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Fight Club
Theatrical poster
Directed by	David Fincher
Produced by	Arnon Milchan (executive) Art Linson Ross Grayson Bell Cean Chaffin
Written by	Jim Uhls Novel: Chuck Palahniuk
Narrated by	Edward Norton
Starring	Edward Norton Brad Pitt Helena Bonham Carter
Music by	Dust Brothers
Cinematography	Jeff Cronenweth
Editing by	James Haygood
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	October 15, 1999
Running time	139 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$63 million
Gross revenue	$100,853,753 (worldwide)
Official website
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Fight Club is a 1999 American feature film adaptation of the 1996 novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, adapted by Jim Uhls and directed by David Fincher. The novel was optioned by producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Uhls to write the script for the film. Several directors were sought to film Fight Club, and David Fincher was hired to direct based on his interest in the project despite previous difficulties with the studio 20th Century Fox. Major actors and actresses were considered by the studio to help promote the film, and actors Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter were ultimately cast into the lead roles. Fincher worked with Uhls to develop the script, seeking advice from others in the film industry and his own cast members.

Production of the film was considered an arduous task, involving 300 scenes, 200 locations, and complex special effects. Fincher initially filmed an amount of footage that was three times the average in the industry. For fight scenes, the cast choreographed their moves to capture the realistic effect of the combat. The director also introduced a visual style to Fight Club that would match its tone. He collaborated with cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth to take advantage of lighting techniques to capture the mood for the film. Additionally, Fincher implemented several scenes that used extensive special effects, including an introductory scene in which the viewer is drawn out of the neural network of the protagonist's brain. The director also utilized effects to further support the film's visual style and to set certain thematic cues.

Fincher described Fight Club as a black comedy that applies heavy satire; he and the cast also compared the film to The Graduate (1967) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Thematically, the film was intended to represent the conflict between a generation of young people and the value system of advertising. The film's use of violence in the fight clubs was intended to serve as a metaphor for feeling based on the generation's conflict. The nameless protagonist, portrayed by Edward Norton, is an everyman and an unreliable narrator who becomes involved in a fight club with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and is conflicted in a relationship triangle with Durden and Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter). The director carried homoerotic overtones over from Palahniuk's novel to implement in the film, believing that the overtones would make audiences uncomfortable and not anticipate the twist ending.

Studio executives were not receptive to the film, and they altered Fincher's intended marketing campaign to try to recoup perceived losses. Fight Club failed to meet expectations at the box office, and the film received polarized reactions from film critics. The film was cited as one of the most controversial and talked-about films of 1999. It was perceived as crossing a milestone for visual style in cinema and introducing a new mood in American political life. The film later found commercial success with its DVD release, which established Fight Club as a cult film. The film has also permeated American society, with people inspired by the film to set up their own fight clubs.

The narrator (Edward Norton) is a nameless automobile company employee who travels to accident sites to perform product recall cost analyses. His doctor refuses to write a prescription for his insomnia, instead recommending that he visit a support group for testicular cancer victims in order to appreciate real suffering. By attending the group, the narrator is able to sleep soundly and subsequently fakes more illnesses so he can attend other support groups. The narrator's routine is disrupted when he begins to notice another impostor, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), at the groups he goes to and his insomnia returns.

During a flight for a business trip, the narrator meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a flamboyant soap salesman. The narrator arrives home to find his apartment has been destroyed by an explosion. He calls Tyler and meets him at a bar, where Tyler agrees to let the narrator stay at his home on the condition that the narrator hits him. The narrator complies and the two end up enjoying a fist fight outside the bar. The narrator moves in with Tyler and the two return to the bar, where they have another fight in the car park. After attracting a crowd, they establish a 'fight club' in the bar's basement. Soon, other fight clubs are established around the country.

When Marla overdoses on Xanax, she is rescued by Tyler and the two embark upon a sexual relationship. Tyler tells the narrator never to discuss him with anyone. Under Tyler's leadership, the fight club becomes "Project Mayhem," which commits increasingly-destructive acts of anti-capitalist 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. After an argument, Tyler disappears from the narrator's life and when a member of Project Mayhem dies on a mission, the narrator attempts to shut down the project. Tracing Tyler's steps, he travels around the country to find that fight clubs have been started in every city, where one of the participants identifies him as Tyler Durden. A phone call to Marla confirms his identity and he realizes that Tyler is an alter ego of his own split personality. Tyler appears before him and explains that he controls the narrator's body whenever he is asleep.

The narrator faints and awakes to find Tyler has made several phone calls during his blackout and traces his plans to the downtown headquarters of several major credit card companies, which Tyler intends to destroy in order to cripple the financial networks. Failing to find help with the police, many of whom are members of Project Mayhem, the narrator attempts to disarm the explosives in the basement of one of the buildings. He is confronted by Tyler, knocked unconscious, and taken to the upper floor of another building to witness the impending destruction. The narrator, held by Tyler at gunpoint, realizes that in sharing the same body with Tyler, he is the one who is actually holding the gun. He fires it into his mouth, shooting through the cheek without killing himself. The illusion of Tyler collapses with an exit wound to the back of his head. Shortly after, members of Project Mayhem bring a kidnapped Marla to the narrator and leave them alone. The bombs detonate and, holding hands, the two witness the destruction of the city block through the windows.

In 1996, a 20th Century Fox book scout sent a galley proof of Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club to creative executive Kevin McCormick. Despite a studio reader discouraging a film adaptation of the material, McCormick passed the proof on to producers Lawrence Bender and Art Linson, who in turn also rejected it. Producers Josh Donen and Ross Bell then expressed interest in the project and arranged unpaid screen readings with actors, initially lasting six hours, to determine the length of a script. After cutting out sections to reduce the running time and recording the dialogue, Bell sent the book on tape to Laura Ziskin, head of the division Fox 2000, who after listening to the tape purchased the rights to Fight Club for $10,000.^[1]

To adapt the story into a screenplay, Ziskin initially considered hiring Buck Henry; Ziskin thought that Fight Club was similar to The Graduate, which had been adapted by Henry. However, a new screenwriter, Jim Uhls, began lobbying Donen and Bell to be hired to adapt the screenplay and was subsequently chosen by the producers over Henry. For directing, Bell had four options in mind: Peter Jackson, Bryan Singer, Danny Boyle, and David Fincher. Bell considered Jackson the best choice and contacted the director, but Jackson was too busy filming The Frighteners (1996) in New Zealand. Singer received the book, but did not read it, while Boyle met with Bell and read the book, but ultimately pursued another project. Fincher, who had previously read the book and tried to buy the rights himself, talked with Ziskin about directing the film, but was hesitant to work with 20th Century Fox again after his bad experiences with the studio during Alien³ (1992). A meeting with Ziskin and studio head Bill Mechanic restored his relationship with the studio,^[1] and in August 1997, Twentieth Century Fox announced that Fincher would helm the film adaptation of the novel.^[2] Mechanic and Ziskin initially planned to finance the film with a $23 million budget.^[1]

Producer Ross Bell met with actor Russell Crowe to discuss portraying Tyler Durden, while at the same time producer Art Linson, who had lately joined the project, was negotiating with Brad Pitt for the same role. Due to Linson's seniority, Pitt was cast over Crowe.^[1] Pitt, who was seeking a new project after the failure of his previous film, Meet Joe Black (1998), was hired for $17.5 million, the studio believing that Fight Club would be more commercially successful with a major star.^[3] Likewise for the role of the nameless narrator, the studio desired a "sexier marquee name" like Matt Damon to increase the film's visibility (Sean Penn was also considered), but Fincher sought to cast Edward Norton in that role, based on the actor's performance in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996).^[4] Norton had also been approached by other studios for leading roles in films like The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Man on the Moon (1999), and he temporarily pursued Runaway Jury (2003) before that project fell apart. To lure him away from the other projects, Fox offered Norton a salary of $2.5 million, but Norton could not immediately accept, as he still owed Paramount Pictures a film. Norton therefore signed a new contract with Paramount for a lesser salary, eventually and unwillingly being cast in The Italian Job (2003).^[3] In January 1998, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton officially joined the project to portray Tyler Durden and the nameless narrator, respectively.^[5]

Actresses Courtney Love and Winona Ryder were considered to portray Marla Singer,^[6] and the studio would have cast Reese Witherspoon were it not for Fincher's objections that the actress was too young.^[3] Ultimately, Helena Bonham Carter was cast in the role, based on her performance in The Wings of the Dove (1997).^[7]

To prepare for their roles, Norton and Pitt took lessons in boxing, taekwondo, and grappling, ^[8] in addition to soapmaking classes from boutique company owner Auntie Godmother.^[9] For the cosmetics of his role, Pitt voluntarily visited a dentist to have pieces of his front teeth chipped off, which were restored after filming concluded.^[10]

Screenwriter Jim Uhls began working on the adaptation from an earlier draft which lacked a voice-over due to the industry's perspective at the time that the technique was "hackneyed and trite". When Fincher joined the project, he disagreed with the approach, believing that the film's humor came from the narrator's voice,^[3] and described the film without voice-over as seemingly "sad and pathetic".^[11] The director and Uhls developed the script for six to seven months, creating a third draft by 1997 that reordered the story and left out several major elements. When Pitt came on board, the actor expressed concern that Tyler Durden was too one-dimensional, so Fincher sought the advice of writer-director Cameron Crowe, who suggested giving the character more ambiguity. Fincher also hired screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker and invited Pitt and Norton to collaborate on rewriting the script, which was completed after a year of work and five drafts.^[3] The narrator was written to be nameless in the film, although he is identified in the script as Jack. The narrator's aliases in the support groups that he attends were based on characters from Planet of the Apes and Robert De Niro roles of the '70s.^[12]

The bathtub scene served as part of the director's intended homoerotic presentation to make audiences uncomfortable and unprepared for the film's coming events.

Author Chuck Palahniuk praised the faithful film adaptation of his novel Fight Club and applauded the fact that the plot of the film was more streamlined than that of the book. Palahniuk also noted the contention over the believability for film audiences of the novel's plot twist, the inclusion of which Director David Fincher supported by saying, "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." Palahniuk was, however, annoyed by the film's change of a single ingredient in its explanation on making napalm, which rendered the recipe useless, since the author had researched the components extensively.^[13] Palahniuk's novel also contained homoerotic overtones, which the director purposely included in the film in order to make audiences uncomfortable and thereby accentuate the surprise of the film's twists and turns.^[14] The scene in which Tyler Durden bathes next to the narrator is an example of such overtones, although Durden's insight in the scene, "I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need," was meant to suggest personal responsibility rather than homosexuality.^[15] Another example of the overtones was the scene at the beginning of the film in which Tyler Durden puts a gun barrel down the narrator's mouth.^[16]

At the end of the film, the narrator finds redemption in rejecting Tyler Durden's dialectic, which is a divergence from the novel's end, in which the narrator is placed in a mental institution.^[17] Norton notes the film's redemptive parallel to The Graduate, as the protagonists of both films find a middle ground between two divisions of self.^[18] The director also considered the novel too infatuated with Tyler Durden and altered the ending to pull away from him, saying, "I wanted people to love Tyler, but I also wanted them to be OK with his vanquishing."^[17]

The interior of Tyler Durden's Paper Street home was designed to possess a sense of decay to reflect the deconstructed world of the characters.

When production first began, the initial $50 million budget, of which half was paid by New Regency, escalated to a peak of $67 million. New Regency's head and 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.^[19]

Filming lasted 138 days,^[20] during which Fincher shot over 1,500 rolls of film, three times the average for a Hollywood film.^[8] Filming locations were in and around Los Angeles and on sets built at the studio's location in Century City.^[20] Production designer Alex McDowell constructed over 70 sets.^[8] The exterior of Tyler Durden's home on Paper Street was built in San Pedro, California, while the interiors, given a decayed look to reflect the deconstructed world of the characters, were built on a sound stage at the studio's location.^[20] Marla's apartment was based on photographs of the Rosalind Apartments in downtown L.A.^[11]

Fighting in the film was heavily choreographed, and fighters were required to "go full out" during fight scenes to capture realistic effects such as having the wind knocked out of oneself.^[21] To enhance the scenes, makeup artist Julie Pearce, who collaborated with the director on The Game, studied mixed martial arts and pay-per-view boxing for her work on the fighters. She also designed an extra to have a chunk missing from his ear, for which she cited Mike Tyson's bite as inspiration.^[22] To create sweat on cue, makeup artists devised two methods: spraying water over a coat of Vaseline, and using straight water for "wet sweat". Meat Loaf, who plays a member of the fight club that has "bitch tits", wore a 90-pound fat harness that gave him large breasts for the role.^[8] He also wore eight-inch lifts in his scenes with Norton, being shorter than the lead actor.^[15]

Overall production included 300 scenes, 200 locations, and complex special effects. Fincher compared Fight Club to his succeeding and less complex project Panic Room (2001), "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."^[23]

Fight Club was shot in the Super 35 format to give the director maximum flexibility in composing shots. To direct the cinematography for the film, director David Fincher hired Jeff Cronenweth, the son of the late cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth with whom Fincher had collaborated for Alien³ (1992). Fincher and Cronenweth drew from elements of the visual styles that Fincher had begun exploring in Se7en and The Game. For the narrator's scenes without Tyler Durden, the look was purposely bland and realistic, while for scenes with Tyler, Fincher chose a look that was "more hyper-real in a torn-down, deconstructed sense - a visual metaphor of what [the narrator's] heading into". Heavily desaturated colors were used in the costuming, makeup, and art direction, and the crew took advantage of as much natural and practical light at filming locations as possible. The director also took various approaches to take advantage of lighting situations in the film's scenes, and several practical locations were chosen for the city lights' effects on the shots' backgrounds. Fluorescent lighting at practical locations was also embraced to maintain an element of reality and to light the prosthetics of the characters' injuries appropriately.^[20] On the other hand, Fincher also ensured that scenes were darkened enough to reduce the visibility of the characters' eyes, citing cinematographer Gordon Willis's technique as the influence.^[15]

The majority of Fight Club was filmed at night, with daytime shots taking place in purposely shadowed locations. For the first scenes of the actual indoor fight club in Lou's basement, the area was lit by inexpensive work lamps to create a background glow. The director also chose to film fight scenes in the basement from a more objective view, purposely avoiding stylish camerawork and instead placing the camera in a fixed position. As the fight scenes in the film progressed, the camera moved from the point of view of a distant observer to that of the fighter.^[20]

Scenes of Tyler Durden were staged to conceal the film's twist; the character was not filmed in two shots with a group of people, nor was he included in any over the shoulder shots. Durden is also present in single frames of the narrator's scenes before the narrator actually meets Durden,^[11] appearing in the background and out of focus, like a "little devil on the shoulder".^[15] Regarding these subliminal frames, Fincher explained, "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."^[24]

The opening scene in Fight Club that represents a 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.

As visual effects supervisor, Tod Haug, who had collaborated with director David Fincher on The Game, divided the VFX artists and experts into different facilities, each responsible for addressing a separate aspect of the film's visual effects: CG modeling, animation, compositing, and scanning. According to Haug, "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 chose to illustrate the nameless narrator's perspective with a "mind's eye" view and to create a myopic framework for the film's audience. Fincher previewed Pixel Liberaton Front's previsualized footage of challenging main-unit shots and visual effects shots. The director considered the preview a problem-solving technique to avoid mistakes from being made during actual filming.^[24]

Fincher chose to design a ninety-second pullback scene from the fear center of the narrator's brain as the title sequence to represent the thought processes initiated by the narrator's fear impulse.^[11] The sequence was designed on a separate budget from the film, but the studio later paid for the sequence based on Fincher's expert direction of the film.^[15] For the visual effects of the sequence, Fincher hired Digital Domain and its visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack, who had won an Academy Award for Visual Effects for What Dreams May Come (1998). The computer-generated brain was mapped using an L-system,^[25] and the design was detailed using renderings by medical illustrator Kathryn Jones. The passage through the brain included the presence of action potentials and a hair follicle as the shot drew out from within the skull. Haug explained Fincher's artistic licensing 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 depth of field was accomplished with the process of ray tracing.^[24]

One of the beginning scenes in which the camera surveys the destructive equipment of Project Mayhem in the streets and building parking lots was a 3D composition of nearly a hundred photographs of Los Angeles and Century City by photographer Michael Douglas Middleton. The final scene of the buildings being demolished was designed by Richard Baily of Image Savant, who worked on the scene for over fourteen months.^[24]

The sequence in which Tyler Durden (Pitt) points out a cue mark is a thematic element implemented by the director to reflect the point after which reality would become subverted.

The director pursued a lurid style to influence the color palette of the film, choosing to make people "sort of shiny", such as Helena Bonham Carter wearing opalescent makeup for her character to create a "smack-fiend patina" that would portray her romantic nihilistic character best. The director and his cinematographer, Jeff Cronenweth, were also influenced by American Graffiti (1973), which applied a mundane look to nighttime exteriors while simultaneously including a variety of colors. When Fight Club was processed, several techniques were applied to alter the footage. The contrast was stretched to be purposely ugly, the print was adjusted to be underexposed, resilvering (lower-scale enhancement) was used to increase density, and high-contrast print socks were stepped all over the print to create a dirty patina.^[11]

Fincher included the cue mark sequence in which Durden points out the "cigarette burn" flash to serve as a thematic element. The director described the film's initial progression as a "fairly subjective reality" for audiences, with the sequence foreshadowing the coming break in which the reality is subverted. "Suddenly it's as though the projectionist missed the changeover, the viewers have to start looking at the movie in a whole new way," explained Fincher.^[24]

For the musical score, the director was concerned that bands experienced in performing film music would be unable to tie the movie's themes together, so for this reason, he sought a band which had never recorded for film before. Radiohead was pursued as a possible choice,^[15] but the alternative rock producer duo Dust Brothers was ultimately chosen to score the film. The duo created a post-modern score that included drum loops, electronic scratches, and computerized samples because, as Dust Brothers performer Michael Simpson explains, "Fincher wanted to break new ground with everything about the movie, and a nontraditional score helped achieve that."^[26]

Fight Club is a black comedy that applies heavy satire.^[15] The director chose to temper the film with humor to avoid a sinister nature, keeping it as "funny and seditious".^[17] Norton described the film to be a "dark, comic, sort of surrealist look" at young people's failures to interact with the value system of which they are expected to be a part.^[28] Fight Club parallels Rebel Without a Cause by probing into the frustrations of the people that live in the system.^[27] The people had been reduced to "a generation of spectators", having undergone societal emasculation.^[29] The culture of advertising had defined society's "external signifiers of happiness", causing an unnecessary chase for material objects where the pursuit was supposed to be for spiritual happiness.^[30] Pitt explained, "I think there's a self defense mechanism that keeps my generation from having any real honest connection or commitment with our true feelings. We're rooting for ball teams, but we're not getting in there to play. We're so concerned with failure and success -- like these two things are all that's going to sum you up at the end."^[21]

The violence of the fight clubs serves not to promote or glorify the notion, but as a metaphor for feeling.^[31] The fights are physical representations of resisting the impulse to be cocooned in society.^[29] Norton explained that the fighting between the men stripped away the "fear of pain" and "the reliance on material signifiers of their self-worth", leaving them to have really experienced something valuable.^[27] When the fights transform into revolutionary violence, this dialectic by Tyler Durden only serves as one-half of the film's dialectic, with the narrator pulling back from Durden.^[18] Fight Club purposely shapes an ambiguous message that is left for the film audiences to interpret.^[32] Described Fincher: "I love this idea that you can have fascism without offering any direction or solution. Isn't the point of fascism to say, 'This is the way we should be going'? But this movie couldn't be further from offering any kind of solution."^[17]

In Fight Club, the nameless narrator is an everyman who lacks a world of possibilities and initially cannot find a way to change his life. The narrator finds himself unable to match society's requirements for happiness and embarks on a path to enlightenment, which involves metaphorically killing his parents, his God, and his teacher. At the beginning of the film, the narrator has killed off his parents but still finds himself trapped in his false world. The narrator meets Tyler Durden, with whom he kills off his metaphorical God by going against the norms of society. Ultimately, the narrator has to face killing his teacher, Tyler Durden, to complete the process of maturity.^[11]

Screenwriter Jim Uhls described the film as a "romantic comedy", explaining, "It has to do with the characters' attitudes toward a healthy relationship, which is a lot of behavior which seems unhealthy and harsh to each other, but in fact does work for them -- because both characters are out on the edge psychologically."^[33] In the film, the narrator seeks a form of intimacy, but he avoids this at first with Marla Singer, seeing too much of himself in her.^[15] Though Marla presents a seductive and negativist prospect for the narrator, he instead embraces the newness that Tyler Durden has to offer him. The narrator finds himself comfortable having the personal connection to Tyler Durden, but he becomes jealous when Marla becomes sexually involved with Tyler. When the narrator argues with Tyler about their friendship, Tyler explains that the relationship between the two men is secondary to the active pursuit of the philosophy they had been exploring.^[18] Tyler also suggests doing something about Marla, implying that she is a risk to be removed. When Tyler says this, the narrator realizes that his desires should have been focused on Marla and begins to part from Tyler's path.^[15]

The unreliable narrator is not immediately aware that Tyler Durden is also himself.^[11] The narrator also unreliably advocates the fight clubs as a way to feel powerful.^[28] Instead, the narrator's physical condition worsens while Tyler Durden improves in appearance. Tyler Durden, who initially embarks on a journey with the narrator in desiring "real experiences" like actual fights,^[27] becomes a Nietzschean model in possessing the nihilistic attitude of rejecting and destroying institutions and value systems.^[32] Tyler, who represents the Id with his impulsive nature,^[15] conveys an attitude that is seductive and liberating to the narrator and the followers. Eventually, Tyler's initiatives approach the point of being dehumanizing,^[32] with Tyler using a megaphone to order around members of Project Mayhem in a similar fashion to the approach of Chinese re-education camps.^[15] The narrator pulls back from Tyler and retreats from what Tyler is going toward. Instead, the narrator ultimately arrives at a middle ground between his conflicting selves.^[18]

A pink bar of soap was conceived by the advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy as the main marketing image, but studio executives considered the concept "a bad joke".

In early 1999, after filming concluded the previous December, David Fincher edited the footage to prepare Fight Club for a preliminary screening with senior executives. They did not receive the film positively, expressing concern that there would not be an audience that would watch it. Two months later, Fight Club was screened to second-tier executives, who also negatively responded to the film.^[35] Fight Club was originally slated to be released in July 1999,^[36] later changed to August 6, 1999. The studio delayed the film's release again to autumn due to a crowded summer schedule and a hurried post-production process,^[37] though the delay had been attributed by outsiders to the Columbine High School massacre earlier in the year.^[38]

Marketing executives at Twentieth Century Fox observed difficulties in marketing Fight Club. They considered the film primarily geared toward male audiences, and that the presence of Brad Pitt in the film would still not attract female filmgoers based on the film's violence. Research testing showed that the film appealed to teenagers. The marketing executives also considered marketing Fight Club as an art film. Fincher refused to let the posters and trailers focus on Brad Pitt, encouraging the studio to hire Wieden+Kennedy, an advertising firm, to devise a marketing plan. The firm came up with a bar of pink soap as the film's main marketing image, which was considered "a bad joke" by Fox executives. Fincher also released two early trailers that were faux public service announcements presented by Pitt and Norton, which the studio did not find appropriate to open the movie. 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. Fight Club was also advertised on cable during World Wrestling Federation broadcasts, which Fincher protested, believing that the placement created the wrong kind of context for the film.^[35]

The film held its world premiere at the 56th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 1999.^[39] The studio had hired the National Research Group to test screen the film, and the group had indicated that the film would gross between $13 million and $15 million for its opening weekend.^[40] Fight Club commercially opened in the United States and Canada on October 15, 1999 and earned $11,035,485 in 1,963 theaters over the opening weekend.^[41] Fight Club placed #1 for its opening weekend, ahead of Double Jeopardy and The Story of Us, a fellow weekend opener.^[42] The gender mix of audiences for Fight Club, initially argued to be "the ultimate anti-date flick", was 61% male and 39% female, with 58% of audiences below the age of 21. Despite the top placement, its opening reception had fallen short of the studio's expectations.^[43] Over the second weekend, Fight Club dropped 42.6% in revenue and earned $6,335,870.^[44] The film, whose production budget was $63 million, went on to gross $37,030,102 during its theatrical run in the United States and Canada. Fight Club earned $100,853,753 in theaters worldwide.^[41] The underwhelming domestic performance of Fight Club soured the relationship between studio head Bill Mechanic and media executive Rupert Murdoch, eventually leading to the resignation of Mechanic in June 2000.^[45]

For the release of Fight Club in the United Kingdom on November 12, 1999, the British Board of Film Classification removed two of the film's scenes that had involved "an indulgence in the excitement of beating a (defenseless) man's face into a pulp". The film was awarded an 18 certificate, limiting the release to adult-only audiences in the UK. The BBFC did not censor any further, having considered and dismissed claims that Fight Club contained "dangerously instructive information" and could "encourage anti-social (behavior)". The board noted of the film: "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."^[46]

The DVD for Fight Club was one of the first to be supervised by the movie's director.^[47] The film was released on two DVD editions. The single-disc edition included a commentary track,^[48] while the two-disc special edition included this track, multiple behind-the-scenes clips, deleted scenes, trailers, public service announcements, the promotional music video "This is Your Life", Internet spots, still galleries, cast bios, story boards, and publicity materials.^[49] The film found more revenue after its theatrical run, grossing $55 million in video and DVD rentals.^[50] Fight Club won the 2000 Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best DVD, Best DVD Commentary, and Best DVD Special Features.^[51] Entertainment Weekly ranked the film's two-disc edition #1 in its 2001 list of The 50 Essential DVDs, giving top ratings to the DVD's content and technical picture-and-audio quality.^[52] In 2004, after the two-disc edition went out of print, the studio decided to re-release it due to fans' requests.^[53] In March 2007, another two-DVD edition was released in the UK. It features four audio commentaries and restores two scenes previously cut by the British Board of Film Classification.^[54]

When Fight Club premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, the film caused a sensation and received a polarized reception among prominent critics.^[55] Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised Fincher's direction and editing of the film. She also noted that Fight Club carried a message of "contemporary manhood", and if not watched closely, the film could be misconstrued as an endorsement of violence and nihilism.^[56] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called Fight Club "visceral and hard-edged", as well as "a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy" that most audiences would not appreciate.^[57] Jay Carr of The Boston Globe thought that the film began with an "invigoratingly nervy and imaginative buzz", but that it eventually became "explosively silly".^[58] David Ansen of Newsweek described Fight Club as "an outrageous mixture of brilliant technique, puerile philosophizing, trenchant satire and sensory overload" and thought that the ending was too pretentious.^[59]

Richard Schickel of Time described the director's mise en scène as dark and damp, noting, "It enforces the contrast between the sterilities of his characters' aboveground life and their underground one. Water, even when it's polluted, is the source of life; blood, even when it's carelessly spilled, is the symbol of life being fully lived. To put his point simply: it's better to be wet than dry." Schickel applauded the performances of Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, but he criticized the film's "conventionally gimmicky" unfolding and the failure to make Helena Bonham Carter's character interesting.^[60]

David Edelstein of Slate thought that Fight Club was "sensationalism that mistakes itself for satire" and criticized the film's sporadic exploration of satiric ideas. Edelstein did not consider the message of Fight Club to be revolutionary, believing that it had already been presented in punk culture and before then. Edelstein considered Edward Norton's performance "marvelous" and thought that Brad Pitt played well into the embodiment of conceit, but the critic believed that the film failed to utilize any female or African-American perspectives.^[61]

Jeff Vice of the Deseret Morning News described the film as an Ernest Hemingway novel reinterpreted by Ken Kesey. Vice thought that Fight Club was buoyed by the cast, particularly Edward Norton, who "turns in a terrific performance that veers from intense to horrifying to likably comical and back again". Vice described the first two-thirds of the film to be "exhilarating, if disturbing", though he believed that the final third petered out.^[62]

Feminist author Susan Faludi, who wrote Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, described Fight Club as an "incisive gender drama", comparing its message to the 1991 film Thelma & Louise. Faludi also considered Fight Club a "savagely violent reprise" of the film American Beauty, but that Fincher's film "delves deeper for a response". The author believed that Fight Club critiqued the "necessarily intramural" revolution, and that the film ultimately renounced violence and adolescent fraternity. Faludi said, "For all its chaotic darkness, Fight Club ends up as a quasi-feminist tale, seen through masculine eyes."^[63]

Since its theatrical run, the film was received more favorably. On Rotten Tomatoes, Fight Club received 80% overall approval out of 123 reviews from critics, with a Cream of the Crop rating of 65% out of 23 reviews from major media outlets.^[64] On Metacritic, Fight Club received 66% approval based on 35 reviews.^[65]

Fight Club was nominated for the 2000 Academy Award for Sound Editing, which it lost to The Matrix.^[66] The film was also nominated a Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing, but also lost to The Matrix.^[67] Actress Helena Bonham Carter won the 2000 Empire Award for Best British Actress.^[68] The Online Film Critics Society also nominated awards to Fight Club for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Edward Norton), Best Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay.^[69] Though the film won none of the awards, the society listed Fight Club one of the top ten films of 1999.^[70] The soundtrack for Fight Club was nominated for a BRIT Award, but lost to Notting Hill.^[71]

In 2004 and 2006, Fight Club was voted by Empire readers as the ninth and eighth greatest film of all time, respectively.^[72][73] The UK film magazine Total Film ranked the film as "The Greatest Film of our Lifetime" in 2007 during its tenth anniversary.^[74] In 2007, Premiere selected Tyler Durden's line, "The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club," as the 27th greatest movie line of all time.^[75]

Fight Club was considered one of the most controversial^[21] and talked-about films of 1999.^[76] The film has been 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 has also been perceived as an advance in cinematic form and style.^[77] Following its initial release, Fight Club grew in popularity via word of mouth.^[78] The positive reception of the DVD transformed Fight Club into a cult film.^[79] Newsweek described Fight Club as a cult movie that would potentially have "perennial" fame.^[80] The success of the film has also promoted the novel's author Chuck Palahniuk to global fame.^[81]

Fight Club has spawned several fight clubs in America since its release. A "Gentleman's Fight Club" was started in Menlo Park, California in 2000 and has members mostly from the high tech industry.^[82] 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, a fight club in Arlington, Texas injured an unwilling participant from a local high school, and the DVD sales of the fight led to the arrest of six teenagers.^[83] An unsanctioned fight club was also started at Princeton University, and matches were held on campus.^[84] The film has also been suspected as an influence on 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 mission in Fight Club in which a building is vandalized to have a smiley on its exterior.^[85]

According to actor Edward Norton, his old professor from Yale University has reported being inundated with dissertations about Fight Club.^[78] The film has also been used as an academic tool at Northern Arizona University to introduce students to rhetorical analysis and argumentation.^[86] In addition, the film has been parodied in a re-cut trailer that converted the storyline into a "quirky love story" between Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter's characters. The Wall Street Journal noted that the trailer was "dominated by a distinctly nonprofessional voiceover".^[87]

• Deacy, Christopher (January 2002). "Integration and Rebirth through Confrontation: Fight Club and American Beauty as Contemporary Religious Parables". Journal of Contemporary Religion 17 (1): 61–73. 1353-7903. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
• Giroux, Henry A (December 2001). "Brutalized Bodies and Emasculated Politics: Fight Club, Consumerism, and Masculine Violence", Breaking in to the Movies: Film and the Culture of Politics (Paperback), Blackwell Publishing Limited, 258–88. ISBN 0631226044. 
• Giroux Henry A; Imre Szeman (December 2001). "Ikea Boy Fights Back: Fight Club, Consumerism, and the Political Limits of Nineties Cinema", in Jon Lewis: The End of Cinema As We Know It: American Film in the Nineties (Paperback), New York University Press, 95–104. ISBN 081475161X. 
• Linson, Art (May 2002). "Fight Clubbed", What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line (Hardcover), Bloomsbury USA, 141–56. ISBN 1582342407. 
• Martin, Kevin H. "A World of Hurt", Cinefex, January 2000. 
• Smith, Gavin. "Gavin Smith goes one-on-one with David Fincher", Film Comment, September/October 1999. 
• Waxman, Sharon (December 2005). Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System. HarperEntertainment. ISBN 0060540176. 
• Windrum, Ken (November 2004). "Fight Club and the political (im)potence of consumer revolt", in Steven Jay Schneider: New Hollywood Violence (Paperback), Manchester University Press, 304–17. ISBN 0719067235. 
• Wise, Damon. "Menace II Society", Empire, December 1999. 

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Fight Club (film)

• Official site
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• Masculine Identity in the Service Class: An Analysis of Fight Club
• Fight Club at Metacritic

• Fight Club at Box Office Mojo
• Fight Club at Rotten Tomatoes
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