Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, Ben Affleck curiously chooses to show his dick in Gone Girl, a film directed by a notorious lover of cgi trickery.
When a subject isn't talked about much but definitely deserves to be talked about more, we're left to connect dots in order to generate answers. Connecting dots, however, can either help to prove one's point or drive one mad, but don't worry, we're gonna stay on this side of madness for the time being. David Fincher is one of those directors like Stanley Kubrick who became famous for an obsessive attention to detail and a penchant for making his actors do dozens of takes. This means that we can't always take things we see in his films at face value. If something is in frame, it ended up in frame for a reason, because he could easily use digital means to remove anything he didn't want in frame.
I only say all of this as a means of establishing that Ben Affleck's dick didn't end up in Fincher's 2014 flick Gone Girl by accident. It wasn't a case where the take that worked best just happened to feature a few frames of Affleck's member. The shot is very much framed so that actor's penis is more or less in the dead center of the frame, so it should have come as no surprise when the dick was spotted by virtually everyone who saw the film. Affleck, ever the master of self-deprecation, called attention to his penis while promoting the film for MTV...
"David [Fincher] said to me from the beginning this is a ‘warts-and-all’ movie. You can’t have any vanity. You have to see the naked underbelly of this character... The penis is in there! It costs extra. It's IMAX penis. You have to pay $15 to see it in 3D, [but] it looks better in 3D!"
Of course, he had nothing to be ashamed of as you can see from the scene itself, as it appears in the film...
Nice dick, right? Seems like that should be the end of the story, but there's something off about that dick, don't you think? Isn't it just a bit too... smooth... for the penis of a man in his mid-40s. I'm 41 and my penis hasn't looked that good since I was in my 20s. Granted, maybe he's on the Rob Lowe path, using dick cream and ensuring his dick always looks supple and young...
One thing David Fincher had earned a reputation for was his cutting edge use of cgi technology. On the commentary for Gone Girl, for instance, he talks about using a substantial amount of cgi to touch up the hairlines on his actors wearing wigs—mainly he's talking about Rosamund Pike, but Affleck is probably a solid candidate for a little digital touch-up himself. Just four years earlier, Fincher convincingly made Armie Hammer's head appear on Josh Pence's body in The Social Network, and two years prior to that, he digitally aged and de-aged Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Who's to say that a digital wizard like Fincher couldn't go in and give his leading man a little dick lift? There's probably more pressing things on his mind, however. As a film director, he can't possibly be attuned to his lead actor's vanity in such a way, could he? Well, speaking of commentary tracks, the one that Fincher did for his 1995 breakthrough film Se7en gave us some insight into Fincher's thoughts on penises on film. In the scene where the first victim—Gluttony—is being autopsied in the morgue, Fincher mentions that he took pity on the poor actor playing the role for having to endure the hot and heavy prosthetics required. To compensate for this, he made the makeup department craft him an abnormally large penis, as a reward for being naked and dead on film.
So, yeah, you can connect those dots for yourself. The precedent is there for Fincher, who has a notedly intense attention to detail, to digitally futz with the full-frontal debut of a major A-list star. Plus, Fincher himself is on the record with his own thoughts on the audience and people who pay money to see his films...
You're telling me that guy right there is above giving Ben Affleck some digital dick smoothing? Connect the dots, people!
Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...
—Two of History's Manliest Men Wrestle Naked in Women in Love
—Ewan McGregor Has Got It, Flaunts It in Velvet Goldmine
—A Pair of Stars are Born in Y Tu Mamá También
—Harvey Keitel Goes Hog Wild in Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant
—Viggo Mortensen is Naked From Every Imaginable Angle in Eastern Promises
—There's No Shame is Michael Fassbender's Dick Game
—Kevin Bacon Steals the Show Going Full Frontal in Wild Things
—How We Met Jason Segel's Dick in Forgetting Sarah Marshall
—Jack Reynor is Uniquely Vulnerable for a Man in Midsommar
—Jaye Davidson Knows All There is to Know About The Crying Game
—David Bowie Battles Rip Torn for Dick Supremacy in The Man Who Fell to Earth
—Al Pacino Doesn't Get In All That Deep for William Friedkin's Cruising
—John Cameron Mitchell's Ass Gives Hedwig and the Angry Inch the Perfect Ending
—Ross Lynch Makes One Sexy Future Serial Killer in My Friend Dahmer
—Rocketman Not-So-Boldly Goes Where Bohemian Rhapsody Refused
—Color of Night Brings Us the Return of Bruno's Dick
—Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu Get Serviced in Bertolucci's 1900
—Future Oscar Winner Mark Rylance Gets Real and Really Nude in Intimacy
—Louis Garrel Lets It All Hang Out in the French New Wave Biopic Godard Mon Amour
—Bronson Makes Tom Hardy and His Uncut Cock a Star
—Henry June Ushers in the NC-17 Rating with a Distinct Lack of Parity in Nudity
—The Gay Cowboys of Brokeback Mountain Do More Than Eat Pudding
—Pretty Boy Eddie Redmayne Makes One Very Pretty Danish Girl
—Tom Cruise's Dick Has All the Right Moves
—Christopher Atkins Rises Above the Curly Blonde Pack in The Blue Lagoon
—A Pre-Fame Sylvester Stallone Shows Us His Italian Stallion
—9 Songs Combines Real Music with Real Sex
—Willem Dafoe Gets a Hardcore Assist in Lars von Trier's Antichrist
—The Naked Men of A Room with a View are Real Period Pieces
—John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus Pushes Every Button in Reach
