25 Things You Didn’t Know About Se7en
1. Some Audiences Are Convinced They Can See The Head
The human mind is a weird and wonderful thing. Despite there being no frame of footage in the finished film that shows any part of a representation of a decapitated head in the courier’s box, there are those that insist that they’ve seen a copy of the film where such footage exists.
Fundamentally, people just seem to believe that they’ve been shown more than they actually have. In some cases they actually create false memories ‘proving’ this, removing all shadow of doubt from their minds. In a 2014 interview with Playboy, Fincher attributed this to the quality of the screenplay, with typical generosity towards his writing partner:
“The thing I appreciated about it and what I thought Andrew Kevin Walker’s script did so well was that it got your mind in overdrive. It worked on your imagination…we were in great shape and didn’t have to show the head in a box.”
Despite this, and despite his ongoing assertions that the head-in-a-box has always been implied, Fincher has gotten into at least one knock-down, drag-out argument with a fan who swears blind that they saw it. But then people are strange...