Mr. Floppy 12.02.08: Fight Club

Posted by Peter Bielik on 12.02.2008

A little bit of easy philosophy.

In the discussion under my last article, someone noted that Southland Tales wasn't that big of a flop, because it earned some money on DVD (still didn't break even though). So, just to make sure, I decided to repeat the criteria by which I choose the films for my column.

I include only films that didn't break even at the worldwide box-office. Keep also in mind that only circa 55% of the film's earnings go to the studio. That means I'm not concerned with how much money any given movie made through rentals or DVD sales, because that way, it would be almost impossible to regularly keep writing about interesting movies.

Like for instance Fight Club. The movie didn't pay for itself in cinemas and that qualifies it as a flop for the purposes of my article. The subsequent popularity and cult status play no part in this.

Now that I've gotten this little issue out of the way, I can continue on. I'll just add that this particular film is one of my personal all-time favorites. The article includes spoilers, so if there's anyone who still hasn't seen the film (I kinda doubt it), skip it if you don't want the plot ruined.



Year of the cock-up: 1999

Budget: $67,000,000

Domestic gross: $37,030,102

Foreign gross: $63,823,651

Worldwide gross: $100,853,753


The year 1999 was very strong when it comes to interesting and good movies. You can say a lot of high quality material that set the trends for the next decade accumulated in this one year alone. The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix and Fight Club certainly fall into this category. I mean, how many times afterwards have we seen strictly fictional happenings captured on a shaky handycam in an attempt to provide raw authenticity? How many times have we seen shocking twists at the end of films? And I don't even need to get started about the abuse of bullet-time. And heck, I can even include American Pie into this influential group as it resurrected the dead genre of teenage comedies. Furthemore, year 1999 saw the release of films such as American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Green Mile, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, Office Space, Three Kings, Magnolia and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. And that's certainly not all. Simply put- year 1999 was a very healthy one and provided us with a very satisfying number of quality films.

Fight Club similarly to The Sixth Sense is a film that caught everyone off guard with it's ending and became an inspiration to many followers trying to duplicate it's punchline. Some examples- The Machinist, Haute Tension, Secret Window, Hide and Seek.

Fight Club however stood out from the flood of good movies by something more than just it's punchline. Probably the biggest difference was that while all the rest of the bunch were universally praised, Fight Club was released to very mixed reactions. But then again- what else could the makers expect? After all, it is a film about young men venting their frustration from empty lives through vicious fistfights and some terrorism.

Fight Club is the first novel of author Chuck Palahniuk, released in 1996, and it still remains his most successful release. I find Palahniuk to be an interesting author and I enjoy reading his works (have read 6 so far), but I also think he rarely managed to duplicate the quality he reached with Fight Club in quite the same way (IMHO only Survivor, Lullaby and Choke come close). The book was one of those Fox studios' book scouts picked up and after some initial refusals, Laura Ziskin, head of the division Fox 2000, bought the rights for $10 000.

The producers had four directorial choices in mind- Peter Jackson, Danny Boyle, Bryan Singer and David Fincher. Very interesting if you ask me as the movie would no doubt be worthwhile under helm of each of the remaining three gentlemen. I think it would achieve cult status under any of these choices which just goes to show that people behind this project really knew the potential of their material. Peter Jackson was the one contacted first, but he was busy making another movie and had to decline. Singer expressed no interest in making the film and the same can be basically said about Danny Boyle. David Fincher had previously worked with Fox on Alien 3 and wasn't particularly fond of the experience. Laura Ziskin and studio's head honcho Bill Mechanic had to personally meet with Fincher to restore the director's faith in the studio.

As far as casting goes, there were two main candidates for the titular role of Tyler Durden- Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt. Both were supported by one producer and because of the seniority of Pitt's supporter, he was chosen to play the role. The studio was very happy with this choice, because they obviously thought a marquee name like Pitt would help make this film a commercial success. Edward Norton was David Fincher's pick to play the narrator and this casting choice was supported by the studio, showing their faith in the young director.

And the final part of the main triangle, the female center-point of all things by the name of Marla Singer went to Helena Bonham Carter, which was quite an odd choice, because the actress was known mainly for her participation in numerous period costume dramas. Needless to say, she just like Pitt and Norton was absolutely spot on. Edward Norton was a perfectly relatable everyman and Helena Bonham Carter was a perfect human rubble, but she was still able to retain enough humanity for the viewer to sympathize with her character.

Who really stole the show however, was Brad Pitt. He already very successfully worked on tarnishing his pretty-boy image in Seven and Twelve Monkeys and here, he was able to continue in this path while using his image to his best possible advantage. In essence- Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden is simply genius casting. In the film's end, we learn Tyler and the narrator are the same person with Brad Pitt being just a creation of a desperately tired, frustrated and sick mind. He's everything you want to be. He oozes coolness just by walking around and doing nothing. His clothing is extravagant, but perfectly fashionable and (once again) extremely cool. He looks good, he fucks like a god, he's a legitimate bad-ass and he knows the world through and through. He's the image many of us may desire to be, but ultimately can never achieve because it is fabricated, artificial and when the main character finally realizes the truth about his friend, only then does it finally sink in. He created a free persona that ultimately led only to destruction, suffering and chaos. And who better to play an imaginary idealistic hero we all secretly want to be than real-life revered celebrity in Brad Pitt? It's also IMHO opinion his finest performance to date, because when it's all said and done, Tyler Durden is the character people are going to remember Brad Pitt the most for. Fight Club is Brad Pitt's finest hour and a definite proof he is a great actor.

The director along with screenwriter Jim Uhls developed the script for good seven months and then decided to include Andrew Kevin Walker (writer of Seven), Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in the creative process. After more than a year of work, the script was finished.

Anyone who has read Palahniuk's book must admit the adaptation and conversion of the material from page to screen was carried out as perfectly as possible. In fact, the story is probably more effective in the movie version, but that's just a subjective opinion.

Originally, the budget was supposed to be $50 million, but as is often the case with any production, it didn't suffice and escalated to a peak of $67 million. Fight Club executive producer Arnon Milchan petitioned Fincher to reduce the budget by at least $5 million, but the director refused to cut costs, so Milchan contacted studio head Bill Mechanic, saying that he would back out. To bring back Milchan's support, Mechanic sent him tapes of dailies, and after three weeks of shooting, Milchan returned his support and financed half of the production budget.

The production was long and a lot more material was shot then is usual for an average Hollywood production. The fight scenes were heavily choreographed and the participants were encouraged to go full-out in order to make the scenes look as realistic as possible.

Much of the film was shot at night and the day scenes took place in purposely shadowed locations. This was to lend the film as bleak, dark and depressive look as possible.

To compose music, an electronic producer duo Dust Brothers was chosen and they created a very atmospheric soundtrack that has since become a favorite among the film's fans. I still to this day like to listen to it from time to time.

After finishing his work on the film, Fincher screened the results to studio executives and needless to say, the old, conservative financiers weren't very pleased with the results. Because of this, the film's release was delayed a couple of times as the studio wasn't sure if it's right to release this kind of film in the middle of summer, fearing it might inspire people to go and beat themselves up in the humid summer nights.

The movie was eventually released in October 1999 to a very weak opening weekend of circa $11 million. It fared very badly at the American box office and as a result Bill Mechcanic resigned in June 2000. The earnings from the rest of the world were better, but still not enough to cover the big budget and big marketing costs.

Abysmal earnings aside, it was quite clear even at the time of the film's release, this wasn't your average run-of-the-mill Hollywood thriller. Critics and audiences alike reacted in almost strictly polarizing way. People either loved the film, or hated it. There were very few who stood in the middle. Fincher and co. were caught off guard when on the movie's press conferences, the majority of questions were concerned just with the film's violence. After all, that wasn't what the movie was about, but people generally have a hard time overlooking violence even if it's there just to support the story and not to provide self-serving, cheap thrills.

Generally, everyone admired the film's visuals and Fincher's innovative use of special-effects shots which enabled the camera to fly all over apartments, outside of buildings and even inside a human brain. Not that the story was hard to understand. It's just that Fight Club is one of those movies that can be best described as a generation statement.

I believe each generation has a movie (or movies) that somehow speak to them, to their issues and the older generations never really understand the point. Sure, they get the plot, they understand the twist, but they don't understand the essentials. That's why you can best relate to people of your own age- you need someone going through the same stuff as you are, even though it's essentially the same as it's always been. And the older you get, the more removed and distant from the young generations you become. That's why old conservative critics who maybe loved something progressive when they were young, didn't like Fight Club. It just didn't speak to them.

It spoke to me. There are only few films I consider generation statements I personally can relate to. Of course, there are many films which possess ideas I can relate to and that make me think, but there aren't many films that really formed me as a person. Fight Club is one of them.

The criticism of consumerism isn't anything new and was probably done before, but in this particular film, it was very accurately formulated.

People really do concern themselves with amazingly unimportant stuff. People really do many times try to fill their lives with material things and they do so very ingorantly and very happily most of the time. And as they get older, I think everyone will realize that just all the stuff isn't going to make you happy. In fact- it doesn't matter at all.

I live in a small country in the middle of Europe. We had socialism (sometimes wrongly labeled as communism- that never really materialized) here up until the year 1989 when a revolution took place and democracy was finally introduced into our society. We all had hopes and dreams and idealistic images of the freedoms we're going to get. America was the big representation of what we wanted to be. But as the years go by, it just goes to show that this new system isn't that much better than the older one. It's just bad in different ways.

Imagine we had our first big mall (multiplexes, many shops and all that stuff) opened here less then ten years ago. I witnessed the introduction of consumerism into our society and it's fun for a while and fun in healthy doses. But now, every single day of the week, my town's biggest mall is crammed with people. Parking lots there are full. People are already spending their days off at the mall. You know, with kids. Because what better place to go on a weekend than a shopping mall?

The only thing that's presented as success is beauty and money. If you're smart as well, that's just a bonus. The more aggressive you are at accumulating money to buy lots of unimportant shit, the more successful you are by today's standards. And I really don't believe it's a good idea to make these values even seemingly the most important.

I think Fight Club hits many nails right on the head- we do identify ourselves too much with artificial things that are just forced down our throats by crafty salesmen. And we think less and less. We have way too many TV channels and stupid TV shows. We just consume too damn much and care about the rest of the world too damn little. More and more countries adopt this lifestyle so I'm kinda curious how far can this thing really go.




I don't think there is anybody in particular to blame for this film's bad theatrical run. There are always films that gain respect only after they flop in cinemas. I remember seeing Fight Club in a theater with five other people.

The director and his crew did the best job possible. And after the film's release on home video, they were all rewarded with acclaim and cult status. Now Fight Club steadily resides in IMDB's Top 30 movies of all time. And it's going to be ten years old next year so time has been good to the film.

The film's message is as relevant now as it was years ago. Even moreso in countries like mine, who now start to accept the consumer lifestyle that USA is already filled with to the ceiling. I'm not saying it's bad to have some stuff and make your life more comfortable. But there are limits to everything. You can't go overboard with this and expect to keep a balanced life. The recent financial crisis is the best example. People making money just for the sake of making money. And who pays for the mistakes? The poor people and middle-class people, who win out in majority, but lose in aggressiveness. Sorry for the rant, but these kind of thoughts fill my head any time I see Fight Club, talk about it, or in this case write about it. I don't want to moralize and make myself the one enlightened person on the Earth. Just expressing my opinion.

Since Fight Club didn't fare well at the box office, I hereby award the film the title Mr. Floppy.




So there you go. Hopefully, my thoughts didn't bore you. I'm sure you all heard it somewhere else anyway. But it's nice to vent some furstrating thoughts every now and then. :-)

However, I'd like to suggest a pretty neat website to anybody interested in the idea of how our system of living has many flaws. Some of you may know it already. You may not buy all the stuff that's said there, but I think it's well worth the watch. The website is www.storyofstuff.com.

See ya next time

-Peter