Fight Club
1999 · 139 min
Directed by David Fincher. Written by Chuck Palahniuk, Jim Uhls. Starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf.
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.
Critics 81% · audiences 96% · streaming on Pluto TV · $37 million in the US and Canada on its first run · $64 million elsewhere · about 7.3 million tickets sold, 2.7% of the country · 1 Oscar nomination
What they said about Fight Club
- 1999
an outrageous mixture of brilliant technique, puerile philosophizing, trenchant satire and sensory overload
— Jay Carr, The Boston Globe - 1999
It enforces the contrast between the sterilities of his characters' aboveground life and their underground one.
— Richard Schickel, Time his brothers-in-arms to foment a movement not unlike Project Mayhem.
— Jessica Johnson
How it got made
The novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk was published in 1996. Before its publication, a Fox Searchlight Pictures book scout sent a galley proof of the novel to creative executive Kevin McCormick. The executive assigned a studio reader to review the proof as a candidate for a film adaptation, but the reader discouraged it. McCormick then forwarded the proof to producers Lawrence Bender and Art Linson, who also rejected it. Producers Josh Donen and Ross Bell saw potential and expressed interest. They arranged unpaid screen readings with actors to determine the script's length and an initial reading lasted six hours. The producers cut out sections to reduce the running time and they used the shorter script to record its dialogue. Bell sent the recording to Laura Ziskin, head of the division Fox 2000 Pictures, who listened to the tape and purchased the rights to Fight Club from Palahniuk for $10,000.
Ziskin initially considered hiring Buck Henry to write the adaptation, finding Fight Club similar to the 1967 film The Graduate, which Henry had adapted. When a new screenwriter, Jim Uhls, lobbied Donen and Bell for the job, the producers chose him over Henry. Bell contacted four directors to direct the film. He considered Peter Jackson the best choice, but Jackson was too busy filming the 1996 film The Frighteners in New Zealand. Bryan Singer received the book but did not read it. Danny Boyle met with Bell and read the book, but he pursued another film. The book was also sent to David O. Russell, but he couldn't understand it. David Fincher, who had read Fight Club and had tried to buy the rights himself, talked with Ziskin about directing the film. He hesitated to accept the assignment with 20th Century Fox at first because he had an unpleasant experience directing the 1992 film Alien 3 for Fox. To repair his relationship with Fox, he met with Ziskin and studio head Bill Mechanic. In August 1997, Fox announced that Fincher would direct the film adaptation of Fight Club. The script initially had no narration, but Fincher found it "sad and pathetic", so it was rewritten to have narration.
Producer Ross Bell met with actor Russell Crowe to discuss his candidacy for the role of Tyler Durden. Producer Art Linson, who joined the project late, met with Brad Pitt regarding the same role. Linson was the senior producer of the two, so the studio sought to cast Pitt instead of Crowe. Pitt was looking for a new film after the domestic failure of his 1998 film Meet Joe Black and the studio believed Fight Club would be more commercially successful with a major star. The studio signed Pitt for US$17.5 million.
Afterwards
Fight Club was one of the most controversial and talked-about films of the 1990s. The film was perceived as the forerunner of a new mood in American political life. Like other 1999 films Magnolia, Being John Malkovich and Three Kings, Fight Club was recognized as an innovator in cinematic form and style, since it exploited new developments in filmmaking technology. After Fight Clubs theatrical release, it became more popular via word of mouth, and the positive reception of the DVD established it as a cult film that David Ansen of Newsweek conjectured would enjoy "perennial" fame. The film's success also heightened Palahniuk's profile to global renown.
Following Fight Clubs release, several fight clubs were reported to have started in the United States. A "Gentleman's Fight Club" was started in Menlo Park, California, in 2000 and had members mostly from the tech industry. Teens and preteens in Texas, New Jersey, Washington state and Alaska also initiated fight clubs and posted videos of their fights online, leading authorities to break up the clubs. In 2006, an unwilling participant from a local high school was injured at a fight club in Arlington, Texas and the DVD sales of the fight led to the arrest of six teenagers. An unsanctioned fight club was also started at Princeton University, where matches were held on campus. The film was suspected of influencing Luke Helder, a college student who planted pipe bombs in mailboxes in 2002. Helder's goal was to create a smiley pattern on the map of the United States, similar to the scene in Fight Club in which a building is vandalized to have a smiley on its exterior. On July 16, 2009, a 17-year-old who had formed his own fight club in Manhattan was charged with detonating a homemade bomb outside a Starbucks Coffee shop on the Upper East Side. The New York City Police Department reported the suspect was trying to emulate "Project Mayhem".
Fight Club had a significant impact on evangelical Christianity, in the areas of Christian discipleship and masculinity. A number of churches called their cell groups "fight clubs" with a stated purpose of meeting regularly to "beat up the flesh and believe the gospel of grace". Some churches, especially Mars Hill Church in Seattle, whose pastor Mark Driscoll was obsessed with the film, picked up the film's emphasis on masculinity and rejection of self-care. Jessica Johnson suggests that Driscoll even called on "his brothers-in-arms to foment a movement not unlike Project Mayhem."