Fight club X

Soap, made from the fat of rich ladies

On this day 10 years ago the world was reeling. Our minds were blown by The Matrix and we all feared the worst from the impending doom of the Y2K bug. It was undoubtedly cold and raining (some things stay the same, I guess) as cinema-goers worldwide strolled into their local movie emporium to witness the birth of a new kind of movie. A black, black comedy that treated its audience as adults, confusing them even as the credits rolled at the end. The movie? Fight Club.

Based on the not-so-amazing novel by Chuck Palahniuk it was adapted for screen on the behest of a few Hollywood producers who loved the book.

Don’t get me wrong, the book is stunning. The use of language is great, and thankfully has not subsided since in Palahniuks work since. The story is sold when watched on screen, but is really difficult to follow in the book without using the movie as a reference. Worth reading now, but imagine what it was like for those of us who discovered it before the movie was released – wishing it was available for the school curriculum, just to fuck things up.

This is Jack... kinda

The story follows a character who is unnamed in the book. For the script they called him Jack, because in one scene he reads a transcript from some books about the body. “This is Jacks abdula ablongata…”. Played by the always-brilliant Edward Norton, his story is as twisted as any scary movie character. He can’t sleep. He appears to have the perfect life. Nice condo, good job in the insurance industry, and he looks pretty decent, too! But he can’t sleep. A trip to the doctor doesn’t help, until he stumbles upon help groups for patients of varying types of diseases and ailments. Once he finds solace in these support groups, he begins to sleep again.

He finds a character who falls in love with him in the femme fatale, Marla. He discovers her in his testicular cancer meeting – where she lights up a cigarette. Jack, though, finds her repulsive at first. Tyler, a free-spirited soap salesman he meets on a plane though, reciprocates Marlas attention.

Tyler and Jack start working together on a Fight Club – a social group who meet once a month in a dingy bar basement to beat each other up. Freeing men from their modern day stresses. Tyler points out, we don’t have any wars to fight, no purpose or meaning to be on this world. Our generation are the middle men of history. We do nothing. Fight Club takes off, big time, branching out to other cities in America. Then, Tyler starts a terrorist organisation, Project Mayhem. “projectmayhem” has been my online handle for years. Literally, years. It’s a bit lame these days with transparent internet accounts, but back in the day, this was the shit.

We all want to be Tyler... but can't

It’s not until later in the story that the pieces begin to fall into place and we realise, along with Jack, that Tyler is the same person. Ah, right. That’s why Marla was weird. She’d have sex with Tyler upstairs, go to the bathroom, come downstairs, and Jack would tell her to “fuck off”.

People loved Jack in restaurants, bars and clubs all over the place. He was never in most of them before. When he realises what’s going on, he reports it to police – who Tyler had visited previously to warn them of his re-visiting.

The story of Project Mayhem revolves around corporate terrorism. Putting bird seeds around BMW dealerships so they poop all over the new cars for rich people, blowing up Apple stores for rich computing nerds, placing horrific leaflets for “In case of an emergency” literature on aircraft for the business elite, etc. etc. etc. All of this culminates in the planting of bombs in the underground carparks of the major credit card companies. Once the buildings are leveled, the debt people have on these cards goes back down to zero!

Marla is a skinny, goth-like person. Now married to Tim Burton. Who saw that coming?

This is one of my favourite movies of all time, and is likely to be forever. This is a stunning movie, both in terms of story telling and visually. Even today it looks mind-blowing. And today, to celebrate some magical special edition disc was released, but importantly – they’ve released a blu-ray version to get proper 1080P smoothness in your ten year old movie.

So go enjoy the movie, read the book and rebel against the system. It’s my generations answer to flower power in the 70s. Good job David Fincher (director), who never really got to work with the same caliber of script afterwards, in my opinion.