Nobody knows what's going on, but we watch the Olympics. We just turn on our TVs and become obsessed with sports we haven't thought about in four years. This is why we made the Ringer Guide to the Summer Games. I'm your host, Roger Sherman.
Each day during the Tokyo Olympics, I'll tell you about a different sport, athlete, or storyline. We'll be releasing new episodes every day, starting July 19th. Follow along on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. So you know exactly how to watch the Olympics.
The Rewatchable is also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, as well as the Ringer.com and all Ringer properties, including Ringer Films, a new documentary coming out July 23rd on HBO, also on HBO Max. It is called Woodstock 99. It is the reason we are doing this part, for reasons we're about to explain. But if you have HBO, if you have HBO Max, put it on your radar, it's a great one.
And the movie we're about to talk about, it ties into. A lot of the things the movie is about. Chris Ryan is here, the first world of Fight Club is you not talking about Fight Club. Fight Club is next.
How much can you know about yourself? You've never been a fight from the director of seven. The first world of Fight Club is do not talk about Fight Club. I got to take Fight Club open notch.
What did you guys do? Ah, without pain. But I'm not gonna. What guys the game you play?
Red, red, red, green, red, green. What's that, green? You do not. It would not, it's not terrible, it would not happen.
What did you expect? Fight Club, rated R. Alright Chris, I remember seeing this movie in the theater. I never read the book, that the reveal that Ed Norton was actually both characters, blew by mind.
I loved it, it made me read the book after I saw the movie. This was an iconic 1999 movie. When we did our re-watchables 1999 season on Luminary, we left Fight Club out. We were like, no, it's gotta be the perfect time.
This is the perfect time we had this with Zack99.com and up. But this is a movie that has aged very strangely over the last 22 years. I have a complicated relationship. What is your relationship with Fight Club?
I love this movie, but I think this movie is one of the most fascinating flashpoints about the debate between taking something seriously and taking something literally. So when you watch this movie and have kind of grown up with it, because it came out when I was about 20, 22, and then to have it just in your life for the last 20, 20, an additional 20 years, you watch how different generations of people treat it, how they look at it differently, how it changes two or three times over the last two decades in terms of its conventional wisdom and public opinion about it. Yeah. Well, it comes out in 1999, but after they filmed it, before it comes out, Commvine happens, with Zack99 happens, and angry young males becomes this new narrative, this kind of post-generation X, this last generation, which is what this film is about.
And it's satirizing, but all of a sudden, it doesn't feel like as much of a satirization. But I think one of the great things about art that I think has gotten lost a little bit, especially over the last five years, is art is supposed to reflect the moment, and you're supposed to take whatever is happening and put into some sort of perspective. And that's why I love Fight Club, because Fight Club is capturing something that was going on that I was in the middle of, I was in my mid to late 20s at that point, and I didn't realize it was happening until a little bit after it was happening. I think Fight Club was one of the first things that put a nail into the ground and said, hey, there's this other post-generation next generation happening right now, and it's getting weird.
Yeah. I always think of this movie as a bridge movie between two generations, because when I was at my most impressionable, it was probably during the alternative rocket explosion of the early 90s and alternative culture, and you're growing up, and it's Richard Linklear and Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and those ideas getting introduced to you by popular culture. And I still remember Eddie better writing Pro-Choice on his arm during unplugged. Those were these iconic images to be growing up, and you have all this anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist kind of sentiment in that bracket.
And then that sentiment just kind of allowed to fester for a while. Nobody knows what to do with these revolutionary ideas and feelings that they have, and then they just become rage. They just become unarticulated, anger, and nihilism. And that's what this movie captures.
Is that moment in 99? Now you could do chicken and the egg stuff about like, did lip biscuit and fight club invent that kind of person, or did that person invent lip biscuit, fight club, max and magazine, none of which are the same exact thing. But there was that moment in 99, 2000, 2000, whatever, like right before 9-11, where you did feel like it was just, there was just so much anger in the air, and it was like being directed in the most like destructive ways possible. Yeah, this movie is trying to do it in the absurdist way, but then the absurdist way actually becomes the way and a path for some people at least.
And I think that was why we became so fascinated by Woodstock 99, just as a prop to do an audio podcast and eventually a doc, because it's like, things fall apart over the course of three days of that festival in a way that even as it's happening, you're like, wow, what is going on right now? What is everybody protesting? There wasn't that much protest that I know, but there kind of was, because there was this disenfranchised generation combined with people pushing the envelope in the wrong ways, and a lot of the boys have the birth of the internet at that point, where that's started to really take root by the late 90s and message boards and all these different ways to express. The music kind of sucked as you found out the festival, it's this really weird time for rock music right before that early 2000s when music took back off.
And you know, Fight Club ends up being tied right into this. I was blown away by this movie in the theater. I loved Ed Norton, I loved Brad Pitt, love Fincher at that point, because he'd done seven in the game. And I knew I got the movie.
It just made sense to me. I thought it was just an amazing shape. It was a little too long. The critics did not get it.
It really got pretty battered, and people didn't like it that much, and it didn't do that well, and it really wasn't until DVD in 2000. It was one of the great DVDs of all time. And the DVD, which came out in the middle of 2000, and then it got the second shelf life and cable and became a rewatchable. But it really was embedded in pop culture.
I think over the next five, six years, no different than Boogie Nights, almost famous, like some of those other popular big, all-terre movies that came out. And that kind of faded, I would say, in the 2010s. And I don't think Fight Club kind of had the same lasting kind of shushank, almost famous Boogie Nights, Goodfellas, Casino type of run. Don't you feel like that faded after a while?
Yeah, and I think also, I think that there was like, there have been multiple course corrections in terms of how people feel about this movie. I think that there are people who look at it and just think it's like, it's for cavemen, and that it is actually celebrating the very behavior that it depicts, and that it romanticizes this kind of like masculine aggression and sort of mindless violence and destructive behavior, even though I think that the filmmakers and the stars would say, no, we were we were satirizing and lampooning and like making fun of that. And it's kind of like, you know, we talked a little bit about this during Goodfellas, but this idea that you get to have your cake and eat it too, that you get to make something look really cool and romanticize it, like in Goodfellas's case, like mob violence and Fight Club's case, this kind of bare knuckled violence that these guys are inflicting on each other, and this project may have stuff, that you get to show it in a very like cool slick, fincher way and make it look like a music video, but at the same time, you're critiquing it and lampooning it and satirizing it. And I think that that's what people ultimately have a problem with, because we've become, I think generally speaking, that's become a little bit more literal, like art has become a little bit more like, here's what this is about, here's like the moral stance of this piece of art, so it's unambiguous.
Like here's, here's like what you should take away from this, and that's not to say that there isn't really, really amazing art being made, but I think that the idea of having 50% of people be like, this movie is an atrocity, and 50 people per cent, people be like, this movie is a masterpiece. It's been a minute since that's happened, right? Yeah, this movie spawned actual fight clubs. The guys are the heroes, and there's this one thing when you're rewatching it in 2021, when there's like seven or eight guys in the room, and they're watching news footage of how they had blown up some different stuff, and they're like, yeah, and you know, and in 1999, you're watching this being like, oh, this is cool.
These guys have flipped the system. Yeah, this is, I like where this is going. These are my movie heroes for this movie, where I know I'm not supposed to root for them, but I'm glad they're flipped. But now in 2021, you're watching, you're like, oh, this is have some crazy.
So it's, it's a complicated movie for a lot of different ways. David Fierd Rolling Stone in 2019, because that by the 20th anniversary of this movie, it's now considered a masterpiece. And he was saying how this is what he wrote, watching buildings collapses really, it's tough to think circa 2019, they're watching buildings collapses really blast in half pixie songs or not, that the generation that came after date, in fact, get not one great war, but to define them in the anxiety that a great depression has felt like it's always just around the corner since 2008, that the way repressed males have turned the primal therapy of illicit violence into a toxic creed in the way of the internet and the powers that be one person in particular would metastasize the very thing this movie would be satirizing. That's really well put and it's true.
And yeah, and that's kind of where we are. I think you think about the book. So say the author's name for me because I'm going to mess it up. Chuck the logic.
Yeah, you know my pronunciation issues. I don't even know if I nailed it, but let's go with that. Reads a book in 96. The movie's pretty faithful to the book.
I think it actually, by all accounts, even Chuck admits it might be improved on a couple of things from the book, but the basic themes are these two Tyler Durden quotes. We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires, movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. Don't fuck with us. So you have disappointment, disillusionment, and the anger that you're being sold this lifestyle that you're probably not going to have.
And then the other quote is advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need. And I do feel like those are the fundamental two points of this movie, right? Yeah, and the fact that these are like, I thought my favorite line from the movie and the one that I think is really important generally, generationally speaking, is our fathers were our models for God. So if our fathers abandon us, what does that tell you about God?
Not to tell you about it, but I do think that this was like, this is a generation of people who grew up when divorce was a little bit more common, and it wasn't that uncommon for your dad to leave when you were in eighth grade, or when your dad, you know, your dad just disappeared from your life in a really functional way. And I don't know that we necessarily really reckon with that. I mean, I'm sure that there are a lot of like really unhappy marriages and fucked up families that stayed together because they didn't want the sort of social stigma of divorce before that. But you know, when you break up a family like that, it has these effects on people.
And that's like a really important thing that and the sort of empty consumerism of this sort of fat of the land era of America, where there's just like nothing to fight against and nothing to sort of identify yourself against. So it's just, it's just I'm accumulating shit. But all the people in Tyler Durden's army by the end of this movie are office drones and waiters and parking valley guys and like people just like kind of going around in circles in their life. Yeah, and you have Mike judges doing office space around the same time.
This is becoming a recurring theme and the corporations piece of it. The 90s is when the big corporations figured out how to market stuff to everybody and just make as much money as possible and infect our lives without us totally realizing it. And I think by the late 90s, you saw some of the art reflecting, it wasn't just this movie like Austin Powers. They make the second one and Dr.
Evil's Compound has the Starbucks, the little mini Starbucks in it with the barista. And the point was, you know, it's funny, but the point was like Starbucks is everywhere. It's even in Dr. Evil's Compound.
In this movie Starbucks is everywhere, right? IKEA, the one of the first 20 minutes and he's decorating his apartment and just looking, sitting on the John looking at the IKEA catalog and over and over again, they're banging in. You read the research of this movie. And at one point, it's it's Andrew Kevin Walker who wrote seven who was helping the rewrite Fincher Brad Pitt and Norton.
They're just hanging out innovating rewriting stuff. And there's this conversation about the Volkswagen Beetle, how that represents a lot of what they want to be in this movie where you have this car in the late 60s. That's the symbol of an era, right? Yeah.
It's one of a kind. A lot of people had it, but it just was very authentic to that era. And then in the 90s, they brought it back in the most sterile way possible. And they're like, the Volkswagen Beetle, you loved it.
This one's meant a lot. Here's a shitty version of it. You should buy it. And that was kind of what was driving the mentality of this movie.
How do we tap into that? That this generation is now being sold the nostalgia and stupid shit they don't need and things that ultimately are paying off for the corporations and not them. There's a that's the sort of goes back to what I was saying about like this being a bridge movie from that early 90s sensibility because there was like a real aversion, at least publicly stated to selling out. And there was this idea that if you like sold your music to a commercial, if you were a band and you sold your music to a Volkswagen commercial, you sold out and like that you were supposed to make money somehow organically through touring and selling records, but you shouldn't be placing your songs in movies.
You shouldn't be placing your songs in commercials. You shouldn't be allowing corporations to have banners behind you when you're performing. And that music ethos really did bleed over into other parts of popular culture. And you remember like when I think when 30 Rock came on, so this is much later, but 30 Rock was making fun of the idea of product placement.
And like pretty it's a pretty slippery slope from we're like winkingly acknowledging that to this movie as sponsored by Ikea and Starbucks. Like if you made Fight Club now, you might still make fun of those things, but you would definitely have all that stuff like it would be spond con within your movie. Right. Well, now people have figured out how to more seamlessly integrate this stuff right?
We do it in all these different ways. Well, many people just see it as a reality of like, this is how this bills get paid, right? Right. Well, remember reality bites, which we did in the rewatchables.
She's so upset that Ben Stiller's character took this, you know, kind of docuseries show she was creating about her friends and turned it into the most stereotypical MTV type show ever with like just little snippets and no soul at all. And she's like, I'm not going to sell out. Doesn't even want to consider working with another cut. He's like, no, no, I fucked up.
Let's get she's out. She's like, I'm not going to sell out. And you're right. That was, I would say from 89 to 95, one of the prevailing things, don't sell out.
Don't, don't, you know, even a band like Pearl Jam, which had two massive hits ended up on Time Magazine and Eddie Vetter almost had like, you know, a nervous breakdown about it and deliberately tried to move away from becoming too famous because to a guy like him fame and all bad things. Nothing good. There was no good art that could come out of being super famous. And that was the mentality for a long time.
It's so funny to go back and watch this movie now because, you know, we're coming out of this period, hopefully of being, you know, really isolated from one another and like, while the world is on fire, like this last year, I know for me, like, one of the more soothing things would just be like kind of like, mindlessly shop or stuff, you know what I mean? And that kind of like, that narcotic feeling of accumulating crap. And like, there was like a good month there where I was just buying like, different, like baseball hats from different soccer clubs. Like, I don't need this, but like, I'm just kind of like, going, losing my mind.
But like, the way to like, kind of fix it is to just buy more stuff. That's how the baseball card boom happened, by the way, the last boom from the 18 months is very similar reason. But it's this movie is so prophetic in that way, because it's just like, these guys are all just, you know, they're the main character in the narrator in this movie is basically articulating this, like, I'm in my early 30s, I have like a stable but boring job. And I basically fill my life with these single serving experiences and getting this sort of like, stable, but like unremarkable Swedish furniture.
And like, you realize like this, this movie, it's like these movies that come along once a generation do still speak to us, like throughout the years. Yeah. And you think like, we've talked a lot about this 96 to 99 stretch, and how unbelievable was for so many different reasons, a whole new generation of stars, a couple of them are in this movie, Pit and Norton, a whole bunch of storytellers, guys from Tarantino to Fincher to who else, who am I leaving out of the big ones? Oh, I mean, well, so there's a million of them.
Yeah, there's like, like, Soderberg and like all these people before the spike, like this is like, Jones, there's just a million things go by saying, yeah, PTA, that's that's the other big one to leave in there. But there's just so much going on. And it was a cool era in the moment, you knew it. Sometimes with stuff you don't realize it till after, I think, you know, with this movie, you don't realize some of the themes that are you're going to look at them differently.
But in that era in the late 90s, you knew what was happening. You knew like, this was an electric time to love movies to go to the theater. And that was like something like Fight Club. I knew about fight.
We've talked about this too, where by the early 90s, you had a sense of what movies were coming and who was working on what projects because of premiere magazines and stuff like that. Now with the internet, starting in 97 98 and the whole infrastructure that was in place, you knew this movie was going on. You knew it was Fincher, you knew it's Norton, you knew it was Pit, you knew it was called Fight Club, you knew it was based on this book. There was real anticipation for it, which was so funny that so many people were disappointed by it.
To me, I felt the opposite. I was absolutely delighted by the experience. I was this is everything I want from Go to a movie theater. And I just couldn't believe read the reviews, like how disappointed people were.
It's really strange. I think that they were turned off by the philosophy of the movie. I think they were turned off by the nihilism. I think they were turned off by the underlying suggestion that maybe that Tyler Durden somehow had some good points.
I think that if you were a middle-aged film critic, you could see this movie. I mean, also you got to remember the people who were doing film criticism in that time period were not cool young bloggers. They were guys like my dad who were in their mid 40s. Yeah, I did one idea that this is what their kids were watching.
So Laura Ziskin from Fox 2000 Pictures, she options the novel for 10,000 bucks. That's all our guy Chuck got. Hires Jim Ewell's through the adaptation. Feature gets involved, starts developing the script, then starts trying to get actors and talks to Norton.
Norton says you're going to do this as a comedy, right? And features like, oh yeah, that's the whole point. Norton and Pit eventually come involved. We'll go into casting with it if there's good side-swipes that almost happen.
And then as I said, Norton Pit, Pit, Fincher, Andrew Kevin Walker, they're all revising the script and all really, really honing in on how to really make a great movie that is going to stay in the test of time. And you could argue, Ed Norton notoriously difficult, right? He's always been the thing. You could argue it was because of this movie and his experience on it and how involved he was, not just in the innovation of the script and scenes and stuff like that.
But even when you read about on the set and him and Fincher litigating everything and trying different things and Fincher shot three times as much film as he wanted or as a normal person which you for 140-minute movie, you could argue after that experience, it's hard to go back. You can't really make Red Dragon and not be like, here are my ideas. But so you basically they realize like, what's at stake here? Is this generation's version of Rebel that a cause of the graduate?
How do we get there? What's our message? What's our main message? And their main message was like advertising is fucking up.
Advertising and the illusion of you need something is fucking up an entire generation. Let's hone in on that and we'll go. Do you agree with that? Do you agree with that angle that advertising was ruining?
Because I think there were other forces too. I mean, at the point of a movie is to go all in on an angle and have fun with it. But do you agree with that basic premise? Because I partially believe it.
I don't totally believe it. I like the argument, but I don't totally believe it. What are we talking about? Because we're two people, you're older than me, but we're obviously like middle-aged people now.
And we're probably like a little bit less. Like I don't have as much skin in the game. Like I know that this is killing my soul. You know what I mean?
Like I know that when you watch an NBA finals game and there's just like shit tons of oculus and jungle cruise tie-ins and everything is like every 15 seconds we have to cut away to have another T-Mobile ad or whatever it is. I understand that that is like a huge barrier to just actually enjoying myself while I'm watching the NBA finals. But I have now just kind of accepted the fact that there is no other way. You know what I mean?
That there is no other way to get what I want where I get to see Chris Paul and Giannis play against one another. Apparently, we need to have all this other crap going into it and have all this other circus around it to prop up that game. So I think it's just like I'm less angry. But I do agree and I definitely felt at that time because that's why I was like into punk rock at that time, which was that like, this fucking sucks.
This is not like a pure human experience. Yeah, I think the thing that it gets credit for what we just talked about this movie. But I think that thing that really matters the most here about the 90s is there's a loneliness to it, which we discussed on pods about other movies from this time. But the internet hasn't really rounded in a shape yet.
Pop culture is basically pop culture and sports and music are like the three things everybody has in common and maybe politics too. But for the most part, everybody's kind of not totally connected. Yeah, it's probably. And then the internet reconnected everybody and at first it seemed awesome.
And then the internet did what it did. And now in a weird way, people are as disconnected as they've ever been. But I do feel like there's a sense like, you know, I'm in Boston, I have these jokes with my friends or these things we care about. And we think we might be the only one with these jokes, you know, or the only one with these running bits.
And then the internet by the time you get to that's where you realize like, Oh, everybody was joking about Buffalo Bill and South of Lambs. We thought it was just us with the James Gump jokes. We thought we were special, but that was it. We were all like on our own little islands.
And I think in some cases that was great in other cases, that's a great and now Twitter, the grid, you know, now it's like we're in the group think era, which is the complete opposite of what the 1990s were like. Yeah, I do think that though it tapped into if you have a bunch of aimless men together, the odds are that like you're not going to love the results. Yeah, no, the greats. And I have that obviously is like still the case with Twitter now.
When you watch this movie, when you were when it first came out and you had like your friends and stuff, like I remember what going to see the Matrix and coming out of the Matrix and being like, could I jump over store or drive? You know what I mean? Like, fast and furious was like that too. It was like, can I drive 120 right now?
Is that possible? Did you walk out of this movie and tell your friend to take a shot at you? No, it didn't make you wonder like, do I just need to get out of a fight this weekend? That was a tough thing.
Do I really understand? Am I really able to understand myself unless somebody punched me in the face? Yeah. And I think that there was like, like club and I remember like just like watching jackass and stuff like that and just like the idea of like putting yourself at physical risk just to feel something was definitely like in the air that like all the people just are a bunchy jumping and you're just like, if this goes wrong, it's the exact like it's the absolute worst case scenario.
Well, you also saw it in professional wrestling. That was when the attitude era starts and the bumps just start getting crazier and crazier and you have guys following 30 feet and it's just in general just pushing the envelope with everything we were doing. Video games was another one. I don't know enough about like the actual history of the actual arts, but couldn't you draw it could actually between like club and UFC is this idea that this is the real version of it.
Oh, yeah. Well, UFC is in there in the 90s. It's not it hasn't rounded into the shape. It would hit into the early 2000s, but it's there it exists.
And there is a weird, weird parallel to it. There's obviously this thing at the center of this movie that is at the center of a moment that we're living through right now, which is like very intoxicating when someone comes along in some way and says everything you think is real is not. Yeah. Everything.
I'm flipping this and I am a leader. The only person who sees it for what it is is me. So you got to listen to me. And obviously that is a very seductive thing for some people.
Well, Fincher said Fight Club, he wanted to be a coming of age film like the graduate for people in their 30s. Norton said his name is the value conflicts of Generation X is the first generation raised on television, which is true. Generation told one could achieve spiritual happiness through home flourishing. So so this movie they make it they're all excited about it.
Combat happens on April 20th. The studio gets freaked out. There's a couple scenes in here that feel a little comedy. Yeah.
They decide to delay it. That delay ends up also having Woodstock 99 happens. So now we have two things that are like, wait, what's going on here? And then they finally premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Italy in September.
And Pitt said it gets to one of Helena's scandalous lines. I haven't been fucked like that since grade school. And literally the guy running the festival got up and left. Edward and I were the only ones laughing.
You could hear two idiots up at the balcony cackling through the whole thing. Norton said it got booed. It wasn't playing well at all. Brad turns and looks at me and said that's the best movie I'm ever going to be in.
He's so happy. That was from Brian Raftery's book. He did a thing about Fight Club. So came out, it got destroyed by everybody.
And we're going to talk about that after the break. So this movie comes out. Everybody goes nuts. Most of their views are angry.
Even our guy Raj will get to him in a second. But it's so bad that Rosie O'Donna who has a big talk show at the time, comes on our show, destroys the movie, says don't go see it. And then gives away the revelation in the third act that Brad Pitt and Edward are the same person actually intentionally ruins the movie. And everybody goes nuts about that.
But that's how dark it was. It flips 10 years after the New York Times recipes and says it's the defining cult movie of our time. Did Rosie ever come back in and change your mind about that? Within a year, nobody cared what Rosie thought.
The DVD sold 6 million copies in its first decade and it just it climbed up rewatchable mountain pretty quickly. I got to say the defining cult movie of our time, is this just a really expensive cult movie? Because they spent like almost 60 million dollars on it. But do you think of this as a cult movie or a big budget studio movie?
I think of it as a cult movie. I think it's way too dark and way too fucked up to be like, what were they trying to sell you here? Like what was the this is new Hollywood ideas with blockbuster filmmaking chops? So it's like it's got that sensibility of like a late 70s movie.
And that's probably the reason why guys like Fincher and Norton wanted to make movies in the first place. Those Scorsese and Copola and Altman movies from that era anyway. But it's shot like an Aerosmith video from that time period. So it just looks outrageous because Fincher just can't make something that doesn't have that kind of texture and depth.
And he basically, so he had a bad experience with Fox Searchlight with Alien 3. Didn't want to do another movie with them. And basically was like, I'm only doing this if we're actually spending real money on it. So we end up making a much of this movie cost.
Let's say I have that 63 million dollar budget to make a cult movie. But he has two major stars. It's like one of those. It's that weird territory where from like 94 to 99 where things felt like they were cult movies, but they were independent movies, but they really weren't.
Pulp Fiction was allegedly an independent movie, but it had eight truly famous people and one of the best directors in that generation. Norton and Pitt quickly. Who do you want to talk about first? We'll talk about Pitt.
Pitt's 95 to 99 looks like this. Seven, 12 monkeys, sleepers, seven years in Tibet, start stating Jennifer Aniston. Devil's Own, Meat Show Black. So he's an A-list movie star.
And all those movies are interesting for whatever reason. But there's a little bit of the feeling, so interview with the vampires 94, but a little of the feeling of like, we have anointed this guy, a little like Janis. This guy's headed for a title someday. Wasn't quite happening.
He's the blonde. I feel like he needed this movie probably more than anyone else in the movie. He's kind of, yeah. And what you realize here, and I think what Pitt realized after doing Meat Show Black, which was shit, is that there's a difference between being a leading man and a movie star.
And you can be a movie star and not always have to be the leading man. And so what he does really well throughout his career is, yeah, he does like movies where he's in like World Wars the end, he's in every shot or whatever. But he is so good at being in an ensemble or being in like a two-hander with somebody like, you know, like even like a spy game with Robert Redford. He's just like really good at sharing.
And that's not something you really think about a lot with movie stars because you assume like they're there to shoot scenery. Like I don't think as Tom Cruise as like a great scene partner or somebody who can like play the background in certain scenes. But Pitt floats through this movie like a ghost and he is because you're just like this guy is electrifying, but he's almost like too hot and too cool to be real. And that's because he is.
Yeah, I feel like there was this battle with him through the 90s of am I Robert Redford or am I an actor? Yeah, like a like Harvey Keitel. A plus list character, basically. And what am I?
And me Joe Black is the last movie where it's like I'm gonna be Redford. And after that, it's like I'm not Redford, I'm me. I'm gonna start doing all kinds of stuff. And that's when his career becomes really interesting, right after that.
Because he's got Fight Club, he's in Ocean's 11, sometimes I go big budget Shroy, he can do Moneyball. He's just all over the map starts producing more and I really the only downside is he beats Angelina Jolie and ends up with like a seven kid family and a crazy relationship that plays out the tabloids. But but his this is a great Brad Pitt part. If we're gonna rank the greatest Brad Pitt parts of all time, this has to be in Moneyball.
I think Ocean's in there. Oh yeah, Ocean's 11 and then the 10th one's upon a time in Hollywood. Yeah. And then maybe one the fifth one can vacillate depending on what you like about Brad Pitt.
Yeah, then there's like the whole school of like Brad Pitt's borderline candy. It was like true romance. Right true romance might be in there actually, right. But that's like, you know, Floyd, Fight Club, that's kind of the Brad Pitt I like.
Yes. I think it's what's interesting about him is he can go full movie star, which he does the best in Ocean's 11 once upon a time in Hollywood Moneyball. Those are our movie star parts where it's like, my charisma will carry this world. I don't think a lot of people could have carried Moneyball.
He's one of the very few. Redford could have done it. So that was his Redford parts. But what I liked is just the goofy side too.
Norton Norton's first six movies are pretty, I don't know if these are the greatest first six movies anyone made, but it's got to be in the conversation. Primal Fear, the one stinker, as everyone says, I love you the Woody Allen movie. People versus Larry Flint, American History X, Rounders, Fight Club. Just from a batting average standpoint, that's pretty bonkers.
Yeah. And also worth noting that like when he does Primal Fear, it's like, what's what it would be like? It's just unbelievable. And it was like one of the most hotly contested parts.
Everybody was trying to go for it because that everybody knew that what a meaty role it was. And he gets it. I hope we do Primal Fear one day. And like, and he's, it's just like a revelation to see him in that movie and the idea that he's just like out of nowhere doing this.
It's just so great. American History X is unbelievable. I don't know if we'll end up doing that one at another one that he was deeply involved with. Yeah.
It basically took it over like took over the directing of it. Rounders were. Yeah. So he's played all types of guys, but you know, this is, we did 25th hour a while ago during the pandemic.
And I think that's the best at Norton Performance out of all these kind of the last piece of this. And then I think at that point, maybe it shifts a little bit. He's not an A plus lister as in the same way after 25th hour. But 25th hour, to me, is the last piece of the list I just mentioned of just really fascinating leading man parts that are all trying to do something different and feel like they belong to him.
Like there's, like, do you feel like Matt, I'll do one cast and what if now, there's this really weird to studio wants Matt Damon or Sean Penn. Fincher wants Norton. Norton's up for the talented Mr. Ripley, man on the moon, the Incoffin movie and Runaway Jerry, a movie that ends up getting postponed and not made for a while.
And all of these guys are all up for the same parts and jockeying. And it's like a merry-go-round. Norton and Jim Carrey, both crush their Incoffman edition. Milla's foreman is basically like, I can't choose.
They want Carrey because he's a bigger name. Sorry. Yeah. At the same time, Damon grabs town to Mr.
Ripley and the merry-go-round stops and Norton ends up with Rounders. But like, there is a weird author in the universe where Damon does Fight Club and Norton does talented Mr. Ripley. And I'm not sure both movies aren't better.
Even though I love both actors and those roles, I think Damon and Ripley, that was one of the best roles he's ever had. But it's really fun to think about the Seltzer universe where they just switched those two parts. And they were doing that like for years. Like there was like a great Norton interview where he talked about like how he and Damon were both up for Rainmaker, but Coppola talks him into doing American History X basically because he obviously want to go make this instead.
Well, Damon was on my podcast talking about how he didn't get Primal Fair. He's devastated. Yeah. Right.
He said like everybody read for that. Like those guys are all going for the same role. Send of a woman was another one, but somehow what's the space got it? Chris O'Donnell.
Yeah. Chris O'Donnell. Yeah. Yeah.
There were a lot of prep school movies back then. You really couldn't throw, if you threw a rock, you would hit a prep school movie back. Right. Chasing Amy was another one that people wanted, but there's like seven or eight of them and there's seven guys going for the same parts every time.
So Damon brings an inherent relatability to every role he does. And I think Norton brings an inherent cerebral nature to every role he does. You're basically choosing, do I want to have the narrator in Fight Club B, somebody who feels like a nicer guy, who feels like a more normal, everyday guy, or someone who could seemingly have so much going on upstairs that he could create this alternate reality within his head. Yeah, Damon, it's funny.
I think Damon could have played either part in this movie. Yeah, he could have played Tyler. I think Pitt could have only played Tyler. I don't think I'd Norton could have played Tyler, but that's what makes Damon so interesting.
Right. Leo is the other one who- He's a little young. He's a little young, but you think like post Titanic, he's probably five years too young, but that could have maybe aged him up a little bit. You're right.
It's probably 2004, 2005, Leo. This would have been his dream part. Right. I mean, the genius thing about casting Pitt and Pitt doing the role the way he did it is that it is actually the manifestation of a lot of what guys wanted to be.
You know what I mean? Like, if you ask a guy, like if you could like be, and he put you in the world right now in 1999, a lot of them would be like, I'd like to look like Brad Pitt. Yeah. You know, so the idea that somebody who would be like at Edward Norton who's wearing his white Oxford at his insurance job, if he's daydreaming, he's going to daydream himself into this character.
Yeah. And don't sleep on Brad Pitt's off the screen stuff either. Like he's dating Gwyneth Poucher, or the almost get married. Gwyneth Poucher is like, everybody's in love with her in the mid 90s.
And then goes right to Aniston, who's this iconic friend's part where everybody's in love with Rachel, people are cutting their hair like her, and then all of a sudden he's with her. And it's like this guy, this guy, man, he's got to go in, and it made perfect sense. He's been part of like five or six of the biggest tabloid stories of Oh, yeah. I would say he's been in the mo, him and Affleck, it's probably one A, one B.
So Oscar's time, this movie just gets shut out left and right. It only gets nominated for best sound editing. Fincher not nominated. We're gonna talk about Fincher one second.
None of the actor parts get nominated. Retroactively, I'm gonna give you best actor, which Norton would be eligible for. And I'll give you best supporting actor for Pitt. Okay.
Spacey wins for American Beauty, other nominees are Russell Crowley insider Richard Farnsworth, The Straight Story, Sean Penn, Sweet and Lowdown Yikes, Denzel Washington, Hurricane. Yeah, I knew that over again. I knew he's got to be in there. I think he gets the Sean Penn spot.
Best supporting actor, Michael Caine wins for Siderhouse Rules. I'm good with that, at least be nominated. Tom Cruise, Magnolia, definitely. Michael Clark, Duncan, Green Mile, hard to believe that was like a thing.
Yeah. I don't even know if we would do that on the rewatchables. It's kind of like the I can't believe this is over a bull's like, is it over yet? A bull's?
It's like three hours that road to perdition. We're like, I feel like it's like the same movie and they're like, so we got Jude Law, talented, Mr. Ripley, Haley Joel Asment, the sixth sense. Right.
So those are five, I got to say, like in the moment and then now I'm like, I can't really argue with the five, but there's probably five other parts. I think pitch should be in there. I don't know who would I, who would you bump out of those five? Maybe Michael Clark, Duncan, who's the first nomination?
Who's the first nomination? Michael Caine wins. And you like that. People like that.
Yes. I never would. It was the time of the career achievement nomination. There was always the one old guy in the category.
It's just, that's why Farnsworth is the best actor. It's just how they did it back then. Right. I would bump either Caine or Haley Joel.
Yeah. Haley, Duncan was a thing. It's hard to explain it. It was a thing.
It was always a game in the game. It went to the wildy nominated the kid, like, you know, the nominated Anna Paco from the piano, like it's like it happens. He's good in that movie, but Brad Pitt was one of the best by performance. Right.
And then Fincher for director Sam Mendes wins for American Beauty, Spike Jones, Malkovich, Lassie Housstrom, Sider House Rules, Michael May and the inside of our guy. Yeah. And then and then Shammell-Ann for the sixth sense. Listen, Fincher wasn't that successful.
It makes sense it wasn't nominated, but this is in a lot of ways the ultimate fincher movie. Well, and it's all the time. And he does seven the game and then this and this feels like he's using all the pieces in this movie. It's so cool too to like go back because when you, you, you list off those Oscar nominees, it's like, Sider House Rules is like the coin essential Oscar movie, where it's like a really prestigious adaptation of a beloved literary property with a lot of like really great actors and it makes you feel good and then you leave it and you're like, okay, and you never think about it again.
Yeah, there's never been a Sider House Rules conversation in 50 years. Somewhere talk about Fight Club every single day. Like some like people think about Fight Club all the time and like the impact that movie had on the culture and it's just sort of, it's fascinating. I can't think of that many more movies that have such a huge impact on the culture, but we're so disregarded or sort of slighted at the time, both in terms of their commercial and critical success.
I think seven was Fincher's I'm here to stay movie. The game was his, I can play by the rules kind of his, no, the game was his just in case you weren't a hundred percent positive. I'm really good at this. Here's the game.
And then Fight Club was his movie was like, oh, now we're talking, this guy is a generational director. This was whatever. However, remember this whole stretch, this guy's name will be one of the first three or four names. And that's how this is going to play out.
And at this point, I had season tickets after seven. He really would have had to make a bad one for me to cancel the season tickets. But by Fight Club, it's just like, it's weird because he crosses over, he can casual movie fans, the super nerds like fantasy. And then you and I are probably in between that you're a little closer to the fantasy side.
I'm probably right in the middle. Yeah, but the thing is, all of us are in on Fincher. You know, Soderberg was just talking about, I think it was either on the Marimpa that he did, but he was talking about no sudden moving. He was talking about the difference between films and movies.
You know, and this idea that you're making something that's primary focus to entertain and first dark is Fight Club is because Fincher is completely aware of that dichotomy and this idea of like the difference between a film that might have just like entirely purely artistic aspirations versus a movie that's also functionally there to entertain people. Like Fincher definitely, Fight Club is fucking entertaining. It's got like a dust brother soundtrack. It's got music video, quick cutting, it's got explosions, it's got fighting, it's got jokes, it's got profanity, it's got nudity.
It's like, it is, it's pulp man. So he knows how to make art out of, out of like anything. He can give you that, he can give you the popcorn, but he can also give you like the something to think about. Also doesn't work that much.
And it's interesting him versus Soderberg. Soderberg is just like, I have to work. What's my next thing? I'll make stuff.
I don't even care if this is the biggest movie. Fincher goes 7 1995, the game 97, Fight Club 99, Panacrum 02, Zodiaco 7, Ben Button, oh wait, I call it Ben Button. Social Network 10, Dragon Tye 211. That was actually pretty prolific for him.
Yeah, he was, that was a lot for him. First two episodes of House of Cards 13, Gone Girl 14, and then your favorite show Mind Hunter. That's right. 17 through 19, in the next, he does 20, but really like once every two, two and a half years, he's making something where Soderberg's made a lot more.
I think both of them have been equally influential for different reasons and equally valuable. And I think if you find themselves trying to figure out like their place in this current landscape, you know, Soderberg obviously makes things at incredibly low budgets, very fast. He shoots and edits and directs his own stuff. Fincher I think is trying to figure out whether or not he needs to be on streaming to make the movies that he wants or make whether they work better as TV shows.
So it's kind of a pivotal point for both of them. And it's interesting, as Soderberg, what's his what's his peak? I think you have to say the traffic, notions 11, like the sort of 2000, yeah, but Fincher makes the best movie of the 21st century social network. Right.
So if you're going head to head, I think Fincher, he wins the fight 114 to 113, maybe 115 to 112 on the scorecards. Yeah, I think Soderberg's like retirement comeback and then making like 11 movies in eight years has been kind of like mixed results, but also really fascinating. So, six to three million budget made a hundred and one point two million, only 37 million domestic, which was considered as Aster at the time. Ebert, our guy Raj, two stars.
So it was visceral and hard edged. So there was a thrill ride masquerading philosophy, but was disappointed that a promising first act eventually panned her to macho sensibilities and trickery, she's disappointed. Yeah. Later, he acknowledged the film was quote, beloved by most, not by me.
It's not his cup of tea. I'm not surprised. I think that a lot of people had like the second half started to turn their stomach a little bit. Yeah, the Jared Lido scene especially.
Yeah, and Project Mayhem as an idea is a little bit tough to stomach. Most rewatchable scene. I really like the opening, semi-opening scene with the insomnia, Ikea, the Grande Latte enema as Tyler, we don't know his style yet, but he's Ed Norton setting up, we'll call him Ed Norton for the pot. Ed Norton setting up his life in the things he hates basically.
It's a nice, it's basically an internet blog post as a narrator slash here's what my life is like, but I thought it's effective. I'm coming from the road if there's any snacks. He was full of pet must have had his Grande Latte enema. Like so many others, I had become a slave to the Ikea nesting Yes, like to order the Eric Kupkari dust ruffles.
If I saw something clever, like a little coffee table in the shape of a gignon, I had to have it. The first 32 minutes, so I think like they start fighting for the first time outside the bar at like minute 31. Yeah, that includes the very elaborate and cool title sequence. That whole 30 minutes is like relentless because from his setting up the narrator character, going to the groups meeting Marla, the fantasy of the plane of planes.
Yeah, and then meeting Tyler after the flight is just like, just wearing a life. This is fucking amazing. Like what city is this? What is happening?
Like, he's also using the the quick one frame flashes of red pit and the different scenes. Yeah. Another rewatchable scene. The second Tyler and narrator scene, the things you own end up owning you get some some senior yearbook quotes there.
Oh, my chance probably. What things you own end up owning? I want you to hit me as hard as you can. How much can you know about yourself if you've never been a fight?
What do you want me to do? You just want me to hit you? Come on. Why?
Why? I don't know why. I don't know. Never been a fight.
You know, but that's a good thing. No, it is not. How much can you know by yourself? Never been a fight?
I want to die without any scars. Come on. Hit me for at least my nerd. They have their first fight.
But just out of here. Yeah. Motherfucker in the ear. Well, Jesus, I'm sorry.
I'm in here. I fucked it up. Oh, that was perfect. Oh, oh.
Fincher told Norton to really hit the air. So hit him. So that whole reaction is genuine. It definitely seems that.
Yeah. So got that one got the first actual fight club scene when the fight club gets together. Tyler's speech to the fight club leading to the incredible cameo from Lou, but we had the Tyler speech where he's like, God damn it, entire generation, pump and gas, wait, table, slaves with white collars. Let's just play that speech because it's really good.
God damn it. Entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising, hesitation, cars and clothes, working jobs. We hate it. So we can buy shit.
We don't need the middle children of history, man. No purpose of place. We have no great war. No great depression.
Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. Fuffing raised on television to believe that one day we don't be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't. We slowly learn.
In fact, we're very, very pissed off. It's great stuff. And then Lou comes in and have an awesome fight. Next, rewatchable scene.
The, you know, I love montages. The starting of fight with a stranger montage leading to narrator fighting himself in Boston's office to the first project. Mayhem montage. To me, the most rewatchable stretch of this movie is the Tyler speech all the way through to him fighting himself in the boss office and the project mayhem.
That 20 minutes is really great. So if you take what I said and what you said, that's an hour of the movie. That's pretty fucking the first hour of the movie. You're just like, you're watching it now, and it's like, you know, when you were like by like 2002 or three, it was pretty common to see just like first rule of fight club is never talk about fight club.
Like it would be written on bathroom stalls. It would be like in people's ear books. It was like what people were using in their early social media, like Myspace profiles, like they would have fight club lines and their like bios and stuff like that. So by like quickly, this movie becomes like a cliche of itself.
But when you watch it now and you watch, like if you just watch that first hour, like the hair on your arm stands up still. Okay, the car accident is a half rewatchable scene, but really great how they shot that. Yeah, it's really, really cool. There's never quite been a small scene like that.
Screwing around. Take the wheel. Take the wheel. You're fucking pathetic.
Why? Why? What are you talking about? Why do you think I blew up your condo?
Getting bottom is in a weekend retreat. It's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go.
Right fine. Fine. Next we watchable narrator realizing that he's actually Tyler in the hotel room is just great. The reveal of that.
Hard to overstate. No. Do not talk with us. Say it.
Say it. Because we're the same person. That's right. We are the all-sitting, all-downs and crap.
Don't understand this. You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do this on your all the ways you wish you could be. That's me.
I look like you want to look. I fuck like you want to fuck. I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not. Tyler's not here.
I don't want to wait. The whole chasing Tyler all over the map stuff is just great. And people, the way people are responding to him and he's like, what's going on here? The guy in the halo who's like security is tight as a drum, sir.
The final pit Norton scene and then I have the pixies ending. What's the most rewatchable scene for you? I think honestly for me that the most rewatchable scene is still the first fight in a lot of ways. Because the whole idea of his apartment exploding and the way.
Because we haven't really even talked about the twist. It's really interesting that this came out at a time when there were these big twist movies where we're hitting. And this is the one that I think ages the best and also I care about the least. Because you can enjoy the film as this relationship drama for the first hour and a half of it before it becomes apparent that he's the same person.
But my favorite, my most rewatchable scene is just the bar and then their first fight. I like the speech, the Luke Amio, and starting a fight with a stranger montage that whole section. I've dealt with that. What's age the best?
You mentioned it, the twist. I also have this in What's Age the Worst? Because the twist was awesome. But when you rewatch the movie, you're looking for the little clues that they do all the stuff with the suitcases and the on the airplane that they're identical.
Yeah. There's like somebody has it online. There's like 27 instances of little tiny hints that they might be the same guy. So that's what's age the best.
And we'll get to the What's Age the Worst piece of that in a second. The DVD is age the best. I really feel like that 99 2000 range was when we figured out DVDs in the best possible way. Incredible director commentary.
Oh, man. Commentary, give me the double disc. Give me deleted scenes. The whole thing.
Give me like a cool looking DVD. I'm so excited to buy it and take it home and put it in my little bookshelf. Miss those days. The famous picture that you see with this movie, I think is age the best of it.
Shirtless Pit with the Black Eye and the cigarette. And it's like in the fight thing, it's just like that's the one picture you always see with Fight Club and it's a big good poster. His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson.
I had columns where I would just throw like football picks and I would just put his name as Robert Paulson in there. And this is, I saw this movie twice in the theater and after the second time, I was like, I'm just making Fight Club jokes in my comp. This is what I was on my website. I didn't even care who gets it.
The five people who saw the movie would get it. But his name is Robert Paulson. I think I wrote once upon a time that would have been my favorite chant for the crowd to randomly stop the enemy. When somebody's at the free throw line, everybody just starts saying his name is Robert Williams.
Maybe that's such a thing to do. That's the oddest. The quote, when people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you when he's explaining why he's going to be good. All the group therapy stuff in the beginning.
I could have been 30 seconds for me. If you're talking about places to talk because this movie's too long, I think we could have zipped through the, we got it. He's going to these weird groups. He's looking for something to date.
When you think like that's that stuff's 10 minutes, but then other parts of this movie, they're zipping through 30 seconds. I would have I would have come from that. That's all the narration during those groups is the first real clue that he and Tyler are the same because they, the way he talks about group is the way that Tyler talks to everybody else where it's like these aphorisms and like fortune cookie statements. The narrator, as you know, I don't like narrators.
Couldn't work better in this movie. It's great. Fincher, what this movie means to the Fincher universe, I think it's weirdly important because it just kind of makes sense when you put his movies together and you just look at his IMDB. I don't know.
For some reason, I feel like this one at this point in time, the fact that he does it here and then he does it again with social network when he catches that moment too when right his Facebook is about to social media and Facebook, Twitter and these other places are about to start dominating our life and he makes a movie about it. How this all kind of happened before it actually really happens. His timing over and over again is just really great. And I think that's one of the true ways to win the biggest way is timing.