Mark Ruffalo on David Fincher

“You hear these stories about him being this perfectionist, this task master. Honestly I was terrified. The first day at work we had like six page walk-and-talk. And I was shitting bricks, man. It was David Fincher, this crane shot, on a dolly, about a hundred extras. It was crazy. Jake and I were winding through these extras its an emotional scene and we’re up to take sixty. He's been giving us notes and going again and going again and going again and I'm starting to get really insecure. I'm like “I'm sucking — what are we doing?” And I see Fincher walking over and I don't know what the hell is going on. And he's walking right towards me and I think he's coming to fire me. This is it. I was like 'you know what? Its okay. If I'm sucking this bad I deserve to go.' He gets to me and then he walks right by me. He takes an extra and he literally moves him like six inches. And he’s like ‘okay lets go again.....’ And after that I was freed. You can play. It was the best time.... You only have to kick people's asses a couple of times. You meet these people who are supposed to be tyrants and they're always so sweet. The one thing about him is that if you are not doing your job or if he's doing your job better than you are, he will eat you alive. If you think you're going to show up and stake through and shoot from the hip, you're done. Because he's so fucking smart and he's spent so much time studying it. He's voracious — every bit of information he gobbles up. He knows exactly what year this pen came out and whether its right for his movie. He'll sit there and go 'what the fuck is this? This pen didn't come out until three years after this scene...' Then he'll eat you alive. If you're not performing at the same level he is, he'll eat you alive.” — from my forthcoming interview with Ruffalo for The Gaurdian