Fight Club

Fight Club is a 1999 feature film adaptation of the 1996 novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. The film is directed by David Fincher and stars Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. Norton plays a disillusioned white-collar everyman who finds catharsis by faking illnesses in support groups until he meets a woman similar to him (Carter) and a soap salesman (Pitt). The two men establish a club for men to express themselves through fist fights, eventually evolving into countercultural missions. Fincher used thematic cinematography and visual effects to illustrate the deconstructed world of the characters.

Fight Club performed below expectations at the box office in the United States. Unfortunately, it had a mismatched ad campaign. The ads made it seem like the movie was about street boxing, instead of an intellectual and emotional ride through a man's psyche as he takes a strange path toward rebellion against consumer society. As a result, most who went to see it were disappointed, and those who would have recognized its brilliance stayed far away from the movie theaters. It initially received lukewarm reviews during its theatrical run. When the film was released on DVD, it gained recognition as a cult film and received belated praise from its viewers.

Plot

Plot and ending details.

The narrator (Edward Norton) is a nameless automobile company employee who travels to accident sites for the company. Suffering from insomnia, he goes for a check-up to request medication. The doctor refuses to write a prescription, and instead recommends natural sleep. When the narrator protests that he is in pain, he is advised to visit a testicular cancer support group in order to appreciate real suffering. The narrator attends the group and is able to find catharsis, sleeping soundly without a problem. He begins compulsively attending other support groups, faking symptoms to be part of them. However, he notices another faker, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), whose presence disrupts his ability to sleep. He confronts her, and they make a deal to schedule their group attendances so that they never meet.

During a flight for a business trip, the narrator meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a flamboyant soap salesman. When the narrator arrives home, he finds that his apartment has been destroyed by an explosion. He calls Tyler and meets him at a bar, where Tyler permits the narrator to stay at his place. Leaving the bar, Tyler asks the narrator to hit him. The narrator reluctantly complies, and the two end up enjoying a fist fight. The narrator moves in with Tyler at an abandoned house, and they continue fighting outside the bar, attracting a crowd and eventually establishing a 'fight club' in the basement. More clubs spring up around the country.

Marla Singer, who overdoses on Xanax and then calls the narrator, is ignored by the narrator but instead rescued by Tyler Durden. The two begin a sexual relationship, and Tyler forbids the narrator from talking to Marla about him. Eventually, Tyler's fight club grows to become Project Mayhem, which commits acts of anti-corporate vandalism in the city. The fight clubs become a network for Project Mayhem, and the narrator is left out of Tyler's activities with the project, feeling disturbed about their actions. During an argument between Tyler and the narrator while driving on a rainy night, Tyler purposefully crashes the car, and then disappears from the scene.

When a member of Project Mayhem, Bob (Meat Loaf), dies on a mission, the narrator decides to take action to shut down the project. He tries to trace Tyler's steps, traveling all over the country and feeling a sense of déjà vu wherever he travels. Puzzled, he calls Marla Singer, and asks her to say his name. When she responds "Tyler Durden," he realizes the truth – Tyler is an aspect of his own split personality, the personification of his unrealized desires. Tyler appears in his room and explains that he is in control of the narrator's body whenever he is asleep. The narrator falls unconscious, and he wakes to find phone calls made during his blackout. He tracks Tyler to the downtown headquarters of major credit card companies, which Tyler plans to destroy in order to collapse the consumerist financial system. The narrator, attempting to disarm the explosives in the building basement, is confronted by Tyler, knocked unconscious, and taken to the upper floor of another building to witness the impending destruction.

The narrator, who is held by Tyler at gunpoint, realizes that, sharing the same body with Tyler, he really holds the gun. He finds himself holding the gun and fires it into his mouth, shooting through the cheek without killing him. The illusion of Tyler collapses, with an exit wound to the back of his head. Members of Project Mayhem, who still see the narrator as Tyler, bring Marla Singer to him and leave them alone, despite being shocked over his wound. Marla, who was warned to leave the city by the narrator, concernedly asks what happened. The narrator explains that he shot himself and tells her, "You met me at a very strange time in my life." They watch as the buildings explode in a collapsing skyline outside the windows, standing side-by-side and holding hands.

Production

Fox 2000 head and producer Laura Ziskin first bought rights to Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel Fight Club for $10,000. In August 1997, Twentieth Century Fox announced that director David Fincher would helm the film adaptation of the novel. Ziskin had recognized Fincher's creative team as the one from the critically acclaimed Se7en. Initially, actor Sean Penn was considered to portray Tyler Durden in the film. In January 1998, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton officially joined the project to portray Tyler Durden and the nameless narrator, respectively. Fincher cast Norton based on the actor's performance in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996). Though actresses Courtney Love and Winona Ryder were considered to portray Marla Singer, Helena Bonham Carter was cast into the role based on her performance in The Wings of the Dove (1997). Norton and Pitt took lessons in boxing, taekwondo, and grappling to prepare for their roles. The actors also took soap making classes from boutique company owner Auntie Godmother. For his role, Pitt voluntarily chipped out pieces of his front teeth, which were restored after filming concluded.

Filming lasted 138 days, during which Fincher shot over 1,500 rolls of film, three times the average for a Hollywood film. Filming locations were in and around Los Angeles and on sets built at the studio's location in Century City. Production designer Alex McDowell constructed over seventy sets. The exterior of Tyler Durden's home on Paper Street was built in San Pedro, California, while the interiors were built on a sound stage at the studio's location. The interiors were designed to possess a sense of decay that reflected the deconstructed world of the characters. Marla's apartment was based on photographs taken at the Rosalind Apartments in downtown L.A.

Makeup artist Julie Pearce, who collaborated with the director on The Game, worked on the actors in Fight Club. For her tasks, Pearce studied mixed martial arts and pay-per-view boxing. She also designed an extra to have a chunk missing from his ear, for which she cited Mike Tyson as inspiration. To create sweat on cue, two methods were devised: spraying Evian water over a coat of Vaseline, and using straight Evian for "wet sweat". Meat Loaf, who plays a character that has "bitch tits", wore a 90-pound fat harness that gave him big breasts for the role. He also wore 8-inch lifts in his scenes with Norton, being shorter than the lead actor.

The director sought to find a band that would perform film music for the first time, out of the concern that bands that had experience performing film music would be unable to tie the film's themes together. “Radiohead” was pursued as a possible band, but the alternative rock producer duo Dust Brothers was ultimately chosen to score the film. The Dust Brothers created a post-modern score that included drum loops, electronic scratches, and computerized samples. According to Dust Brothers performer Michael Simpson, "Fincher wanted to break new ground with everything about the movie, and a nontraditional score helped achieve that."

Writing

The adapted screenplay was developed by Jim Uhls, who was receiving his first screen credit as a writer. Uhls had initially excluded the voice-over at the request of the studio, who saw the technique as a crutch. When David Fincher joined the project, the director worked with Uhls for eight months to rewrite the script, including the voice-over to provide a sense of context and a sense of humor through the interior monologue. Fincher described the film without the technique as seemingly "sad and pathetic". Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker from Fincher's Se7en provided the screenplay with a final polish prior to principal photography.