INTRO: In 1999, there were two major film releases that spoke to the disillusioned. Those who dreamed of breaking free of their soul-crushing jobs and unfulfilling personal lives. One was the movie that won Best Picture that year, American Beauty. Another was a darker, more violent take on the concept. A movie that just kind of came and went at the domestic box office. But it quickly found its audience. It has gone on to earn such a prominent place in pop culture, it’s surprising to look back and realize it wasn’t a huge deal when it first came out. The movie is Fight Club, and it’s time for it to be Revisited.
SET-UP: Fight Club came from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk, who worked as a diesel mechanic during the day and wrote in his spare time. He couldn’t get anyone to publish the first novel he had written, Invisible Monsters, but he didn’t let that deter him from his writing. While on a camping trip, he asked some other campers to turn their music down. A request that escalated into a fist fight. When he returned to work with his face busted up, he was amused to find that his co-workers did not address his injuries at all. He realized that if you looked bad enough, people wouldn’t want to know about your private life. They don’t want to know the bad things about you. That realization inspired Fight Club, which started as a short story. The short story ended up being one chapter in the novel Palahniuk then built around it.
As he wrote, he practiced a technique called dangerous writing, which encourages the writer to work their own personal experiences into their stories. Many of the things he wrote into Fight Club came from his own life or from the people around him. One character was named after a co-worker who had been fired for sexual harassment. Another was named after a girl who bullied his sister in school. The ideas of projectionists splicing porn into family films, people erasing VHS tapes rented out by local video stores, and faking illnesses to attend support groups – those were all things he heard about from friends. Palahniuk also drew inspiration from interviews he conducted with young men who worked white collar jobs. He found that many of them had father abandonment issues and resented the way advertising dictated their lifestyles. This all went into the book.
The story of Fight Club centers on an unnamed Narrator. He makes his way through a hollow existence, working as a recall coordinator for a major car company so he can afford the latest lifestyle trends and build his life the way advertising tells him he should. He also suffers from insomnia… which he finds he can treat by attending support groups for people with serious diseases he doesn’t have. He can cry his eyes out with these sick people, then sleep like a baby. One day, he meets a soap salesman named Tyler Durden. Tyler works as a projectionist and splices frames of porn into family films. He also works as a waiter and taints the food he feeds to wealthy patrons. And in his free time, he makes soap out of human fat removed from bodies in liposuction procedures. When the Narrator’s apartment is wiped out in a mysterious explosion, he needs a place to stay. So he calls Tyler and asks to move in with him in his crumbling, isolated home. Tyler wants a favor in exchange: he wants his new friend to hit him as hard as he can. That one hit leads to fist fights Tyler and the Narrator find more exhilarating than anything else in their lives. And when others witness these fights, they want to join in. The fight club of the title is born. The club grows bigger and bigger as the story goes on – and along the way, Tyler comes up with something called Project Mayhem. He basically builds his own army that wreaks havoc around the city. Vandalizing property. Picking fights with strangers. Erasing VHS tapes. Tyler will eventually take things so far with Project Mayhem, the Narrator begins to see this as something dangerous that needs to be stopped. During his attempt to bring this chaos to an end, he makes some shocking discoveries about himself.
In the midst of all this, there’s also a love story. While faking illnesses to attend support group meetings, the Narrator meets another faker. A woman named Marla Singer. He doesn’t like her at all at first. Her presence disrupts the meetings as far as he’s concerned. With another liar around, he can’t cry. And if he can’t cry, he can’t sleep. He’s appalled when Tyler strikes up a sexual relationship with Marla. But she’s around so much, he does start to grow somewhat fond of her. And when he realizes how dangerous Project Mayhem is, he steps up and tries to protect her from Tyler and his mindless followers. The soldiers he calls Space Monkeys.
Palahniuk saw Fight Club as a satire of the idea of the all-American tough guy, and of books like The Joy Luck Club and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Books that, as he put it, “presented a social model for women to be together.” Fight Club “presented a new social model for men to share their lives.” But he didn’t expect any publishers to go for it. To his surprise, VW Norton did decide to pick up Fight Club and offered him an advance of seven thousand dollars for it. Palahniuk’s manuscript then started making its way around Hollywood. Most executives who read it didn’t think it would work as a movie. It was too dark and strange, with a twist that would be difficult to pull off on screen. A reader at 20th Century Fox felt a movie based on the novel would be “exceedingly disturbing”, “volatile and dangerous”, and would “make audiences squirm”. But Fox 2000 Pictures executive Raymond Bongiovanni passionately believed that a Fight Club adaptation would work. He got President of Production Laura Ziskin interested in the property as well, and she attached producers Joshua Donen and Ross Grayson Bell, who felt the reasons the reader gave for why Fight Club shouldn’t be a movie were exactly why it should be made. Donen and Bell assembled some actors for a six hour read-through of the novel, and after listening to the recording Ziskin was thoroughly convinced that Fight Club could work on film. She purchased the rights to the novel for ten thousand dollars and gave the adaptation a green light.
Sadly, Bongiovanni passed away from a blood infection before he could see the Fight Club movie go into production. In his obituary, it was said his last wish was that Palahniuk’s novel would be brought to the screen. So Ziskin, Donen, and Bell made sure his last wish would come true. The finished film is dedicated to him.
The adaptation of Fight Club had Palahniuk’s full support, but he did not want to write the script himself. He felt that if he was too involved with the movie he would mess it up somehow. Seeing similarities between Palahniuk’s story and the 1960s classic The Graduate, Ziskin considered having The Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry write Fight Club – he had written about aimless, alienated modern young men before, so he could do it again thirty years later. But then a different scribe was found, one closer in age to Tyler and the Narrator: first-time screenwriter Jim Uhls, who had already read Palahniuk’s novel and fallen in love with it. With the script in progress, the search for a director began. The book was sent to Bryan Singer, but he never got around to reading it. David O. Russell received a draft of the script, but didn’t understand the story. Danny Boyle met with the producers and read the book, but chose to work on a different project. Peter Jackson was considered the top contender to direct, but he was too busy. So the focus turned to David Fincher. He was enthusiastic about the story, but hesitant to work with Fox again after his bad experience making Alien 3 for the studio a few years earlier. After meeting with Ziskin and studio head Bill Mechanic, he was convinced that this production would go more smoothly than the Alien movie had. He turned down the offer to direct 8MM so he could make Fight Club.
Fincher and Uhls spent a year working on the script together, with Fincher helping the writer guide the Narrator on a path to enlightenment that involves eliminating his parents, his god, and his teacher from his life. Interestingly, Fincher had given David S. Goyer that same path to enlightenment note when he was briefly attached to direct the first Blade movie. Blade and the Narrator take the same journey, in their own ways. Fincher received some valuable advice from Cameron Crowe on how to handle the Tyler character. Initially, Tyler had the answer for every question. Crowe suggested that he should be less direct. Instead of giving answers, he advises based on his own views and experiences. Once Uhls had done the heavy lifting on the adaptation, Fincher brought in his Seven collaborator Andrew Kevin Walker – who had also written 8mm – to polish the script. Walker didn’t do enough work to earn a screen credit, so Fincher found a different way to give him credit: three detectives in the film are named Andrew, Kevin, and Walker. The lead actors would also help shape the script with their input.
Russell Crowe was considered for the role of Tyler Durden, but Fox preferred Fincher’s Seven star Brad Pitt. The studio was also hoping the Narrator part would be played by a more popular star; Sean Penn and Matt Damon were mentioned as candidates. But Fincher wanted Edward Norton because he was impressed by his acting skills. And also thought he was the plainest actor in Hollywood. A supporting cast was then built around Pitt and Norton, with prominent Space Monkey roles going to Holt McCallany, Eion Bailey, Jared Leto, and – wearing a one hundred pound body suit with large breasts on it – singer Meat Loaf. The most difficult role to cast was Marla Singer. Fincher knew he had to find an actress with a specific screen presence, someone who could get across that Marla is hanging around Tyler and the Narrator by choice, not because she didn’t know any better. Winona Ryder, Renée Zellweger, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Anna Friel, Vanessa Angel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Norton’s then-girlfriend Courtney Love were all potential Marlas. Fox offered the role to Reese Witherspoon and she turned it down, to Fincher’s relief. He felt she was too young. At one point, Fincher wanted to cast Janeane Garofalo, and there are conflicting reports as to why she didn’t end up in the movie. He said she objected to the sexual content, which includes a sex scene with Tyler and Marla that was shot with the same bullet time technique used on THE MATRIX. Garofalo says it was Norton who vetoed her because he didn’t think she could act well enough. Whatever the case, Fincher did end up casting an actress who has received many awards and nominations over the course of her career. Casting against type, he chose Helena Bonham Carter, who was known for her work in period films. Carter’s mother was appalled by the script and Carter herself felt the film could be abominable if it was in the wrong hands. But it seemed to be in the right hands, so she joined in.
Fincher was given an impressive one hundred and thirty-eight days to shoot the film, and managed to secure a budget of sixty-seven million. Getting some of that money was a struggle, though. Fox was initially hoping Fight Club would only cost twenty-three million to make. Fincher’s vision caused the budget to balloon, first to fifty million. New Regency came on board to handle half of the costs – and when the budget blew up to sixty-seven million, the company asked Fincher to bring that number down by five million. When Fincher refused, New Regency threatened to withdraw their financing completely. They were only convinced to stick with Fight Club once Bill Mechanic showed New Regency head Arnon Milchan three weeks of the footage Fincher had shot. Many of the people involved with the making of the film were shocked that they were being given so much money to make a movie that wouldn’t go over well with a large portion of the audience – but they believed in it, they knew there would be a receptive audience out there, and they had a blast making it. Even though some of them suffered painful injuries filming the fight and stunt scenes. And Carter got bronchitis from all the smoking she had to do.
REVIEW: There was worry among studio executives that Fight Club was going to turn out to be something sinister and seditious. The film does have a dark, oppressive atmosphere that’s enhanced by Fincher’s stylistic choices, as he and Jeff Cronenweth wanted this to look shadowy, dirty, and ugly. And it does have critical things to say about modern culture. Advertising, materialism, the fact that people can come to feel there’s no value in their everyday life. A viewer can relate to a lot of things that are said by the characters. There are certainly viewers who have taken the wrong lessons from the film. But you’re not supposed to follow Tyler Durden’s example. This was not meant to be a call to action. It’s not intended to inspire people to start their own fight clubs or come up with their own Project Mayhem plots. In the end, the Narrator realizes Tyler is out of control and needs to be stopped. The Narrator is not being empowered by his association with Tyler, he’s falling apart. Tyler is pushing him to self-destruct. The film rejects what he’s doing, points out that it’s wrong and dangerous. The further over the edge Tyler goes, the more the film shifts from being a character study to being an exciting thriller.
If you dig beneath the darkness and filth, the anger expressed by these characters who feel lost in life, you’ll also find that Fight Club is a very humorous movie. A lot of the humor might go over the heads of some viewers due to how dark it is, but Fincher did intend for this film to be funny. Given that the lead character is referred to as the Narrator, you might assume that the extensive narration was always part of the plan. But the first draft of Uhls’ script didn’t have narration, since that’s generally frowned upon in screenwriting circles. Fincher felt that the movie would come off as sad and pathetic without narration. With this material, maybe it could have even come off as sinister and seditious after all. So the director and writer worked to enhance the film’s level of humor through the narration and dialogue.
Uhls would go on to describe the film as a romantic comedy, and that element is definitely there. The trajectory of the relationship between the Narrator and Marla follows a traditional romantic comedy structure. At first they can’t stand each other, but they gradually start to warm up to each other. The Narrator accidentally messes things up with her, then he comes to realize how much she truly means to him. Their relationship really becomes the heart of the movie as it goes along, building up to a great final line and a final shot of the Narrator and Marla holding hands as the world crumbles around them. This is what ultimately matters the most. The answer isn’t violence and destruction. It’s love and finding a way to connect with other people. Without beating them to a pulp.
Fincher wouldn’t call the movie a love story, but he does consider it to be an apology. An apology for bad behavior.
Fight Club is one of the rare instances where an author feels that a film adaptation improved upon their initial work. Palahniuk has gone so far as to say that watching the movie made him feel sort of embarrassed of his book, because the filmmakers “streamlined the plot and made it so much more effective”. He shouldn’t be embarrassed, because his book is great in its own right and provided a strong foundation for the film to be built upon. Fincher brought his story to the screen with amazing style, and assembled the perfect cast to bring his characters to life. Pitt was so dedicated to his character, he even went to a dentist to have his front teeth chipped so they would look like they were broken in a fight. Fox paid for the dentistry work under the condition that Fincher would be sure to have Pitt take his shirt off in the movie.
LEGACY/NOW: Fight Club had an A-list cast and an excellent script. Fincher did an incredible job directing it. The Dust Brothers provided a great score. Looking at the film now, you might expect that it was an Oscar contender when it was released. But that’s not the case. The movie did make it to the Academy Awards ceremony, but it was nominated in just one category: Best Sound Effects Editing. And it lost to The Matrix. But at the time, the movie wasn’t seen as being very Oscars-friendly anyway. Some audience members stormed out of the premiere screening, shouting on the way out that the filmmakers were fascists. There were plenty of positive reviews, but also an onslaught of negative ones that called the film an assault on personal decency, grotesquely explicit, irresponsible, appalling, dumb and brutal. Roger Ebert called it cheerfully facist macho porn.
Executives at Fox weren’t too fond of the movie, either. It has been said that the studio’s then-owner Rupert Murdoch despised the project and wasn’t happy with Bill Mechanic for allowing it to go into production in the first place. They had to release the film, but didn’t know how to market it. Fincher hoped the film would have a clever, anti-commercial marketing campaign, but Fox ended up dropping twenty million dollars into a campaign that focused on the fights instead. They aired ads during UFC and WWE matches. Viewers were not drawn in by the promise of getting to see Brad Pitt beat people up. Fight Club only made thirty-seven million at the domestic box office. Thankfully, it pulled it almost sixty-four million internationally… but a total haul of one hundred million was not what Fox was looking for. The disappointing box office of this film led to Mechanic resigning a few months after its release.
In the UK, some of the violence had to be trimmed before Fight Club could earn an 18 certificate – meaning no one under the age of 18 could go see it. The cut moments were added back in for a later home video release. Some demanded even harsher treatment of the film, saying it contained dangerous information and would encourage anti-social behavior. The ratings board wisely defended it, saying the film was clearly critical of its characters’ behavior and a parody of the amateur fascism on display in it. The said the “central theme of male machismo and the anti-social behavior that flows from it is emphatically rejected” in the end.
Norton could understand why some viewers, especially older ones, had such a negative reaction to the film. He could see why they wouldn’t be able to understand what was wrong with the characters. He told Total Film, “I don’t think they related to the ambivalence of our generation. We have grown up with so much broader a sense of global dynamics, of the impending catastrophes of the environment and the economy and world politics and nuclear war – all mainlined into us at a speed that they can’t comprehend. That feeling of being overwhelmed at a very young age, being overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to engage in adult life, just didn’t resonate for them the way it does for us. At its core, Fight Club springs out of a feeling of being overwhelmed and alienated, cut off from anything that feels like an authentic sense of being alive. If you choose to fully explore what are the roots of those negative feelings, on the way to maybe suggesting that there’s a way out of that, you’re going to lose a lot of people.”
Fight Club found some of its appreciative audience while it was in theatres, but really gained popularity once it reached home video. It helped that Fincher was able to oversee the DVD release, which was packed with special features. His marketing suggestions had been disregarded when the movie was released, but the DVD packaging was all his. Years later, Fincher oversaw the Blu-ray release as well. The DVD won awards for Best DVD release of the year, best commentary, and best special features. Entertainment Weekly listed it among the fifty essential DVDs that should be in a cinephile’s collection. Within the first ten years of Fight Club being on home video, over six million copies were sold, making it one of the best-selling films in Fox history. VHS and DVD rentals added more than fifty-five million dollars to the film’s haul and finally made it profitable for the studio.
As its cult following grew, negative responses in the press were drowned out by the amount of praise the movie was receiving. The Online Film Critics Society named it as one of the ten best films of 1999. The New York Times called Fight Club “the defining cult movie of our time.” Empire magazine has listed it in the top ten of the greatest movies ever made on multiple occasions, and its readers chose Tyler Durden as one of the best movie characters. IMDb also ranked the film in their top ten list of the greatest movies ever made. Men’s Journal called Fight Club one of the fifty Best Guy Movies, while Total Film called it The Greatest Film of Our Lifetime. Premiere ranked Tyler’s line “The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club” as one of the greatest lines of all time. There’s no doubt that it’s one of the most popular and most often quoted. Martin Scorsese passed on the word that Leonardo DiCaprio told him the younger actors in Hollywood considered Fight Club to be the Citizen Kane of their generation.
Fight Club became so popular, there was even a video game based on the movie, released five years after the film. That didn’t go over very well. And yes, there have been sequels, but not on film or even in novel form. Chuck Palahniuk wrote Fight Club 2 and Fight Club 3 as comic books.
The world has changed a lot since 1999, so there are elements of the film that haven’t aged particularly well. Things were already shifting when the movie was being made. It has been said that Fox delayed the release a few months after the shootings at Columbine High School. There’s a scene in which the Narrator threatens his boss with the idea that someone could walk into the office with a rifle. This scene got laughs in a test screening before the massacre at Columbine. At a screening after the massacre, it didn’t get laughs anymore. And now incidents like the one the Narrator talks about happen with shocking frequency. The final shot of the film, with skyscrapers crumbling, was also played with humor at the time. It wouldn’t be now. It’s also difficult to watch the scene where Tyler talks about his generation having no great war and no great depression to endure without thinking, “Just wait a few more years.” War and recession were right around the corner.
But even though some things about the film are dated, Fight Club is still relevant to this day. People are still feeling overwhelmed by modern life and adulthood. Still feeling like their jobs are destroying their souls. Still being abandoned by parents and struggling to connect with each other. We’ve been through rough times since this movie was released, but the frustration and anger felt by the characters remains relatable.
And Fight Club is still in the news decades later. The movie didn’t receive a streaming release in China until 2022, and when it did there were several minutes missing. And it had a whole different ending. Instead of showing the Narrator and Marla holding hands while the buildings fall, it fades to black before Marla enters the room and finishes the story with text on the screen. This new ending made the police the heroes of the story, saying they were able to thwart Project Mayhem before the explosions go off. And it says Tyler was sent to a mental institution, where he stayed for thirteen years. This brought the ending of the film closer to how Palahniuk’s novel wraps up, but fans were not pleased to see the movie altered in this way. Complaints led to the missing minutes and original ending being restored for the streaming version of the film in China.
So after all this time, people are still breaking the rules and talking about fight club.
