Fight Club

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, who listened to the tape and purchased the rights to Fight Club from Palahniuk for $10,000.[25]

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.[26] 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 the studio. To repair his relationship with the studio, he met with Ziskin and studio head Bill Mechanic.[25] In August 1997, 20th Century Fox announced that Fincher would direct the film adaptation of Fight Club.[27]

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 Pitt regarding the same role. Linson was the senior producer of the two, so the studio sought to cast Pitt instead of Crowe.[25] 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.[28]

For the role of the unnamed Narrator, the studio desired a "sexier marquee name" such as Matt Damon to increase the film's commercial prospects; it also considered Sean Penn. Fincher instead considered Norton based on his performance in the 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt.[29] Other studios were approaching Norton for leading roles in developing films like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Man on the Moon. He was cast in Runaway Jury, but the film did not reach production. 20th Century Fox offered Norton $2.5 million for Fight Club. He could not accept the offer immediately because he still owed Paramount Pictures a film; he had signed a contractual obligation with Paramount to appear in one of the studio's future films for a smaller salary. Norton later satisfied the obligation with his role in the 2003 film The Italian Job.[28]

In January 1998, 20th Century Fox announced that Pitt and Norton had been cast.[30] The actors prepared by taking lessons in boxing, taekwondo, grappling,[31] and soapmaking.[32] Pitt voluntarily visited a dentist to have pieces of his front teeth chipped off so his character would not have perfect teeth. The pieces were restored after filming concluded.[33]

Fincher's first choice for the role of Marla Singer was Janeane Garofalo. While Fincher initially stated that she turned it down because she objected to the film's sexual content, in an interview in 2020, Garofalo revealed she did accept the role but was dropped because Norton believed she was poorly suited to it.[34][35] Fincher pitched the role to Julia Louis-Dreyfus.[36] The filmmakers considered Courtney Love and Winona Ryder as early candidates.[37] Love claimed that she was cast as Marla Singer, but was fired after she rejected Pitt's pitch for a film about her late husband, Kurt Cobain.[38] The studio wanted to cast Reese Witherspoon, but Fincher felt she was too young.[28] Finally, Fincher chose to cast Bonham Carter based on her performance in the 1997 film The Wings of the Dove.[39]

Uhls started working on a draft of the adapted screenplay, which excluded a voice-over because the industry perceived the technique as "hackneyed and trite" at the time. When Fincher joined the film, he thought that the film should have a voice-over, believing that the film's humor came from the Narrator's voice.[28] He described the film without a voice-over as seemingly "sad and pathetic".[40] Fincher and Uhls revised the script for six to seven months and by 1997 had a third draft that reordered the story and left out several major elements. When Pitt was cast, he was concerned that his character, Tyler Durden, was too one-dimensional. Fincher sought the advice of writer-director Cameron Crowe, who suggested giving the character more ambiguity. Fincher also hired screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker for assistance. He invited Pitt and Norton to help revise the script, and the group drafted five revisions in the course of a year.[28]

Palahniuk praised the faithful film adaptation of his novel and applauded how the film's plot was more streamlined than the book's. Palahniuk recalled how the writers debated if film audiences would believe the plot twist from the novel. Fincher supported including the twist, arguing, "If they accept everything up to this point, they'll accept the plot twist. If they're still in the theater, they'll stay with it."[41] Palahniuk's novel also contained homoerotic overtones, which Fincher included in the film to make audiences uncomfortable and accentuate the surprise of the twists.[42] The bathroom scene where Tyler Durden bathes next to the Narrator is an example of the overtones; the line, "I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need," was meant to suggest personal responsibility rather than homosexuality.[13] Another example is the scene at the beginning of the film in which Tyler Durden puts a gun barrel down the Narrator's mouth.[43]

The Narrator finds redemption at the end of the film by rejecting Tyler Durden's dialectic, a path that diverged from the novel's ending in which the Narrator is placed in a mental institution.[11] Norton drew parallels between redemption in the film and redemption in The Graduate, indicating that the protagonists of both films find a middle ground between two divisions of self.[14] Fincher considered the novel too infatuated with Tyler Durden and changed the ending to move away from him: "I wanted people to love Tyler, but I also wanted them to be OK with his vanquishing."[11]

Studio executives Mechanic and Ziskin planned an initial budget of $23 million to finance the film,[25] but by the start of production, the budget was increased to $50 million. Half was paid by New Regency, but during filming, the projected budget escalated to $67 million. New Regency's head and Fight Club executive producer Arnon Milchan petitioned Fincher to reduce costs by at least $5 million. Fincher refused, so Milchan threatened Mechanic that New Regency would withdraw financing. Mechanic sought to restore Milchan's support by sending him tapes of dailies from Fight Club. After seeing three weeks of filming, Milchan reinstated New Regency's financial backing.[44] The final production budget was $63–65 million.[1][4]

The fight scenes were heavily choreographed, but the actors were required to "go full out" to capture realistic effects such as having the wind knocked out of them.[21] Makeup artist Julie Pearce, who had worked for Fincher on the 1997 film The Game, studied mixed martial arts and pay-per-view boxing to portray the fighters accurately. She designed an extra's ear to have cartilage missing, inspired by the boxing match in which Mike Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear.[45] Makeup artists devised two methods to create sweat on cue: spraying mineral water over a coat of Vaseline, and using the unadulterated water for "wet sweat". Meat Loaf, who plays a fight club member who has "bitch tits", wore a 90-pound (40 kg) fat harness that gave him large breasts.[31] He also wore eight-inch (20 cm) lifts in his scenes with Norton to be taller than him.[13]

Filming lasted 138 days from July to December 1998,[46] during which Fincher shot more than 1,500 rolls of film, three times the average for a Hollywood film.[31] The locations were in and around Los Angeles and on sets built at the studio in Century City.[46] Production designer Alex McDowell constructed more than 70 sets.[31] The exterior of Tyler Durden's house was built in Wilmington, California,[47] while the interior was built on a sound stage at the studio's location. The interior was given a decayed look to illustrate the deconstructed world of the characters.[46] Marla Singer's apartment was based on photographs of apartments in downtown LA.[16] Overall, production included 300 scenes, 200 locations, and complex special effects. Fincher compared Fight Club to his subsequent, less complex film Panic Room: "I felt like I was spending all my time watching trucks being loaded and unloaded so I could shoot three lines of dialogue. There was far too much transportation going on."[48]

Fincher used the Super 35 format to film Fight Club since it gave him maximum flexibility to compose shots. He hired Jeff Cronenweth as cinematographer; Cronenweth's father Jordan Cronenweth had been cinematographer for Fincher's 1992 film Alien 3, but left midway through production due to Parkinson's disease. Fincher explored visual styles in his previous films Seven and The Game, and he and Cronenweth drew elements from these styles for Fight Club.[46]

Fincher and Cronenweth applied a lurid style, choosing to make people "sort of shiny".[16] The appearance of the Narrator's scenes without Tyler were bland and realistic. The scenes with Tyler were described by Fincher as "more hyper-real in a torn-down, deconstructed sense—a visual metaphor of what [the Narrator is] heading into". The filmmakers used heavily desaturated colors in the costuming, makeup, and art direction.[46] Bonham Carter wore opalescent makeup to portray her romantic nihilistic character with a "smack-fiend patina". Fincher and Cronenweth drew influences from the 1973 film American Graffiti, which applied a mundane look to nighttime exteriors while simultaneously including a variety of colors.[16]

The crew took advantage of both natural and practical light. Fincher sought various approaches to the lighting setups; for example, he chose several urban locations for the city lights' effects on the shots' backgrounds. The crew also embraced fluorescent lighting at other practical locations to maintain an element of reality and to light the prostheses depicting the characters' injuries.[46] On the other hand, Fincher also ensured that scenes were not so strongly lit so the characters' eyes were less visible, citing cinematographer Gordon Willis' technique as the influence.[13]

Fight Club was filmed mostly at night, and Fincher filmed the daytime shots in shadowed locations. The crew equipped the bar's basement with inexpensive work lamps to create a background glow. Fincher avoided stylish camerawork when filming early fight scenes in the basement and instead placed the camera in a fixed position. In later fight scenes, Fincher moved the camera from the viewpoint of a distant observer to that of the fighter.[46]

The scenes with Tyler were staged to conceal that the character was a mental projection of the unnamed Narrator. Tyler was not filmed in two shots with a group of people, nor was he shown in any over-the-shoulder shots in scenes where Tyler gives the Narrator specific ideas to manipulate him. In scenes before the Narrator meets Tyler, the filmmakers inserted Tyler's presence in single frames for subliminal effect.[16] Tyler appears in the background and out of focus, like a "little devil on the shoulder".[13] Fincher explained the subliminal frames: "Our hero is creating Tyler Durden in his own mind, so at this point he exists only on the periphery of the Narrator's consciousness."[49]

While Cronenweth generally rated and exposed the Kodak film stock normally on Fight Club, several other techniques were applied to change its appearance. Flashing was implemented on much of the exterior night photography, the contrast was stretched to be purposely ugly, the print was adjusted to be underexposed, Technicolor's ENR silver retention was used on a select number of prints to increase the density of the blacks, and high-contrast print stocks were chosen to create a "stepped-on" look on the print with a dirty patina.[16]

Fincher hired visual effects supervisor Kevin Tod Haug, who worked for him on The Game, to create visual effects for Fight Club. Haug assigned the visual effects artists and experts to different facilities that each addressed different types of visual effects: CG modeling, animation, compositing, and scanning. Haug explained, "We selected the best people for each aspect of the effects work, then coordinated their efforts. In this way, we never had to play to a facility's weakness." Fincher visualized the Narrator's perspective through a "mind's eye" view and structured a myopic framework for the film audiences. Fincher also used previsualized footage of challenging main-unit and visual effects shots as a problem-solving tool to avoid making mistakes during the actual filming.[49]

The opening scene in Fight Club that represents a brain's neural network in which the thought processes are initiated by the Narrator's fear impulse. The network was mapped using an L-system and drawn out by a medical illustrator.

The film's title sequence is a 90-second visual effects composition that depicts the inside of the Narrator's brain at a microscopic level; the camera pulls back to the outside, starting at his fear center and following the thought processes initiated by his fear impulse.[50] The sequence, designed in part by Fincher, was budgeted separately from the rest of the film at first, but the sequence was awarded by the studio in January 1999.[49] Fincher hired Digital Domain and its visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack, who won an Academy Award for Visual Effects for the 1998 film What Dreams May Come, for the sequence. The company mapped the computer-generated brain using an L-system,[51] and the design was detailed using renderings by medical illustrator Katherine Jones. The pullback sequence from within the brain to the outside of the skull included neurons, action potentials, and a hair follicle. Haug explained the artistic license that Fincher took with the shot, "While he wanted to keep the brain passage looking like electron microscope photography, that look had to be coupled with the feel of a night dive—wet, scary, and with a low depth of field." The shallow depth of field was accomplished with the ray tracing process.[49]

Other visual effects include an early scene in which the camera flashes past city streets to survey Project Mayhem's destructive equipment lying in underground parking lots; the sequence was a three-dimensional composition of nearly 100 photographs of Los Angeles and Century City by photographer Michael Douglas Middleton. The final scene of the demolition of the credit card office buildings was designed by Richard Baily of Image Savant; Baily worked on the scene for over fourteen months.[49]

Midway through the film, Tyler Durden points out the cue mark—nicknamed "cigarette burn" in the film—to the audience. The scene represents a turning point that foreshadows the coming rupture and inversion of the "fairly subjective reality" that existed earlier in the film. Fincher explained: "Suddenly it's as though the projectionist missed the changeover, the viewers have to start looking at the movie in a whole new way."[49]

Fincher was concerned that bands experienced in writing film scores would be unable to tie the themes together, so he sought a band which had never recorded for film. He pursued Radiohead,[13] but the singer, Thom Yorke, declined as he was recovering from the stress of promoting their 1997 album OK Computer.[52] Fincher instead commissioned the breakbeat producing duo Dust Brothers, who created a post-modern score encompassing drum loops, electronic scratches, and computerized samples. Dust Brothers performer Michael Simpson explained the setup: "Fincher wanted to break new ground with everything about the movie, and a nontraditional score helped achieve that."[53] The climax and end credits feature the song "Where Is My Mind?" by Pixies.[54]

Filming concluded in December 1998, and Fincher edited the footage in early 1999 to prepare Fight Club for a screening with senior executives. They did not receive the film positively and were concerned that there would not be an audience for the film.[55] Executive producer Art Linson, who supported the film, recalled the response: "So many incidences of Fight Club were alarming, no group of executives could narrow them down."[56] Nevertheless, Fight Club was originally slated to be released in July 1999[57] but was later changed to August 6, 1999. The studio further delayed the film's release, this time to autumn, citing a crowded summer schedule and a hurried post-production process.[58] Outsiders attributed the delays to the Columbine High School massacre earlier in the year.[59]

Marketing executives at Fox Searchlight Pictures faced difficulties in marketing Fight Club and at one point considered marketing it as an art film. They considered that the film was primarily geared toward male audiences because of its violence and believed that not even Pitt would attract female filmgoers. Research testing showed that the film appealed to teenagers. Fincher refused to let the posters and trailers focus on Pitt and encouraged the studio to hire the advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy to devise a marketing plan. The firm proposed a bar of pink soap with the title "Fight Club" embossed on it as the film's main marketing image; the proposal was considered "a bad joke" by Fox executives. Fincher also released two early trailers in the form of fake public service announcements presented by Pitt and Norton; the studio did not think the trailers marketed the film appropriately. Instead, the studio financed a $20 million large-scale campaign to provide a press junket, posters, billboards, and trailers for TV that highlighted the film's fight scenes. The studio advertised Fight Club on cable during World Wrestling Federation broadcasts, which Fincher protested, believing that the placement created the wrong context for the film.[55] Linson believed that the "ill-conceived one-dimensional" marketing by marketing executive Robert Harper largely contributed to Fight Club's lukewarm box office performance in the United States.[60]

The studio held Fight Club's world premiere at the 56th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 1999.[61][62] For the American theatrical release, the studio hired the National Research Group to test screen the film; the group predicted the film would gross between US$13 million and US$15 million in its opening weekend.[63] Fight Club opened commercially in the United States and Canada on October 15, 1999 and earned US$11 million in 1,963 theaters over the opening weekend.[1] The film ranked first at the weekend box office, beating Double Jeopardy and The Story of Us, a fellow weekend opener.[64] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[65] The gender mix of audiences for Fight Club, argued to be "the ultimate anti-date flick", was 61% male and 39% female; 58% of audiences were below the age of 21. Despite the film's top placement, its opening gross fell short of the studio's expectations.[66] Over the second weekend, Fight Club dropped 42.6% in revenue, earning US$6.3 million.[67] In its original theatrical run, the film grossed US$37 million in the United States and Canada, and US$63.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of US$100.9 million. (With subsequent re-releases, the film's worldwide gross increased to $101.2 million.)[1] The underwhelming North American performance of Fight Club soured the relationship between 20th Century Fox's studio head Bill Mechanic and media executive Rupert Murdoch, which contributed to Mechanic's resignation in June 2000.[68]

The British Board of Film Classification reviewed Fight Club for its November 12, 1999 release in the United Kingdom and removed two scenes involving "an indulgence in the excitement of beating a (defenseless) man's face into a pulp". The board assigned the film an 18 certificate, limiting the release to adult-only audiences in the UK. The BBFC did not censor any further, considering and dismissing claims that Fight Club contained "dangerously instructive information" and could "encourage anti-social (behavior)". The board decided, "The film as a whole is—quite clearly—critical and sharply parodic of the amateur fascism which in part it portrays. Its central theme of male machismo (and the anti-social behaviour that flows from it) is emphatically rejected by the central character in the concluding reels."[69] The scenes were restored in a two-disc DVD edition released in the UK in March 2007.[70]

Fincher supervised the composition of the DVD packaging and was one of the first directors to participate in a film's transition to home media. The film was released on DVD on June 6, 2000, in both one and two-disc editions.[71] The movie disc included four commentary tracks,[72] while the bonus disc contained behind-the-scenes clips, deleted scenes, trailers, theater safety PSAs, the promotional music video "This is Your Life", Internet spots, still galleries, cast biographies, storyboards, and publicity materials.[73] Fincher worked on the DVD as a way to finish his vision for the film. Julie Markell, 20th Century Fox's senior vice president of creative development, said the DVD packaging complemented Fincher's vision: "The film is meant to make you question. The package, by extension, tries to reflect an experience that you must experience for yourself. The more you look at it, the more you'll get out of it." The studio developed the packaging for two months.[74] The two-disc special edition DVD was packaged to look covered in brown cardboard wrapper. The title "Fight Club" was labeled diagonally across the front, and packaging appeared tied with twine. Markell said, "We wanted the package to be simple on the outside, so that there would be a dichotomy between the simplicity of brown paper wrapping and the intensity and chaos of what's inside."[74] Deborah Mitchell, 20th Century Fox's vice president of marketing, described the design: "From a retail standpoint, [the DVD case] has incredible shelf-presence."[75] It was the first DVD release to feature the THX Optimode.[76]

Fight Club won the 2000 Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best DVD, Best DVD Commentary, and Best DVD Special Features.[77] Entertainment Weekly ranked the film's two-disc edition in first place on its 2001 list of "The 50 Essential DVDs", giving top ratings to the DVD's content and technical picture-and-audio quality.[78] When the two-disc edition went out of print, the studio re-released it in 2004 because of fans' requests.[79] The film sold more than 6 million copies on DVD and video within the first ten years,[80] making it one of the largest-selling home media items in the studio's history,[60] in addition to grossing over $55 million in video and DVD rentals.[81] With a weak box office performance in the United States and Canada, a better performance in other territories, and the highly successful DVD release, Fight Club generated a US$10 million profit for the studio.[60]

The Laserdisc edition was only released in Japan on May 26, 2000[82] and features a different cover art, as well as one of the very few Dolby Digital Surround EX soundtracks released on LD. The VHS edition was released on October 31, 2000, as a part of 20th Century Fox's "Premiere Series" line. It includes a featurette after the film, "Behind the Brawl".[83]

Fight Club was released in the Blu-ray Disc format in the United States on November 17, 2009.[84] Five graffiti artists were commissioned to create 30 pieces of art for the packaging, encompassing urban aesthetics found on the East Coast and West Coast of the United States as well as influences from European street art.[85] The Blu-ray edition opens with a menu screen for the romantic comedy Never Been Kissed starring Drew Barrymore before leading into the Fight Club menu screen. Fincher got permission from Barrymore to include the fake menu screen.[86]

An online release in China from Tencent censored the bomb blasts at the end and replaced the ending with a message that Project Mayhem was thwarted,[87] with Tyler Durden being arrested by law enforcement and placed in an insane asylum until 2012, adapting the ending of the original Fight Club novel.[88] Weeks later, Tencent released a version of the film restoring 11 of the 12 minutes that had previously been cut.[89][90] The novel's author Chuck Palahniuk believed the censored version partially restored the book's ending.[91][92]