Seven (1995): 25 SECRETS Hidden for Decades

A screenplay written by a record-store clerk who hated New York reached a young director by mistake, and its bleak final scene became the reason he agreed to make the film. This video covers the production secrets behind David Fincher's 1995 crime thriller Seven, from the draft nobody meant to send to the fight to keep its ending intact. You will hear how New Line Cinema rushed filming to protect the original script, why Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman and Al Pacino passed on the role of Somerset, and how Brad Pitt helped bring Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Spacey into the cast. The video explains why Spacey kept himself off the opening credits and out of the marketing, and how Pitt's real hand injury during the chase scene was written into the story. It also looks at the craft behind the film's look: the constant rain, the unnamed city built from downtown Los Angeles, the handmade opening titles by Kyle Cooper, the journals filled page by page for the killer's apartment, and the Deluxe silver-retention process that deepened the blacks on a few hundred release prints. Darius Khondji's lighting, Howard Shore's restrained score and Richard Francis-Bruce's editing of the finale each get their own chapter, along with the influence the film had on crime pictures and title design for years afterward.