Fight Club (film)

Fight Club (1999) is a film based on the novel Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk. It was directed by David Fincher and starred Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Meat Loaf, and Helena Bonham Carter. It also featured an original soundtrack by the Dust Brothers.

Plot

The plot revolves around a nameless narrator (Norton; referred to as "Jack" by many of the film's fans), an actuary for a major car company. During a severe bout of insomnia he starts attending support group meetings (one of which is a group for testicular cancer survivors). He begins to use the meetings as a vicarious source of emotional release and soon finds that he can sleep again. But when a strange young woman named Marla (Bonham-Carter) starts disrupting his enjoyment of these meetings by showing up to them for fun, the narrator finds that his insomnia returns.

While returning from a business trip, the narrator meets Tyler Durden (Pitt), a fellow frequent business traveler and independent soap salesperson, on a plane. Arriving at his apartment, he finds that it has exploded and he has nowhere to live. He eventually finds the business card that Tyler Durden gave him in his pocket, and phones him. They meet at a bar and discuss materialism and the modern male. As they leave the bar, before going to Tyler's home, Tyler asks him to hit him as hard as he can. After trading a few punches, the two begin to brawl in the bar's parking lot. The narrator realizes that he enjoys fighting and, after moving in with Tyler, they start fighting every week. Thus, "fight club" was born.

As the club grows, Tyler uses it to spread ideas of anti-materialism. Soon, Tyler is distributing "homework" to the members of the club, which grows into "Project Mayhem", an anti-corporate destruction squad led by Tyler. As the project continues to expand, the narrator becomes increasingly disturbed by their actions and tries to stop it as one of the co-founders of fight club. He slowly uncovers their plan and soon discovers the real identity of Tyler Durden; he is a split-personality construct that exists only in the narrator's head and the actions that Tyler undertakes are actions that the narrator himself is really performing; the narrator's perpetual state of insomnia is truly caused by the "Tyler" personality taking over during the night when the narrator thinks he's asleep, then leading a double life until the narrator "wakes up" in the morning.

The film climaxes with the narrator arguing with Tyler over control of his body. The narrator, in a violent act of desperation, shoots himself in the mouth. The audience sees the narrator slump in the chair, and Tyler fall, with a bullet hole in the back of his head. The injury to the narrator however, is not fatal. Members of Project Mayhem arrive, with Marla forcibly in tow, and the narrator calls for gauze. The film ends with the narrator and Marla startled by a spectacular view of highrise offices exploding - the successful completion of Project Mayhem's most ambitious project, almost forgotten amidst the drama.

Differences between novel and film

Though the plot is mostly similar to the novel and much of the dialogue is used verbatim, some significant changes have been made in the film.

Many of the lines taken from the novel for the film are given to different characters than they were originally said by. It is likely this was done because the narrator has more lines in the novel than the other characters, though other characters' lines are also switched around (for instance, Tyler gives a speech that was originally given by a mechanic in the novel).
Tyler's involvement in the storyline is often in the foreground of the film, while he is often unseen in the novel, his involvement being mentioned by the narrator in retrospect.
Tyler Durden is a soap salesman instead of a beach artist as in the novel.
The narrator meets Tyler on a plane instead of on a nude beach as in the novel.
The first two rules of fight club, "You don't talk about fight club", have "don't" changed to "do not".
The third rule of fight club, "If someone says stop, goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over.", was changed to "If someone says stop, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over".
The narrator reads stories about "Jack" in the film, who was named "Joe" in the novel. This was changed to avoid conflicts with Reader's Digest over the use of the name (the articles read by the narrator were featured in the magazine).
Marla's line after having sex with Tyler was "I want to have your abortion" in the novel. The film changed this line to "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school." However, the original line was filmed and can be seen in the DVD's deleted scenes section (the reason for the change is that the director was told the original line was 'too offensive', so he changed it to something even more offensive and then refused to change it back).
The first batch of soap made by the narrator and Tyler is made from fat from a liposuction clinic, rather than from liposuctioned fat from Marla's mother as in the book. The Paper Street Soap Company is not formed until after this first soap making project, which was simply to get some soap to clean the Narrator's clothes.
The scene where Tyler fights Lou is based on a scene in the novel where Tyler blackmails the Projectionist Union's president. Lou (or any other angry bar owner) did not appear in the book.
A flashback scene in the novel in which the narrator urinates on the Blarney Stone does not appear in the film.
A scene in which Tyler is telling a story in which he caused a woman to nearly lose her mind after he leaves an anonymous note stating that he urinated in one of the woman's perfume bottles is omitted from the movie.
The narrator's fight with himself to blackmail his boss is at the car company in the film; in the novel, it was done to threaten his boss at the hotel where Tyler had gotten him a job as a waiter.
The narrator is not entirely aware of what Tyler is doing with Project Mayhem and is more uncomfortable with the increasing destructiveness of their activities, rather than being partially in control of it as in the book.
The confrontation with Raymond K. Hessel is handled by the narrator alone in the novel; in the film, Tyler takes control while the narrator witnesses the event.
Robert Paulson is by himself when he is killed in the novel; he was using an electric drill to drill a hole in an ATM and pump it full of glue, pudding or grease (they never mention which), and a cop spots him and thinks the drill is a gun.
A scene from the novel in which Tyler murders the narrator's boss does not appear in the film, although the method of his murder is used in the film (drilling out a computer monitor and filling it with gasoline).
In the film, the ultimate objective of Project Mayhem is never revealed, but the narrator tells a police officer that he believes their goal is to blow up all the credit card companies and send the national debt record back to zero. In the novel, however, the goal of Project Mayhem was to slow down humanity's technological advancement by artificially causing another Dark Age. This is referred to in the film, however, in the bedroom scene after the car crash. Part of Project Mayhem's goals included erasing history, and the real purpose of blowing up the building in the book was to have it fall on the National Museum next door.
Project Mayhem's bombs are successful in exploding in the film, while they were duds in the novel.
The narrator shoots himself to kill Tyler, rather than to make a decision on his own as in the novel.
Tyler's gun had a home-made silencer in the novel. The gun makes a loud sound in the film, and there appears to be no silencer.
The film ends with the narrator and Marla watching buildings explode, while the novel ends with the narrator talking about a mental institution (which he believes is heaven) to which he has been confined.

Reaction and themes

Fight Club was released in the United States on October 15, 1999 to mixed reviews. While some critics raved about the film, many high-profile critics denounced it. Janet Maslin of The New York Times compared it favorably to American Beauty while Roger Ebert called it "macho porn." Perhaps the strongest negative reaction was from critic Rex Reed, who called it "A film without a single redeeming quality, which may have to find its audience in Hell." The graphic violence of the fights seemed to upset most critics, although only two death scenes actually occur in the film, neither of which are related to the fights in question. One of the most controversial critical moves occurred on The Rosie O'Donnell Show when Rosie O'Donnell spoiled the twist ending to the movie before it was in wide release as protest to the perceived violent message. The film was also criticized as a result of being released into theaters while the social and cultural effects of the Columbine High School massacre were still lingering.

The film opened with $11 million, a surprise #1 movie in a close race that weekend at the box office. However, it fell very quickly in subsequent weekends, finishing with only $37 million in the U.S. It was regarded as a failure as the budget was $63 million, not including advertising which could have been another $20-30 million. Even with the $63 million later accumulated overseas, executives at 20th Century Fox still felt the movie was a severe disappointment, so much that Entertainment Chief Bill Mechanic was fired. According to Mechanic, he had personally clashed with Fox owner Rupert Murdoch over Fight Club and it cost him his job, barely a year after Fox's Titanic had become the highest-grossing film ever made.

Fight Club's salvation turned out to be the DVD market which was experiencing rapid growth at the time. The two-disc package featured four audio commentaries and hours of extra material, offering an in-depth analysis of the film. Fight Club would eventually break even and later become profitable thanks to booming DVD sales. Entertainment Weekly, which had originally given the film a negative grade of D, later ranked the DVD #1 on its list of "The Top 50 DVDs You Need To Own."

Fight Club ranked 10th on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's My Favourite Film. The film was the only entry in the top 10 to split the presenter panel along gender lines, with the three male presenters endorsing the film and the three female presenters offering a negative reaction.

The film's highly critical view of consumerism and modern living caused discomfort among some critics. Critics like Ebert decried what they described as fascist themes throughout the film, while others have commented on anarchist, nihilist, and buddhist ideals. Both are represented in the transformation of the fight club, an anti-materialistic organization of individuality to Project Mayhem, a more organized anarchy, led solely on the authority of Tyler Durden. The amorphous nature in which these seemingly opposed philosophical systems melded together is the cause for much of the disagreement over the philosophical core of this film.

Parallels are also drawn between Tyler Durden's vision of the world after his revolution, and the views of Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. This can be seen in one scene where Tyler talks about abseiling down the Sears Tower in clothes that will last you the rest of your life and hunting elk on abandoned freeways.

Some elements from the film have found their way into the mainstream, such as the first two rules of fight club — both of which are You do not talk about fight club — or the name "Tyler Durden" itself.

Nietzsche

There are a number of parallels between Nietzschian philosophy and Fight Club. These include themes such as the death of God, trying to find meaning in life through destroying old values and creating new ones, master morality vs. slave morality, the overman, and, of course, the will to power.

The process of fighting oneself and fighting others relates to the will to power--which, while a theory of everything, involves the collision of forces and the success of the stronger. Males in the film find a fight club so appealing because to them, it is a cure to the loneliness inherent in consumer capitalism. The fight club offers white collar office workers something their typical jobs cannot. Winning or losing a fight does not matter because extreme pleasure or pain makes the male fighter feel strong and alive. Even in defeat one has extended oneself.

The Narrator represents slave morality whereas Tyler represents master morality. The Narrator taking control over himself--destroying himself in order to create himself and finally asserting himself over Tyler--represents the move to overman.

Tyler explains Nietzsche's concept of God's death to the narrator: the question of God's existence (whether it is true or not) is an unimportant answer. The question of God's existence is irrelevant.

Clues about Durden's identity

Throughout the movie, there are several clues as to Tyler Durden's true identity before the revelation at the end of the film.

At the beginning of the movie, the narrator refers to the details of the controlled demolition, "I know this, because Tyler knows this."
There are several single frame images of Tyler in scenes where he does not belong. They are:
1. In the insomnia chapter, Durden is visible when the copier flashes.
2. In the doctor's office, Tyler appears with his arm around the doctor.
3. In "Remaining Men Together", Tyler is shown with his arm around the group leader.
4. After Marla first appears in the movie, Tyler appears in the alleyway as she is walking away.
5. In the hotel room, after the airport scene, there is a welcome video with several workers saying welcome in unison. Tyler is the one farthest on the right.
When the narrator is at the airport, he delivers the line, "If you wake up in a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?" The camera pans to Tyler as he glides past on the moving walk way. Tyler is not in the scene until he moves out from behind the narrator. This is interesting, since the conveyor is moving at a constant rate and Tyler should have been visible to the right of the narrator before passing behind him.
On the plane, the narrator is sitting with a woman to his left. After he fantasizes about a mid-air collision, Tyler now occupies the same seat. Both Tyler and the narrator have the exact same briefcase as well.
After having sex with Marla for the first time, the narrator says, "You won't believe this dream I had last night.” Marla replies that she could not believe anything about it either, giving him a look because of their shared experience. Her actions indicate disbelief and shock when the narrator kicks her out of the house revealing that they are not on the same page. When Tyler comes in to talk about it, the narrator says he already knew the story.
When the narrator beats himself up to extort his boss, he says it reminded him of his first fight with Tyler (His first fight with himself).
When Tyler and the narrator are in the bathroom together, relating life experiences, they have remarkably similar pasts.
When the narrator is being stitched up after surgery, he says, "Sometimes Tyler spoke for me.” He repeats what Tyler says, even though he is in the same room with Tyler and this would have seemed odd for the nurse.
In the kitchen, when Marla is examining the narrator's burn, Tyler is feeding him lines to say to her.
The narrator walks in on Tyler having sex with Marla (This is the scene where Tyler is wearing the yellow gloves). Tyler talks to the narrator and Marla asks him whom he is talking to.
Before the car crash scene, the narrator is sitting on the right, in the passenger seat, talking to Tyler. After the car flips over, Tyler pulls the narrator out of the driver's seat.
When the narrator gets off the bus, just before he learns about Project Mayhem painting a smiley face and setting fire to a building, he is carrying a green folder. This is one of the same folders that are tacked up to the bulletin board for Project Mayhem's exploits.
When the narrator and Tyler get on the bus, the narrator pays fare for only one person

Trivia

The movie appears to take place in Wilmington, Delaware, home to most credit card companies. The Narrator's business card includes the Wilmington zip code 19808 and the Delaware area code 302. Moreover, the cities specifically mentioned in the car-smashing scene are New Castle, Delaware City and Penns Grove, NJ, which are close to Wilmington. The apartment building in which the narrator lives has as its motto "A Place To Be Somebody," which is also the city motto of Wilmington, Delaware; this can be seen in the scene where the narrator is driven home by a S.C.A.T. company cab, the local taxi service of Wilmington. In the scene where the narrator desperately calls office buildings to warn them, the street names "Franklin" and "Harrison" are shown. However Franklin and Harrison streets run North to South in Wilmington's Westside/Hilltop neighborhood, a mile or so parallel to the corporate downtown. Wilmington city officials rejected the filmmakers' request to film in Delaware, in fear of copycats. It was filmed in Los Angeles instead and made to look like a generic city.
The film makers originally intended Tyler Durden to recite working recipes for homemade explosives. They later decided against it for the interest of public safety, and fake recipes were used, including the recipe for "homemade napalm," which is not equal parts orange juice concentrate and gasoline.
On the business card for Tyler's soap company, the address is 537 Paper St. When the narrator is talking to the cops, he gives the address as 1537 Paper St. In the beginning of the film, Tyler Durden flashes on screen for a duration of one frame, perhaps foreshadowing Tyler's job as film projectionist, in 4 different instances. These are:
1. At the photocopier at work while the narrator says "Everything is a copy, of a copy."
2. In the doctor's office, when the narrator is learning about the testicular cancer support group.
3. At that group's meeting.
4. As the narrator sees Marla leaving a meeting but does not follow her.
These single frame flashes caused quality controllers to complain about "dirt" on the final reel. The film makers had to then reassure them that this was by design before the film was allowed to be distributed.
Pitt describes these instances as "subliminal Tylers."
Beyond these individual frame moments, Tyler appears twice more; first on a hotel TV screen among a group of employees wearing white jackets and bidding the viewer "welcome" (look on the right side of the screen); and again while the Narrator is riding the moveable sidewalk in the airport. When the narrator asks "If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?", the camera pans to follow a white-suited Tyler. Also, as the narrator passes the bottle of beer to Tyler outside the bar after their first fight, the light in the background blinks out the instant Tyler takes it. This sort of trickery has become one of Fincher's trademarks.
The reverse-tracking shot out of the trash can, an elaborate computer graphic, was the very last shot to be added to the film - as almost an afterthought by the director. It required so much processing time that it almost had to be spliced in "wet" - that is, fresh from the lab - so that the film could be duplicated on schedule.
The intro credit scene is a special effects fly-through of Edward Norton's character's brain at the neuron level, a similar special effect fly-through is used in the intro credits for the X-Men movies from FOX, which also released Fight Club. Metroid Prime for Nintendo's Gamecube also has a similar intro.
In the scene where Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are seemingly drunk and striking balls into neighboring factories, the two actually are drunk and hitting balls at catering trucks.
During rehearsals Brad Pitt and Edward Norton found out that they both hated the new Volkswagen Beetle. In the film they are seen striking a Volkswagen Beetle with baseball bats. However, after the film's DVD release Pitt is quoted in a commentary track as saying he had a change of heart about his feelings for the new VW Beetle.
In a similar one panel trick, a single frame showing a frontal view of a naked man is included in the view of the explosions at the end of the film. This is likely an internal reference to Tyler's practice of splicing single frames of pornography into family films during his job at the movie theatre, as if he is working at the cinema in question. A common urban legend is that this is Pitt's penis; a press release for the film said that it is not. The penis in question is the same one Tyler splices into the children's movie near the beginning of the film.
The main motifs of the Fight Club film can be spotted in several other films. One might notice similarities between Tyler Durden and Brad Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys (1995). Newer films have homages to Fight Club's story and directing style. Collateral (2004) and Old School (2003) are but two examples.
Brad Pitt had the caps on his teeth removed for his role, as a way of developing the character more. He later had them restored after completing his work. Along with co-star and friend Edward Norton, they enrolled in soap making classes, much like their characters do in the film.
According to producer Art Linson in his book What Just Happened?, test screenings at the studio had many viewers both audience and executives shaking their head in confusion. Linson was an outspoken supporter of the film.
Ed Kowalczyk of Live appears as a waiter serving the characters played by Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter in the movie.
Lines from Fight Club have also surfaced in popular music. In The Dust Brothers track called "This is Your Life" ft Tyler Durden, many audio samples from the movie can be heard, although admittedly The Dust Brothers produced the entire movie soundtrack. Limp Bizkit reference Fight Club, "I've seen Fight Club about 28 times.". Even Papa Roach cite the lines "You're a slave to the system working jobs that you hate for that shit you don't need." and "And the things you own end up owning you." in "Between Angels and Insects".
A tribute of sorts is made to Fight Club in the British cult sitcom Spaced, where there is an underground Robot Club. This also parodies Robot Wars. The setting looks similar, with the competitors in similar modes of dress. The referee also states that there are two rules of Robot Club, "You do not talk about Robot Club", and "You do not talk about Robot Club", he then says that this is an error, and says instead that Rule 2 is "no smoking".
The use of Fight Club and its first two rules as a cultural reference can be seen in Episode #10 of the series Grey's Anatomy, "Who's Zoomin' Who", when Christina Yang says, "Meredith, this is Fight Club. Nobody talks about it."
In 2004, plans were made to create a Fight Club musical, developed by Palahniuk, Fincher, and Trent Reznor. Palahniuk said "We all verbally signed on to do it, but that was two years ago, and we haven't heard anything" in a 2006 interview with the Courier-Journal.

Cast

Edward Norton - Narrator ("Jack")
Brad Pitt - Tyler Durden
Helena Bonham Carter - Marla Singer
Meat Loaf - Robert 'Bob' Paulson
Zach Grenier - Richard Chesler
Rachel Singer - Chloe
Holt McCallany - The Mechanic
Eion Bailey - Ricky
Jared Leto - Angel Face
Peter Iacangelo - Lou

Awards

The film won the following awards:

the 2000 Empire Award (UK) for Best British Actress (Helena Bonham Carter)
the 2001 Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best DVD, Best DVD Commentary, and Best DVD Special Features
the 2005 Total Film Magazine Award (UK) for "The Greatest Film of our Lifetime"

It was also nominated for the following awards:

the 2000 Academy Award for Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing
the 2000 Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Action Team (Brad Pitt & Edward Norton)
the 2000 Brit Award for Best Soundtrack
the 2000 Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence for Costume Design for Film - Contemporary
the 2000 Sierra Award from the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards for Best DVD and Best Editing
the 2000 MTV Movie Award for Best Fight (Edward Norton vs himself)
the 2000 Golden Reel Award from the Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA for Best Sound Editing - Effects & Foley
the 2000 Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best Actor (Edward Norton), Best Director, Best Film, Best Film Editing, and Best Screenplay, Adapted
the 2000 Political Film Society Award for Democracy

References

External links

The Fight Club film official web site
Filming locations in the Los Angeles area
A Metaphilm article comparing the characters to those in Calvin and Hobbes
An essay on Fight Club as spiritual allegory

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