Fight Club
Fight Club is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher, and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays the unnamed narrator, who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a "fight club" with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Pitt), and becomes embroiled in a relationship with an impoverished but beguilingly attractive woman, Marla Singer (Bonham Carter). Palahniuk's novel was optioned by Fox 2000 Pictures producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Jim Uhls to write the film adaptation. Fincher was selected because of his enthusiasm for the story. He developed the script with Uhls and sought screenwriting advice from the cast and others in the film industry. It was filmed in and around Los Angeles from July to December 1998. He and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967), with a theme of conflict between Generation X and the value system of advertising. Studio executives did not like the film, and they restructured Fincher's intended marketing campaign to try to reduce anticipated losses. Fight Club premiered at the 56th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 1999, and was released in the United States on October 15, 1999 by 20th Century Fox. The film failed to meet the studio's expectations at the box office and received polarized reactions from critics. It was ranked as one of the most controversial and talked-about films of the 1990s. However, Fight Club later found commercial success with its home video release, establishing it as a cult classic and causing media to revisit the film. In 2009, on its tenth anniversary, The New York Times dubbed it the "defining cult movie of our time."
You wake up at SeaTac. S.F.O... L.A.X... You wake up at O'Hare... Dallas-Fort Worth... B.W.I... Pacific, mountain, central... Lose an hour, gain an hour... Check-in for that flight doesn't begin for another 2 hours, sir. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor international... ...the aircraft has come to a complete stop. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?
Fight Club
Everywhere I travel, tiny life... single-serving sugar... single-serving cream... single pat of butter... a microwave cordon-bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos. Sample package mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight, they're single-serving friends. Between takeoff and landing, we have our time together, but that's all we get. Welcome!
Fight Club
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. I was a recall coordinator. My job was to apply the formula. Here's where the infant went through the windshield. 3 points. A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 miles per hour. The rear differential locks up. The teenager's braces are wrapped around the back seat ashtray. Might make a good antismoking ad. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? The father must've been huge. You see where the fat has burned to the seat, the polyester shirt? - Very modern art. - Ha ha ha! Take the number of vehicles in the field, "A," multiply it by the probable rate of failure, "B," then multiply the result by the average out-of - court settlement, "C." "A" times "B" times "C" equals "X." If "X" is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents? You wouldn't believe. Which car company do you work for? A major one.
Fight Club
It's a lot of responsibility. Wanna switch seats? No. I'm not sure I'm the man for that particular job. An exit-door procedure at 30,000 feet. Mm-hmm. The illusion of safety. Yeah. I guess so. You know why they put oxygen masks on planes? So you can breathe. Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you're taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right here. Emergency water landing- 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows. That's, um... That's an interesting theory.
Fight Club
Soap. Sorry? I make and I sell soap- the yard stick of civilization. And this is how I met... "Tyler Durden." Did you know, if you mixed equal parts of gasoline and frozen or angejuice concentrate, you can make napalm? No, I did not know that. Is that true? That's right. One can make all kinds of explosives using simple household items. Really? If one were so inclined. Tyler, you are, by far, the most interesting "single-serving" friend I've ever met. See, obviously, everything on a plane is single-serving, even- Oh, I get it. It's very clever. Thank you. How's that working out for you? What? Being clever. Great. Keep it up, then. Right up. Now a question of etiquette. As I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?
Fight Club
Was-Was it ticking? Actually, throwers don't worry about ticking, 'cause modern bombs don't tick. Sorry. "Throwers"? Baggage handlers. But when a suitcase vibrates, then the thrower's gotta call the police. My suitcase... was vibrating? 9 times out of 10, it's an electric razor, but every once in a while... it's a dildo. Of course, it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo. We have to use the indefinite article a dildo. Never your dildo. I don't own a- I had everything in that suitcase- my CK shirts, my DKNY shoes, my AX ties.
Fight Club
Home was a condo on the 15th floor of a filing cabinet for widows and young professionals. The walls were solid concrete. A foot of concrete's important when your next-door neighbor lets her hearing aid go and has to watch game shows at full volume... Or when a volcanic blast and debris that used to be your furniture and personal effects blows out of your floor-to-ceiling windows and sails flaming into the night. I suppose these things happen.
Fight Club