Blank Check with Griffin & David - Fight Club with Alex Ross Perry

Episode Date: October 1, 2023

The first rule of Fight Club? Don’t talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club? DON’T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB. For those of you who like following the rules, we have an edited version of this episode available on Patreon wherein we do NOT talk about the seminal 1999 film FIGHT CLUB. But for the rest of you sickos, we’ve got a supersized episode with Project Mayhem’s own Alex Ross Perry. In this episode, we discuss our picks for the iconic DVDs of the “DVD era”, dive into the career of SERIOUS ACTOR Edward Norton, wonder what this movie would have been like with Janeane Garofalo as Marla Singer, and reveal the very dumb reason why Fred Durst is a playable character in the Fight Club video game. This episode is sponsored by: NO ONE BECAUSE WE ARE NOT OUR JOBS. WE ARE NOT OUR ADVERTISERS. HIS NAME IS ROBERT PAULSON. Music by The Orgs Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

Gentlemen, welcome to podcast. First rule of podcast is you do not talk about podcast. The second rule of podcast is you do not talk about podcast. Third rule of podcast, someone yells stop, goes limp, taps out, the pod is over. Fourth rule, only two guys to a pod. Fifth rule, one pod at a time, fellas. Sixth rule, no shirts, no shoes. Seventh rule, pod at a time, fellas. Sixth rule. No shirts, no shoes.

Seventh rule. Pods will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule. If this is your first time at podcast, you have to pod. Now, if I went limp during this podcast, the podcast would not stop. You should have bit that.

Yes. And also, this is a four-person episode. I should make it we're breaking rule no that's true and also all our shirts are on yes well and so far and shoes so far has any quote ever been more preordained oh your shoes are off my shoes are off wiggle wiggle wiggle okay saucy toe wiggle saucy toe wiggle uh it's the kind of energy at fight club right people talk about the about Saucy Toe Wiggle. The only question was, were you going to hold podcast off for the end? Yeah, were you going to sprinkle it in throughout?

If this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to podcast. I didn't know if we'd hear it. No, I wanted all of it. Yeah, I wanted all of it. I wanted it everywhere. Now, it does put us in a difficult position. Not the quote I just read,

but the actual quote in the movie. We're here ostensibly to talk about this film, but are we not allowed to? And I'm not saying because of the SAG-WGA strikes where people are very muddy on the idea of what is or isn't legal podcasting and are going to false conclusions. That's not

the issue here. The issue here is we've been told specifically not to talk about Fight Club. I mean, this is a no-biz podcast. So we would never do something like that where we would incorporate some weird element of the movie and then sort of like have it affect the episode. I think if we just chose to not discuss the movie

at hand and spend the next three hours talking about Becker, people would be happy. I think there is a track record Have you seen Becker? Of people being happy when that happens. Not even one ep? Not one single solitary minute of old Dr. Becker? Of people being happy when that happens Not even one ep? Not one single solitary minute of old Dr. Becker? Becker's kind of got big ARP energy

You would maybe reboot Becker If you started watching Becker My only association with Becker I guess you guys have resuscitated Is the South Park joke I don't remember the South Park joke You guys don't remember this? It was like, I don't know, 2005 South Park

Where they were just watching it And it was ted danson like cartoon animated flat face and he just said i'm t becker the t is for terrific and i'd never seen it or really heard of it at the time and i just thought this is either very funny or very stupid but either way it makes me laugh and i have no context for it um he is uh uh john becker though jay take it up with matt and trey yeah if i ever meet matt and trey the first thing i'll say to them is like why did you get becker's name wrong it's also possible i'm misremembering this but i'm 90 certain that the t is for terrific um becker obviously debuted in 1998 so canonically within the you know the show becker might have seen fight club he might have been like yeah i'll go go see a movie summer of 99 maybe i'll see fight club

fall of 99 i thought it was summer why does it shit out of luck if he's going in the summer poor guy you're right it's the fall why did i associate it with the summer i think i just an october movie in my it is but that's what i think in my head I was like, they sort of weirdly whiffed and put it out in August or something, but I'm wrong. Very wrong, which is silly. Maybe, could it have come out that late in Britain? Let's look it up. You mean a year later?

Like back in the day that would happen, like they would release shit. I mean, honestly, they still do it sometimes. Nope, came out in November. Came out in November. Immediately. Or a month later. A month later, yeah. Feels like an Empire magazine movie.

The biggest, yes. Alex, you bring up things that have lingered with you in terms of being funny that you still think about and laugh on a regular basis. T is for terrific. T is for terrific. I want to pull this up, get it verbatim. Sunday, April 16th of this year, apropos of nothing,

you text me at 9.40 a.m. You ever think what John Henson is up to? John Henson, the basketball player? I respond from... Incorrect, David. I respond... Way, way off. From TalkSoup.

That's right. Oh, the comedian guy. The most forgotten guy right soup post and then you say of course on any given day 98 to 2000 in parentheses pre-killborn my answer for funniest person alive oh in 1998 you were like when i want comedy i turned to john henson the host of toxic his his rhythms, everything about him was like my absolute favorite. And then look, this is... Keeping in mind, you say 940 as David and I know.

I've been up at that point for three hours. I'm not rolling out of bed and texting you. This is like the middle of my day. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, just for context. And I forgot the direct transition here is, I respond, no, I never think about what he's up to. Then I say, it looks like he hosted Wipeout for seven years.

And then in April, I text you, by the way, I think we're doing Fincher after Park Chan-wook, if any picks spring to mind. And you go, oh yeah, hell yeah, anything. Fight Club, of course, the defining movie of my life for four years. That's right. I worry that me on Fight Club has potential to be too obnoxious, but much like Clockwork Orange,

may be irresistible. Or pivot back to the old Alex selection method and do Panic Room. Now, this is a big thing. Your selection method used to be pick the least essential film in any person's filmography. Or just the kind of one that people would say like,

oh yeah, I forgot about that. And then your last three picks, including this one, it's a new trilogy of movies that basically are the building blocks of your entire personality. It's a Halloween, Clockwork Orange, and now Fight Club. Right. You've gone from being like, I pick the things that don't exist

or the most marginal to the things that are the most important to you on a cellular level. Yeah. We'll close the book on the trilogy maybe. Make this episode 70 minutes long. Just like truly piss everyone off. I mean, I have to be somewhere in 90 minutes. Do you? cellular level. What if we close the book on the trilogy? Maybe, but I episode 70 minutes long, just like true, truly piss. I mean,

I have to be somewhere in 90 minutes. Do you? Uh, no. Okay, great. Yes. Uh,

funny. I do right here. Starting to talk about the 90 minutes from now, we will begin the plot. Yeah. But yeah, I don't, I mean,

that would be fun. What would, would it be panic room? I feel like that's kind of the one that just, yeah, it's that or button, but it's not really right. a feature where you can be like Panic Room is probably the closest.

And I'm sure you have a superior guest for that than I would. We have a lovely guest for Panic Room. Look forward to that next week. Yeah. In fact. Yes, but this is a blank check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin.

I'm David. Jumpin' Jack Sims. Call me Whoopi because I am Jumpin sims he is jumping jack sims when i real quick as long as you're referencing oh absolutely so when we were promoting or no for some reason after listen up philip came out jonathan price was in new york and at metrograph i was like well we got to do something so we screened brazil and i did a q a with him but then jake perlin former programmer of Metrograph, was like, as long as Price is in the building, I want to have him introduce Jumping Jack Flash.

So it was a sold-out screening of Brazil. Yeah. I sat next to Jonathan. He watched the movie for the first time in 25 years. What do you think? He was so emotional. It'd be funny if he was like, this thing's a piece of shit. No wonder the studio didn't want to pee you.

That we've lost. I think Hoskins had maybe just died. Okay. He just was like, this thing's a piece of shit. No one in the studio didn't want to pee you. That we've lost. I think Hoskins had maybe just died. He just was like, I cannot believe it. The room was going wild. Such a good movie. And then he introduced a 35 millimeter print of Jumping Jack Flash for seven people. And he was just like, I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't think I'm actually in this movie.

I think I just do the voiceover. He has like a small role in that film. I think he's just in the final scene. It's not like he's the villain or something. Incredible move from Perlin. To this day, it's just like, man, remember that? That was one of my all-time wins. Yes, that's incredible.

Yes. But anyway, jumping jacks. We were just talking Price the other day, because we're doing the Brosnan Bonds over on Patreon. So we're talking his Murdoch-esque turn. Yeah, I will say that. The villain of Tomorrow Never Dies. We were at the Le Carnail Film Festival.

Or listen up, Philip. Getting to like walk around a European film festival with a Bond character was really interesting because to me...

Even one of the lesser Bond villains. No offense to whatever his name is. Elliot Carver. People forget that he's... I had forgotten

he's in that movie. Yes. And he's good in it, but like the, the mania of European fans coming up to a Bond villain was outrageous. Right.

And someone at some point handed him like a James Bond, like a cookie. A James Bond cookie? Like the frosting was arranged to say 007 or something. And they were like, can you take a picture with this? I take pictures of every Bond girl or Bond villain that I encounter with a cookie.

Like it was wild. The cookie guy. People really love interacting with a Bond character in Europe. I love Jonathan Pryce, but he is not in Fight Club. But we may cover Jumping Jack Flash one day. Because it's a penny. Yeah, I mean, I think we gotta do her someday. It's her first film. That'll be a fun

act. If we ever decide to give a penny for our thoughts. Exactly. Or our thoughts on Penny. Right. This is a podcast about filmography. Take a penny, leave a penny. Take a penny, leave a penny. That's what it'll be called. It's the first miniseries where we only cover every other film in her filmography. We take one penny, we leave one it'll be called. It's the first miniseries where we only cover every other film in her filmography.

We take one penny, we leave one out of the schedule. But Jumping Jack Flash is essential. Listen, it's a podcast about filmography. It's also a guess, guess, guess. It's a what? It's Rolling Stone's song. It's a guess, guess, guess. Jumping Jack Flash. Oh, sure, sure, sure.

Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they fight, baby. It's a miniseries on the films of David Fincher. It is called The Curious Pod of Benjamin Buttcast. Maybe our best title ever.

It's the best one. I'm glad I learned that. Yeah. On mic. We got a genuine chuckle out of you. Our guest today returning to the show, Maybe our best title ever. It's the best one. I'm glad I learned that. Yeah. On mic. We got a genuine chuckle out of you. Our guest today returning to the show, completing his My DNA Makeup Trilogy,

Alex Ross-Perry. And I can't be obnoxious. I didn't, because I'm underprepared. I have no real... Oh, you're not coming in with like a folder? No, I have like a few pages here in my notebook. You can print it out. No, I went back to basics in that regard, that all I have is what I wrote down while watching the movie.

I think that's fine. We have a big, fat dossier as always, of course. We're not allowed to talk about this movie. A lot of dossier. That's an issue. I kind of want to get some dossier on this because I found the Wikipedia page for this movie to be insufferable. Yes, and also, unsurprisingly...

It's quite fat. It's a big old page. But it's a Wikipedia page that some people have uploaded their dissertations to, which I don't like. Sometimes it's a problem.

I also was, like, reading stuff on the Wikipedia page as I was watching the movie with commentary on and in real time hearing Fincher negate what was reported

on the Wikipedia page. Which is weird because it's usually a, like, bulletproof source for information. I've never read one wrong thing on Wikipedia up until this moment. People shit on Wikipedia, but a good Wikipedia page, well-maintained, is a lovely thing. And then, yep, sometimes, like you say, people will just be dropping paragraphs. It is amazing that it exists.

And it is better to have resource as an imperfect resource. Right, right, right. Yes. I mean, it's really good for like, I want to learn about elementary physics.

It's less good for like, I need gossip from behind the scenes of my favorite movie or whatever. Yes. Um, but, uh, yes, fight club,

fight, 1999 fight club. Uh, David Fincher's, I want to say, fourth film? That's right. Correct. Wow, that was impressive, David. You did that math in real time?

I counted. One, two, three, four. We're doing this out of order. And a moderate flop on release. Yep. And Instant Cult Classic, A generational cult classic. One of the big DVD generation movies. Part of the legend of

1999 as an iconic year for film. A defining power of DVD movie. Yeah. Very much so. In every sense. In like DVD sales. It looked like a little box. Right. The DVD itself as an object. The using the medium of the DVD and the special features and everything,

and then also just immediate reclamation, immediate cult reappraisal, basically the second this thing hits disc and goes into profit. Like basically was a flop in theaters and within a year of it being on DVD has gone into profit. One of Ana's questions

when we finished watching the movie and I put it back in the DVD that I've had for 23 years. The brown paper bag. Yeah. Why is this a brown paper bag? There's not a single

image like that in the movie. Yeah. And she said is it meant to contain soap? And if so why did they decide on this design? I believe that is

exactly the idea. I think that's part of it and I think the other part of it. Bespoke soap. I thought it was supposed to look maybe like you know like

pornography in the mail brown paper bag like what's inside is too hot to handle. Now I'm trying to find where I read this quote, and I'm embarrassed if it is from the Wikipedia, but I think their

whole thought was, knowing that he prepared this whole holistic thing for it, they were like, we wanted to make a package that spoke to the anti-consumerist message of the movie. So to make the movie look as sort of nondescript as possible. And it's just like, here's the plainest packaging. Like it's almost their version of the Repo Man labels, right?

Where they're like, this is just like garbage. It's like brown paper with a string around it and just says the movie on it. This movie also had like iconically quote unquote bad marketing. Yes. You know, sort of a famous example of like, they don't know what to do. They're putting soap all over the posters. Like, they're confused. Mischief, mayhem, soap. Mischief, mayhem, soap. Great tagline.

Julie Markell, 20th Century Fox's Senior Vice President of Creative Development said the DVD packaging complimented Fincher's vision. The film is meant to make you question. The package, by extension, tries to reflect an experience that you must experience for yourself. What the fuck does that mean?

The more you look at it, the more you'll get it. I don't know what the fuck that means. What are some other DVDs in the running for most iconic DVDs of this time? Well, I would say 1999 has Fight Club and The Matrix. Yeah, but The Matrix DVD was a snap case. It was a snap.

Oh, you're saying the look, exactly. A huge DVD, but that's not like... DVDs that had things on. No, no, no. The Matrix was obviously, I think,

the first million-selling DVD, but it was not a beautiful object. No. This was a DVD that you had to own. It was the law. Here's the better quote. I'm sorry.

We want the package to be simple on the outside so that there would be a dichotomy between the simplicity of brown paper wrapping and the intensity and chaos of what's inside. That's, I think,

the idea. That's fine. Griff, come on, answer his question. I feel like it's a real Griff question. No, what I'm looking through right now...

The other ones were like the Boogie Nights, Magnolia, kind of twofer, the way this and the seven, the twofer. The reason I have to tap out of this is

I grew up in Britain, different packages. And the packages are different. Usually, honestly, God bless the United Kingdom, but they but they're usually i feel like they do not have a good history of like a beautiful package we britain lacks the snap case cardboard that never existed it was always the plastic case interesting um but then obviously also you have to have your what was it like when you first saw a snap case um and what was your first snap it would have to be la confidential i think it was my first snap warner a new line movie yeah and platinum a platinum series uh i can't remember

i watched that movie so many times took a hammer to it i watched i just lit it on fire i was driving on the other side of the road i watched la confidential so many times on dvd i actually broke the DVD, which I didn't know was possible. I'm trying to find this article. There was an Entertainment Weekly article in 2001 that was the 50 essential DVDs.

And it was when DVD was taking over. It was the cover story. And it was basically, here are the 50 DVDs everyone should own. You are not going to find that ever. Because Googling 50 essential DVDs really gets you so much swill. Their fucking formatting is so bad You are not going to find that ever. Because Googling 50 essential DVDs

really gets you so much swill. Their fucking formatting is so bad that it's split across multiple pages. But they put their Fight Club at number one. Makes sense. I remember Criterion Rushmore being way up there, which I think was another big one. You found the full list?

Well, it's, like you say, Boogie Nights is number two. Their site is so broken. God, this is so sad. Yes. That like you actually can't see the rest. But some of their inclusions were just good movies that are now on DVD. Yeah, it's like, okay, I'm like Casablanca, Three Kings.

The Conversation Disc, which has like no good specials. We gotta drop this. Excuse me, we're going deeper into this Are you I have to ask While you're You know You're doing Fincher

Right Are you Is anyone letting you guys be frank Are you going to be frank During this miniseries We haven't recorded that one yet You are You're going to be frank

We aren't Yes What We're going to speak frankly I don't understand I bet you thought I'd never talk about this But we're not doing that

You're not We're not doing House of Cards We're doing The Voice I don't think of being Frank as I think he's referring to House of Cards No he is but I'm saying Or just being Frank Perhaps someone will have an opinion on these movies That you never invited into the studio

Sure So you're not doing House of Cards You said it was illegal for me to be on podcast. I can do House of Cards for you right now. That shows dog shit. All right. You don't like the first two? There was a little mini episode we just did.

I'll do House of Cards for you. Roll credits. I'll do House of Cards for you quickly. Well, well, well. I bet you thought I'd never be on mic again. You don't like the first two Fincher episodes? I think House of Cards stinks. It stinks. Like the Fincher episodes, that's probably the worst shit he's ever done i mean

it looks fine i never watched it i'm a much bigger fan of the short form content delivering monologues to you in that fucking accent right which is done really well three times on youtube on christmas day yeah that's the best version of it cut the fat we've said this before right alex that you had this thought of like i should make every actor YouTube on Christmas Day. That's the best version of it. Cut the fat. We've said this before, right, Alex, that you had this thought of like, I should make every actor audition. Yeah, with Let Me Be Frank. Right, and you're just like, if they can deliver this, then they can

do anything. That's the only thing to test. They don't need to read pages from my actual script. I'm really compelled by Kevin Spacey's ongoing trial and all these character witnesses that are just coming in and saying, like, he's a really good guy. Normal. Let's drop that. Let's drop the DVD thing.

Let's talk about Fight Club. When did you first see it, Alex? Not permitted to be Frank, apparently. Apparently. Opening night, like October, whatever, 15th? October 15th. You're not even allowed to be Frank anymore. I mean, literally, yes.

Don't talk about frank woke culture has like made it difficult for kevin spacey to participate in polite society because the crimes he's accused you're almost making it sound like it's illegal to be frank like if you were frank you'd currently be on trial it's funny to do like a joke version like oh i can't even like eat m&m anymore without the woke police it's like wow i can't even talk about kevin spacey without there being some sort of woke discussion apparently i'm not even to be kevin spacey without people getting upset you laugh david bring him up and impersonate him saying various things without people having a problem with that yes but you know schrader would agree he would say i can't simply tell producers of a film that this movie would only

work with kevin in the lead role without someone telling, I can't simply tell producers of a film that this movie would only work with Kevin in the lead role without someone telling me I can't cast Kevin Spacey in 2020. It is literally in his contracts that he has to log off Facebook when his movies come out. Well, well, well.

Entertainment Weekly says Matrix is the first best DVD of all time in a snapper case. Not to quote something of my own, but in the documentary I made about Schrader

where he says, you know, this script is just a fastball coming right down the plate and kevin's just there ready to hit it i i i have thought of that quote and i also think about that thing where ridley scott cut him out of all the money in this world and they're like was he good in the movie though and ridley scott's like yeah he's great but you know just i wanted to put my fucking movie out like so he's gotta go like i just i just imagine Kevin Spacey standing at an actual

home plate Kevin at the plate I swear to God we're probably gonna cut all this out right yeah I think so you know what's one of my favorite parts of that Ridley Scott press tour for all the money in the world it was around then when someone was

like yeah it was like around the time that like he was reshooting that or Lord Miller got fired and people were just like, so what do you think of like young directors running amok? Right. Do you remember this? I feel like this is one of the most underrated Ridley quote. I think that anytime Ridley Scott gives an interview, you're going to get at least one way slab of juicy ham.

Nearly verbatim where he's like, well, look, you hire someone who has experience, you know what you're getting verbatim where he's like well look you hire someone who has experience you know what you're getting so like when you pay me my fee which is considerable yes i remember that yes that's which is considerable that is what i always think of is him just saying like look i'm not gonna lie i need a lot of money but what you're getting is someone who's going to get in and get out and not give you any trouble i just feel like he had that

thing about the accents in Last Duel where he was like, shut the fuck up. Stop worrying about it. That I appreciate. That's been going around a lot. He's just got so many good quotes. You're not really cutting out the House of Cards talk. This is Fincher or Jason. We're going to cut some of it. It's Fincher or Jason. I saw Fight Club opening night.

I also saw it again Saturday night. You saw it two nights in a row. Was that the plan? No. Or after you saw it, you were just like, I gotta i gotta go right it became the plan by the end of the movie when where did you see it at the amc marple 10 wow uh a big multiplex in marple newton pennsylvania newtown pennsylvania griffin near a circuit city in a big parking lot you would have been nay 10 years old correct when when Fight Club came out? I did not see this movie in theaters.

I can't imagine you saw it in theaters. No, I think like the following spring or summer Okay. Would have been out on DVD

at that point. Boys sleepover party. Boys having a sleepover? Uh-huh. And they watched Fight Club? I think it was not even Kidding me. DVD.

My memory is that it was perhaps VHS. Amen. His mom rented a couple R-rated movies. He was one of the kids whose parents let him watch R-rated movies. And they put Fight Club on, and I was pretty into it. And everyone was just going like, when do we see tits? When do we see tits and blood?

It's like, no, this movie is kind of more about like, sort of how like Gen X guys feel like they don't have any balls. It's like a bunch of 13 year olds. You got to the weird bullet time sex sequence. Sure. Where everyone started like pausing and trying to like. Right. Like discern.

Frame by frame it. And then pretty shortly after that, they were like, let's watch something else. And then we probably. Wow. You didn't even finish. Who knows what.

2000. Maybe we put on how the Grinch stole Christmas. Was there another R-rated movie? Did maybe someone find out what someone did last summer, perhaps? Right, or like something about Mary. I'm guessing we went to a comedy. Sure. Right, but I remember one other person at the party being like,

that was kind of good, right? Yeah, I was kind of digging it. So then I rented it after that. I somehow talked to my parents and let me rent it, or I saw it on cable or whatever it was. I saw it shortly after that. FX used to have a thing, getting back to the important subject, called DVD on TV. I remember this.

I think this was maybe the first way. Where they would give you some special features. They put the special features in the broadcast. I remember that. Yeah. So no commercial breaks, but they sort of take the uncensored version of the film where the commercial breaks would be. But imagine being that person and saying, hey, did you buy that on tvd i'm waiting for fx dv on tv i watch dvd on tv i don't need to put a thing into another thing you don't know experience these special

big companies trick you they make you think you gotta buy the dvd they put the dvds on tv for free ben did you see fight club in theaters no. You also would have been a little young. Yeah. Now, were you too busy Fight Clubbing? Aren't we the same age, Ben? No, I think... I'm 38. Yeah, I think you're two years older than Ben.

I turned 39 last week. So I was... Happy birthday. If we'd record this earlier, I'd be 38. Okay. Yeah. How are you two young? We fucked it up.

Perfect age for a guy like you to want to join Project Mayhem. I suppose that's true. You were even like 14. Yeah. I mean, it's just like you can't automatically sneak into an R-rated movie when you're 14. I mean, I did. Yeah, he did. But back then, I feel like it probably was a little more like, all right, we got to plan the sneak in.

Well, this was still during the post-Columbine crackdown on R-rated movies where theaters were encouraged to be very, very hard on. We can't let the kids watch movies that would make them go back most of 99 it was really like theaters would ask to see an id my big thing was i had a a visa bucks card which was the credit card made for children basically that was like a debit card that your parents could put a little money like a hundred dollars a month or whatever right and once they started putting the ticket machines in theaters rather than having to go to the ticket taker i could as a young person with a hundred dollars a month to spend go to the machine buy a ticket and they'd be like you're 18 and i'd be like absolutely you know 14 i look like i'm nine

right and they'd be like and they id'd you and, yep, they ID'd me when I bought the ticket. You could act like, I already talked to that guy. That guy already cleared me. Yeah. That was my move for years. So Ben, so you saw it.

Did you see it on the porch? Um, for sure. I've watched this movie hundreds. I have no doubt. You've seen fight club many, many times. I will say,

uh, the way that I was able to get my hands on the DVD is me and my friends shoplifting. Oh! Just like, steal this movie! This movie is so pivotal to me. This is like me taking acid for the first time. This is my introduction to what it's like

to be a misanthrope adult. This is your brain. This is your brain on Fight Club. Yes, absolutely. 100%. Right. I'm not surprised to hear this. This is like around the time of me starting to take drugs and reading Bukowski. And the Fight Club is somewhere right in there. Yeah. A lot of, you know, like you're a millennial, but the Gen X, you know, disconnected, like,

fuck, you know, consumer capitalism, fuck man mindset is is very appealing to you absolutely you want to fight oh yeah sure did that make you specifically appeal to maybe have right you've always uh struck me as a kind of perpetual uh hellion near do well just like say me i'm a lover not a fighter right i don't get big fight energy from you as much yeah my friends and i did not start a fight club after watching this movie because even when the most mad i've ever seen you get you kind of just like stomp around yeah and i yell yeah and i punch things you punch things so i will say i i was kind of more the type of beat yourself up you were doing the edward norton in the office yeah yeah

was the mayhem appealing did you want to do the sort of public art destruction and absolutely arson like 100 that seems more interesting to you and me also than fighting yes i i right away was like i should commit vandalism yeah yeah. Went on to get into graffiti. Of course. What was your tag? I'm not going to say. He won't say it. It's come up before. It still stands in some places? Well, I think so. I'm sure it does.

Banksy? Ben, what was the thing I was going to say? Did you get into soap? Soap making? No. Fat rendering? No Okay I did not see this in theaters For it was rated 18

In the United Kingdom Illegal Can't sneak into an 18 I could sneak into a 15 So you're 12 I'm 13 I'm 13 And I snuck into The Matrix

Which was rated 15 Yeah But I did not sneak into Fight Club Saw that at the Marple Newton theater as well You entered The Matrix So that was the theater for 99. Three Kings there as well.

Three Kings. Saw everything there. Three Kings, I believe number 47 on Entertainment Weekly's 50 best DVDs. Excusingly, yes. I owned it. Wait, can I just give a DVD tangent of this era after David finishes his story?

I don't have a story. I don't remember when I first saw this movie. It was on video. Yes. Like probably the year after. Do you guys remember the website real.com which was the dvd selling website yes do you remember this was like 99 2000 their daily trivia question where if you got it right you got either a quarter or 50 cents of credit wow and you And you played every day. Wow.

And it would just be like a multiple choice trivia question. Okay. And it wasn't one winner. It was anyone who got it right. Anyone who got it right. I think it was a quarter. Would get a quarter. Okay.

Of credit for real.com. Yeah. And I, in a very Ben prankster way, I had set up a second email address. Sure. So that on one, I got it right every-

Which was harder to do back then. You couldn't just set up an email address for free easily. No, there's no Gmail. It required like a little bit. I think I just used my dad's email address or something. And so I would play it on mine, get it right some of the time,

then go to the other account, get it right every single day. Because now I knew the answer. Sure. And then like every, you know, two months I had enough money to buy like a $14.99 Snapcase DVD. Yeah.

And that was how I got Three Kings. Snap. Snap like a hot dog. Right. Because every other company was like some variation on plastic, like deep case. A clamshell of sorts. And then Warner Brothers and New Line were just like, what if it's 90% cardboard? What if you left it out in the rain once?

Yes. Ruined. Which is also like it would bend and fold yes i'm just looking here at this cover story i remember most of these not even being on the list the images they have for the dvd cover are aaron brockovich the x files gladiator silence of the lambs i think the criterion version gladiator was a big one that was one of the first movies that came out concurrently on DVD and video. Yes, and I think it was a two-disc-er. Sixth Sense,

which I assume would have been the Vista version edition. Toy Story, which they had the Ultimate Toy Box box set. Wizard of Oz, Saving Private Ryan. And then the,

it's You've Got the Player. Now here's our guide to the essential disc. The only other thing on the cover is the banner on top is a picture of Eminem and it says, Will Grammy reward eminem's hate rhymes ah thoughts on that david let him be frank yeah

eminem doesn't let him be marshall sorry i think i'm i think the gladiator thing isn't that it came out at the same time because it was like 2000 i think it was the gladiator and x-men came out the same day i could see that that was like i remember the gladiator dvds i remember the gladiator dvd being very heavy on special features and the whole story with that movie of course was like they recreated rome as it as it stood yeah that was 3 000 years ago i was that was like black friday when i was working at suncoast video at the mall when those two dvds came out and i had to wear like a Gladiator button and an X-Men button. And people would come up and they would hit you on the chest for which movie they wanted. Right. And then I

whipped one from behind. I remember having to buy or wanting to buy the X-Men DVD at Blockbuster because they had a promotion where if you bought it there exclusively, it came with a mini CD-ROM that had additional special features that weren't on the disc. But one of those horribly sized CD-ROM that had additional special features

that weren't on the disc, but one of those horribly sized CD-ROMs. Yeah, the tiny GameCube-sized ones. That would sometimes get lodged inside and fuck up your machine. They sure would. You really needed a tray that had a little divot

that you could put it inside. I almost remember it being like rectangle-shaped. Trust a few, fear the rest. It wasn't rectangle-shaped. You found this? You found the mini? I mean no

but those mini discs were circular they had to be my friend they did not have to I remember getting some oddly shaped ones that would fuck you up

that was the whole point they'd be like this has to you can only play it in certain types of players because otherwise the shape will mess it up but it's the whole

I'm gonna find disc trays had this thing this divot in the middle that was circular. Yes. Well, you could spin a rectangle in there. It was smaller than that space,

but oddly shaped. I guarantee you, I'm going to find this. I'm with David on this. I don't think Griffith's memory is my strategy. I don't think the technology exists for that.

I'm going to find this. Because the laser wouldn't be able to make any sense. I'm going to find this. Let's keep talking about Fight Club. I'm going to find this. I'm the only one who saw this on initial release. This makes me feel like I'm gonna find this. Let's keep talking about Fight Club. I'm gonna find this. I'm the only one who saw this on initial release. This makes me feel like I'm 10 years older than you guys. But it's

just a very slim, you know, like, if I was just a couple years older, it probably would have... It was rated 18. Sure. Well, let me say this. It was that sort of thing. Like, the movie is violent and obviously has sex, but I think it was truly, like, rated 18 for, like, this is too anarchic and grown up right like

just fundamentally like well if i can be frank i will say that like whatever i was 14 maybe 15 great age to see this movie in the theater twice opening weekend yeah changed everything really let me know what the world was about i mean look i like fight club i'm happy to talk about it today but it just was not this movie for me feel like it wasn't for you either grip no i know it was fundamentally for many people of our generation was that because you came to it six months or a year later because you just didn't have the thoughts that lined up with this movie yes i just did not have that masculine you weren't mad at the fucking world no no the matrix is yeah i was so happy no the matrix is my

1999 the world doesn't make sense movie more than fight club right i mean if you think about me now sure that's sort of where i fall to this day totally that you are wearing actually we should say all leather with a floor-length jacket right and the propeller heads are playing from a speaker on my shoulder whereas ben is shirtless listening to the dust brothers good score i'm sending we'll talk about the music griffin is about to send an oblong ebay link or whatever i don't have anything in front of me so i i was right and wrong the x-men cd-rom i was remembering was in fact a little three inch round cd-rom yes it's a mini this is a mini cd but i'm going to send you as a supplement that I was not fundamentally wrong that sometimes

they were oddly shaped. Let me see. What this eBay listing refers to as Animal House Odd Shaped CD. Look at this little guy. Look at this funny little disc. Look at this funny little disc.

Animal House Odd Shaped. Now, okay. Now, what's happened here is so sick. David is still right, though. It's basically... He was right about the X-Men one no I'm right in general

this is a circular DVD that has this reaches the edges of the tray I'm gonna keep finding so what this is if you zoom in on this you can see that

the amount of space on the disc is less than the wonky shape correct so this still fits in your tray they have created a mini I mean it looks

so stupid basically it looks like someone took two bites Oh no I'm looking Oh you're looking Okay out of a Out of a regular sized disc It is so silly

Look We love DVDs We love them And as we pointed out Ono and I When we watched this When he flaps his arms And says whoa

In front of the car That was in like Every Fox power of DVD pre-roll Right That shot is in every Like welcome to DVD. And that's why it's important. Fight Club.

That's the reason it was important because of its role in the Fox power of DVD pre-roll. Look, I cannot deny this film's importance in DVD culture. Like that is certainly a bedrock of its, you know, legacy. I won't deny it. Ben? What's up, Grave? Our sponsor for this week's episode is...

Chex Notes. No sponsor? That's right. It's the ultimate bid. Usually society plays the bid on us trying to sell us stuff. Shove it down our throats. You need to improve yourself. You gotta buy stuff.

You are what you own. Get better clothes. Get better furniture. Get a friggin' mattress. Buy a bunch of action figures. Society is constantly telling all of us to buy action figures all the time. Like the Fight Club action figures I bought and recently put in our shelf in the studio. The point is, Ben, we said let's get meta with it.

No ads this episode. That's right. This is our anti-establishment stance for this one episode. It's a bit that costs us money. that costs us money. And yeah, sure, I did plan when we set this in motion to come up with a bunch of fake ads.

And I ran out of time. Because that's what society wants you to do. They want you to work for free. They want you to come up with fake ads, sell fake products. To mock companies that pay us money. We're not going to do catalogs, but we're sticking it to those sponsors for one week and one week only. Next week, we'll welcome them back warmly.

Thank you for supporting our podcast. But this week, you can't sell anything to us. Yeah, man. We haven't sold out at all. At all. For this one week. For this one week. For this one week, we pointedly didn't sell out.

Because usually we go, oh, good. We sold out this episode.. For this one week. For this one week, we pointedly didn't sell out. Because usually we go, oh, good, we sold out this episode. All three ad slots filled. This week, we said no ads. We X'd them. We X'd them out. We went, and I think

it's really brave of us. I think it's really brave. I think this is the year we should finally win a Streamy. And OB is the one I've been really angling for for a while.

A Streamy? A Streamy. I'm not familiar. Isn't it like the Internet Awards? a streamy and ob is the one i've been really angling for for a while stream a streamy i'm not familiar is that like the internet awards isn't it you're thinking of webby oh yeah i think the streamy is something as well maybe maybe but let's get let's get them all all right yeah this is the year though for us to actually just get an honorable mention for bravery and a nobel peace prize absolutely and a pulitzer. In the war against advertisement. Yeah. Yeah. And once again, next week, our sponsors are back and we love them.

We love every single one of them. But this week, you can't sell us shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Shit. Have any of you read the book? Oh, yeah. That's my other question. I assumed immediately. And I assumed, right. Did you read the book oh that's my other question i assumed immediately and i assumed right did you read it after i read it after yeah me too but then i became a real like diehard paul and nick i was definitely with paul and nick for a couple of years as well i was looking at his bibliography he's actually written a lot of books for a while he was like one a year yeah he's one of those guys he's not unlike a kevin sm Smith where it's just like he has his fan base. Yes. He will pack a bookstore once a year with the same people.

He will sell the same number of books. You can't go broke and you'll never get rich. But like there's just that fan base there. Yeah. Yeah. I was with him for a while. They're not going to teach him in literature classes. Do you know what I mean?

He's like a little bit. Well, Ben. Well, Ben. Well, well. teach him in literature classes do you know what i mean he's like a little bit well ben well well i read this book in college what as part of my post-american to post-war american literature class it was the last book we studied and this guy was like this is a totemic work of like you know kind of point out ben is punching the wall right now he is is. He's so mad. God damn it. I read the book. I read it in college. This book and American Psycho were like the first two books

I ever read in my life for fun after I was a child. Like there was a, there was like a nine year. It's just funny if you think that way. There's like a nine year gap where I didn't read a book. Why not?

Because reading was lame. I was a kid. I had video games to play and like fires to start. Well, reading's great. I was a kid. I had video games to play and like fires to start. Well, reading's great. I'm hooked on phonics. Well, right, but I've also heard that reading is fundamental. When reading became homework, you don't want to do it. Is that a poster?

Yeah. You don't remember that one? It's Britain, man. I was probably told that reading was like a big cup of tea or whatever they were telling me over there. Whatever their fucking propaganda campaign was. I mean, to be clear, I loved reading. But you, okay, when did you drop reading? Like, age 10?

Like, when it became homework. All right, Griffin's sending another. God, let's see what this one is. Uh, look. It seems to be a square. It is a fucking rectangle business card. Blank CD that is no longer available for sale, but was sold in packs of 100 from B&H Co.

Do they still sell them? And can the blank check business cards be on these? Yep, I found another link. We could order them from... This is, okay, Bands CDs. So it's no longer available, sure. Bandscds.co.uk. We are currently having issues sourcing stock of the business card CDs,

so unfortunately we will not be able to deliver any new orders. I'm trying to see if anyone still printing the joy of slapping one of those in someone's palm and saying like, go home and feel that weight, buddy. Go home and pop it and don't scratch it.

Don't put it in your pocket. Yeah. You better not let anything touch any other metal objects. Do you like the book, David? I did you read other

Palahniuk? I think I read Survivor, which that's that's like the uh the airplane cult one i read choke that may be it i remember diary and haunted being kind of big books the one after choke with like a bird on the lullaby i think that was the last one i read lullaby i always loved the detail and that where the character is building his own monument to himself. He's like stacking rocks up in like his like backyard. I always just found that to be intriguing. That sounds good.

I mean, I remember Choke and then that was a movie. Did someone make a diary movie? I think. Or maybe someone wanted to. Choke was Clark Gregg made it. Correct. He's one of those like, yeah, like one of those writers that just, he either was going to have like a Grisham-esque run of everything becomes a movie or nothing does because it's all

just like or even like dennis lahane yeah it's just too rare too esoteric like i just feel like there was like it used to be every year his new book whether or not it got good reviews yeah posters you'd see you know it would be at the front of the, you know, fucking borders, right? You know, like, and then around 2008, 2009, it's sort of like, you forget about him. You know, whatever. But he's still just making a book a year. And you see his shelf and you're like, wow, he has like nine new books. Yeah, no, those are the only two that were made into films.

I did read, I didn't read the book. I read Fight Club 2. Oh, you read the graphic novel. Which was his comic sequel. And I didn't realize there was also a Fight Club 3 a recent ish fight club 3 um but most of fight club 2 is about tyler durden sort of trapped inside the narrator's brain it was drawn by david mack right looks looks cool oh the covers the covers are david mack cameron stewart did the arts fair enough yeah um i like the book yeah uh you know it's you know i

am jack splauer you know you know i am john's bile i am john you know it's all that remember that i haven't read it since 2000 this would be 2006 yeah no i read it like exactly at the time the movie you know i got the movie tie-in edition um it felt like you know it felt like a lot of these these like the you know uh bakowski or whatever i'm like there's a point of view here it's it's this you know starkly written thing i sort of admire it but i never was like this guy's talking to me if that makes sense right i was like he's going there right he's saying shit that i think that no one is saying. Now, how do you feel about Fight Club now? I immediately was radicalized.

I'm trying to say you watch it now and you are kind of like, I mean, points were made. I've written down here, life is bullshit and meaningless. Right there on the top of Ben's yellow legal path. I will say- We are now the age of the characters in Fight Club. Yeah, which sucks

almost older maybe i mean at least possibly early 30s yeah right it's yeah they still seem older than me um i just watching it sure well they're like uh adults um i uh ben tyler durden in the series artwork or do we not know yet we don't know you don't know i just kind of feel like that's right there probably what happened i mean put That's a fastball coming right down the plate and Ben's just standing there ready to hit it. I imagine that I'm seven, but I look a lot older. Benjamin Button. I have to imagine that's where I'll end up. I mean, that's there for you.

Specifically that version. And David is probably, I don't know, the girl with the dragon tattoo. Hey, fuck. Yeah. You know, go off. That sounds good. Wait, what was the thing I was going to say? Oh, Ben and I were specifically yesterday after we recorded David and you rushed off.

Ben and I were talking about our shared insomnia and how bad it's been recently. And then I put this movie on and forgot how much that's a part of it. And it just immediately hit. It's about having insomnia. Way too hardomnia way too hard way too hard yeah yeah I'm going a little crazy

we're both not sleeping well unfortunately woke up today at five in the morning well I have fun news for you guys I'm also sleeping

very poorly yeah because of stress yeah well there's that and also I fell asleep at 1015 last night watching Secret Invasion by myself.

Well, Secret Invasion, of course, is prescribed this year by all doctors for quick and deep sleep. I crawled into bed and was knocked out by 10.30. I mean, the thing about Secret Invasion is the episode says it's 50 minutes long. It's actually four minutes long. It's a black screen. No one actually makes it that far.

My problem is, my sleep issue is stress and whatever, all the usual stuff, but also my roommate keeps on fucking bringing Hell in the Bottom Carter back and having the world's loudest sex with her, and I don't even remember having a roommate. Who is the Tyler Durden of the dynamic

here? Of our group? Yeah. Ben. Ben is like the potentially fictitious figure who has spawned from your inner thoughts. He's the one who like, we wouldn't be doing this if not for Ben. It's a little suspicious that suddenly he was... What if it's just the two of you? If it's just the two of us? Yeah.

Ben is meatloaf. I'm David Sellerdert, no question. Yeah, because he's the sort of more, you know, chaotic sort of, yeah, encouraged to do bad things. Yes. Okay. I'm sleepy. L'enfant terrible. But you sleep well, chaotic. Sort of, yeah. Encouraged to do bad things. Yes. Okay. I'm sleepy. L'enfant terrible.

But you sleep well sometimes. When? Yeah. I mean, I'm waking up early. This movie changed everything for young guys. And Polonik kind of with it. Well, it's also, it's crystallizing a thing. This movie has the thesis,

see, here's my thing with Fight Club. I like this movie. I feel like this is a movie that's reputation is constantly being damaged by the world's most annoying people liking it for the wrong reasons. From the beginning of it.

As with a lot of films. Right. And a lot of the most sort of popular quote unquote cult films as much as that's a thing anymore. Right. Rewatching it, I was like, right,

this is so much better and I have remembered it being because of the annoying people, you know? Like, the actual act of watching this, I really kind of loved. I do find, like, the expression of what this movie is sort of getting at, for me, reaches its peak form in Jackass. Another great instruction manual for hurting yourself and breaking things and not just the fighting part of it but it's the same thing of like it's like this is a generation of men who have no outlet who have been made like irrelevant right there's like some weird animalistic

urge that like no longer has a place the big i mean of course there's the crossover of brad pitt being on jackass and one of the best jackass moments. Yeah. Jackass. Yes. I mean, that's that's a fair point. The sort of like what what else can we do? I mean, Pitt in this movie.

But damage our bodies for glee. And Knoxville are aesthetically very similar. Yeah. He looks a lot. He has like a real early Knoxville look. But jackass is similar as like that was another thing when I was in high school. Yes. Every all the fucking boys would talk about it all the time.

And I'd be like, can we talk about anything else? Was it called Jack Arse? Were you? They would, they would call it that. Yes, they would. They would. Yes. It wasn't spelled that way, but yes, they couldn't help themselves.

Jack Arse. Yeah, of course. They would correct it. They fucking can't. They don't, they can't conceive of certain words. No, Jack Arse. If they said ass, you could feel them having to shift their bodies into being able to say it. Jack ass. Like they would like have to shift their bodies into being able to say it. Jack ass.

Like, they would have to sort of stand up straight for a second. Jack arse is obviously the less nihilistic expression of the same instincts. You just spelled jack ass and people just say it. Finish your thought, Griff. No, I just think it's a... There was a Fincher quote. I don't know if it's in the dossier. Crack the dossier open now.

Here's a good transition point. But there was some quote... There's a lot in this movie that shouldier open now. Here's a good transition point. But there was some quote. There's a lot in this movie that should be talked about. There's a quote I found that was basically like, the problem is that like men are genetically like designed to be hunters and we're in a society where there's nothing for them to hunt anymore. So you become like consumers and there's like some pent up energy that has no outlet anymore. And as a teen boy, I felt, thank God i don't have to hunt and gather i'd much rather

i think you read my book are the same in that sense where those are not the things that make me feel out of touch with society is that i can't hunt right uh and jackass is like the more productive of expression of that same frustration because it's like oh there's a genuine camaraderie found there not that i don't relate to the nihilism of this movie, but I feel like my nihilism manifests in a very different way. Um, let me, I'll give you some dossier here.

I think that's a good call. Um, so, uh, Chuck Palahniuk, Palahniuk, Palahniuk, the pronunciation is Palahniuk.

Palahniuk, Palahniuk, uh, right. Right. It's a book called invisible monsters that he cannot get published. Um, which I have your, uh, you know, I'm trying to remember what that one's about.

It's like about a disfigured model, I think. Yeah, that's okay. Yes. It was seen as too disturbing. She's like, you know, feels invisible now that she's not beautiful or something. And it's sort of. Hey, man. Can I read this exact quote just because I found it?

It's from Film Comment. He said, we're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's nothing to kill anymore. There's nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. And that societal emasculation, this everyman,

the narrator, is created. Which is the whole thing with this movie. Is this Fincher or Palladar? That's Fincher. The like, 1999,

society is collapsing, nothing matters. What are you reading that from? It's a film comment interview. In, how'd you find it? I found a hyperlink to it. On what? Wikipedia. but now i'm on the

article itself inside out david finch by gavin smith september october 1999 go on let me let me read from the dossier now chuck ponock uh decides i'm never gonna get published i might as well write something for the fun of it so fight club is written with no thought, really, of commercial success, I suppose. Norton publishes it. It sells a little bit. 5,000 copies. And Joshua Donan, the son of Stanley Donan. Okay.

Do you know who Joshua Donan is? No. He had produced two films. The Underneath, Steven Soderbergh's film. Not a bad movie. But unsuccessful. Yes. And Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead.

A great film. So he is Stanley Donen's son who is whatever, trying to, you know, kind of make his way in Hollywood. A nepo baby. Classic.

A bit of a nepo baby. Loves the twist of the book, the iconic twist at the end. And sends, he basically records a reading of the novel. Okay. And sends it to Laura Ziskin

at Fox 2000, which is, at the time, does Searchlight exist? In like 1999? But like, it's sort of like in between Searchlight

and regular Fox, right? It was sort of the concept of Fox 2000. Yes. Right? Like, it's kind of like,

we're going to do like mid to big-ish. Fox 2000 existed until like five years ago. Very recently. It was one of the things that finally got shuttered during the Disney sale.

was, like, the Kate Winslet, Idris Elba mountain movie. That's the mountain. The mountain between us. Excuse me. The mountain between us. I think that was the last Fox 2000 movie.

I'm sorry. The Woman in the Window, which ended up being sold to Netflix. Right. They sold a lot of them off. Was the last one. But it was basically

shut down in 2019. But at this point, Fox 2000 has done things like One Fine Day. They gave us One Fine Day. Volcano, The Coast Was Toast. The Thin Red Line was a Fox 2000 film. Right?

They're kind of all over the place. Never Been Kissed. This same year. You haven't? I'm working on it. David, reigning threes from all on it. David, raining threes from all over court. No, their 1999 list is Ravenous, Never Been Kissed,

Pushington, Lake Placid, Broke Down Palace, Best Laid Plans, Fight Club, Light It Up, Anywhere But Here, Anna and the King. That's a bizarre collection of movies. That's just 2000? That's just Fox 2000? That's just 99. No, I'm saying that is all Fox 2000. That's a movie every five weeks for the year. Basically. That's crazy. They were their main

outlet I think and then Fox was just like Phantom Menace and nothing else right I guess and then whatever family films they must have released

that year I mean they probably felt like they had to clear the deck before the calendar turned and they looked ridiculous come the year 2000

they were like ironically only three films in the year 2000 but I mean like the thing you just read the list of movies it's exactly that's exactly right it's like you know you can't even really pinpoint apart from that those movies i guess all were not blockbuster sized or indie size that's about it right that just used to be called movies yes i don't know what you're talking about um laura ziskin reads the book and it blows her mind uh so she options it the rights for ten

thousand dollars and it's just like i don't know how you make a movie out of this but i want to you know figure out if someone can um uh there's another guy called raymond bon Giovanni who uh also uh worked at Fox and died of a blood infection at 41 and his his obituary claimed that bringing Fight Club to the screen was his dying wish. Okay. They throw it to a director named David O. Russell. Which makes sense. Absolutely. Like that he's just done flirting with disaster. I can absolutely

see them thinking like, yeah, he you know, he's got the twisted mind suitable, right? Sure. I mean, sure. At the time yes. Right? I mean, I don't know no i can see it i can yeah who else was there really uh well oh well well we can well well well uh david o russell says he did not understand the book i read it i didn't get it i didn't do a good job reading it obviously is his retrospective thought of the matter of course he made Three Kings in 1999. So he's, you know, he's getting his big project as well.

They get the book over to Fincher and say, you got to read it tonight. And Fincher's like, I'm not going to read a book in one night. And they're like, you know, you do,

you're going to read it really fast. His agent reached out and said, you need to read this thing. And he went, I barely read books. Right. And he went,

I'm telling you, one night, and he goes, right now, pitch me on the phone the reason need to read this thing. And he went, I barely read books. Right. And he went, I'm telling you, one night, and he goes, right now, pitch me on the phone the reason I should read this book. And his agent says to him, there's a guy in it who pisses in soup and splices porn into family films, and there's a scene where he takes

a guy out of a convenience store, holds him up at gunpoint, says, what do you want to be doing? And he says, I want to be a vet, but the school was too hard. And he says, I know where you you live i'll come back in a year and shoot you or six weeks if you're not in classes and fincher was like i'm sold i'll fucking read the book and what hang on fincher then said does this guy with the gun does he quote forrest gump does he like forrest gump and the agent said just read and find out just Just read and find out. I have a lot of thoughts about Tyler Durden's relationship with Forrest Gump.

We can get into that. Put a pin in that. He was like I absolutely want to do this and then his agent is like great news. Laura Ziskin and Fox just bought it and then he was like well now I'm fucked. He's like I will not work with Fox. His big comparison which I do think is very interesting is he's like this is the graduate.

Which I do love. He's like it's about coming of age right except these days you come of age in your 30s and you feel like disaffected in your 30s now right like it's like that kind of vibe and beyond just that he had obviously had a terrible experience with Fox doing Alien 3 I think he also was just like

this was a thing I was hoping I could option develop and then bring to them as a package thing if they're already trying to develop it internally it's going to get fucked up. Let me ask a question about Fincher. Now you guys, so you if you didn't even see this in theaters you probably hadn't seen Seven when you first saw this. No I did. I've seen Seven.

Yes. You have. On video. Yeah so like that but not enough that you were like I want to see the new movie from the guy that made Seven. Probably not. I mean this is probably around when I'm starting to care about directors and reading Empire Magazine. Because this is something I felt now re-watching the movie for the 102nd time in my life,

but the first time in, I don't know, 15 years, is at the time, I think that Fincher made perfect sense as the guy who made this movie after seven in the game which like i didn't know until like 2006 were in that order sure i always was like it must go seven and then fight club sure and it wasn't i was like when i learned i was like wait the games in the blew my mind game fucking rules it does rule but then at the time it was like this is a perfect fincher thing and now 20 years later with more i'm, I actually can't quite figure out if I think he is the perfect person for this movie, knowing what we know now or at the time.

Because it does seem very strange, considering the filmmaker he has become. And to hear him tell it, like, there's some quote on Wikipedia, you know, maybe it's inaccurate, but he's like, oh, this is too much locations, too much moving around for half. It's just like, this doesn't really seem like the path he followed. No. Because this is too much locations too much moving around for half it's just like this doesn't really seem like the path he followed no because this is a very anarchic movie yes and nobody would now be like well david finch are an anarchic filmmaker yeah yeah so therefore this now seems very strange to me in a way that i never basically like i felt like i kept on spending most of my days watching people load and unload stuff off of trucks in order to get three lines of dialogue i want to watch people load and unload stuff off of trucks in order to get three lines of dialogue. Yeah, I want to watch people

load and unload stuff in a scene all day with zero lines of dialogue. This is also, though, like, to your point, this is the most overtly funny movie he has made up until this point. I think you could make the argument that it's the, I mean, Gone Girl, I guess, qualifies now as that's comedic-ish, but, like,

this is his only funny movie. Like, Gone Girl has a black humor to it, but this is a comedy. This is, I think Social Network is also funny. This is a satire. Social Network is funny.

Social Network is funny in its way. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and all that. But yes. I think this movie

highlights his, like, more sense of humor more than your, it's easier to identify the comedy in things. Like, even Seven and the Game

now play funnier. Oh, of course. Knowing his sense of humor. It's the comedy in things. Like, even Seven and the Game now play funnier. Oh, of course. Knowing his sense of humor. It's the Kubrick thing. It's like, this guy's funny and there's humor in his movies, but like, Social Network is funny because it's Sorkin and there's quirk to it. Gone Girl is funny because it's campy. Right. This movie

is funny because it's a satire. Yes. And I don't think of Fincher as a satirical filmmaker. No, not really. Especially in the decades. I mean, Social Network is not a satire. No, it's a satire yes and i don't think of fincher as a satirical filmmaker especially not really in the decades i mean social network is not a satire uh no it's not this is a satire and that's a very specific kind of comedy but weirdly like the fucked upness of this in 99 was connected to his work in a way that i don't think it's connected at all anymore i think a lot of it truly on a stupid like studio surface level was like, well, Seven was fucked up. And it's fucked up in a way that's entirely different from this movie. This guy loves drippy wet houses.

Right. And I think they were just like, we need someone who's fucked up. We need something that's intense. He was the fucked up guy. Right. That was what we loved about him. He's a little bit the fucked up guy. He's such a Gen X guy, too.

That's also true. Yeah, that's why you'd think a Gen X guy would just not be the guy to make a movie about the golden age of Hollywood because that's just not his thing. Yeah. But it goes back to just like in this moment, I think in 1999 the studios were like coming off the whole

like Rebels in the Backlot, right? 90s indie revolution, those guys working their way into the studio system you guys haven't covered any of those guys this is kind of this is the first like of the big

because Soderbergh has so many movies and Tarantino is so over discussed and I'm trying to think who else we got David O. Russell's the greatest filmmaker well obviously David O. Russell

I talk about him so much in my regular life I just you know I get exhausted I need a break PTA you guys haven't really done like the 90s Gen X

because they're the most discussed filmmakers of our generation. I think it's felt a little overchewed for us. For sure. To a certain degree. But there was that feeling

of like in the late 60s, in the early 70s, I think largely spurred by Graduate and Easy Rider. Suddenly these movies became really fucking profitable. And it was the studios reacting to an audience they

hadn't thought to make movies for in a style they hadn't understood before. And then 1999 feels like, I think it's the reason it produces so many films that are now feel like this last gasp, is I think the studios were like, it's time for another Reckoning, right? It's time for another disruptive force in cinema.

We have to give all these guys big-ass budgets and assume that they're going to convert to mainstream success. And so I think even if you're not correctly identifying what is Fincher's skill set, if you're a studio exec in 1997 when this movie's getting set up, you're just like,

his shit's edgy and it was popular. Seven made so much money. That's the thing. He made this movie that's really fucked up, and it was a big hit. Even if it's a different kind of fucked up than this book. And he was frank in that movie.

He was very frank. Let him be frank. I just, really watching this again. I bet you wonder what's in this box. He literally is in that movie. Yes, he is.

He's frank. He's letting him be frank. We haven't recorded Seven at this moment. We're going to drive him insane in that episode. No, I'm excited for it. I just,

this was a very complex re-watch for me as someone who like ben ingested this movie on a molecular level for many years of my life has grown away from it and i view it now as like i mean i love this movie spiritually it's a deeply embarrassing movie to actually admire i i kind of agree with like at this point it's very oh you sweeties it's like basic like entry-level philosophy 101 a stoned person in a bathtub being like don't you under fucking stand man like corporation and you're just like yeah no i know like there's some quote i came across i think in the new york times dennis limn like blu-ray special edition article where norton's like it's a deeply serious

movie made by deeply goofy unserious people, which is debatable and Edward Norton calling himself that. Edward Norton, laugh riot. It's like, it's on the line of is this a smart movie made for dumb people or a dumb movie made by smart people?

At this point, I think you can't answer that question. No, you can't, but watching it takes me on this journey because i watched this movie daily in some like i'm not in its entirety but i had a tape of it so i could watch it because i had the tv vcr in my room but the dvd player in the basement so i need to have the tape upstairs and i would just watch 20 30 minutes before falling asleep every night for there are so many like what i did with the whiz in high school right i do that with but not this one but i just did it all the time and watching it again now it's like look this movie is not profound in fact it's deeply juvenile and idiotic and borderline like laughable yes and the music is so of its time and it's just so of its time the special effects are terrible it's so long

anna who knows this movie well was like i don't remember the last hour of this movie yeah because you fucking get exhausted with this get exhausted it's just it's so flawed and it is so inherently like stupid in the way that gen x angst is stupid any generational angst becomes stupid yeah i can't not love it for what it has meant to me but watching it again i was just thinking man this is just like what does this mean to a 23 year old now and i said to anna and this is my final thought these are important points don't cut them off my man's cooking i just said this is like kids watching this now i think would be like when i watched easy rider and she said i knew you're going to say easy rider where you watch it in 1998 no you're right you're watching rider and

all you think is later sure i guess like i can see what this was i can see what this meant it doesn't work for me at all yeah i don't connect with it i don't understand what they're talking about yeah i don't care what they're talking about and i don't like these aesthetics yeah because they're too busy posting on instagram and like like it's like go line those up like ridley scott is here times has gotten worse right the millenniums yeah um the shit that he's complaining about, the consumerism, all of that messaging has gotten so

worse and terrible. I mean, that's the thing. They lost. Now we're just sort of like, yeah, what are you going to do? People are self-aware and accepted. It's not like we're oblivious. We're all fucking brands now. We just walk around as fucking brands. That's your entire currency as a human being

in this world. We talked about selling out with the Doughboys the last... Oh, they live. Oh, sure. Right, like the thing where now it's like

when you're selling out, people are just like, well, you got money. Get that bag. Right, gotta get, you know, gotta rise and grind, motherfucker. Right.

Right, they pay you to sell out. Ben. What's up? Hey, it's me. It's Griffin. You're Ben. Yeah, hey.

Sorry to interrupt the episode again. I know we did the ad break where we then revealed it was not an ad break and we didn't have sponsors for this episode. Yes, right. Which is sort of this meta idea in line with the sort of sentiments of Fight Club to not do advertisements in the episode. Right. I have to admit that was a bit. We decided to forego one of our ad slots. We usually have three.

We kept one open to make an anti-advertising sentiment. But to be fair, you know, truly, I mean, these ads, they help pay for the salaries, our editors, you know, researcher, our rent here in the studio. So we do, we need to do ads. So it was, we took a little bit of a financial hit on the first one, but we're going to do two other ads. So here's today's episode sponsored by... Just kidding! We still don't have advertising!

Got you! We cut your ads so bad! You didn't even see it coming, man. You didn't see it coming! And to be clear, we love those companies. Thank them for their years of support. We will reinstate our relationships with them next week. But this week,

I don't fucking give a care. All you fucking listeners, you're sitting there with your napkins tucked into your collar, forking knife going, please feed me more ads. I'm a pig. Fuck you. Here's your ad. Get a life.

Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you go to your damn library? Yeah. Read a fucking book. Or even better, how about punch somebody? Well, we can't condone violence. Okay, you're right. We can't condone violence, but, uh, well, this was... You know what? Defend someone. Yeah!

Or read a book about punching somebody. There you go. Like Fight Club, the book. But this is not an ad for the book. No. It's not an ad for anything. It's an ad for nothing. That's right.

We don't believe in ads. This one week. Just this week. Okay, back to the episode. See, my thing. I think why I enjoyed this movie rewatching it more than I remembered liking this film in my mind's eye is I never it never was a a a a call to rise for me. You know, you were not like I write. I'm being spoken to by Club, right? Right, and I think I've always landed on

it's a dumb movie made by incredibly intelligent people. And so I find the movie very fun and entertaining in that level. I also love Easy Rider. It is a movie that I do not relate to any of, but I find it so, I like the film itself, but also it's got that thing of like... You were born to be wild. I was born to be wild.

But I watch it and I'm just like, it's kind of funny watching a movie that is this primal scream from a failed countercultural movement, right? Yeah. Where you're like, at this point, it's just a closed-loop time capsule of a thing being presented with the promise of like, are we about to shake fucking everything up? Although that movie, of course,

ends with their deaths being meaningless. Being shot. Right. So I think now with like more distance from this film and the less it actually speaks to our current moment or the attitudes, at least, that most people apply to our current moment, I like it more as a time capsule of

this is what people were yelling. Sure. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think I just also, these these days i respect any movie that looks good i think this movie looks great yes some of the visual effects are like you know dated or whatever but like yeah you know it looks like 1999 in a glass i love that the other thing i was gonna say what david i just i feel bad for criticizing the last hour of this movie because I do want to

I do think the ending of this movie is so effective the ending of the last hour is bad or whatever you sort of are losing steam a little bit

if you've seen this movie a dozen times in bits and pieces you're like I remember Marla I remember the fights the like levels of project mayhem

that goes on and him being like what do you mean you know like the Tyler reveal taking 10 minutes of exposition you're just sort of like

I get it but of course the ending is so good you do you always finish on a high note at Fight Club Fincher in the commentary

said that he really didn't want the movie to be that long right sure and he was like two hours 20 yes

and he was like Fox was supportive of it but they were like obviously if you could cut it down and make it user friendly we understand what we signed up for we wanted fucking countercultural revolution like Fox was supportive of it but they were like obviously if you could cut it down and make it user friendly. We understand what we signed up for. We wanted fucking counter

cultural revolution. We're going to talk about this specifically. Yes. But like if you can do it and he was like I really worked hard and I kept on trying to pair out anything I could and I got to a point where I said I don't think I condense the story down anymore. I really tried to squeeze it as much as I can.

And he's recording this commentary maybe a year later. Yeah. And he's like, now I absolutely think I could cut it down. I needed distance. Right. There was a part of me that wishes

I could just go off the grid for six months, go into the woods, completely rethink it, and I could absolutely get this down under two hours. But I was so deep in it and I was so committed to like

all the different story beats I wanted, using as much of the actual text from the book, all these different gags that I just thought all of this was indispensable. The Raymond K. Hussle human sacrifice scene is a perfect example. That is a deleted scene. It's never set up. You see the driver's licenses

on the door later, but the human sacrifice element of Project Mayhem is not part of it. It's like a scene that could, I mean, you could just lift it out. I just, I find it so fascinating where you compare it.

But you need it in there for the Gump reference because you have to know that he loves Gump. He's a Gump fan. My question is, is the fact that Tyler can quote Gump proof that the

narrator has such lame taste? Yes. That he himself can quote Gump? Of course. Because he watches it and he's like.

The narrator is so lame. Yeah. He's so lame that he loves Gump. Tyler doesn't love Gump. Well, Tyler isn't real. Right, but at that moment, before you know that, are you supposed to think

he projected Gump? He's one of the guys who thinks that Pulp Fiction should have won Best Picture. I can't conceive of... He's mockingly quoting Gump. I mean... Sure.

Whereas the narrator loves Gump. I can't conceive of Tyler as a real person. I don't remember not... You know, I don't remember knowing about this movie before the, you know, I think I did watch it not knowing the twist, but I just don't remember that. I will say to Ben's aggression point of this movie connecting,

I, for an English class project where I made like a movie of like a, whatever, you had to do something for a project and I made a movie, like a 30 minute thing. I put a frame of pornography in it before we watched it for the class on iMovie because this was when my school switched from VCR to VCR editing to iMovie and I was like I can put one

frame of porn in this one frame is very short yeah and like the I mean what they show in the movie is like two seconds I know it's not one frame I took that order literally. Page two of this 26 page dossier. It's funny, JJ sent this to us and then just said like,

I imagine you're not going to get through any of this and he's being proven right in real time. He is told the movie is set up at Fox. He does not want to work at Fox because of course that's where he made Alien 3 and had such a bad time. And he is told, well, Joe Roth isn't there anymore. Tom Jacobson isn't there anymore. Good thing about these multinational

corporations is the people you loathe are gone so quickly it doesn't really matter. It's not like Fox, the big statue with lights, doesn't like you. It's just all those fucking guys you fought with who are gone. The lights actually liked him. Yeah, they thought he did a good job. Yeah. I'll see what Deadpool has to say about that. Oh my god.

Deadpool and Cyclops. Wait a second. Oh, my God. Deadpool on Fight Club. Wait a second. Wait, you think Deadpool's watched Fight Club? This is one of those movies where when Deadpool 2 was coming out, Fox re-released like their 20 top-selling DVDs with covers where Deadpool was now on the movie. And there's an edition of Fight Club you can buy that is Deadpool holding up the soap.

That's fucking disgusting. Yeah. I think that's good. And definitely the kind of thing that, you know, Tyler Durden would approve of. Yes. So, okay. So, you know, he goes into this meeting with Fox

and he says, look, I want to make this movie. Like, I'm not going to water this down. I want to make a balls-out version where planes explode and buildings explode and it's for real. I don't want to do this for $3 million. You know, I want to do it balls-out version where planes explode and buildings explode, and it's for real. I don't want to do this for $3 million. I want to do it for lots of money. Fox CEO Bill Mechanic, who I feel like has come up on this podcast before,

during SELIC, right? And all that is sort of like, okay, give us a real outline. You know, like, prove it. Prove that you can do this. So Fincher goes off uh he amazingly approached buck henry yes uh going with his graduate idea being like do you want to write my script for this movie it was a fox decision jj said it was a fincher thing i mean he says the director reached out i mean i okay you know so but uh buck henry's response was i don't think there's anything funny about it kind of fun okay uh script written by jim ewells i've always thought

uh who had written a spec script called hard hearts which was his like ticket to hollywood he's only other credit is jumper to this day i think he's a rewrite guy like it's it is just interesting that this very big movie was written by a guy who just kind of has no footprint in Hollywood, really. I don't know. Yes. Yes. Right?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, the movie is... The book is very... He's cribbing right from the book. But still. Which was Fincher's big thing. It's a complex work of adaptation. It's hard to put that book on the screen.

Laura Ziskin, who was in charge, when he had to go pitch it to her, he was just like, I think the thing to do is to really look at the book. I have no radical idea of how to adapt this. I think it's there. There was sort of a fear about using voiceover because it was seen as such a hacky cliche.

And he was like, you gotta. Yeah. A lot of the development speak at the time, according to Fincher, was you can't do voiceover. Voiceover is a crutch. The first draft has no at the time according to fincher was he can't do voiceover voiceovers a crutch the first draft has no voiceover according to fincher and he's like and there he's like where's the voiceover and they're like oh you know that's a crutch and he says it's not funny if there's no voiceover it's just sad and pathetic i think that is so true yeah imagine this movie without the narrator talking you'll just be like what a little dweeb this guy is absolutely um you need that kind of you know he's he yule says i never wrote an entire script without the

voiceover i wrote like 10 pages of spec without but you know they fight over i guess uh andrew kevin walker polished sure as he did with the game squeaky squeaky uh he says and i like this quote jim mules uh made an amazing chair and i came in and i sanded some of the edges and put the Squeaky, squeaky. He says, and I like this quote, Jim Mules made an amazing chair and I came in and I sanded some of the edges and put the little things that protect the floor on the bottom. That's his take on what he did. The three detectives in this movie

are named Detective Andrew, Detective Kevin, and Detective Walker in separate scenes. That's cute. I should also mention that I went through a phase where I would buy anything on eBay that was Fight Club.

I would just search for it and buy stuff. I was wondering when you were going to bring this up. What you had in your basement? Well, no, I didn't buy that. But I bought a script, like the kind of thing you would now get on the street in Soho or whatever. And I read it. It was the first script I'd ever read. And it taught me formatting.

That makes sense. I would read the script and watch the movie and be like oh this is how this is written and i just had it sitting next to my computer for like five years and just was always like oh so that's what a script looks like so jim mules is like such a big name for me even though have you ever met him or no i don't know i mean he's the kind of guy who's probably like on the board of governors of the wga now or something did the script read well yeah it was exactly like the movie um Crowe apparently gave Fincher some advice Says make sure that he's not so sure about what he's doing Because otherwise that's going to be boring

Read Tyler Durden Sort of like that The other thing I saw him say Part Linson did a pass Yes I got Alex Alex is laughing I'm just seeing these texts now

He's sending Deadpool covers They're like 20 of these They're really bad They're very funny. It's Deadpool's in them. Yes. Oh my God. They fucking desecrated

Assassin's Creed. Are you fucking serious? He's under the hood. Motherfucker. He invaded the Assassin's Creed cover. This is going to radicalize Ben more than The Washington Fight Club.

No, the thing I was going to say, he went to Cameron Crowe and he was like, my worry is that Tyler Durden is a little too one-dimensional. I want to make him feel a little more rounded as a character. And Crowe basically gave him the opposite advice, which was like, make him more inscrutable. Make him more unknowable.

He doesn't need to be a real person. You have to go lean harder into. Absolutely. Fincher goes back to Fox with this giant package he's written up. He's like, it's going to cost $60 million. He's going to have Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. We're going to start inside Edward's brain and pull out.

We're going to blow up a plane. All this shit. You have a 72 hours, yes or no. And Fox said yes. When he went to Laura Ziskin, his pitch was, I don't want to go through the notes. Let me just go off, work on this for six months. I'll come back.

I'll give you that sell. And he went in with like a book that was fucking humongous of every single thing storyboarded. The two stars. And yeah, Pitt got 17.5. He did. Norton got two. Well, you know what?

Yeah. Primal Fear is only three years before this? No, absolutely. But by the time this comes out, Norton is absolutely... He's hot shit. This is the year that Vandy Fair does the oft-mentioned,

there's no denying it, Ed Norton is the actor of his generation. Is he sufficiently milquetoast enough to be this guy? I think he's very well cast because he's a nervy little rat boy. I mean, I think he is because that's how the movie is,

but if the guy is supposed to be the most pathetic office drone every man, Norton does have an edge. I mean, that's why he's so good in Rounders and in American History X, the kind of two movies and Primal Fear where he's in jail. Like he, those three movies you would have seen up until this point. He's like a scumbag. That was the thing. Or a bad guy.

Or an angry guy. Positioning himself as like, I'm the new De Niro. I'm the guy who will go there. Right. But Fincher casts him in this off of People vs. Larry Flint, which is very much the same vibe.

Yes. That's the thing he's like responding to. And then Norton, like, you know, within five years of this movie starts to enter like a wilderness period that he isn't really pulled out of until Wes Anderson reclaims him and is like

you are goofy. You are funny applied in goofy ways and listen to the commentary Fincher just keeps on talking about like his Adam's apple is so funny. Look at how like goofy he looks and he's just keep saying like Norton has the best under eye bags of

any actor I've ever seen. He's got good bags. We play it up with makeup but that's like that's just how he looks. He's got good bags. We play it up with makeup, but that's like, that's just how he looks. He's just silly. Kept saying he's like Buster Keaton. It's funny to watch him get punched. Here is Art Linson, producer of the film,

his take on this movie getting made. And he's basically like, you got Brad Pitt and David Fincher. Last time they made a movie, it made $300 million worldwide. And it was a $300 million success that no one could have anticipated, which makes people take the risk.

Well, that's what happens when you let them be frank. Yes. Okay. Played well both domestic and overseas. The DVD sales weren't too shabby neither. Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt is obviously the choice. Yeah. Fincher says, I hung up the phone after offering it to him and he was knocking on

my door like four minutes later i live in a gated community i don't know how he got past security i mean this had to have been the best call of pitt's life right like pitt is this guy who's so desperately trying to find the way to knock himself out of pretty boy's shit right and it's like 12 monkeys was him finally getting some sense of like serious credibility and here it's like you get to do that and you get to essentially be the center guy but then in between those he does like just nothing but the wrong stuff again

like he he keeps obviously you know throughout his whole 90s I guess Double Zone is legitimate but no it's a terrible movie

but like that's like a legitimate choice unlike some of the other movies in the middle it's sort of a good choice it's a taper yeah sure I mean but like yeah

like obviously for much of the early 90s, he's, you know, River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall, Interview the Vampire. It's like you are playing a very pretty, you know,

golden boy. And he hates it. Tony drama. So, right. Then he does Seven and Twelve Monkeys and you're like, all right, baby. Like, you know,

and then California's around that same time too. Yeah, movies. Yeah. Horrendous. It sucks, but it's part of the same movement. I got a monkey.

Isn't that closer to true romance yeah um then in 96 he makes sleepers which sort of is like i mean he's not a huge part of that movie right everyone's kind of i've been wanting to re-watch that me too it's so long i know it's very long that was a huge when i was a teen like people kids being like that movie's so fucked yeah i was like to me like i watching that, like this is adult filmmaking. Right. This is serious. In 97, he does The Devil's Own in seven years in Tibet, which is just a huge

back-to-back flop. Disaster year. And then follows that up with Meet Joe Black. So he's in kind of like disaster zone. And obviously this year he does Fight Club.

Next year he does Snatch. Yeah. And you're like, and then the next year after that is Ocean's Eleven. You're like, he's found his sort of We just did this on the concert, but that's the movie you're like he's found his right we just did

this on the concert but that's the movie oceans 11 is the one where he crystallizes who brad here i am as a handsome man yes uh and then he's like troy let's do it i figured it out right let's let's go to war uh yeah i've been thinking of re-watching troy too um have fun with that uh thank you thank you i will good. My wife also keeps being like, we're not doing that. And I'm like, yeah, kind of want to,

there's some kind of like medieval section on Apple TV that they keep pushing at me, even though it's classical. Six hour extended cut of that movie. That probably makes it 2% better. Exactly. Gets that from a C plus to a B minus. All right.

This is a funny quote from Pitt that JJ is very happy with he says it's astounding it's an astounding extraordinary amazing movie it's a pummeling of information

it's Mr. Fincher's opus it's provocative but thank God it's provocative people are hungry for films like this films that make them think Fincher is piloting

the Enola Gay on this one he's got the A-bomb is that a Mr. Holland's opus reference yes Pitt's referencing Holland's opus yes yes pitt's referencing holland's opus yes that's no weirder than tyler durden referencing forrest gump well picture pitt

getting his his vhs of mr holland's opus and being like man when they played that opus at the end he couldn't rip the shrimp off all fast now sean penn wanted to play the narrator yes which doesn't really make any sense at all but it's a little too old for it but he'd worked with fincher the studio i think wanted him he's still a huge name right norton's a little more untested he's rising but obviously they're seizing on norton right at the right moment as you say people versus larry flint his big monologues in that doing the court arguments he's like okay good and that movie is all him being put upon next to he's good in the irascible wild card he's great in that movie i am such a i'm so mixed on norton i feel like we both are griff obviously his later career is very up and down when he's good he's incredible and i feel like we have this conversation a lot and any of our listeners who are like my wife's favorite

actor and biggest crush to this day will she see a movie now just because he's in it absolutely when he showed up in elita battle angel a cameo that some people did not even recognize and biggest crush. To this day. Will she see him moving now just because he's in it? Absolutely. When he showed up in Alita Battle Angel, a cameo that some people did not even recognize him in, that is worthless, she basically started firing a gun in the air.

She was so happy. She's like, is that Edward Norton? So she'll see, like, motherless Brooklyn just to spend time with Norton. Absolutely. Now, she didn't see Gotti,

which he only produced. Sure. He produced Gotti? He sure did. That's so fucking weird. She didn't see Gotti, which he only produced. Sure. He produced Gotti? He sure did. That's so fucking weird. He wanted to bring Gotti to the world. This is probably a five-timers club, but just that like,

that fucking Vandy Fair cover, right? That moment where he's positioned as the guy. Yes. My sister, Romney, who was nine years younger than me, saw Motherless Brooklyn and went, why the fuck did they let the seven most important guy in the Wes Anderson movies make that movie? And I went, why the fuck did they let the seventh most important guy in the Wes Anderson movies

make that movie? And I went, you understand, that's like, this has all been, in theory, a weird sidestep from what he was supposed to be doing all along, how this guy was framed to us in the late 90s of like, undeniably, this is the dramatic heavyweight actor of his generation will be owning the screens for the next 30 years, and now he's going to direct two. How do you feel about it, Eden? Very, I would would say at this point just kind of mixed negative yeah he because at this point at the point of fight club contemporary he was the guy i mean i loved it i loved american history x i had it on snap dvd snap case you snapped that one i loved larry flint these and this movie was seminal and i just thought he was the guy. And then now it's like, I don't even really like him now.

Like, I don't look back on these and be like, man, I just love watching. I don't, you know, like some actors, you just think, I just love watching him in anything. How I feel about Brad Pitt. Yes. I just don't, I don't love watching him in anything. And when I see him and stuff now, I'm just befuddled. I hated him in Glass Onion. See, okay.

I love him in Glass Onion. I love him in Glass Onion. I thought he was well cast. I think he's great in Asteroid City. He is. And then I'm looking. He's actually awesome in Asteroidon. I think he's great in Asteroid City. He is. He's actually awesome in Asteroid City. I think he's awesome in Asteroid City. I think that's his best of the West performances.

Although I think he's pretty good in all of them. Moonrise. And he's very good in... Yes. But it's like... Right. The last three are Asteroid City, Glasson, and Friends Dispatch. Then you go back to Motherless Brooklyn, Disaster.

I think that performance is not good. No. And just the whole movie is like on him. And then you're going back further and you're like, Collateral Beauty, what the fuck are you doing? Why is that your follow-up to Birdman? Birdman is awesome. He's great in a movie we don't like, but he's great in. I don't really like that movie, but I think he's really good.

But once again, you're just like, this last decade, basically, he is only successful when he's making fun of his own reputation as like, precious, self-serious, you know. And then you're just like, born legacy, you know, outside of the Wes Anderson movies, Leaves of Grass, Stone. I'm like, what's the last time I liked him in the sort of like, original, hot run? And it's like, it basically stops in 2002 it's 25th hour yeah I think he's very good at 25th hour

you know Italian Job he's the least interesting part Italian Job is a movie he was forced to make a gunpoint but he's like someone I feel like this is the kind of pattern that's obvious sometimes like after 25th hour he never really seems to seek out great directors.

Obviously, he's number 17 on every Wes Anderson call sheet, but, like... After that, who does he want to work with? Well, but isn't it also people don't want to work with him? Of course.

But, like, how do you go from Milos Forman, Fincher, Spike Lee, and then just, like, no A-list directors? Well, look, 96 to 99 is Primal Fear, Everyone Says I Love You, People vs. Larry Flint, Rounders, American History X, Fight Club.

That's when that cover comes out. And they're like, this guy has made six films. They are all culturally important. He has two Oscar nominations already. He's like barely 30 years old, probably. He can do anything he wants. And his next move is, I'm going to write, direct, and co-star with the least interesting part in a faith-based... He didn't write it.

...rom-com. He didn't write. I'm sorry. But I think that's almost more insane. Isn't that your wife's favorite movie? Correct. So that's why she loves it. That is my wife's favorite movie.

That was one of my brother's favorite movies. He showed it for a birthday party. It's a charming film. It's fine. It's honestly not bad at all. Not at all. But you're like, weird that this is what this guy wanted to make. It's a little bit weird,

but you're sort of like go off, I guess. And then he does the score, which is this moment of like, we're putting Brando, De Niro, Norton. They're the three guys,

right? That movie is itself unmemorable. And then O2 is death to smoochie free to red dragon 25th hour. He's good in death to smoochie. He's great in death. He's good. He's great in 25th hour. Red dragon. He's good. He's great in 25th Hour. Red Dragon,

he's fine. Oh yeah, he's pretty fun in that. Yeah, he's, you know, doing what he's asked. Frida,

he's dating Salma Hayek. He was very involved in rewriting that film. he plays Nelson Rockefeller. Right. But you're like, that's a year where he's still in the conversation.

100%. And then 2003, Italian Job, you're like, he hates that he's in this movie. 2004, you have him playing himself in that he's in this movie. 2004, you have him playing himself in After the Sunset.

Yeah, what the fuck is that? Because he's Ratner's boy. Kingdom of Heaven, people like that performance, but he's wearing a mask the whole time. He's really good in Kingdom of Heaven,

but it's this kind of like, oh, you know, good for you. You did a movie where no one saw your face. Down in the Valley is a movie I actually love that I think he's great in,

but doesn't exist. Never seen. Yeah, never seen. And then like Illusion a movie I actually love that I think he's great in, but doesn't exist. Never seen. Yeah. And then like Illusionist, he's not great. And Painted Veil, what is this? No, wait a second.

Excuse me. I'm pumping the brakes. What? I actually don't mind the movie Illusionist, but I can't really remember what he's like in it. He's fine, right?

Is that wearing a cravat and doing magic? He's like, ah, I'm a magician. I think that movie is fun. It's fun. Yeah. Painted Veil. It just fun. Yeah. Painted veil.

It just got its, it just got its lunch eaten by the prestige. Absolutely. Painted veil. At the time and now. Yeah. Is a very good movie. Really?

That I think he's good in, but obviously the global appetite for that movie was zero. Ben, do you like the painted veil? I've never fucking heard of it. Yeah, of course. I painted that veil every week. What are you talking about?

Porch classic. We all had veils. But then basically after that, it's over. Ben is literally doing the Joseph Cotton and Citizen Kane gif of like, he's literally folding paper in half and tearing it up while you run through Edward Norton's disastrous 2000s. That's the thing. You know? He basically-

Pride and glory, but she's all righted, I think. But it's like, why is this guy doing he basically pride and glory which he's alright in I think but it's like why is this guy doing kind of like third tier movies because he sucks when he announces that he's doing Hulk

it's like oh Norton clearly gets it he's ready to play ball he wants to make good and then he makes that experience so difficult for everyone for a movie that just

does not work where they're like you know what you're fucking not part of these when he's in Glass Onion you are almost kind of like I can't believe ryan johnson with this expensive you know sequel with a lot of expectations took the risk of putting edward norton in the second biggest role sure like in a way like because like i feel like his reputation becomes he's gonna try and take

over your movie like don't you know don't don't even bother. That's like a Warren Beatty thing. But Norton is coasting on this like, off of what? I'm not saying he's going to take it over and make it good. I'm just saying... How can anybody even take that as a serious threat in 2021?

I assume that's a Rian Johnson thought. There's that, and I think there's the other part of it, which is like, it seems like maybe he's less controlling when he's in a comedy. Sure. None of the Nightmare stories come from comedies, and his only good work in the last 15

years have been in comedies. Usually not as the center guy. Never as the center guy. To quote Fincher at you, answering your question, and I'm not sure I agree with him, he says, Fin re fight club i wouldn't believe matt damon in this role i don't believe affleck in this role i don't be believe

giovanni rabisi in this role studio really wanted damon makes sense he's the guy he's the ever also like he's he is an everyman type right and the similar kind of corn-fed slightly dorky but but still handsome enough what are you talking about brad you know i mean like they do that notion of love but he says edward makes a great blank slate his opacity is part of the thing that makes him a terrific everyman i don't feel that way about edward norton but i do think he's well cast in this movie this totally works because like i certainly don't think he's an everyman norton he's not at all norton seems like a miserable guy yes and this character needs to be miserable for a minute one damon does not seem miserable no no Damon's a you know kind of this

is the rounder happy boy yeah he can be frustrated but he doesn't seem miserable you have to see this guy in the first five minutes and think god this guy's just so fucking unpleasant right because he's unhappy he's like and he's got nothing he is the mirror image of Keanu in the Matrix, the same mirror. The cubicle guy with the fucking ill-fitting white shirt. And Norton looks like he wants to kill himself. And Keanu looks like he's asleep. He's just in a daze. I mean, this movie and Matrix...

This generation really feared the cubicle. Well, to be fair, I get it. I understand there's a different evil to the open workspace. But the cubicle thing is, I think, one of the most depressing environments in the world. The felt cubicle under fluorescent lighting is certainly not the most pleasant-seeming vibe.

Yes. But they have this sort of... You guys should build cubicles in here. Yeah, we need separate cubicles where we can't see each other. And peek over. Norton and Pitt made this sort of handshake deal with Pitt was like... Office Space 99 too?

Oh, yes. And you would not believe what Deadpool did to the cover of that one. I'm telling you, blow your fucking mind. It's so disrespectful. Is he covered in post-its? No, he's poking behind the guy covered in post-its. He wouldn't even do it. He wouldn't even do the difficult part. Ben is

punching the wall again. Here he is. Ben? Hey, Griff. Hey, this is our third ad read slot. Right. But this time is different. This time's different. Let's be reasonable. We're adults here.

And to sacrifice two ad slots on a big episode by Club, one of the bigger movies we've ever covered culturally, it would not be prudent. And once again, you've got to keep the lights on. We have salaries to pay.

Totally. So we're going to do one ad. We're doing one actual ad and we're sorry if it feels like we're kind of a sellout bailing on the bit. And I feel like the brand that we're about to promote.

I think actually when you hear who the sponsor is, it'll make sense. But just again, it won't feel like a betrayal. That we've like had two ads sort of essentially

mocking ads. Of course. I feel like the brand may not love that. But even give them credit for choosing to stay on

as a sponsor in this week even if it feels like we're kind of selling out because it was pretty cool of them. Because even Audio Boom had to say like hey just so of selling out because it was pretty cool of them. Because even Audioboom had to say like, hey, just so you know, they're

doing this a bit without ads. So that's okay. And brands usually are not really into our bits. Totally. But this is very tolerant, very cool of them. We're sorry if this feels like once again, like we're bailing out on the bit and our integrity.

And if you want to skip ahead ahead now's the time to do it it'll just be like a minute or two we're just going to get through the ad copy as quickly as we can our sponsor for this week's episode is fuck you no ads we did it three and you fucking fell for it

even though last time we played the same fucking trick on you and in fact we maybe over same fucking trick on you, and in fact, we maybe oversold the setup on this third beat. We laid out way too much runway to the point where it got suspicious. You still fucking fell for it

like an idiot. You know why? Because you like ads. You love them. I'm sitting up in my chair. This is my fucking manifesto, you pigs. We just dunked on your ass. We dunked on your ass so hard. There is actually a sponsor on this episode, really, if you think about it.

And the sponsor is you looking like a damn fool listening to these ads. And guess what? That sponsor got their money's worth because you look like a damn fool right now. Honestly, the sponsor is you being a fool. I told you to skip ahead. I said skip ahead and you're listening to this. You damn fool. Anyway, David left hours ago.

David is long gone. When I talked to David about this, he said, okay. Do whatever the fuck you want. And we said, oh, we will. Trust me. We're going to get our money's worth. The non-money we're not paying to sponsor this episode with non-ads. And honestly, it's paying out. It's paying out.

Not in terms of salary, though. And as we said, we do have about 10 people on payroll. And we have the rent we have to pay for for this office. So next week, ads will be back in full effect. Yep. This is paying out comedically. But once again, we are taking a hit financially. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Worth it? Absolutely. Oh, I'm so glad that we did this. Yes, but next week we're going to hawk stuff so hard. You will not believe how hard we're going to sell stuff next week because we got ourselves

into a hole on this one. We really did. This is the most expensive episode we've ever done. Actually, you know what? You're right. In a way, it really is. Somehow it's become like a Terry Gilliam project

that's spiraling out of control. Next week, we're selling out. We might have to do a for that. We might have to do a for that. This has been a success. This has been a success. And I did buy the Fight Club action figures, which I thought were kind of funny

because it sort of goes against the message of the movie. You can see, I think the other two fell down. They're not very well sculpted, but that's little Edward Norton there. Those just look like men in a suit. That's kind of the bit. That's kind of the bit, yeah. The Marla looks kind of distinctive because she's got a, she fell down. I guess she's sitting next to Teddy from AI.

Ben's looking on the shelf here. Like, that specifically looks like her, right? The Edward Norton one's pretty generic. I mean, I guess. It just sort of looks like a sick woman. The facial likeness isn't there because I think they didn't have likeness rights, so they have to sculpt it just based on the costume and the styling. Yeah.

Yeah. I know all this stuff. I go too deep in on licensing agreements for the styling. Yeah. Yeah. I know all this stuff. I go too deep in on licensing agreements for different products. Anyway, sorry. Because I hate ads. And I hate products. Establishment.

Fuck you. Back to the episode. Pit and Norton shook hands and were basically like, Norton shook hands and were basically like Norton I'm going to lose as much weight as I can Pitt I'm going to bulk up more than I ever have and start doing it now and continue doing it over the course of the movie

it's a great call so Pitt was basically like I was just lifting constantly and Norton was like I basically was on a diet of vitamins for six months. Which makes him look goofier. He looks all withdrawn. I will say also,

I want to just to complete the Norton thought. They want him for Talented Mr. Ripley. Obviously, that ends up going to Damon. They want him for Man on the Moon. Obviously, that ends up going to Jim Carrey. Doesn't he want it for Man on the Moon? He wants that more than they do. Because he's worked with Foreman. Yeah. They also want him for the biggest of these three Obviously, that ends up going to Jim Carrey. Doesn't he want it for Man on the... He wants that more than they do. Because he's worked with Foreman.

Yeah. They also want him for the biggest of these three movies, Runaway Jury. They're desperate to get Norton in Runaway Jury. He was signed. He was supposed to do that.

It just didn't get off the ground. And it's also, this is all part of the Paramount Pictures, you know, handcuff that he has, you know, I think it was signed

from the primal fear moment. It's what they end up using against him to make him do Italian job. He gets permission to appear in this movie with Italian job as the price, which is why he then complains about the Italian job for the whole press tour while journalists are like, you know, have you seen the movie?

It's actually like perfectly fun. Right. And he's like, this piece of shit. Yeah. It's very similar to the emily blunt gulliver's travels thing well with that one you do feel for her a little bit although she was also spared being in the mcu maybe it's good for her i think it worked out well for everybody um yes they're making this movie uh norton says to fincher as they're starting he's like this is a

comedy right and fincher's like yeah that's the whole point. So, you know, they are aligned, as you're saying. Like, this is a satirical film. And then people watched it and they were like, do they believe what they're saying in this? That we should blow things up? Irresponsible. Because Columbine had happened earlier this year. The movie was pushed back from summer to fall.

People thought it was because they wanted more distance for Columbine. In fact, Fincher was like, it was the one time in my life basically where I'd made the movie, I'd been told I was out of time and had to lock and Ziskin and Arnold Milshon came to me and they said like, are you happy with it?

And he was like, I'm happy enough. And they said, if we could give you six more weeks, would you take it and would you be able to make it better? And he said, yes, they gave him like

$750,000 another six weeks to refine it and pushed it back because of that. I'm sure they also probably thought I think they wanted

some distance. Some distance and it played better in the fall. The Matrix has gotten tagged so much with the Columbine shit because they were

so close together. Janine Garofalo supposedly was the first choice for Marla Singer. This is one of those legendary, this era of she was the first choice for Jerry Maguire and then the studio balked. She was the first choice for Fight Club. She was at this

threshold point of, yeah. She claims Edward Norton felt she didn't quote unquote have the chops she's always blamed him uh she said in an interview years later that brad pitt came after him said i'm really sorry about how that all went down and she was like had nothing to do with you it wasn't your fault norton claims that janine is mistaken and that that is not true uh and says i'm a big fan of janine's i'd love to do a reading with her and if she sees me in the neighborhood i'll i hope she comes say hi that's kind of an asshole answer yeah well he seems like a huge asshole i have no idea if it's

true or not and of course edward norton is only allegedly a huge asshole and i don't want him to come for me no edward norton was dating courtney love at this time okay well so we're getting her he was dating courtney love at some point has, so we're getting to her next. He was dating Courtney Love at this time. Edward Norton has one of the weirdest dating histories ever, but he was dating Courtney Love for a while. So we can all agree that Garofalo doesn't do it. It's just a matter of we're not sure why. Edward Norton wanted to do it and she felt...

It's fascinating to imagine Garofalo doing this because it would be the kind of like, can you do a role this like this? And if she could have, it would have been awesome. I have no idea, obviously. Supposedly, Edward Norton wanted Courtney Love to do it. And Brad Pitt was like, absolutely fucking not. Like, she is too insane to like, she will fuck this movie.

What conjecture? You could see Norton. Obviously, they had been in People vs. Larry Flynn together. It's Courtney Love's best performance. Yes. they had been in people versus larry flynn together it's courtney love's best performance yes you could see norton icing uh uh groffalo out because he wanted to create the opening for love conjecture and then everyone else just went love is not getting this you created an opening for no reason absolutely yes possible uh obviously fincher casts um uh helena bottom carter now you Helena Bonham Carter. Now you can read Courtney Love's

long exegesis on her getting... It's pretty focused and coherent. It's not really. It was on Marin that she said it. It wasn't done. She also had, I believe, a Twitter or Instagram thread maybe where she expanded on it. It is funny that what she said. As Fincher said, Fincher's pretty

blunt about it in Brian Rafferty's book where he's just like, the personal stuff was going to get in the way of it. Like, she understood the character. There's no doubt. But like, it was just too much. I think they're all just basically like,

do you know how insane it is we're getting to make this at a big budget? Like, we cannot introduce like something chaotic like that. She says that it's because Pitt wanted their life rights to Kurt Cobain and she wouldn't give them.

She does say that. And then he said don't cast her. That seems... That is a thing she says. Like a thing that Courtney Love has said. Absolutely. Classic Courtney Love sentence. Whether it's true or not, it's a good story. It's just, if you're going Occam's Razor, you can definitely see just the stakeholders of this movie being like, Courtney Love seems

like a chaotic person. Yes. Fox really wanted Reese Witherspoon and kept on pushing her on him, which is kind of interesting because she hadn't really popped yet, but I guess she was

one of those people where they said like... Her crew intentions is 98, right? And I guess that's Fox movie. And election is 99, obviously. Like, obviously,

again, that's a zag for her. Like, she's been in like Pleasantville. Too young. Yeah. That was his whole thing. And then, of course, he fucks her out of

Gone Girl as well. He's always fucking Takembe Mutombo and Reese Witherspoon. Helena's an interesting choice at this point because she's almost exclusively prestige, period.

Whereas this was my introduction to her. Right. I had no sense of her in Room with a Beauty. This reveals who I now feel like the public perception of Helena Bonham Carter primarily is.

She's very good in the film, in my opinion. She is. I agree with that. Is this a non-character? She disappears for, I would say, almost an hour of the movie. Does any character in Fight Club have any dimensionality at all? Bob. You know what?

I think he's the most well-rounded in a couple of movies. Wait a second. I feel like Marla Singer is iconic as a sort of twisted female character. But she's really, after the first 20 minutes of the movie, I feel like Marla Singer is iconic as a sort of twisted female character. Correct. But she's really, after the first 20 minutes of the movie, there's not a single drop of new information about her. Again, is there, and does any character in this movie have any information? No, but she's the third, you know, she's whatever. The first lead also has no information.

Right. Doesn't have a name. The second one is made up. Yes. I was trying to define, like, what is it? But she's almost like a flip of a manic pixie dream girl where it's like the dream is that she's got goth manic gothy dream girl whatever nightmare girl like laconic laconic gothy nightmare girl there you go right this is a big influence on me where i was like

wait a second what you're attracted to this kind of woman absolutely i was like pete mean to me step on me smoke in front of me and blow smoke in my face by the way ben's current girlfriend is nothing like this it's very true you really did not end up with a Marla. I pivoted in a good way. We've been friends for 10 years. I remember you dating a couple Marlas. You've never seen particularly happy in the moment. You had a couple Marlas blow through your life

like, you know, sexy trash bags. Yeah. Bonham Carter says, I want to meet Fincher to ascertain that he wasn't a complete misogynist because I think you're reading the script and you're like, you know, to what extent am I supposed to be taking all of this seriously?

Sure. Uh, and she says, like I could tell he's not an all out testos package. Okay. He's got a healthy feminist streak. Um, and,

uh, she's, yeah, she's awesome. She's, she's, she's, she's very crucial to this movie, I think.

I agree. Making sense. Yes. She looks sick. She does look a bit ill. As in unwell or great? Both. Both.

Yes. Unhealthy and rad as hell. Film shot for 138 days, which is a long time. It was like originally budgeted at like 25. Then when Fincher got a hold of it and he got Pitt involved, the budget went up to 50. 60. Well, 50 was what

they agreed upon. According to the research, he said 60. It went to 65, I think. And you're linear. 65 is what I heard it ended up at. I think in the commentary

he said 50 was what they... He's lying. He's a liar. You're saying 17 is... JJ or Fincher? I would never accuse JJ of lying. 17's in Pitt's pocket.

17 and a half right to Braddy. Yes. And you're tracking a Fincher like... That's a long shoot. It's a long movie. But this is definitely before this ridiculous obsessive reputation gets started. Maybe before it gets started,

but I don't think... I think that is... I consumed everything about this movie. Right. Every commentary, every article. I never heard like a hundred takes. I don't know if he's doing a hundred takes, but I think he did a lot of takes. 40.

I kept on hearing him say 40. I mean, that's on the heavier side. On the commentary. Here's a good quote from Edward Norton. Apparently Helena kept laughing during takes, like corpsing as the Brits would say. And he, he would say to her, like, David's going to make us do 40 of these.

You really want to make it 70? Stop fucking laughing. No, I think, I think to some degree, this movie has so many scenes, so many locations, so many setups

that he had to, like, cut his usual takes in half. But I don't, were those usual on the game? I don't think so. I don't, I feel like two things happen,

and this is where the Fincher heat comes, is like, one, this idiotic reputation he's created of as a perfectionist, I think is absolutely like, it's just nonsense. I hate it.

Two, he's still shooting on film at this point. I think panic room is hybrid, both film and digital by Zodiac. I feel like he's like, look, this is the movie about obsessives. I'm going to just let it all out.

I'm now that guy. Right. I'make gyllenhaal is gonna say i did 100 takes and i watched david delete the first 99 i'm gonna like it's time for me to fully put it on the table i feel like at this point that reputation is not there yeah okay he works people long shoots big budgets but it's not like jesus that's a marathon and i think this for the better. I feel like he went out of his way to create this reputation. We, I kind of on the Kubrick episode, you know, we had fun saying like this reputation. And I think it's kind of complex.

I don't really think it's the way people perceive it. Sure. The perfectionism. It's not so much that Fincher, I think is the opposite. He kind of like created this for himself. Yeah. He was,

I think as someone who loves him and is also deeply cynical of his public persona, he seems to have been like, I want to be perceived as a perfectionist so that my work is perceived as perfect. And I think this is charlatanism. And it's nonsense. Like the hundred takes, like, oh, he stitches these frames together so that everything is perfect. And it's just like, to what end? Who cares about about this this is like so not in the context of the work and then he makes four movies in five years and it's like you can't like his work does not keep up with this legend he spins about himself i almost think it is like it's a green m&ms thing

okay right where it's like the M&M's thing. Okay. Right? Where it's like... He has the heels. Conservatives don't like him. Hachi machi! Look at this green M&M! Wait, I need my charger. You guys keep talking. Let me tell you, I've always been more of a brown M&M person myself. Frank's got opinions.

They melt in my hand and in my mouth. Quick, David's getting something. Do Frank a door. I see you need an AC charger for that laptop David David's gonna go take a shit while Frank when the David's away the Frank will

play no you know the David's a defender of this Fincher narrative so now that he's in the bathroom we can really debunk it the Green M&M's thing in the rider, which, which band was it? Was it Motley Crue? Van Halen.

Van Halen. Yes. You know this thing, right? That like for years and years and years, it was cited as this, like they are the greatest divas. One of the things in their riders in their concerts for their shows is that

they demand that in the backstage, the green room, there are no green M&Ms. I thought this was Aussie. Sure. Well, other people start doing it, right? Oh, but they're the originators of this. Well, I think it's Van Halen.

I believe it was Van Halen. I would love to be proven wrong. And it was sort of this thing that for years they would sort of like not rebut it, but also never really claim it. And it was like, are they that neurotic?

Do they think they taste different? Is it like truly just a power control thing? And then it came out decades later that like we had a very complicated tech setup and our writer had like the full breakdown of how things need to be set up because we understood like the amount of energy, actual like electrical danger was at play, right?

And there was one time they did the show and the equipment was poorly set up and someone got injured and they were like we're gonna put the green m&m thing in like halfway through the rider so if we get backstage and we see that there are no green m&ms in the bowl we understand that they actually read every word we put in there and it was this test but in order to keep the test going strategic geniuses van halen right in order to keep that test going... Famous strategic geniuses, Van Halen. Right. In order to keep that test going, they could never publicly own up to why they were doing that. And I do feel like there's a similar kind of thing with Fincher

where it's like, I get people on set knowing that they would be willing to do this for me. Not that I'm going to ask them to do it as much, you know? I remember some Timberlake interview where he was just like, and was it tough, like the 100 takes thing? And he was like, no, he was just like

he'd do five takes and he'd be like, do you not like we can be done if you want, we can move on. I've never heard someone who works with Fincher say that and I certainly ask anyone I meet who's worked with him like, so what's the deal? And what did they say? They say you work, you do a lot, you do a ton of fucking takes. When I

interviewed everyone they just all were basically like anyone who doesn't like that is a big baby but of course that was his loyal crew you know i've an actor's say like i would love to work with you know i would love to do that that sounds like a fun process but like i just think he created this this myth of himself rather than it being kind of created despite himself and i think it has led to a perception of his work that i find very irritating and at odds with my occasional love and occasional complete disconnect from his more recent movies interesting it's just myth-making and this movie doesn't have that and this movie david as you say looks great i feel

like he really i mean he really i zodiac kind of the exception but like his proselytizing of digital i think is a huge mistake and it's like borderline embarrassing at this point especially when you look at kind of like go off i mean you guys you're doing like you're covering all of house of cards so you'll talk about this later but like one episode at a time way he... Excuse me, say that in a different accent, if you will. We wouldn't want to rush. You're doing them all

as commentaries. You're having commentaries to back under one. Slow and steady wins the podcast. And you won't believe who's the one doing the commentary.

You miss me? You thought it was fascinating when I turned to camera and talked to you. The way he kind of flattened the aesthetic of television with that show and kind of made all TV look like that.

Very stately, very cold. It sucks. And I feel like he's... Also, just ground zero for all the problems of prestige in streaming TV that we now live in. If I throw that at Fincher's feed, I throw that more at Netflix's feed. Well, for sure, but TV, you know, in. Right, I don't know if I throw that at Fincher's feet. I throw that more at Netflix's feet. Well, for sure,

but TV, you know, even prestige shows, HBO prestige shows up to 2012 did not look the way House of Cards looked and now I feel like a lot of shows

look that way because he's so influential. He's so aesthetically and visually influential. And Netflix also likes things basically being produced in his style

because it gives them more ability to manipulate it and post further. Well, for sure. I i just feel like and this is like broader that again this movie does not live within nor does seven nor you know panic room a little bit zodiac to a good extent but like his coldness and his digitalness is good but it has only had a bad influence it's good when he does it but it has only had a completely influence. It's good when he does it, but it has only had a completely insidious and horrible impact on people's relationship with changing camera technology,

people's relationship with tone and mood, and people's relationship with this kind of movie, even if it's a kind of movie. You don't think there's anyone else who does it good? Anyone? Surely there's someone. Give me some examples. Soderbergh and Michael Mann.

Those are the three guys I think of who like... Michael Mann is a hot stylist, though. He's hot. Yes, but no, but I'm just saying all three of them have like gone to video and tried to own

what it does differently than rather, rather than using it to try to replicate or replace film. But Soderbergh, to use best, Soderbergh is a dang ass freak.

Like, he does not even count he's trying stuff right well because he has like a camera in his butt these guys sort of like alright let's move it along he shows up

with the Google Glass and he's just filming you but like I remember Soderbergh had some quote about Fincher where he was like see if you can find this where it's like

he was like yeah we did color correct and we talked about it and I just thought, imagine seeing the whole world that way. Where he's like 25% darker in this quadrant. Get the fuck out of here. Like, come on. This is silly. So then what's your take on him?

It's very up and down. I mean, this movie, seminal. Seven, I've seen dozens of times. Right. Zodiac. Well, you were taking notes. Towering masterpiece.

Yes, I was taking notes on how to be frank. Zodiac, like one of the great American films. Yeah, a towering masterpiece.

And then all of his other, you know, social network, love. Right. Dragon Tattoo, I saw it once and then we rewatched it

like a year ago. It went from like seven to 12 stars for me. Correct, correct, correct, correct. It's one of those things where like. Crack, crack, crack, crack. It was one of those things where like I'd sit,

I'd enjoy that. It was on Netflix, you know, like in the dead of winter. What about a movie about a girl who's gone? Like it a lot. Haven't seen it in a while. I just remember being very... What about Let Me Be Mank? Terrible. Yeah, I know. You texted me a rant about Mank so long when it came out

that I actually had to put my phone in the fucking bathtub. What about a boy who's seven, but he looks a lot older? I have not seen that movie since it came out. And you loved it at the time. Can I ask a loaded question? A lot of bits. A lot of bits. A lot of Benjamin bits.

How long have we been recording? I look a lot older. 30 minutes? An hour and 47 minutes. I joked at the start of this podcast it would be 90 minutes before we started the plot of my club and my joke was too tame focused we've been very on top i just feel like the fincher quite i'm sorry could you say that in different accent for me please no tangents in this episode we're on a straight road road. This is your point, David. A road to four hours. He is so over-discussed that you have to draw a circle around all of it.

Because otherwise, what are you doing? You can't just say, let's talk about the movie because that's not that interesting. Because people have been doing it. Yeah, we can't. That's why we're not doing it. We cannot do it. Fight Club is certainly not a movie where we have to be like, all right, the film begins with the narrator who is never named, but often called

Jack. And he's attending various therapy sessions for diseases he does not have. He looks around his apartment and he sees prices on the furniture, which is a reflection of this capitalist, flat-packed IKEA furniture everywhere. You guys are making me want to do this. He can't even access emotion or his own

feelings, so he has to watch dead, dying people. I remember a thing I've involved on a couple other movies we've covered from this year. But I remember seeing Entertainment Tonight do the exclusive premiere of the trailer, which they also did for Eyes Wide Shut and maybe a couple other big 99 movies when this is kind of like peak film nerd culture. Big 99 movies that were like totally normal and didn't have any provocative elements. Sure. Right. And they would like be like, it's coming up in the last five minutes the exclusive premiere the

much like trl where you'd wait to see the video and they'd only play like 30 seconds of the video like an mtv bug like having sex with someone in the corner totally yeah moon man high-fiving moon man mooning you yeah um they they were like selling up the trailer and then they were only playing like excerpts from the trailer and having the horrible uh entertainment tonight correspondence go like we see a scene in which they go around the room and it's like kia firm draws prices attached apparently you can't talk about fight club right they were like, speaking to the fact that this movie is maybe a satire of capitalist society, consumerism? We'll have to find out. Brad is definitely looking hotter than ever.

I do think that all the things I was just pointing out, such as, yes, you can imagine the prices of everything in his beautiful, shitty apartment. Or he's going to, you know, these therapy sessions to feel something. Yang Yang coffee table, right. These all did feel profound in 1999. Absolutely. I cannot deny. Like a plastic bag floating in the wind. They still fucking resonate.

Uh-huh. But things like the therapy sessions, like things like this guy is so far from accessing his emotions that he has to experience like the worst human emotions, right? Yeah. Like, does that feel profound to you like the worst human emotions right yeah like does that feel profound to you now because it feels trite but does it just feel trite because

it's like fight club did that and it became like a parody of itself i i don't know i i mean like this guy i just want to sit this guy down and be like will you just like jerk off and relax fucking weird he's never heard of it. It feels like something a weird loser misanthrope would do. But that feels like something that's very swept under the rug. Especially back then. Men couldn't have feelings

or whatever in a normal way. Men couldn't have feelings. Until the green M&M came along. The movie does literally start with, you're probably wondering how I got here. We have to acknowledge. The movie does literally start with, you're probably wondering how I got here. We have to acknowledge that. It also then starts with like,

let me start earlier. No, no, no, even earlier. Okay, that's right. There I am. It has every silly cliche and yet- It does. But of course it feels like it's aware of all these cliches, doesn't it?

Like Deadpool. Right. Deadpool perfected the formula, of course. Fight Club walked so that Deadpool could run. Fight Pool. Fight Pool. Dead Club. The narrator, the whole first chunk of this movie, right?

It's right out of the book. The book is exactly the same, except for the sort of last chunk they kind of changed. The whole first chunk is him fighting with Marla over... I was going to say. You know, which Daisy got. This is my favorite section of the movie. Of course it is, because it's like

screwball comedy. Yeah. Like more screwball comedy with a Tim Burton girlfriend. I like it when he's more centrally a part of the film. And the car recall stuff is dark and fucked up in a fun way. It's right out of like Douglas Copeland or whatever, right? Like, you know, like the

Gen X people where it's like, you have a job that's so meaningless and surreal. Like, it know, like the Gen X people where it's like, you have a job that's so meaningless and surreal, like it speaks to our human condition like post-Cold War. The Gen X cynicism is now metastasizing into a,

is the whole world over? Right. Not just literally Y2K, but also just being like- My favorite topic, The End of History. Yes. I knew you were going to say

The End of History. Of course I was. We're talking about Fight Club. It's like one of the most End of History movies ever made. David, David, David, we're not, don't. We're talking about Fight Club. It's like one of the most end of history movies ever made. David, David, David, we're not, don't say we're talking about Fight Club. And then history is now going to end. Now.

Right. Currently. Yeah. Well, no, that's the end of the world is what you're talking about. The idea of the end of history was that the world wasn't going to end. There just wasn't going to be any more new things happening. Right. And then too many things happened.

I mean, to be clear, the end of history is more complicated. Can I say something? I'm so tired of living in unprecedented times. Can we get precedented times for a change? This history won't stop happening around me. I can't take a damn breather. No, as you said, we can't talk about this movie

without mentioning 9-11. It's one of the definitive, like, oh, I see 9-11. It's one of the definitive, like, oh, I see, 9-11 hasn't happened to these people yet. Right? You know, even more so than American Beauty. Even if you just showed it to people now, they would think, like, this has to have been a commentary on 9-11. Right. Is this a reaction to 9-11?

Young people would be like, oh, this is one of those 99 movies. They would just think, like, oh, this is a 9-11 movie. Which it is. Well, and the imagery at the end, which is, I still think the most effective imagery in the entire movie. It's so cool. I think this movie has one of the better endings.

You mean the Chinese ending? Yes, that one. Where they go, Tyler Durden, you're a bad man. Time to go to jail. Wait, what are you talking about? I do know this. Because American films

were not allowed in China for a very long time. This is from like a year ago. This is very recent. Fight Club finally got released in China, and they made their own ending where they were like, well, crime cannot pay. Tyler Durden must be punished.

You can watch it. It ends with a freeze frame of Norton shooting himself, and then a text comes up that says like, thanks to all the clues, the authorities arrested Tyler Durden, and he served time in an insane asylum. He died on the way back to his home planet. The end.

Truly. His home planet? end truly his home planet it's basically a poochy level tacked on it ends with a note to viewers that says through the clue provided by Tyler the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals successfully preventing the bomb from

exploding after the trial Tyler was sent to a lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment he was discharged in 2012 this appears in the movie after it is revealed that Tyler is not a real person. Right. No, but the ending of this movie... They had to, like,

wrap for the day. Like, it was almost 5 o'clock. They were like, fuck, we forgot to do the fight club ending. Uh, they all went to jail. Yeah, also, they were writing this postscript on Twitter. They only had so many characters. Tyler was rehabilitated by society. Basically, a quote tweet on the movie. No, but I...

The ending. The ending feels like literally what you're saying of like... You made a strange time in my life. Yes, and then like two buildings collapse, or it's one building that collapses. Many, many, many. Right. You're watching a bunch of buildings collapse

out your high-rise window. Well, they're being exploded. Yes, and then you're sort of just like,rise window. Well, they're being exploded. Yes. And then you're sort of just like, I guess this kind of puts things in perspective. Yeah. How do you feel re-watching it? Because, David, as you said,

we can't watch this movie and not know that. I mean, this blew my mind opening night, of course. I think it's a good twist, obviously. Does it work when you re-watch the movie? I had this thought re-watching it just now. Like, is this a, it's almost just as rewarding now that you know? No, it doesn't make any sense. It's more

frustrating almost. Yes. Go on. I just feel like, because you're always, like, as Anna was saying, like, so how is he walking around while Tyler's having sex with her? Like, what is the POV that we're in? Very often you're like, is he actually doing this or is he imagined

Tyler doing this? And it's unclear and the movie kind of plays fast and loose, I would argue. Is this happening at all or is he upstairs with Marla? I think it depends.

Imagining that he's also downstairs trying to not listen to it. Like, when he's talking to Marla in the kitchen post-coit. Right, that's the most devastating moment

where he's like, what are you doing here? And she looks at him like very hurt because she's like, we've just been upstairs this whole she looks at him like very hurt because she's like, we just been upstairs this whole time. Like, like I actually,

she plays that moment quite well. And it's very good to me, like representation of like, as much as he's like, no one understands me. I am, you know, the Gen X narrator.

I am Jack's bile duct or whatever. It's like, no, you're just like an asshole. It's not nice to the people around you. Like, and you're writing this off as like well my insane alter ego best friend tyler durden is causing all this trouble and tyler durden is just his evil you know male id right uh-huh it's just that and like the you know when you see him later it's not like a six cents twist where you're like good

god they like you know like it was perfect they dodged every it was there you know right you know like no it's it's metaphorical right yes um it is obviously i mean this was my professor james annelsey post-war american lit uh shout out james uh his big his whole thing was like watch the movie like you know brad pitt looking like the sexiest man who ever lived dressed perfectly with washboard abs yeah is like looking at a calvin klein out on the bus and being like men are fed such you know lies that they have to aspire to and he's like this is like the funniest shit in the world like that you have brad pitt saying this like brad pitt is the most impossible ideal and he's styled in the way

that is like insane that any man would like be like well i could never dress like this ben what's the read on tyler durden's fashion he is dressed in cheap clothes that you would get at a vintage store it's all for store right you know hawaiian shirts he at one point is wearing like a tuxedo pants he's got the bathrobe with like the ice creams on it you know all this shit where you're like no no one could ever pull this off. And he's like, and he has a chin goatee. Like he should look like the biggest idiot in the world. And you're like, he's so cool.

Spiky fucking like a Mark McGrath hair. Yeah. It's amazing. Misunderstanding this. I think Fincher said in the commentary that these sunglasses were what brad pitt's assistant was wearing on set and he was just like you should put those on that's cool yeah uh but ben do you like his look absolutely it was so deeply influential i feel like uh around this time i definitely me and all my friends started wearing uh dave's auto body t-shirt absolutely right anything with a patch

on it yep like yeah absolutely gas station attendant shirt something like that just like shitty bowling jacket slogan t-shirt that's knoxville as well that's the other convergence of these well knoxville is like titans of masculinity like he's like i've been trying to be brad pitt in hollywood no one will take my phone calls but it's what if i throw myself a chaotic good versus chaotic yeah he's also like literally tyler durden where like his friends are walking down the hallway and he's like i'm just gonna like push you into a giant hole right and watch you get out of it yeah the funniest man but he's also kind of the hottest man who ever lived yeah he's so fucking so sexy yeah but only once he has become this like jackass loser like and then

anytime he shows up in a scripted movie you you're like, yeah, you're all right. You know. I just remember girls in my school when there was the poster of him shirtless, like with the sunglasses on. And they were just like, he's the hottest guy alive. And I was like, really? He is? Why were you confused? Because I didn't get it.

You didn't get it. But you get it now. I was asleep. He thought men had to look like Johnny Bravo. I did. Women want one thing and it's fucking disgusting. Do the monkey with me. Yeah.

Tiny legs. Tiny legs. Triangular torso. Yeah. That's like bigger than the rest of the body. 25 inch tall hair. When will we get our Johnny Bravo movie? Why don't you make a Johnny Bravo movie?

Fucking The Rock was attached to this movie. I'm scabbing writing one right now. Thank God. Alex's new bit is that he's scabbing. My new bit is not that I have done literally nothing for three months. Nothing, you're going insane, not able to do anything. I'm definitely not going insane. But rather than doing nothing for three months is that I'm constantly working for studios under the radar as a scab.

Which to be clear, I'm not. Is it scabbing if you've already gotten a Johnny Bravo waiver, which they've made very clear in the outlines of the strike? That's true. The WGA, this is very unknown, but the WGA granted Johnny Bravo waivers. We went to the WGA and said, can I write a Johnny Bravo movie? And they said, no, we're on strike. Absolutely not. And he said, do the monkey with me. Anyway. I had to Google literally what is Johnny Bravo because this is after my time and what is something of his I could say. Mama.

Whoa, mama. I was seeing Fight Club in theaters twice opening weekend while you guys were watching Johnny Bravo. It's funny. It's funny true. I want to be frank. You know, this is pretty profound, Johnny Bravo. It's got a lot to say about my masculinity. And I was making phone calls Saturday morning being like, you gotta come see this movie with me. I'm not going

to tell you anything about it. I saw it last night. I'm rounding up a posse and we're going tonight. Meanwhile, I was yelling at my brother down the hall, James, you gotta get in here. Johnny Bravo is doing the monkey. This is gonna change your fucking mind. How did you feel about the twist at the time? It blew your mind the first time you saw it.

Right. I mean, this is a time, you know, this is two months after the sixth sense. I know. Twists are hot. Especially the guy doesn't exist as a twist It's just crazy they fooled us twice in two months It's the same thing Well it's not I mean it's not literally but it is like wait a minute that guy's not real No one else can see that guy

That's the same twist twice ten weeks apart I mean no you're right Two big twisty movies are the same You're totally right Technically the monkey is kind of a twist Do the monkey with me? Oh because it's two big twisty movies of the same. You're totally right. Technically, The Monkey is kind of a twist. Do The Monkey with me? Yeah. Go on.

Oh, because it's sort of like The Twist. Good call. It's a solo dance. Thank you, Ben. Thank you so much. It's a credit to like, I mean, again, this is like the Pitt magic

and like I think we could all agree the first half of the movie is better than the second half. Yes. Pitt's magneticism is so, that 17.5 million is so well spent because you can't take your eyes off him. Yeah.

Every time he's even near the center of the frame that you can't even conceive that this guy is anything less than the sun around which everything in Fight Club orbits. The whole thing with the 12 Monkeys performance, which gets him an Oscar nomination. There it is everywhere. Plague of Madness. And I do think I love that movie. It's a huge movie for me.

Yeah. I watched that movie, that performance now, and I'm like, he's trying so hard. It's like a little much at times. Willis is obviously the great performance there. Needing to show the work and needing to show the effort in these early years. This is the good version of that performance

where it's like, he's obviously, he's playing the most obnoxious you know mile a minute like you know ultra charismatic guy but he now feels effortless like it does no longer feel like I think he feels effortless I think it feels I think

it wouldn't take much effort to get me in a move I know I actually do know what you're saying I think he gets better at letting this roll off of him more casually. He's like one of those jackets where the water doesn't touch him. Yeah. I just think he gets to better versions of this, but this is the first moment where it's like,

what you're saying, he's just undeniable. You're like, this is like the center of the universe. And you're watching him so closely. It's impossible to imagine. And then later you're like, oh, no one else really talks to him and like right it's very like you don't even think about that you don't uh literally when he's not on screen you are asking where's tyler uh and then anytime tyler is talking everything he's saying is absolutely i'm sorry nonsense like like when he's putting the soap on his hand a big soap scene on it was laughing just laughing and he's just like saying all the

stuff like you have to like hit rock bottom you know like i'm just like beautiful moment of your life and you're all somewhere this is all fucking nonsense but not everything because i also think he has that thing that feels very of its time where it's like i i know all of this like weird information that i dug up at the library that people don't know here's how you make dynamite yeah all that stuff that's cool because yeah exactly disinformation he's the one that's like they're lying to you man you don't understand i mean he's such an armchair philosopher right of the stoner jack shepherd if you will absolutely absolutely he is without a paddle indeed he is indeed he is paddlers let me be frank um he's just such an obnoxious gen x armchair philosopher

who keeps talking about how like men are slaves waiting tables pumping gas you know all this stuff you're not a snowflake

generation of men raised by women middle children of history I wonder if another woman is what we need this is the book that coins snowflake it like all stems

out of this usage it's just like so silly the stuff he's saying and you are not your job you're not your khakis you're not how much money you have and all that we know what a duvet is and yet here we can quote everything he says because it is so simple and he delivers it so well yeah i agree with you everything he says on the in this movie i think is sort of like

quasi horse and yet again olestra this guy wanted to be my friend. Probably even today, I'd probably kind of be like, yeah, let's hang out, you know, while he's going on about duvets. I'm like,

you're so right. Let's go fucking thrifting. You would love to hang out. Like let's hit fucking cars with bats right now. Okay. But go ahead. The other gen, I mean,

in Gen X terms, like this guy, he's, he is Tarantino. He's combining this like thrift store aesthetic with this like, I got to take, man. Like, let me tell you

what it's all about. I see the world this way. This period of history. And you're just like, in the 90s, people just took this very seriously. Yes.

But do any of you, I know the answer to Griffin is from Griffin, will be no. Want to hit. Know what a duvet is. Yeah, I know what a duvet is. Do you want to hit each other in the face? No.

Do you want to do punchings? Yeah. Which, of course, is the big... I would do punchings. Halfway into this movie, or maybe even a little before, just like, alright, come on, man, hit me. Sometimes, you know, pain is like cathartic. I mean, you sound like Tyler Durden right now. Yeah, it's before. His apartment gets blown up. Yeah, it's before. It's like 40 minutes into the movie. Calls him up for drinks.

They've met the one time on the plane. I think in the book, they meet on a nude beach. Is that correct? They do. That's right. That's where he first sees him. Yeah. And Fincher was basically like,

I know that's a non-starter conversation. Why even start the fight over? They're never going to let me shoot that the way I want to. Right. So I need to come up with something else. It actually doesn't make sense that the narrator that we know on screen would go to a nude beach. He seems too sort of pathetic. actually doesn't make sense that the narrator that we know on screen would go to a nude beach.

He seems too sort of pathetic. It doesn't make sense he would go to a beach. Exactly. To do anything fun. All he does is go to his dumb job and Zach Grenier

is mean to him. Right. He's like the idea of two people. You wake up in tomorrow. You wake up in tomorrow. I was saying this to Anna.

Having seen this movie a hundred times, every line reading of every like small character is first of all perfect and second of all burned in my brain you guys like show this over here i show this to my man here you liked it like that guy is great in the conference room the like you know a dildo case in point the like that guy is great the amyl nitrate lady at the support like all these everyone who has this movie five

or six times but i don't have that kind of everyone who has these lines you know like i'm i'm fucking luke who the fuck are you like every player who comes in for a small moment is great yeah the all you know the uh what you know now we know it's holt mcclellany at the time it's just like that big guy yeah yes like these guys are all you know build a house like every line reading like that in this movie hits so hard and it's so funny even like the guy at the you know there's hope in the inner city it's like that guy like every line in this movie pops and it's so cynical and cartoonish in this gen x way of like everyone in the world is so grotesque yeah you know a fat burned into his polyester shirt almost modern art like with all of this stuff it's just this which car company do you work for

like every one of these lines from all all these like people that are in one scene are so good um i agree with that i yes uh yeah and meatloaf is incredible we haven't i mean we haven't really talked about credited as meatloaf a day which i love he keeps because there was a period where he courses a day or right he's nowhere with us this was when he was really trying to like start a second act as like a pure character actor and not as like kind of a gimmicky cameo guy right and what his real name was marvin Lee a day. Right. Then he was meatloaf.

Michael Lee. Sorry, Michael Lee. Sorry. Oh, he was born Marvin Lee. Born Marvin Lee and went to Michael. I don't know. I think he went to. Marvin to Michael to meat.

He went through a period where he was like, I don't want to fucking be credited as meatloaf. And this is sort of like the halfway point where he's like, I'm going to add a real last name on to it. Meatloaf the Rock a day. Right, right. Ben, is it okay that I like

Bad Out of Hell? I think it's an awesome album that fucking rules. It's amazing. I don't know. It's corny. You know, Jim Steinman is corny. It is corny, but no, you got to give it up for his theatricality and his showmanship. Did you see the Meatloaf musical? No, it never came to Britain, I mean, or America.

It was on Broadway for like two years. Yeah. Recently. 2019? Yeah, I was embarrassed that I missed it. Oh, Bad Out of Hell the musical. Yeah, you're right. It was right before the pandemic?

Yeah, because I remember it was playing in Toronto one year that I was in Toronto, and I kept like seeing it and being like, should I just duck out for a Bad Out of Hell? Meat Loaf is very good. Bad Out of Hell? It's good. Meat Loaf is goodaf is good so effective in this it's really yeah i mean that you know the sort of supposed physical grotesquery of him is a little bit like very gen x-y and snarky yes bitch tits is like a very dumb phrase that even at the time i hated when people said

me too yeah it's annoying But Like again I just associate it with this movie So strongly as well Like you know It's the first You know What's a Bob had the bitch tits

Like that's the first line in the book Isn't it Yeah Right Maybe I think it just helps that he's such a genuine Warm presence Yeah

That's the thing Yeah His face is so nice Yeah And so open And yeah Yeah but even like When he's like You can cry Cornelius his face is so nice. Yeah, and so open. And yeah. Yeah, but even like when he's like,

you can cry, Cornelius. It's so sad. You're like, this is the first guy who's been able to make this dude feel anything for a while. Right?

Like Tyler Durden's whole thing is like, you need to get punched in the face to feel something. But like Meatloaf gets through to him just as hard just through hugging him

and listening to him. It's the line they say, which is like, people listen to you differently if they think you're dying. Right. Yeah. And Meatloaf sees him, hears him, acknowledges him. What do we think of Jared Leto? I want to talk Leto.

Leto. I like to see him get punched a bunch. Should we take a walk on the Leto deck? I have to say, i still maintain this opinion i'm pro lido always have been what no no i'm joking i'm joking i'm joking i'm joking i'm joking always will be you always will be what i'm sorry pro lido pro lido in all at all times no but like because you might want to be frank about that yeah do you like his cult work i do yeah and i really like his band. Jesus. Morbius.

Like, we're talking like Norton was very... Jared Leto has a Swiss cheese recipe. There's some holes. You were very amphimorbius in the late... Right. Because Morbius felt like a movie made for you to cover on blank check, where it's like, what is this? This came out?

You guys are doing Espinoza, right? Yeah. I just feel like we're talking Norton at the time, right? He has all the... For me, Lito, My Soul Called Life, Catalano, we love that guy. He's so cool. Of course. By this point, he's in this run.

He made an American quilt. He'd run... He'd been a boy. Without limits. Without limits. He's in Prefontaine, but you get it. But like this, like for me... He trod the thin red line.

He hurt the urban legend this american psycho and requiem for a dream yeah like okay vanity fair and how interrupted i know you're not including that but he has those four movies that are all about like disaffection vanity fair can have norton after these three movies i was like this is the guy uh-huh this is the guy right after those three you guys are all like you're all one year too young to have seen no no no no no no no i was so special about him especially i just as a young man who was so good in american psycho as a young man he's good in american psycho he's good i would a requiem for a dream he's good in all those movies he's he's well i think he's well suited to i think we do make the argument in our next

episode the panic rooms his best performance he's great in panic he's well suited to those films. I think we do make the argument in our next episode that Panic Room is his best performance. He's great in Panic Room. He's great in Panic Room. Highway was, you know, you kind of like tip your hat to that one as a little, you know, 2002 artifact. I don't even know what that is. With fucking Selma Blair and Jake Gyllenhaal with the goggles.

You don't know Highway? Sort of a VHS classic. What is he talking about? This is such a... I don't think there's any 2002 vhs class i mean dvd classic sorry you know a rental store classic you made that photoshop right now i've never seen this image before and then like in 2004 when he's in alexander you're like sure i remember there was this sort of brief notion of like hey could leto get oscar buzz are we like

ready for like some big supporting turn from him and then after that is when he's like going away like he always will have that 99 to 2000 run that no matter what i'm like yeah but he was in american psycho and requiem for a dream in the same year even with the cat fucking head especially with the cat head he looked awesome you don't want to dress up like a giant white cat he took the head off and he had his normal head inside. He looked like a mascot. I just like, but this was kind of like, you know,

this is him doing a great thing. He's like, look, I want to be number 11 in this insane movie. His appearance in this film is quite effective. And be Angel Face or whatever his name is

and just get like, he has like five lines. He has five lines and half the movie he has crazy makeup of, you know, basically like the worst black guy you've ever seen.

I wanted to destroy something beautiful. There's no control, sir. But. I love him in this movie. He's a great presence. I agree. I do think Panic Room is Fincher being like, having just worked with you,

I think it's really great to abuse you on screen. I just wish that that... People just react to you. Similar to Fincher and Pitt. Why no more Fincher Alito? Why no more Fincher Alito? He could havecher lito could have been jill and holland zodiac what he'd be terrible he's not saying he'd be better i'm not saying he'd be better but you could see fincher being like we've made a couple movies together yeah but but that's what i'm saying by 2007 even you're like

he's doing chapter 27 it's like his fucking leprechaun gold is like melting in his hand. He's got nothing. When he came and you know, when he came back after chapter 27, he makes two, one movie before Dallas buyers club. He makes Mr. Nobody,

uh, harmony, you know, not harmony. He was focusing on Jacob and D'Amel. What's the name of the band? Fucking 30 seconds to Mars. I hate to even say it.

It's acid on my tongue. Well, speaking of music, can we talk fight club music sure yeah we talked to us brothers can we talk to us can i actually actually there's a really good quote about the dust brothers his first uh choice to score this film was tom york he went to tom york it was like this you know i'm thinking okay computer like you know i want your music for this and tom york was like i'm busy. We had just done an album. I didn't want to do it. And he sort of regrets it now.

He's like, I see the film and I go, you know, would have been fun. Would have been meh. So instead he throws it to the Dust Brothers. What are the Dust Brothers best known for at this point? Three things, in my opinion. They produced Paul's Boutique. Okay.

You know, Beastie Boys sort of like kind of the thinking man's Beastie Boys album, right? Totally sample-based. Right. Produced Odelay, the Beck breakthrough album that I feel like is sort of a huge deal in the sort of late 90s. Uh-huh.

Produced Mbop. One of the definitive pop songs of the 90s. Did not see that twist coming. Did not see that coming either. Mbop, you're not there. Very true. What was the name of the band? Hanson. Yes.

Middle of nowhere. Here's my advice to you if you're ever driving your car on a highway, put on Mbop. You will look at the speedometer and be like, I'm going 140 miles an hour. This song is liquid cocaine.

And then let go of the steering wheel and crash into a car and let that then slide down a hill. If you time Mbop with that scene in Fight Club, it works out perfectly. steering wheel and crash into a car and let them then slide down a hill if you actually if you time mbop with that scene in fight club it works out perfectly um the funny thing about dust brothers uh according to one of the brothers uh michael simpson and don john king not don king um simpson says uh david said he wanted music that sounded like it was from white guys who thought they were funky but really weren't i said thanks a lot but that's that's that's the vibe i

feel like that's your genre at this time david you know that's your like brit techno jamaica yeah i mean read me for filth are we are we going to talk about hip-hop sims we might okay i forgot about that until just now i might keep it in my pocket for another year i think you never want to tell me what that this is more of a trip hop movie yeah this is the moment of of like fucking tricky and you know left field and those kinds of guys are you a dust brothers or a chemical brothers guy do you want to keep hope alive i am a huge chemical brothers guy at this time you prove my two options i guess i'm gonna have to go with chemical brothers they're the fucking greatest. The music in this movie works very well in this movie.

It is dumb, terrible music. I gotta say, I've never really listened to the score isolated. It sounds like being in a crowded Thai restaurant. But is it an authentically Thai restaurant on Roosevelt Avenue? Or is it sort of a shitty Manhattan Thai restaurant? No, it's like a Thai restaurant that has purple lights

and like a bunch of aquariums. Sure, sure. Do you like the Dust Brothers score for Fight Club, Griffin? I think it works. I think it, I basically, I think Alex just nailed it to a wall and I can't.

Finch is very interesting in that he has great music, obviously, in his early movies, like David Shire's Zodiac score is so good right I love the Howard Shore Panic Room score but then like when he gets Reznor and

Ross for Social Network it's kind of the first time he's like okay I've found like my composers like they will now do me you know for do everything I do right before then he's always kind of like thinking of soundscapes and stuff I guess Seven is also Shore. I guess he used Shore a fair amount in the beginning.

No, I agree with you that it didn't totally crystallize as like, this is a key working relationship until Resident Evil. Right. But okay, so the music sounds like a Thai restaurant. Anything else? The soundtrack? Well, the music and the soundtrack. We have it on CD at home.

Iconic soundtrack. Great. I just feel like as the middle of the movie goes on and there are these kind of montages, fight club building montage, it gets bigger and bigger. There's more people coming than the project mayhem montages. They're all set to like very trip hoppy techno background beats, which is became iconic. It kind of became the sound of this kind of disaffection i feel like i didn't get enough about fighting griff you don't want to fight no if you guys want to fight you can fight no i don't right now neither i i think maybe that is where this bonus episode lost me maybe a patreon episode it's just fight we just you know you guys could just have a fight club

i'm like i'm like so on a feeling what what Ben was saying, at my most mad, my fantasy is punching a wall as hard as I can. I like, it never manifests even in my mind in a hypothetical way

as attacking another person because I don't like fighting. Now, I will say, I have gotten my ass kicked. I've been in fights, but not in the way where I'm like, yeah,

then I fucking took that guy down. No, I got punched in the face. So what are you thinking during the... I have also been punched in the face. The movie's kind of like... But I didn't like that. No. I hated it hated it it hurt and then you know what it kept hurting it keeps hurting for like a couple days let me ask this who punched you uh a person punched me on the face in uh the

street in the face on the street there's a random person in the face uh yeah a random person punched me in the face uh when i was coming home from work one night when I was like 22 years old. Drive-by punching. In Park Slope, which is like, no, you don't want it. Actually, that was me. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah, really? I forgot that I used to walk around Park Slope

punching people. Can we say the new bit you started doing, Alex? I don't, you could be referring to any number of things right now. I know, it's too much to fucking fix soup. What are you getting on that ladle? You and David live fairly close to each other. Yes, that's true. You will see David like a block away and take a picture of him from behind like a creep shot and just text it to him an hour later.

You'll see me like on a bike. And we'll not reveal in the moment that you see him. It's funnier to me to see you on a city bike from a block away and take a picture rather than yelling. Right. Yeah. And then just send you these like zoomed in pictures of you from a thousand feet away. The zoom makes it feel creepier. No, I take the picture.

I zoom in. I do a screenshot. I understand. Of a very blurry. You have a distinct size and have a recognizable gait. I can't deny that. And you're just out and about a lot. I do love to be out and about.

Man about town. I am a man about town. Pushing a stroller, riding a bike. These are things I do. Arguing. Go ahead. Arguing with people doing construction loudly was i arguing with someone no it's like the idea of you just being like hey keep

it down just going i don't think i've ever done the worst kind of the worst kind of pest you call and complain about it we've done that when we had our construction well sure when the construction was so powerful i didn't call and complain called and asked, what are you doing next door that was shaking the foundation of a skyscraper? I do like my David sneak attack photo. It's a really good bit. I'll keep doing it.

Yeah. Fight club. Fight club. They're punching each other. I feel like once the fight club is going well, the movie is flying. It's fun.

Sure. You have early on in the fight club the scene you referenced where the mobster is like, get out of my basement and Brad just sort of lets him beat him up. I feel like that's mid. I. You have early on in the fight club, the senior reference where the mobster is like, get out of my basement. And Brad just sort of lets him.

I feel like that's mid. I feel like at that point, project mayhem is close. Like I guess so. The fight club itself, I feel like is not lasting for, I guess it's a fair amount of time. Because they move in together.

That stuff is all fun. Yeah. He's not going to the groups. He's feeling good. The house. I love the house. Working on that for 20 minutes. Working on what?

Alex, check your text message. There's the, you have to get enough. Are you going to say what I did? Alex, how did you make this? I did it work fast. Griffin has taken the DVD cover to Highway. First of all, we should say a photo of the DVD snap case cover for Highway.

Not like a flash. Not like a JPEG of the cover. Because for this to work, it has to be a physical, it can't be a poster, it has to be a DVD copy. And he has put Deadpool on all three cast members. David, can you just narrate the poster for Highway? You know I love when you narrate a poster.

Do you want me to narrate the actual poster No no no And you have to read the tagline you have to do the whole thing Okay so So The poster is It says Jared Leto Jake Gyllenhaal Selma Blair Then there's Deadpool

And on his head on his shoulder is a Deadpool And then behind him is Deadpool and then it says highway and the tagline is it started as a desperate escape and became the wildest ride of their lives DVD video and then there they are on a car and there's other people

I will say you got to put really small dead tiny dead second draft. I must have I wanted to notes round. Yeah, this is great Griffin. I must say that i worked in video stores for the entire time after this came out i have never seen this dvd or heard of this movie before cult classic i know i have never once are seeing a physical copy of this dvd in my life when gyllenhaal was like sort of like donnie darko his bubble boy face he's got the glasses that's what i'm saying you you were like oh what else has donnie darko been in like well october sky you know winning family film sure what else i don't

know he was weird freak in these movies bubble boy and highway no just bubble boy okay um the fight club is that what do you think of the house paper street paper street house very cool i do i the worst where you want to live yeah you're mad at that age i was like oh this is basically the aspiration for where i'm gonna to settle down as an adult. You want brown water coming out of every faucet. Absolutely. When it rains, the basement fills up with water. You can just go outside and break bottles.

You just smoke cigs and just throw it on the floor when you're done with it. Just discard trash just wherever. Obviously, there are, as Fincher says there are no victorian homes with 18 foot ceilings on the west coast so they basically built this thing like uh beyond that they mostly did location shooting but the paper street house is their creation it's very cool it's very in the mold of from the warped mind who brought you seven yeah yeah where it's like what is because where is fight club set nowherehere Yeah Nowhere and everywhere America USA That's right

That's where it's set There's American flags Everywhere in this movie There's even an American flag Hanging up in the house When it's Project Mayhem Well it was two years Before 9-11

We had to You know never forget Yes We're trying to make sure We remember No you see David That's satire Yeah

That there's all these American flags Wait a second Are you saying These guys don't love America The scene Where Tyler is in the bathtub and Norton is kind of like bandaging himself up,

nursing his wounds. I forget what they're talking about in that scene. There's some important information conveyed in that scene. Yeah, sure. Fight my dad. Right, right, right. That's what it was.

Graduated, he told me, get a job. Called him five years later, told me, get married. They shot that scene on like a children's playground underneath like a rusty swing okay and it was like a thing that that fincher was really proud of where he's like oh it's like interesting that they're having this conversation about how their fathers fucked them up in a child's environment whatever and he watched the scene he was like this sucks right this sucks and i think this is important dialogue and i thought

it was so clever i was patting myself on the back and they were about to tear the house down. Uh-huh. And whoever the producer, one of the producers was like, is there anything else you still need in this environment? Right. And he was like,

that's a good question. Are there any scenes I fucked up that could be plussed up by using the space that's interesting? Plop them back in. And he came up with it

and he said it was like a key moment in his career where like the things that bug him the most in the movie. Does Pitt have the towel on his head because he shaved his head

at that point not impossibly yeah yeah yeah there you go quite probably yeah yeah yeah but he was like I would plan everything

out I'd plan everything out so perfectly good joke and then the things I hate the most in my movies are things where

I had convinced myself of them being correct and refused to acknowledge it later when it wasn't working and he was like that was really big for me

to in that moment recognize, like, sometimes you just need to shake a scene off. Sometimes you've gotten too settled in your head and you need to just, like, throw it up in a different way and approach it from a different angle. Should we talk gay text and subtext now that we're on this scene? I think it's very important to note how fucking gay this movie is. Right. He was like, I needed a scene to show, like,

how devoid of self-consciousness and embarrassment Tyler was. He's incredibly, he feels sort of omnisexual, even though in this movie he's also like an alpha who fucks the narrator's crush. And just like incredibly comfortable

in his own skin. Yes. Which is pretty good skin. Sure. Good skin. All right. Stop trying to skin Brad Pitt. In the sort of like obvious attraction

that narrator has to Tyler. Like, is that ultimately just about this? Because this is like, okay, so if he's in love with himself, is this an antithesis of the movie? Is this like deep solipsism? I think he's in love with an idea of who he wishes he could be. Yes, I think that's true. But I do also think he, you know,

Tyler does also Represent His like Latent fear of sexuality Sure Like in general Because like As the movie goes on Tyler growing apart from him

Including the comfort That comes with Project Mayhem Is like He's acting He's acting spurned Sure Yes

He's acting very But he's like Why didn't you tell me about that I thought Who are these other people I thought I thought it was you and me Right

And it's also It's the same way When she's When he thinks That Tyler's fucking Marla Marla 100% Right And it's the thing He's afraid to Yeah he't you tell me about that? I thought we, who are these other people? I thought, I thought it was you and me. Right. And it's also the same way when she's, when he thinks that Tyler's fucking Marla. Marla. 100%. It's the thing he's afraid to do. Yeah, he's jealous of her, not of him.

And he won't even admit that he is attracted to her. Or to Tyler. It's all part of the twist, obviously. But yes, I do think it's also, right. It's his sort of self-hatred and his like, you know. Yeah. Well, the other thing that's much like American Psycho, like decades later when the author was like, I'm gay. I was gay when I i read like i've been in a relationship since i wrote

this book sure it took the supposed subtext of people being like you know fight club kind of gay and it's like well no like fight club questioning masculinity from all angles including the idea of like well why do these guys think you know why would you go watch it why would you if you're not attracted to men why do we want to watch these cut, beautiful men box each other? Right. How can you watch that and not be in awe of their body? The movie's kind of asking that question.

And then most of the other guys who are there are gross. They're just normal. Once again, they're just like suits who, you know, you know, stuffed shirts who are coming alive, like punching each other. When the first Jackass movie came out, and it did well,

and the young audience rushed out and then it was lingering at the box office and Paramount was like what's going on here and they were like it has been claimed by the gay community

they love that it is a movie about a bunch of dudes were really comfortable being naked around each other and just like trying shit yeah they covered in

semen and shoving things into each other's asses and there's like no judgment in it Fincher this is a funny point just apparently when fox started uh doing lots of ads for fight club during wrestling uh fincher says like i was like

this movie is pretty homoerotic are you sure you guys want to do this but at this point no one's listening to him right basically that's the thing like two things about that one so is wrestling so what does he care two there's always a fincher watch but Fincher watched a lot but there's all these quotes of him being like oh you know and we should talk about the marketing where he's just like oh you know

that's not how you market it and it's like if he really believes in the message of the movie shouldn't he be like yeah market it to people that don't know

what's gonna hit them get them in the theater to see the bare knuckle boxing that they think they're getting and then it's a two hour screed against capitalism because they were basically like alright Griffin what you asked me to do it I didn't ask you to do that That they think they're getting. And then it's a two-hour screed against capitalism. Because they were basically like,

All right, Griffin. What? You asked me to do it. I didn't ask you to do that. Let me see. And I did. Oh, it looks good. Yeah, it looks great.

I did it pretty quickly. It's a quick turnaround. I would like to see this printed as a poster the next time I'm here. You guys have nothing on the walls. I'd like to see a printed out version. We're getting stuff framed. Once upon a highway, the Deadpool cut. Hey.

Once upon a highway. the Deadpool cut. Hey. Once upon a highway. Can I say, Alex, you came here recently. Ben was helping you do some other work for a different project. Yeah.

Right? And you casually placed on our shelf a VHS copy of Bad Company. That wasn't that recent. That was months and months and months ago. You're right.

I did do that. That's about six months ago. I was also here two days ago. That's a Ben copy, right? The Small Soldiers? I did not bring Small Soldiers. I placed a VHS copy of Bad Company,

David's favorite movie of that respective year. Right. You said that that was the bottom of your letterbox on 2002, so you placed it on the shelf. I happened to have

a tape of it laying around that I didn't think I was going to ever revisit. It is no longer the Wilderfilm, obviously. What's the bottom? It's the penultimate. This is how this came up.

I was like, is it worse than Bad Company? So I knew I had a tape that wasn't getting rewatched anytime soon. I thought I bet David would enjoy that. So you place it on the shelf

and you go, I just want to know how long it will take for him to notice. Yeah, this was in March. Yeah. Had never noticed. No.

And David will walk in and after a record, he'll look at the shelf and go like, hey, Griffin, what new stuff have you put up? Right. Like, what's this? But just never noticed it. No. And David will walk in and after a record he'll look at the shelf and go like hey Griffin what new stuff have you put up here? Like what's this? But just never

noticed it. Max Minghella mutual friend of the pod of course when he was going to visit you he came swung by here and on the way out

he went like oh that's funny you had bad company on VHS immediately. Max noticed. Max noticed. Well Max probably owns a bad company shirt

because all he wears are like shirts from shitty movies from the 2000s that he buys on eBay. But pinged it immediately and then David was like, why is that here?

Okay, good. Was that on mic? No. Damn. Well, now, I know we have zero time for this, but I'm still gonna

set it up. We have time. Do you notice behind the hat? Seems to be a gift here for me. Correct. Christmas gift. I have a Christmas gift for you. Christmas in July. Do you notice behind the hat? Seems to be a gift here for me. Correct. Christmas gift. I have a Christmas gift

for you. Christmas in July. Of course. Very belated. Well, you know what? My birthday was last week so we can fold it in. Would you like to open it?

Right now. Take a little pause from the fight clubbing. I think so. Yeah, we've been too focused on the movie. We have been focused on the movie.

After this, we should just talk Project Mayhem in the second, not even half, like the back third of the movie but this has been sitting here for about six months

and the other times you've come to the studio you said I don't want to open it I want to wait to open it until I'm on my oh my god okay it's a VHS

unsurprising oh well I mean you know this is a vital addition to any library I thought I finally was rid of this movie no it's a VHS

for the Razzie winner lucky numbers unopened sealed sealed now if you open that was rid of this movie? No. It's a VHS for the Razzie winner. Unopened. Sealed. Sealed. Now, if you open that, there will be a curse on your family for seven years. I don't want that.

Now, I also, when I brought the Bad Company tape, I brought the Lucky Numbers DVD that I had to buy to get the Nora Ephron commentary. The infamous ripped commentary. So I've had like a nice four-month break

from having a copy of Lucky Numbers in my house. Back in your life. Thank you, Ben. You're welcome. Where did you get? Did you buy this online? Did you find this?

My landlord. I'm sorry. What? Yeah. My landlord had a like garage sale and he had a ton of. He had a sealed lucky numbers. Yeah. He had a ton of VHS.

And I saw that and I was like, I know just the guy is going to need this. That's one of those movies we covered during the early pandemic where I'm like, I know I watched it. I sort of remember things about it, but like, kind of forgotten about it. Could be time for a revisit. That was like one of our longest episodes. Well, of course it was because we were just, what the fuck else were we doing? Yeah. Could be time for a revisit.

We have two copies of it in the mutual lives of this space. I want to say something just to pin this for a distant future that may never come. Thank you, Ben. You're welcome. Just because the fact that you got this from your landlord is so fascinating.

Your landlord is a fascinating figure. There are things that happen in your building that people would not believe how on brand they are to the Ben Honsley universe. And we can never talk about them

because if we did, you'd be able to Google it back and figure out where Ben lives. Absolutely. And if you ever leave, you ever move, we will someday reveal those things, but you will not believe the things that happen right underneath Ben that Ben has no part in.

Yeah. It's just a happenstance that it really aligns with my vibe. Absolutely. And just having a sealed VHS copy of Lucky Numbers fits into that as well. Yes. It does. It does indeed alex is in the bathroom alex is in the bathroom do you want to say anything david how do you feel like the episode's going pretty good honestly the clock or orange episode was so like a lot of people texted me with concern after it aired oh because we were getting up right and and i responded to all those people being like, oh, I think that episode is funny.

Like, I think, you know, my frustration is like, you know, I'm playing into a little bit. It's funny. But like, I got a lot of concerned text messages. Yes. There were many threads of like, has the show gone too far? Right.

And then, of course, right, I read it. But I'm saying like people who actually know me were in contact. Right. And then my brother remarked, he's like, there's this moment where like David says says like this is not funny anymore and ben says like it's not and he says it unhumorlessly like ben is just like yeah saying that and so he's like i was really proud of him for leaving that in like that's kind of a it's kind of an intense moment

like to to just sort of like not cut out of the show to go in and break the bed it was not the intent for us to break the bit yes i don't think alex and i i can fucking pull up the text we were like this is we're gonna break the bit break i mean obviously you wanted to go as hard as you could i know that we're talking about project mayhem well in a way in a way no we're talking about your last appearance on this show, on the Clockwork Orange episode. And we shouldn't be too self-reflective. Universally beloved and not at all scrutinized appearance.

Right, right. And then since then, we have made fun of you on this show a few times, and you've texted us angrily, which is fun. Oh, angrily in quotes. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Did you make fun of me, or did you just kind of... Well, we kind of, like, you know, Alex, I can't remember.

I just remember at some point you were like, Griffin was like, yeah, you know, Alex running a bit into the ground and you were like, yeah, no shit.

Right. Well, yeah, no shit. Yeah, no, it was my stated intention to burn it down. Okay, fair enough. I came into that episode and these movies

are obviously very unified. This is kind of the Clockwork Orange for another generation. Yes, it's the Edge Lord. I came into that. Halloweenwork orange for another generation. It's the Edgelord trilogy. I came into that. Halloween less so, maybe. No, we'll find another Edgelord one.

I came in being like, Jumping jack. Yeah, here's my Project Mayhem homework. I want to find a bit and burn it down. Right. I want to destroy something beautiful. It saved my life. It was a quiet act of...

Mercy. Yeah. Quietly, it was to put you... It was putting the bit out of its misery. To be fair, you had already said, we're doing Boyle. And I said, oh, it's going to be tough.

And you were like, I have told Griffin, the bit has to not exist. Right. When we do a British filmmaker. I'm not sure about this timeline on whether that was pre or prior. You told me on the drive there.

Absolutely. So I knew that it was okay. Absolutely. On our drive to Ben's house. These guys are now getting a lot of credit on the drive there. Absolutely. So I knew that it was okay. Absolutely. On our drive to Ben's house. These guys are now getting a lot of credit for basically being annoying. No.

And you said, I have said, when we do this filmmaker, I cannot deal with this. Right. And I thought, great. I mean, I certainly was, yes, I was preparing

for the ultimatum. Alex, what I mean, he said, I can't find the text now, but it was, we have to go harder than we've ever gone before. We have to break this. It was on a text with the two of you. Oh, okay. Let he said, I can't find the text now, but it was, we have to go harder than we've ever gone before. We have to break the bit.

It was on a text with the two of you. Oh, okay. Let me see if I can find it. Let's mention Ben was in on it. Yeah, Ben was in on it. Yeah, but then Ben wasn't happy. You were not happy.

I was not. After the episode was over, you were like, that was too much and like, you know, I feel bad for David. Ben has a beating heart. He's a sympathetic figure.

Very true. I'm all about like the, you know, the anarchy of it, the content. Right. Burn it down. Watch the world burn or whatever whatever what is another edgelord movie you could do what's another edgelord classic from this time for you uh for me i will think about that okay like another like fight club where you're an angry young man movie yes like i have to see this over and over again i mean american psycho is one sure it's funny because i think

that movie is satirical and yeah no i think that movie is excellent from like a gaze perspective that is like well yeah the people who love this are wrong about what they love about it sure i mean obviously a film literally making a film and book with famously insane fans if you much like fight club if you take this at face value you are a fool and you are missing the point um a good edgelord movie of that time. What's this? This text is pretty incredible. Okay.

I'm going to play the box office game in like 10 minutes. 45. We have all of Project Mayhem. Ben, I told Griffin this the other day, but be prepared to go hard as hell with the England bit during the Clough of Orange episode. I'm serious. It's the most British movie you've ever covered. We need to go so far beyond

with it that David loses his mind. And Ben's response is, I fully accept this invitation to take things too far. Like every 20 minutes... Not hearing break. Not hearing the word break. Well, here's the word break. If only we could have break, away glass, and a pipe to smash

as well. Well, that would have been good if you'd done that. That's a reference to something else. You were not trying to break the bed. We were just trying to make me mad. But it was a benefit of running something into the ground. And then, hey, look, Friday, August 26th, 5 or 9 p.m. Really don't feel like that could have gone any better. These are the bits.

Apparently, I was very pleased with how that went. But the funny thing is, I feel like some people said to me, or you saw, people were like- I feel like I seem very exasperated now, and I'm not, and it was funny. People were nagging me. I think people really think that I'm mad about this.

That's exactly it. People thought that, and then I was getting you in on this. People were, because I don't have any other form of social media you can at me about other than on Instagram. And people were adding me being like, what the fuck, man?

Sure, sure, sure. And then you were like, hey, come on. And then there's this notion that's like, man, David was just so mad. We got in the car. Yeah. Continued talking about the post-Home Alone career of Macaulay Culkin,

as we had done on the drive two bands. Right, we were basically like, unpause. You turned up the prodigy. We talked about our daughters and just laughed and goofed. Of course. As though this had never happened. Of course. It wasn't like, all right, are you ready to drive home?

And you said, actually, I have to go a different way. Oh, right. I was like, no, Alex, I won't be driving you home today. You can get out and walk. Right. I just want to be clear. It was all in good fun. Of course.

Because I, like Tyler Durden, enjoy the chaos chaos i viewed the bit as like the credit companies you just have to blow them up yes because otherwise we'll never be free because we're a weak generation of men raised by movies what do you want to say about project mayhem it's just the movies turn from let's i feel like by the back third of the movie. Much like the back third of this episode. Because with the Fight Club, you're like, I understand the metaphor at work. I understand that. Not only do I understand it, but this was set up in emotional, character-driven terms that are so clear and so logical, also satirical, but very clear.

But this is self-expression. And then Project Mayhem has basically nothing new to say. The movie has no new points to make. Right. It evolves into what really like... Terrorism. Yes, but also like 60s revolutionary anarchy. Like it's not that different apart from...

It's Weather Underground. It's more corporately targeted, you know, but like, yeah, it's just, yeah, we need to start blowing shit up. Like, you know, we're going to take this to its logical extreme. We're going to break the law. We're going to kill people. Is the logical continuation of, let's just get out our aggression. Right. Is the logical continuation, let's blow up a Starbucks?

I don't think so, because I do think the defining thing, I mean, the Fight Club comes out of them being like, I don't care about anything. I want to care about something. I want to feel something. I have to feel something. Right. Even if that is a fist in my mouth. Right. Whereas Project Mayhem is like very pointed.

It's more like, look, we're breaking out of the Ikea apartment. I want to break someone's face. Yeah. Now I want to go to the source of my angst and destroy that as well. And then the speed with which it becomes this national cell of people. Right, kill them all. We're a paramilitary organization. It just feels like a thing that's like they adapted the sequel into the book

as well like it feels like that kind of it's so much content of movies 50 minutes I will say I do feel like though Tyler all of the stuff he's doing as the cater waiter where he's pissing and coming into food I do think there is something to his

character that leads to Project Mayhem I do think there is something to his character that like it leads to project mayhem like I do see yeah I see there like being sort of it leading up or escalating to that it escalates nicely but it's just like the point has been made yes when Fincher

talks about like I now with distance could go and spend six months and figure out how to cut this movie down you do feel like this is what he cut down like the thing he wants to accomplish is tyler becomes scary to the narrator spiraling out of control the narrator's not even aware of his other self at this point he's turning on him and it's like it doesn't need to be 45 minutes it can be almost but if it was 20 it would just be a disaster it might even feel crazier right yeah the the slow build of it is correct narratively,

but like emotionally, as we're saying, you see the beginning, you see a fight club. Someone like Ben and I says, you know, I can see the thrill of that. By the time they're in the black suits and they're blowing up the corporate art, I'm like, look, I like setting fires as much as anybody and I love fireworks, but like, come on, I don't want to do this and as edward norton says he's like you're

running around in ski masks what do you think's gonna happen and i'm like yeah i mean come on i want to like fuck shit up but i don't want to like get shot at by the police right yeah well these are the limits of our pussy generation that's true but but that's the point is like it goes from being i think in a satirical heightened way fairly relatable yes I am angry I know what it is to feel angry

and to feel confused to highly unrelatable which is like I don't actually want like I'm not actually ready to run off and like join a militia but I mean like

I think it's just crucial because we need to understand that Tyler was then found guilty of his crimes and rehabilitated by society but then there's like there's subtle stuff once the guys start living in the house we need to understand that Tyler was then found guilty of his crimes and rehabilitated by society. There's subtle stuff.

Once the guys start living in the house that I do like a lot, like early narrators, like after the first month, I didn't miss TV. Right. Then when project mayhems are, they have a TV. Yeah. So it's like,

even Tyler is selling out these ideals. Even now. That's a great call because it's because that's the thing. It's like, and the American flag is in that shot when they're watching the TV report. There's like a makeshift shitty American flag on the wall. The pure simplicity of Fight Club where it's like we're punching each other.

There is no end to this except we don't want to do it anymore. Right. And that's fucking it. Someone taps out, the fight is over. Right. But that's so like primal and like understandable versus like I'm the boss and you're my soul you

know it's like suddenly it's like fuck we're bringing rules into this again yeah you know what were you gonna say Greg I mean you're gonna sigh loudly the

second I bring this up but I think it kind of needs to be said does it better be another Deadpool DVD cover well he knows I have like 20 more I have saved I'll send you

guys later he knows everything he knows everything he's already photoshopped himself onto the artwork for this miniseries. God damn it, Deadpool! And, and, uh,

Pavern Elves hasn't finished it yet. What are you gonna make David say? Make him sigh? This movie is getting at, it anticipated, basically, like, the radicalization

of, like, rando, nihilistic, who gives a shit humor on the internet, leading to, like, bizarre political righteousness. You know? It is.

It's like The Matrix in that respect. But when you're talking about that shift, right? Of just like Fight Club is basically just being like, we're just like posting edgelord memes to then like 4chan becoming this like place. Here's what I'll say. A political hotbed. What?

These people have always existed. The internet, of course, you know, amplifies them or channels them in certain directions. It has to go down to NPR.

Right. As we continue this conversation. But the tiresome aspects of some of the people in Fight Club, like I said, like there are people

like that in the 70s and 60s and before and before. But not after, really. What do you mean? That kind of radicalism is very much not a part of the culture it goes away sure well but people are always saying it's online blow shit up yeah you know i mean that's always gonna be there is it though i don't know maybe not i just feel like i feel like in the last 20 years i can't even discourse anymore like i don like in the last 20 years, this kind of action is very much not a part of the culture.

Frowned upon more. Very few protests, very few like, you know, crunchy radicals putting a pipe bomb in some like summit of some kind. But this is my point. Feels Good Man, which I think is an excellent documentary

about the whole weird life cycle of Pepe the Frog, is about this whole thing of like, it's a bunch of people who went to message boards because they were like, I don't give a shit about anything. My life feels like an absolute dead end. All this feels meaningless. I have no value. I think I am dumb and boring, right? And then all of them were sort of like bonding over that.

Then they start like making comedy. You know, what are funny jokes we can make online? what are funny jokes we can make online what are funny gifts we can make online and then that somehow like metastasizes i keep on using that fucking word you use it a lot but that's fine into them being like we've decided we care a lot about certain things and we're gonna get like really active how long have we been recording like an hour he's about to say a number that's gonna make you we're at the end of the movie it's two hours and 47 minutes we're at the we're at the end of the movie we're getting close to david can't record ads today here's a here's here's a question does this tale of the movie make it

harder to appreciate as a very very good david fincher movie i just get a little bored it doesn't make me this is why i appreciate the movie less It's just in the act Of watching it I start to feel myself slipping Because like This is a pre-internet movie It has to be Yes Literally

Because it's from 1999 Well the internet is Just coming into shape Yes but like It does not reflect the internet As we now know it And it does reflect A mentality that is

Wildly rampant On the internet now Yes But the point of this movie is like, you find that in the basement of Lou's. Lou's Tavern. Now you find it on the message board. Tyler would hate this.

Now you find that meme account. If you're doing this as an edgelord on the internet. Well, meme accounts are good. They've got, you know, dank memes. Inspired by the vitriol of this movie, you're missing the point, obviously. Because this is about feeling something. And it's not, you know, the people...

Having soap, lye poured on your hand. I mean, the soap stuff is, we haven't talked about it, but it's very funny. Not a big part of the movie. No. No, I feel like it is more important in the book just in terms of like economics. Like that is how he makes money. Hits slapstickery when they're getting the fat. The fat scene is really good where it gets caught on the...

And he falls a couple times. The barbed wire and then it's like gooping everywhere. Stuff like that. Are you photoshopping Deadpool's face in something new? Okay. One, you can't say that incredulously

because you have photoshopped Deadpool. What have I ever done? During this episode. I would do such a thing. Uh-huh. What are you doing? Nothing. Oh, okay. I thought you were looking something up. You're getting distracted. What are you doing? Nothing. Oh, okay.

I thought you were looking something up. You're getting distracted. What are you doing? This is a movie that the... Read the fucking dossier right here. Okay, well, so am I. Got the tab open. It's easy to love nostalgically.

It's impossible to admire this movie now. I don't know if it's impossible. I admire... I really admire this movie aesthetically. I think... Yeah. Because movies look like such hot trash a lot of the time now, no offense to good movies that I like,

the way this movie looks really does feel so special to me. Even though I don't really love Fincher's digital obsession, he never makes movies that don't look good. I'm not talking about... Fincher always makes movies that look good. I'm just saying movies, generally. The amount of care put into... But also, what I mean is like the amount of words spoken in this movie that makes me watching it now just laugh and roll my eyes is ludicrous. Like all the stuff there's, you know, even the whole time you just have to be turning to someone being like, you got to understand, you know, in 1999, a lot of this felt like very sort of like with it and interesting.

And now, yes, I know it feels a little trite. Yes. I roll my eyes, but I'm nostalgic for it. Right. You're nostalgic and you're sort of clapping them on the back. I have a, you know, like, yeah, you guys. I can offer, you know, what feels like a concluding point on the movie before I list all the great Fight Club merch I had. And we talk about the video game for half an hour.

We do have to talk about the video game for two minutes. Great. In Chuck Klosterman's video game for two minutes. Great. In Chuck Klosterman's book, The 90s, I looked up to see if he had anything about Fight Club. And he says, either Slacker or Fight Club could justifiably be called

the decade's most generationally defining I wrote one word here that I can't read of my own right probably edifying generationally defining edifying film it's interesting that he calls out a very stonery gentle film and a very and also slacker plotless 1990 you know vibes only right and it's very interesting that he identifies these two movies from opposite ends of the decade as generationally

defining, edifying films that crystallize what is clearly in the air for lots of people watching them. For Gen X men. I can't find the number. I love Psycho.

I remember Art Linson, the producer, having a quote of just like, we all thought this thing was going to be a big fucking hit and it was going to speak to this feeling in the moment.

It was going to be this sort of like cultural touchstone movie in theaters. It became i have this quote you want it uh i mean i don't know if it's a quote you're looking for he said i think we ended up realizing we made the first film of the 21st century instead of one of the last films of the 20th which is a clever thing to say like i don't even know what that means but i still am also kind because i'm also like this movie is kind of the end of the 90s yes so it is kind of the last 20 and once again film in a way but i know what he means in terms of feeling like current and new and like the launch of something but the irony is that like the

20 the 2000s like there is no cinema like this it's not like oh bonnie and clive first movie of the 70s right it's like no there are the 2000s do not make art that looks like this for 70 million dollars 9-11 changes everything you ever heard about it or did you forget no i never forgot it's just a very you know it was a movie that was misunderstood like as it was being projected for the first time right which is why it failed because it was confusing to people and they thought they were seeing a movie about hot men making soap. Hot men. Right. Instead, they were seeing like a two and a half hour long anti-capitalist screed about

how pathetic it is to have emotions and feelings. They made the soap the center of the marketing. But then... And I bought on eBay a pink bar of Fight Club promotional soap. Do you still have it? I don't think so. I don't know what happened to it. Washed his hands.

No, I definitely didn't use it. It sat on my shelf and it shrink-wrapped for years. I think it disappeared when my parents got rid of the house, but... What, they didn't want to save your commemorative soap?

I mean, I might have it somewhere. I just, I can't speak to it for sure. I also had, as Griffin alluded to earlier, two prize pieces

in the basement. I got the seven-foot-tall cardboard display from Blockbuster for Fight Club. Holding up the bar, right? Brad Pitt's holding up the bar.

It's 3D, you know, it's several platforms. Because I said, what are you going to do when you get rid of this? And they said, throw it in the trash. And I said, if I put my name on the back of it, will you call me the day you don't want it anymore? And they said, sure, who cares? If you come get it. So I had that in the basement. I was right next to the Nintendo. Looked great. And I also got the

four panel Blockbuster window display. Which they used to put up in the windows. So it's like with the, you know, a beam in the middle, two and two with like six by four. Okay.

Huge poster. Okay. Of Fight Club. And I had to nail it to the wall because the stickiness was gone by the time they gave it to me. I just nailed it to the wall. Sure. So these were in the basement. I bought a lot of Fight Club stuff.

Script, the book, the soap. Never the game, though. The video game, of course. Which I learned about yesterday. Was on the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox. Yes. Griffin, have you played it?

I have not. And it's wild because I was such a fan of tie-in games. I was looking for a used copy on eBay for a price that didn't feel stupid. And which basically is anything under five dollars. I can see it on the shelf here someday I will get here eventually but the big thing which you text a photo of Immortal Kombat style fighting game. It is just a fighting game

It is not a game about dismantling capitalism There's some narrative I believe but largely it's like men in jeans punching each other in the rain. And who is one of those men? Well okay so it has no likenesses but it does have the characters of Tyler Durden and Angel Face. This doesn't look like meatloaf to you?

It pointedly has no likenesses. Okay, fine. But the characters are styled after the characters from the movie. Yes, you can play as Bob. Narrator Tyler, Angel Face Bob. The mechanic. You can play as Marla, apparently.

She's so good at fighting in this film. Someone missed the point on that one. But if you beat the game, the ultimate unlock, do you know this, Ben? The ultimate unlock character in the game is Fred Durst. Now, Fred Durst,

famously close friends with David Fincher. Is that her? Yes, because this was early, mid-2000s when Fred Durst is being pushed. It's like, maybe he's going to be a good filmmaker. Maybe he's going to educate Charlie Banks. And it was like he would shadow Fincher on sets. Fincher says this guy knows what he's talking about.

Fincher's boosting Durst. So I was like, is that how we end up in the game? No. They wanted to use a Limp Bizkit song on the soundtrack of the game, and Fred Durst's contract for any video game that wanted to use a Limp Bizkit song was

you can use the song as long as I am a playable character. And Fight Club said yes, the game. So he's the only person in it that looks like a real... Fight Club the game said yes.

He's also in various wrestling games, I believe. This was always the deal. Did he ever pop up in a Tony Hawk? He should have. Probably. Go on. I've never played it, so I don't know if he's good.

He's in this appallingly misguided Fight Club side-scrolling fighter game. Right. I just think it's so funny to be like, and you won't believe who the final unlock is. It's not like Goro. It's not like some super-powered guy. It's Fred Durst. It's not Fincher. It's someone who has super-powered guy. It's Fred Durst. It's also not like Fincher.

It's someone who has nothing to do with the movie. With the hat. He's in classic sort of like rolling music video. But that's like a perfect example of the wrong Fight Club. Correct. The wrong lens through which to view Fight Club is like, yeah, man, break stuff. Right.

Break each other. When does the game come out? Game Consideral 2? So it's like, okay, this movie's a hit. There's a huge cult for it now. We can sell this to like dumb bros who have a PlayStation and think this is a fun movie

about fucking people's faces and getting into fights. And this is probably just like a re-spin King of Fighters or whatever. Yeah. I mean,

I'm watching some gameplay now and it seems heavy on punches and kicks. Yes. We watched a little, I sent the gameplay clip. David responded with some personal stories about his relationship with Limp Bizkit

that we can either save for another day or you can reveal. I think we need to just quickly throw them out. I have personal stories about my relationship to Limp Bizkit. Well, you said them on a text yesterday. What did I say? I love Limp Bizkit. I always have and I still do. I'm listening to them right now with my daughter. Pretty sure

that's not what I said. I said, let's see first it's us arguing over whether we're starting at noon david were you a biscuit fan have to assume ben wasn't asking would be a waste of time ben gave that a thumbs up and said three dollar bills y'all i said i downloaded at least two records probably on kazaa or LimeWire or whatever I was using back then. Said, don't think I own them, but I did do them the honor of burning them onto a disc.

So somewhere in the world. Hot dog flavored water is one of them. In a trash lint. The one before that significant other. I think you have the order wrong. Yeah, I know. I'm saying before. Yeah, significant other

and hot dog. You guys would know better than me. You burn them onto a business card shape. Of course. And I handed them to all my teachers. You had a wallet full of biscuits. I said, I'm not going to take a listen to that. Jesus. Significant other. 70 minutes

long. Fucking shut up, Fred. Isn't that like seven times platinum too? Yeah. Chocolate Starfish is 75. I remember at one point listening to Chocolate Starfish with a friend of mine and like three songs. And we were like, what is it? Like, what is the matter with us?

Some kind of spell broker. It's like we have to stop listening to this music immediately forever. You know, the one that song that's just like, we live in a fucked up land with a fucked up place. You know, like he just says that over and over again. No, I don't. But I don't remember that at all. None of clearly they had a video i probably saw it it's called hot dog i believe and it sucks the song sucks i just remember oh it sucks that's the bad limp biscuit

that's what i'm saying the rolling single single off of that album is so bad. Yeah. Uh, what? Come on. Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. Yeah. It's the other thing also. It's like,

all I did all day was watch MTV. So I had to watch Limp Bizkit. They were... They were just fucking cramming that stuff down our throats. It is a bad time.

It's a bad time for TV. This is the crisis of post Fight Club, post 2000, post September 11th like identity masculinity aggression anger is it just became this it became fred durst it's accidentally fred being in the fight club game makes a lot of sense 100 the other thing of course is that fight club is about 30 something gen x men but then a bunch of 13 year old future millennials

are watching it being like this has a lot to say right and it's like it's not like fight club has nothing to say no it's it's literally the rage against the machine of movies right it's like socialism anti-capitalism and then these angry kids are just like yeah man fuck you i'm gonna set you on fire hang on a second hang on a second there's a lot more going the artists who are using appropriations money, you don't have a credit card. You're not even, you don't have these things to be mad about yet. It's like, yeah, I do. The artists burning a corporation's money have a kind of a point that they're Trojan

horsing in and the kids are just like, fuck you, mom. It really is like an equivalent thing. I want chocolate milk. And if you're, you know, me, you're like, oh, I get into this because it's angry and I appreciate it later because I see what it's doing. And if you're most people, you're just like,

fucking snowflakes, man. Bulls on parade. Break stuff. Yeah. I guess so. I got no beef with Fight Club in a way. Like, you know, I'm like,

you know, right? I think because it was less formative in my personality, I look on it with less embarrassment now where there are tons of movies that I will not name that I do feel that way about.

All right, give us one. Scooby-Doo 2 Monsters Only. Fair enough. I think that's a real answer. But to your point as we end, you're levitating when the pixies starts. Absolutely.

Yeah, I need fucking rules. You've been exhausted for 30 minutes, maybe the mayhem, as you said. And you're also like, where's this guy? When he shoots himself

and doesn't die. When they reveal, you're seeing all the scenes again. Norton is just, you're like, oh, that's where, oh, there's only one of him. You're just like, come on. It's a cool twist the first time, but by the time you've seen the movie a lot,

you're sort of like, I know, I know. Sure, sure, sure. The pixie song starts and you're just like, wow, five stars. It's great. I just find it to be one of the most evocative endings. And it obviously is like, it's the obvious culmination of everything this movie is doing.

But I also just think like, God, I wish you could fucking end most movies this way. You could end most movies with someone looking out a window and watching the world collapse. It's a good end of the decade. Right. Yes. Now, they premiered this film at the Venice Film Festival.

It went very badly. Brad Pitt remembers the Helena Bonham Cartier, the Marla line, I haven't been fucked like that since grade school. He's like, Edward and I are the only people laughing. Sort of like Tony Festival audiences walking out. Do you know the story behind that very quickly?

In the script, it was during that scene, she says I want to have your abortion. And Laura Ziskin was like I fucking hate that can you please shoot an alt right and Fincher said

I don't want to shoot an alt unless you're going to make me use it I come up with something that I like so much that I prefer to what we have in there right now

so you have to promise me if I reshoot it you use whatever it is and he shot that and gave it to her and she was like you fucking son of a pain in the ass yeah um but norton does say while the movie's getting booed brad pitt

turns to him with like a huge smile on his face being like this is the best movie i've ever been like yeah clearly pitt is like i did it thrilled like you know i got to actually channel my image in a way that i really like but he does that again you know like jesse james is another thing where it's like i want to deconstruct the myth of the guy who really like. But he does that again, you know, like Jesse James is another thing where it's like, I want to deconstruct the myth of the guy who looks like me. Well, I mean, that's what Moneyball is. That's why Moneyball is the greatest film ever made. He does that a lot. I know! Because it's the thing that

works for him, right? Yeah, like, even in Glorious Bastards or, you know, like, you know, it's like he's making fun of his image in the perfect way or he's like, you know, sort of messing with it. Yeah, this is when he starts to figure it out. He's like he's making fun of his image in the perfect way or he's like you know sort of messing with it like you know like this is when he starts to figure it out he's like playing a movie star but also their self-awareness i mean you know uh the film made uh 11 million

dollars in its opening weekend and 37 domestically uh and worldwide it took a hundred even sure so certainly a failure but then as we have said makes a lot of money on dvd quickly it makes it back uh paul thomas anderson famously uh called the movie out and wished david fincher testicular cancer uh do you remember do you know this i forgot i don't know um because his dad had recently died of cancer. He said, I saw 30 minutes of the movie. This is also like late 90s,

really nervy, young PTA who is kind of like this kind of like wired asshole. He's also got Magnolia. He also was just worried that

he's going to lose lines. He's got this chain and then Kevin Smith shits on Magnolia. Like these guys are all fucking lobbing bombs at each other. But he says,

I saw 30 minutes of it only because our trailer is playing in front of it i would love to go on railing about the movie i'm just gonna pretend as if i haven't seen it it's unbearable i wish david fincher testicular cancer for all his jokes about it i wish him testicular fucking cancer i really 20 years later fincher says i've been through cancer with someone i love i can understand if someone thought that we weren't making fun of cancer survivors, but he's basically like, I kind of get it. Like,

if you're in a rough state like that, my dad died. It made me feel different about death. My dad probably liked Fight Club less than Paul did, which I think is a funny line.

But I just love that Fincher's like, yeah, I get it. Filmmakers need to talk like this more often. We've really lost this. I do agree that we need some like B4 wars with filmmakers. The only problem is no one makes good movies anymore,

except for, you know, but like, you know, it's like, I don't know. It's just guys on Twitter arguing with guys who like different directors on Twitter. It's just complaints from people who have no skin in the game. We just need like top tier beefs like this. This is perfect. We need the auteurs to have the knives out.

Instead, they're all basically like, look, man, if you made a movie, I'm proud of you. We need this industry to survive. That's Paul Thomas Anderson's thing. He says all the time, you got to respect the swing. Does that, you know, where he takes John Krasinski aside? Yes, I think about it all the time. Don't ever say anything bad about any movie.

The other thing I- I love this era of PTA. He's such an asshole. It's great. Yes. Fincher also says when his daughter was nine years old and she went to some school function with him and said,

I want to meet my friend Max. Fight Club is his favorite movie. And Fincher says, I took her aside and said, you are no longer to hang out with Max. You cannot be alone with Max. October 15, 1999, Griffin. Yeah. Fight Club opens to $11 million. Only on 2,000 screens, which also feels like kind of a

mistake yeah but whatever it's a bomb sure pretty big bomb right yeah there's not that many more screens in 1999 there's no 4 000 screen well i will say there are two films playing on 3 000 screens though okay yeah october 99 this was in a box office Game online recently This Oh really Right away I was just like Oh a Fox movie That's not doing well

That's Fight Club Number two Is from The Good People Atop the Mountain This is number one I know No I'm saying Fight Club 1

Yes Fight Club 1 With a left A soft one A very soft one Number two Had been number one For three weeks In a row

Okay It is a crime thriller From the Good People Atop Paramount. Is it Double Jeopardy? And it is called Double Jeopardy. Movie we rewatched

less than a month ago. And? So fun. Yeah, that's like a rare... That's a movie where at the time we were like, eh, this kind of like B-list thriller.

Now I watch and I'm like, a taut masterpiece. I had never seen I had never seen High Crimes. Oh, yeah. I've never seen High Crimes either.

So solid. I mean mean a terrible like the sixth Xerox of Silence of the Lambs and Seven yeah but again now you're just like is everyone smoking

that dank weed in that movie no no no it's not that kind of no no it's very serious how dare you do you want to end the episode

I'd never seen it we're just starting to get somewhere super solid and then I was like let's rewatch the other Ashley Judd movies I'm gonna paraphrase him but I was talking to

that's the second Judd Morgan Freeman as well right that's them reuniting them after Kiss the Girls but it's the first Alex where I forget the Alex Cross Alex Cross is not part of

Kiss the Girls not Kiss the Girls or Long Came a Spider he's Kiss the Girls and Long Came a Spider not High Crimes okay exactly so yeah High Crimes is just

he's a lawyer yeah exactly so it's like a reunion but it's a franchise there's a literal Alex Cross sequel and then there's a spiritual... Yeah, we have A Long Game of Spider next after doing High Crimes and Double Jeopardy. A Long Game of Spider kind of stinks. Kiss the Girls is pretty good in my memory.

Or no, wait. That's what we watched. We didn't watch High Crimes yet. High Crimes is like 2002. High Crimes is like... Okay, no. I'd never seen Kiss the Girls. High Crimes is the last of the Junk Thrillers. I had never seen Kiss the Girls. High Crimes is the last of the joke thrillers.

I had never seen Kiss the Girls. So you watched Kiss the Girls. And then we watched Cariola's, the Carton of Milk. Yeah.

Good movie. I mean, it's kind of bad. Pilger Berry, friend of the show. Absolutely. I was talking to him the other night. Frank.

Humble Frank. And we were just talking about like watching any three-star movie from like 1987 to 2002. You just go like, well, any three-star movie from like 1987 to 2002 you just go like well this three-star movie is now by default a five-star because of its like ambition knowing exactly what it's trying to be and actually executed with good craft right yeah i completely agree

and of course he falls in you also throw on one of those movies and it's like ashley judd tommy lee jones and you're like yes i know the stars of bruce jeopardy but then right it just keeps going and you're like holy shit everyone in this movie is somebody like i'm so happy bruce greenwood obviously is the villain annabeth gish roma mafia michael gaston spencer tree clark like i mean it's not the best version basically made most people misunderstand the law absolutely what do you mean just from the trailer it's like well of course there's a double jeopardy double jeopardy situation number three at the box office an even bigger bomb than fight club i would say that this is opening at number three to nine million is an underperformance

what studio ah the studio is a globe spinning. Universal. Words come around saying universal. They're here to tell a story. A story. A romantic comedy drama starring two movie stars. Uh-huh. Directed by a big director. It's the story of us. Story of us.

It's the story of us. Bruce and Michelle. Bruce and Michelle. Playing for Oscar, I feel like. Yep. Oscar doesn't pick up the phone. It does not. No.

A rhino. They send him a letter. Oscar returns to send her. Yes. Haven't seen the story of us. does not. No. They send him a letter. Oscar returns to sender. Yes. Haven't seen the story of us. Have you? No, I don't think so. Not the kind of that.

That's going to be really low on my 90s recovery project. I feel like there's a chance on and I might have watched it like 10 years ago back when Netflix would just have random like, you know. Yeah, sure. Real movies on it. Right. But I don't know for sure. Number four, the box office. We've invoked this director a bunch on this episode. He was the first choice for Fight Club. you know yeah sure real movies on it right but I don't know for sure number four

the box office we've invoked this director a bunch on this episode he was the first choice for Fight Club David O. Russell Three Kings Three Kings

maybe Stealing the Gold good movie I think so I haven't rewatched it in a long time I would like to do you guys know what the tagline

for Story of Us is no can a marriage survive 15 years of marriage what that's the hook the poster is so bad let's narrate

it yeah it's narrated let's narrate the poster okay Michelle Pfeiffer wait my eyes have to be drawn left it's one of those classic like Bruce Willis first but Michelle Pfeiffer's name is above it sure and then Michelle Pfeiffer's name is above it. Sure.

And then Michelle Pfeiffer in profile, smiling wanly, as she is, you know, often does. She's like whispering in her ear, but it's clearly photoshopped and they're not in front of the camera at the same time. I think it's supposed to look like he's whispering in her ear or sort of kissing her on the cheek or something. Instead, it kind of looks like he's being blown away by a big fan. Yes. Because he's like blurry and he's kind of like and it says can a marriage survive 15 years of marriage a rob reiner film in little uh floating little uh scroll right you'll do it when you do reiner i thought this was a swy bell swy bell

row i've mentioned i texted this to i think at least david at some point but whenever you play online the daily box office game, 1999, you're like, what a great year. How many gems are going to be in this top five? it's all trash. Yeah, it's like,

oh, okay, it's one movie that people like and then four of the biggest pieces of shit that have ever been. It's so true. And of course, the Oscars that year

are like a lot of whiffs and ignoring, obviously, movies like Fight Club. Not a great Oscar. Number four is Three Kings. Number five is the Best Picture winner of 1999. American Beauty.

In its fifth week. Let me be frank. $41 million. Well, I do declare. You ever jerked off in the shower? It's been the highlight of your day. I rule. Nothing gets me going like a rose petal.

Number six at the box office. Speaking of forgotten 1999 crap, Sidney Pollack's Random Hearts. Yeah, that's a real. Which has maybe one of the most misguided studio decisions in history. Chris and Scott Thomas doing an American accent. Yeah, why do that?

Number seven at the box office. Superstar. I like when Helena Bonham Carter is listing all of his names when she's standing in the middle of the street. And as her line reading goes on, she just gets more and more British. She's like, any of the names they call you? Rupert.

Cornelius. And it's like, what is she doing? Did they not want to ADR this line? They're all movie characters. It's supposed to be Rupert Pumpkin and Cornelius from Planet of the Apes and whatever. That makes some sense. I know Rupert is... Wait, what was after Random Hearts? Superstar. SNL movie.

Another great... 1999, man. Great year for... Mark McKinney. That's an incredibly strange film. I haven't seen it since I was a kid. It is incredibly strange. You guys gotta do the SNL movies. I've thrown it out. I mean, with some finessing. Yeah, I told you what...

Do them all. I told you how we're closing on Patreon for the year and you got so excited. I'm very excited. I'm excited. Ding! It's a joke. It's a joke from one of the movies we're covering. Okay.

And a very obvious one if you know the trailer. Yep. And I know you know it. Number eight of the box office is The Sixth Sense. Oh, that's right. Three months in has made $250 million. Uh-huh. Number nine is Martin Lawrence comedy Blue Streak. Uh-huh uh number nine is martin lawrence comedy

blue streak uh-huh is that the one that people helped me remember correct what it was when i said when i left you was like ee and then i came back and you was like well boom yeah and then someone was i was like i need some blankie to tell me this it's it's blue streak number 10 is a uh christian film okay opening this week called the omega Omega Code, which is like the Antichrist is using the Bible to take over the world or something. Is that the one that Christopher Walken's in? It's got Michael Ironside and Casper Van Dien. Are you thinking of Prophecy? Yes.

Which is not Christian. Michael York as the Antichrist. He was playing Basil Exposition and the Antichrist. Good year. You've also got Drive Me Crazy, the Melissa Joan Hart vehicle with Adrian Grenier. Saw that first week. Absolutely.

I'll tell you that much. Banger of a Britney song. And the Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, which I should probably fire up for my daughter. Yeah, she'll love it. You know who's fucking... Patinkin. Ham sandwich.

Patinkin is really good in that movie. Fucking eyebrows for days. Yeah. For the Love of the Game, which we've covered. Stigmata. Will we cover that one? A very important film.

Price. Mystery Alaska. Price is in Stigmata. Jonathan Price. I believe so. Is he playing like a priest? Sure. That guy's played a lot of priests.

He also played a pope. Yeah. I don't know if you know this. Which one? One of the two. One of two? He's playing Pope II. He's part of a set. My daughter likes to say that there are two of things. also played a pope yeah i don't know if you know this which one one of the one of two one of playing pope two it's part of a set my daughter likes to say that there are two of things like that's the

most exciting thing for her and it'd be really funny if i could like make her say two popes she likes to say there are likes to observe when there are like she'll like pick up two things and be like you know two spoons whatever you know like that's that's her favorite number two good number good well that's how old she is and mine as well. That's very true. They know from two. Yeah. We got to get them together.

You've been away. I was briefly away. You were away for like two weeks. That's true. Yeah. Then I'm away. So you say. But, geez, leave me alone.

Let me wrap it up. What do you mean? I don't know what you're drawing this episode at. Ah, David. You got to go. She's making plans with Alex. I got to make dinner for my baby. I got to get out of here.

Wait, who's your baby? My baby. I'm just imagining. Griffin has a basket case-esque baby. No, I'm imagining like a baby Yoda doll. It's like sitting in a high chair. Get out of here. I'm imagining a mutant in a wicker basket that Griffin feeds slop to.

Aquaman's in its third series of reshoots and is something that the Hollywood Reporter just posted? I wonder if that movie will ever That got an indie SAG waiver, right? No studio money? No studio will acknowledge being involved with it at this point. It is wild. That is the only DC movie since the

Nolan Dark Knight trilogy to make a billion dollars and they have been treating it like it is the biggest disaster on their hands? Yeah, it is really weird. The number one thing that DC ever produced

and the sequel is basically radioactive. I don't know, man. Alex, final thoughts. Very complex rewatch for me. A beloved film. You demanded, or not demanded, but requested. I accepted it when Griffin was like, you should do that.

It's just a complicated movie to look back. I mean, I remember having like raucous sunshine midnight screenings of this a few times when I was in college. Just like,

man, I get to see a print of Fight Club. People going nuts. You're there until 2.45 in the morning. Yeah. It's a very silly movie. It's very silly. Is Zodiac your favorite? I would say I would45 in the morning. Yeah. It's a very silly movie. It's very silly. Is Zodiac your favorite?

I would say I would rank it number one if pressured. Yeah. But it's insane to be like, yeah, this was my favorite movie for like three years. It would maybe be like my third favorite Fincher now, possibly fourth. Yeah. Wait, what else is above it? I mean, I would put seven above it. I would probably put Social Network above it.

And then I just- Don't be wrong. Beyond that, I just couldn't justify anything else above it, even if I'm like, yeah. What about Benjamin Button? He's a venerable senior citizen. Gotta give the guy some respect. And how does he look relative to how old he actually is?

Let me be frank. I'm seven, but I look a lot older. Ben looks like he's melting. Ben, you came in ready for Project Mayhem and we gave it to you. You did? Yesterday we did a different episode and I was like,

do we have anything planned for Fight Club? And Ben was like, I don't know, we might fight. That was his pitch. He's been doing some complicated bits recently. Yeah, and I feel like for this one, I was like, I know we're going to go for approximately three hours.

Your complicated bit, let's say, and you did put a lot of prep work into it, was not sleeping for two weeks. feel like for this one i was like i know we're gonna go for approximately three hours your complicated bit let's say and you did put a lot of prep work into it was not sleeping for two weeks yes that's true so i'm gonna take you gotta become a sleepy time honks you king again i gotta do it i know maybe we'll get you a big cap and a candle on a plate or something i mean like we gotta do something can i tell you what ben told me after yesterday after the court i don't think this will embarrass you i'm a sleep'm a sleep therapist, and I'm like, here's what you do. Put this big cap on, take this candle. No, sorry, go ahead.

Can I say this, Ben? I don't know. I don't think it's too embarrassing. Wow. Ben was like, I've been sleeping so poorly. I was like, at the beginning of the episode, really struggling to stay awake. And then you guys, in what was the Alien 3 episode, brought out him falling asleep on a different alien house.

That when we did the Alien commentaries on Patreon he fell asleep and was like I couldn't do it twice you were so you did seem out of it at the start of the episode

to the point that I was like is Ben mad at me? like what's going on? and I think you were just sleepy time on a shoe very sleepy time on a shoe I'll say this in closing yeah

I think I'll save Hip Hop Sims for another day yes you're never gonna reveal that one that's a promise Ben and I are working on something. Okay, great. Mixtape.

Ben's got his assignment. His Project Mayhem homework is... I understood the assignment. He understood the assignment. Ben looks full of vim and vigor and energy about this assignment. Ben needs a nap. Alex, thank you for being here. Happy to come by.

Yeah. And I'm glad you got your present. Mischief, mayhem, lucky numbers on VHS. It's and I'm glad you got your present. Mischief, mayhem, lucky numbers on VHS. It's what we promise here at Blank Check. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show.

AJ McCann and Alex Barron for our editing. Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Please don't put Deadpool over our faces. Thank you to JJ Birch for our research. We end up using a lot more of it than we thought we would. Lay Montgomery and the Great American Idol for our theme song. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit,

including our Patreon blank check special features, where we're doing the Fincher music video episode, but we're also doing the Brosnan Bond movies, including Jonathan Pryce's, of course, Vehicle, Tomorrow Never Dies. Mile a minute action excitement. It's so great. It's a good episode,

though. And you're doing all the House of Cards. And we're doing every... We're doing House of Cards one minute at a time. Right, but only if you pay me one million dollars in unmarked American cash. Yes. And then we'll get real Frank on me. Frank is your nightmare.

Anytime I can get you to do the voice, I'm really happy. Tune in next week for Panic Room with... Eva Anderson. The great Eva Anderson. We already recorded it. It's a good app. It's a corker. Love that movie.

And as always, gentlemen, check your text. Everyone, just please go to your phone. Oh my God. This was a difficult one. This is good. Yeah, well,

this is why you've been so occupied for the last hour. Tell them what it is Well, I'll read this poster aloud for everybody Starting at the top left They're headed to the homeland Who could be headed? I sort of move my eyes over Nia Vardalos

John Corbett Well, I'm sure you're seeing their faces on this poster By Big Fat Greek Winning three And this is, of course dalos john corbett well i'm sure you're seeing their faces on this poster my big fat greek wedding three and this is of course griffin has taken a very soberly photographed poster where everyone's faces looked normal 10 different humans and everyone was clearly in the same room and he's put deadpool's face on everyone laney kazan jo Joey Fatone, not Michael Constantine because he sadly left us. God bless. He got out before he did.

They were like, we're gonna make my big pec recording 3D. He's like, I'll see you later. R.I.P. to Michael Constantine. Yep. Only in theaters September 8th. Love the movie that comes out during TIFF. That's probably premiering at Venice and Telluride, though.

That's why it's coming out then. Telluride secret screening. Well, they're all secret. This is top secret. Yeah, that's a pain of death. This is classified. You need a Q clearance to see this one. Bye.