According to a 8.25 Yahoo Movies piece by Gwynne Watkins, director-writer Tyler Perry had never heard of Gone Girl director David Fincher before signing to play a costarring role as Tanner Bolt, the attorney of Ben Affleck‘s suspected wife-killer Nick Dunne. Honestly — that’s what he says in the article.
Tyler Perry, Ben Affleck in David Fincher’s Gone Girl (20th Century Fox, 10.3).
“If I had known who David Fincher was and his body of work, or if I’d known the book was so popular, I would have said no…I probably would have walked away from it,” Tyler tells Watkins. “And my agent knew that! He didn’t tell me until after I signed on!”
On one hand you almost have to admire Perry’s nerve. That’s almost like admitting he’s never heard of James Cameron or Stanley Kubrick or David Lean. Does he live at the bottom of a mine shaft? Hey, Tyler…ever heard of Paul Thomas Anderson? How about Samuel Fuller or Ida Lupino? Could it be that Perry only pays attention to black directors…something like that? This might help some of us to understand a little more why Perry’s movies are so bad. He lives entirely in his own little cave.
This ranks with that statement allegedly made by Melanie Griffith during a 1992 Shining Through interview in which she indicated she’d only recently heard about the Holocaust or that she knew very little about it. Noting that the Nazi regime had exterminated six million Jews in concentration camps, she observed, “That’s a lot of people.”
There’s also a notorious remark allegedly made by Cher when she discussed her relationship with Allman Brother organist and singer Gregg Allman, whom she married in June 1975. I can’t find an online link but I swear to God I read a quote in which Cher told a reputable interviewer in the mid ’70s or early ’80s that she’d “never heard” of the Allman Brothers before she met Allman in…what, ’74 or early ’75? The Allman Brothers were stone rock legends as of early 1970. And yet (it irks me that I can’t find this quote) Cher managed to keep herself ignorant of their reputation for…what, three or four years? And she was right smack in the middle of the action with her Sonny and Cher TV show and all. She should talk to Perry sometime.
20th Century Fox will open Gone Girl on 10.3.14.
