"What's in the booox!?" Everybody knows the infamous line, as Brad Pitt's Detective Mills finds out that he is to be the seventh deadly sin - Wrath - in John Doe's (Kevin Spacey's) sick and twisted plan. No one wants to find Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box, let alone when she's your pregnant wife. The shock twist ending - defying the established convention of cop thrillers up to that point - only made it to screen by fluke. Director David Fincher, who was being courted for the film by New Line, was accidentally sent an earlier draft of the script than the studio intended. In the version the studio wanted, Mills' wife's head didn't end up in the box, instead being a more bog-standard, Hollywood ending. Luckily, Fincher read the earlier draft, with the ending being the main reason he decided to get involved. All the way through filming, New Line tried to get him to go with the revised ending, or at least compromise and put Mills' dog's head in the box. "F*ck that," said everybody else. Fincher and Pitt then put up a united front, which New Line couldn't say no to - and the rest is history.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
