The author and screenwriter discusses David Fincher’s film, its detractors, and adapting a seemingly unadaptable novel. Warning: Major spoilers for Gone Girl the movie and the novel contained within!
Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn
Merrick Morton, Twentieth Century Fox/Regency Enterprises
Like Gone Girl's suspect male protagonist Nick Dunne, played with fitting frat-boy-gone-to-seed handsomeness on screen by Ben Affleck, Gillian Flynn used to be an entertainment journalist. Before she adapted her best-selling third novel into a hugely anticipated movie directed by David Fincher that's now in theaters, she was a features writer and television critic at Entertainment Weekly — so she knows her way around an interview, even a slightly awkward one with someone who loved the book but felt uneasy about its cinematic adaptation.
It's not often that an author gets to be so involved in translating his or her work to film, but Flynn wrote the screenplay for Gone Girl herself, boldly reshaping and slimming down her novel into a movie about how Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) disappears on the fifth anniversary of her wedding to Nick, and about all the dark secrets that emerge in the investigation that follows. It's certain to be one of the most talked-about movies of the year, and Flynn, who's already teamed up again with Fincher on a U.S. adaptation of the British cult series Utopia for HBO, was happy to talk about it with BuzzFeed News, the day after Gone Girl's world premiere at the New York Film Festival.
There was talk early on that the ending of Gone Girl would be changed for the film, but what's there is very close to what's in the book. Was there ever actually any discussion of altering the ending?
Gillian Flynn: No. No, it came from a quote that got taken out of context of what David had said, then the aggregation sites picked it up and pretty soon it was being attributed to me, mashed together with another quote I'd said somewhere else. David and I had always been in a complete mind-set that that was how the ending was supposed to be. We liked it that way and it was the right one.
What was your process in fitting the novel into something feature-length? Did you look at it more as "what can I trim away" or "what do I need to keep"?
GF: More "what am I going to keep." That was the first thing I looked at — what absolutely needs to be here, plot-wise. You think you can get rid of one scene, and you realize down the road that now this is going to collapse because we haven't put that brick in there.
It was partly doing that, but also with a real mind to not turning it into a complete procedural. The plot could have just taken over. To me it was so important to have those Nick and Amy flashbacks, to see them all the way through the different stages of their marriage so that you're invested in them.
Obviously some scenes just feel iconic — like the sugar kiss. What was your approach in terms of what to keep from early in their marriage in New York?
GF: I knew I wanted to see them meet. And the way David has filmed it is the weirdest, most diabolical meet-cute ever. I love the cognitive dissonance of that scene, this cute, flirty banter — but the way they play it is not bouncy. It's not the way you're used to seeing a romantic comedy. Something's off.
I like the scene when Nick's been laid off. I feel like that's an important turning point. Some scenes had to be combined together. I had to create other scenes to do the work of what had been three or four diary chapters — otherwise it would have been the whole movie. I could have just stayed in there.
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl
Merrick Morton, Twentieth Century Fox/Regency Enterprises
The book is defined by these dueling narratives of Nick's account in the present day and Amy's diary, which in the movie Pike narrates. Was there ever a consideration of something like, I don't know, voice-over for Nick?
GF: Yeah, I know you didn't like that.
I missed his voice.
GF: I didn't ever consider voice-over for Nick, because I felt like it could very easily turn into a book on tape. I beefed up [Nick's twin sister, played by Carrie Coon] Go's role a little bit, to give her some of those moments with him. But I also really wanted him to take on the role of us projecting our emotions onto him. I wanted him to feel more of a cipher, that Amy was hypnotically working her magic.
To me, he still felt like an unreliable narrator — you're still not quite sure why he's doing the things that he's doing, why he's checking the phone, why his emotions seem so off-kilter. Anyone who can joke with his sister that (laughs), "Anyone who took her will probably bring her back," something is a little bit off. But mainly I liked Amy having that control of the voice-over — that sense of planting that seed, that she was in our heads from the very beginning. So when you get to the reveal, you realize that she's been this presence who's been toying with you the whole time, and that she's really in control of this overarching narrative. And it does make her a little more villainous than in the book. It gives her a bit more power.
She felt more like a femme fatale to me in the movie.
GF: I think she's empathetic, because you see the flashbacks with her parents and any time you know where someone's come from, you tend to have more empathy for them. To me, "femme fatale" implies a sort of unknowability, and I think she's known. She's telling you what's going on. To me, they felt like equal players.
I felt like she's in control, and I wanted that sense that you're going to always have to be on your toes when Amy's around, even the audience. Because she's tricked you, because she's been in your head and been playing with you, the audience member, that you have a feeling for Nick in a way.
The "Cool Girl" section in the book has really resonated with people and taken on a life of its own, and a version of it is part of a pivotal moment in the movie as well. Did you expect that kind of response when you wrote it?
GF: It's funny — that "Cool Girl" speech started just as a writing exercise. I was trying to figure out who Amy was, and at the time when I was writing it, she didn't write quizzes; she was more a female issues writer for a women's magazine. I wrote that all in one day in this fugue state, just sweating and angry, it all poured out of me. Normally, as a rule, I don't try to wedge my writing exercise stuff into a book, because it's unhealthy to do that. But that one I just liked so much — I put it in, took it back out, put it back in, and finally was like, fuck it, it's too good, I'm going to put it in there.
But I had no idea... it really does seem to resonate with people. The cool thing about working with David, I think a lot of directors would have seen three pages of a script of pure voice-over and been like "absolutely not." But he was like, great, we got it, that's awesome. He totally was into it, and making that that turning point where you're first really meeting Amy.
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"Gone Girl" Writer Gillian Flynn Takes On Picky Fans, Men's Rights Activists, And Cool Girls