Gillian Flynn

Gillian Schieber Flynn (born February 24, 1971) is an American author, screenwriter, comic book writer and former television critic for Entertainment Weekly. Flynn's three published novels are the thrillers Sharp Objects, Dark Places, and Gone Girl, the latter of which she adapted for the screen in the 2014 film of the same name directed by David Fincher.

Early life and education

Flynn was born in Kansas City, Missouri and raised in midtown Kansas City's Coleman Highlands neighborhood. Both of her parents were professors at Metropolitan Community College–Penn Valley: her mother, Judith Ann (née Schieber), was a reading-comprehension professor, and her father, Edwin Matthew Flynn, was a film professor. She has an older brother, Travis, who is a railroad machinist. Her uncle is Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Robert Schieber. Flynn was "painfully shy" and found escape in reading and writing. Growing up, Flynn's father would take her to watch horror movies.

After attending Bishop Miege High School and graduating in 1989, she attended the University of Kansas, where she received her undergraduate degrees in English and journalism. She spent two years in California writing for a trade magazine for human resources professionals before moving to Chicago and attending Northwestern University for a master's degree at its Medill School of Journalism in 1997. Flynn initially wanted to work as a police reporter, but chose to focus on her own writing as she discovered she had "no aptitude" for police reporting.

David Fincher

David Andrew Leo Fincher (born August 28, 1962) is an American film director, film producer, television director, television producer, and music video director. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for the romantic fantasy drama The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and the drama The Social Network (2010). For the latter, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director and the BAFTA Award for Best Direction.

He is also known for having directed the psychological thrillers Seven (1995), Fight Club (1999), and Gone Girl (2014) and the mystery thrillers Zodiac (2007) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), as well as being instrumental in the creation of the critically acclaimed U.S. television series House of Cards.

Early life

Fincher was born on August 28, 1962 in Denver, Colorado, the son of Claire Mae (née Boettcher), a mental health nurse from South Dakota who worked in drug addiction programs, and Howard Kelly Fincher, an author from Oklahoma who worked as a reporter and bureau chief for Life. Howard died of cancer in April 2003. Fincher knew from a young age he wanted to go into filmmaking. When Fincher was two years old, the family moved to San Anselmo, California, where filmmaker George Lucas was one of his neighbors. Fincher moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens, where he graduated from Ashland High School. During high school, he directed plays and designed sets and lighting after school, and was a non-union projectionist at a second-run movie theater, production assistant at the local television news station KOBI in Medford, Oregon, and took on other odd jobs such as fry cook, busboy, and dishwasher. Inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Fincher began making movies at age eight with an 8mm camera.