Coca-Cola was very noticeable.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Hey, if none of you noticed, what Fincher did was make a "commerical" film. Unlike his other films, I felt pretty good coming out of the theater.

 

[MatS]

Fincher on 'Panic Room'
http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/1596.html
PANIC BUTTONS
Taking David Fincher's head out of the box
Ray Pride
Movies, like dreams, can take us anywhere. With "Fight Club," David Fincher began his movie literally inside the brain of a very confused young man.
It always frightens me when talented directors paint themselves into a corner. Hearing about "Panic Room," a script by David Koepp bought by Columbia Pictures for several million dollars, my heart sank. One location, one night, one goal: a divorced mother (Jodie Foster) must protect her daughter (Kristen Stewart) against home invaders (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam). Her greatest weapon? A secret, cement-lined, steel-reinforced "panic room" hidden in the middle of the house.
But "Panic Room" works like the scare machine it's meant to be. Jodie Foster took the role after Nicole Kidman was injured following several weeks of shooting, and her pain, then courage, as the put-upon mom may be one of her most meticulous performances yet. Fincher is soft-spoken, but talking to him about the production of "Panic Room" reveals him to be meticulous about any detail you might bring up. I mention my fear before seeing the film that he wouldn't be able to pull off this hyperkinetic, fast-as-the-wind riff on Hitchcock's "Rear Window."
"Yeah," he concedes. "That was the key to making it. It's a pretty terse script. There's not a lot there. The whole time, it was like, y'know, an hour-and-forty-five-minute movie, that's what it's gotta be. It's got to feel like one night. Is it going to feel like that or is going to feel like three nights?"
There's hardly any back-story for the characters. We're in the present. I wondered how long this woman is in the house before hell breaks loose--four hours? "Yeah. Not even. That's the thing. That's what makes it a movie. We kept saying, [taking a major scene from the film] there's no way you're not going to see fucking fire on the ceiling in the trailer. So all this playing coy in the first three pages, it's stupid. It's like, let's get on with it. We know where we're going with it. We know where we're going to wind up."
The movie's beautifully dark, gray and blue and black. "It seemed like if you were going to make a movie that takes place during a breaking-and-entering in the middle of the night, it's gotta be dark," he deadpans.
The dialogue avoids catchphrases, like nineties movie heroes were fond of cracking, as well as overt racial remarks. Whitaker is black; Yoakum can be taken by some as being poor Southern bad guy; Leto is a spoiled Manhattan trustafarian. There are a handful of pop-culture jokes, but nobody's slanging about class or race or gender up front. "I think we added one line in the looping. You can't really hear it because there's so much music and craziness going on," Fincher says. "But in the scene where you see the fight through the bedroom doorway and you see it in shadows, I had Forest say, `Get off me, you crazy hillbilly motherfucker!' But again, New York, I don't see racial divisions in New York. Everybody's suffering the same and everybody's pawing their way. The most agonized and miserable guy in the movie is the one with the trust fund!"
The script has moments that make it a paradigm of Hollywood terseness, where you can say almost nothing yet say everything. "David's a real stickler for, tell what you need to know at the last possible minute," Fincher says of Koepp. "I'm sure in the second `Jurassic Park' that it was not David's decision to show that Jeff Goldblum's daughter is a gymnast in the first act. That's just not who he is. This is a movie-movie. It's about what the expectations are about movies as much as our expectations about people. In that sense, it is a true genre picture. It exists to either deliver or subvert your expectations of what's going to happen in that situation. It's a crime thriller, but it's also in the `Treasure of the Sierra Madre' vein. These people are going in to look for what they perceive as the quick solution to their problems. Money is never the quick solution to anyone's problems. It's just an object that everyone's after for the wrong reasons. It's a cinematic study in how you use or abuse the one setting for maximum effect. I was drawn to it because I loved the idea: They've gotta get in, they've gotta get in, now how are they going to get out? A simple reversal."
The story's so stripped-down that it can be read as a really clean metaphor for child custody battles. "This is a movie about divorce," Fincher says calmly. "The destruction of the home, the attempts to... One party's always after the money, the other party is going to allow whatever has to be destroyed to be destroyed, whatever. That's there."
Get in, get out, survive, vanquish the bad guys. That seems like a pretty simple narrative mechanism after "Fight Club." I wondered if he felt it was time for a more direct kind of storytelling. "I don't really think in those terms. I read a script, going, `Is it a movie I'd want to see, A; are there a lot of movies like it already out, B; and do I think I can do something with it, C. That's my criteria. This movie's been a challenge for me because it's all in one night, all in one place. It's like the high-school play. It's like eight fucking people and that's it, that's all you got."
"Panic Room" opens Friday.
(2002-03-28)
ps. for what it's worth: all-time biggest Easter opening movie

 

[AdamK]

Just a quick question here. In the beginning of the film did the realtor say the name "Arthur Digbee Sellers"? If not i've got quite an imagination.

Also, though I didn't enjoy the film as much as I was hoping how many of you cheered when-

The daughter got punched in the face by the robber (who should have never gotten back up in the first place).


I actually started clapping after seeing that.

 

[MatS]

I don't cheer or clap at movies, so I guess the answer would be no

I have a feeling the robber, who in your expert opinion 'should have never gotten back up in the first place',
didn't hear you

 

[Ryan Peter]

Why would you clap at that?

 

[AdamK]

By cheer i didn't mean literally to cheer out loud, but i suppose I should have clarified.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

I didn't cheer when the little girl was punched.
Take care,
Chuck

 

[AdamK]

Dang you guys are harsh. I'm sorry I have caused such a ruckus. It's not as if the girl who i'm sure is quite nice was actually hit. Quite a bit of the theater was laughing at it, but I suppose none are members here. I did not mean to offend anyone. I'll just go back to looking but not touching.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Adam,

You didn't offend:p) I know it's just a movie, but I was into it...the actress wasn't THAT bad! Stick around. No need to be a stranger.

Take care,

Chuck

 

[RogerB]

Saw it tonight. Excellent movie. Didn't care much for the laughs - broke the tension too much.

David Oliver,

1. Kid with diabetes, of course, I meamn that has to be the case in this kind of movie. And I am pretty sure the kid should have been in much worse shape than she was.

NO, IT WAS ACCURATE.

2. Supercop, able to discetrn something wrong with "If there is something you want to tell us, but can't, you can just blink" Way to go Columbo! Of course she says nothing, but he still decides, with barely anything to go on, to show up with the SWAT Team. Because he is Supercop. But that ignores the fact that she could have told him! The closed circuit TV had no sound and she knew that.

GUN SHOTS NORMALLY BRING COPS.

3. Bad Guy #3, gets his hand crushed and two fingers chopped off, which normally would mean he would be practically uncoscious from pain and blood loss. But hey I can believe that he is toughing it out. But then he gets nailed witha sledge hammer and sent over the railing to the floor below about 20 feet). Yet he rremains conscious, and has the strength to ascend the stairs and overpower our protagonist. Jason from Halloween was even going "C'mon!" when that happened.

STRANGER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED.

4. Foster is knocking out all the cameras. "Why didn't we think of that?!" Really? Because it a bad script with a myriad of plot contrivances.

WHAT GOOD WOULD IT HAVE DONE?

5. Flashing light was working great as a distress signal, hey let's stop that and yell through this small pipe, through a driving rainstorm acorss a courtyard to a guy standing behind a closed window about 50 yards away. Oh he didn't hear us. But yes he did, and he called the cops, unbelievable, hearing like a bat!

NEIGHBORS HEARD IT, NOT SLEEPING MAN.

6. Jared Leto only pulled the downstairs phone out, not the main line to the house. Yes, we are supposed to believe he is that dumb. Well we know he is dumb because he dosen't know how long it takes to close the sale of a house. And then Foster manages to jerry rig another phone together. I guess this is possible,not sure about that one.

R E A C H I N G A BIT....

7. Of course, there is the ubiquitious extra guy for the job, you know the loose cannon who no one was told about until they actually get to the job. I remember this from Shanghai Noon as well, but that was a comedy.

IN ORDER TO CALL HIM UBIQUITIOUS YOU HAVE TO NAME AT LEAST 10 MORE MOVIES THAT USE THE SAME.

 

[Markus Lidstrom]

In regards to Raoul being hit with the hammer
, my interpretation was that he managed to move a bit and caught the brunt of the blow with the wooden part of the hammer
.

edit: oops, Raoul it is

 

[Michael*K]

I think you're referring to the Raoul character, Bart.

 

[Brett_B]

The movie wasn't bad, but it did have some poor writing (IMO).

Even though this is a discussion thread, I will put this in spoiler tags.

There are actually 2 parts that glared at me while watching this.

1. When the three intruders were filling the "room" with propane, and Forest Whittaker's (sp?) character is trying to get the masked intruder to turn off the gas. If he was so concerned about this why didn't he just go over to the wall and pull the hose out??? I mean, he was the one who rigged that end of the contraption.

2. The cell phone revelation. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't it seem like a long time had passed since the first time they entered the room and the intruders discussing the different possibilities on the bottom floor. I know what people are going to argue. She was too scared when she first went in. Fine. But they tried the phone when they first went in, and the cell phone wasn't even mentioned (not even the possibility of using another phone). When the revelation is finally made, it was treated as an afterthought by Foster's character. It would have been a little bit (not much) better if the daughter offered that suggestion.

Overall, I would give the movie a "C".

 

[Mike Kelly]

Enjoyable, but Fincher-lite - a predictable plot spiced up by Fincher's mole-camerawork.

Agree with the ubiquitous Raoul character observation. If Jared Leto expected the house to be empty, what was the point of bringing Raoul? He didn't offer any skills.

Sort of reminded me a bit of Wait Until Dark near the end, as well as, unfortunately, Home Alone.

 

[Stevan Lay]

Panic Room bagged in over $30M for the opening weekend. I'd expected a bigger count.

 

[DonRoeber]

Stevan,

It was a holliday weekend, you know. Lots of people were busy Friday and Sunday.

 

[MatS]

like I said above: for what it's worth: all-time biggest Easter opening movie

 

[Brian Perry]

If Jared Leto expected the house to be empty, what was the point of bringing Raoul? He didn't offer any skills.

Good point...just another person to split the loot with.