Offline with Jon Favreau - How “Fight Club” Created a Generation of Sh*tposters

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Since “Fight Club” hit theaters in 1999, the movie has become both a cinematic cult classic and a building block of how people (mostly men) express themselves online. Film critic Emily St. James and Crooked’s Erin Ryan join Offline Movie Club to talk about whether David Fincher’s opus deserves its top tier rankings, how the movie has been misappropriated by disillusioned Gen Xers and online chauvinists alike, and whether there are any feminist messages to be found. In essence, it’s Edward Norton playing a bored shitposter with Brad Pitt as his edgelord sock puppet account—what’s not to love?  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The generation that most supported Trump, like percentage-wise, was Gen X. And it's like... And continues to be. It's a reflexive contrarianism, which is like, the system's broken, we need to tear it down. But it's the ending of Fight Club. It's like, we're going to tear it down, and then what? And I'm not saying Fight Club needs to answer, and then what? I don't think any art does.

But it's very much like, yeah, it sort of shows the limitations of that worldview in a way that I think the film actually captures somewhat adroitly. But yeah, it's very much like, you know what, we need to be skeptical of everything. Great. Also, nothing is real. Some things are a little real. I'm Max Fisher. I'm Max Fisher. I'm Erin Ryan. And joining us today, Emily St. James, the critic, writer, podcaster, and author of the just-out-lost Back to the Island, the complete critical companion to the hit TV show. Emily, welcome back.

It's so good to be here. Thank you. And congratulations on the book. Thank you so much. I think it's a very good one. I've been reading it in my bathroom, which is the highest price I can pay a book like that. It's captive time, so it kind of is, yeah. All right, this is Offline Movie Club. Every episode we discuss one of our favorite movies and how it reflects or shapes how we think about technology and the internet. This week we are talking about Fight Club, the 1999 cult classic in which Edward Norton plays a bored shit poster with Brad Pitt as his edgelord sock puppet account. Everyone is here in the studio in our pink coffee mug bathrobes.

Absolutely ready to go. Everybody bring the burial money. I'm actually wearing like a cool tank top. And we all have our giant red sunglasses on the sunglasses in this movie. I truly could not think of a better sunglasses movie. The blue blockers. Is that what they are? Yes.

I didn't know that. So the lenses are blue blockers. So, you know, like blue light interferes with your ability to sleep. And at the beginning, the narrator has insomnia. So it's a kind of nice touch. Oh, yeah. That that helps. It's supposed to be if you're insomniac, you wear it in the evening.

That's clever. That's I had read that they just like pick those sunglasses because Brad Pitt's personal assistant was wearing them. But it can be both. It can be the universe provided them because they were on theme. Another instance of accidental Brad Pittian genius. It's the best kind of genius. All right, Emily, what to you makes this movie important for how we think about technology and the Internet? Well, it's very gay. I'm so glad we're starting with this. No, I think it is obviously the depiction of workplace culture and technology and all of that is so nice. This is the most 1999 movie.

Yes. Technology and all of that is so nice. This is the most 1999 movie. Yes, it is like right there on the precipice of everything changing, but like also kind of like, well, this is going to last forever. I do think, though, it's a very smart movie about the ways that men, especially, but many people felt disaffected by that world and turned to communities that were formed sort of ad hoc, mostly online now, but in the film, you know, they meet in a bar parking garage or something. And it created this world where there was this huge, virulent sense of we're the only ones who can sense that something is wrong. And there's so many movies like The Matrix is like that. American Beauty is like that. And they all came out in 1999 and it's like there was this sense in the air of oh everything is broken but like it seems okay and like this movie very much captures the way that uh young disaffected people especially young disaffected men would like gather and congregate and then you know destroy the world yeah we did

the matrix a couple of months ago and it is fascinating to think of these two movies side by side as, yes, about like a community of like-minded people coming together and fighting each other because something is wrong with the world and they have to tear it down. Although I think that the guys in Fight Club did not take the right lessons about what to do about that. No, and I think like one of the other things that's prescient about this movie is that its influence is tremendous,

unlike our culture. It's huge. But people kind of took all, didn't read it in the way the film intends itself to be read, which is fine. All readings of films are valid, but this movie is very satirical.

Right. And yet, the effect on the culture at large and the, I guess you'd call it the dorm room cinema effect has been so deleterious to its legacy that every time I sit down to watch it I'm like oh this fucking movie and then I like watch it and I'm like oh no this movie's good

like this movie's really watchable and enjoyable I don't think it's aged that it's issues where it hasn't aged well but like the only thing I can compare it to is the dark knight which is another movie that had this huge effect on the culture but then you sit down and you watch it and you're like oh it was so of its moment right yeah yeah i'm actually very curious how what it was like for both of you to revisit this and like how long it had been

since you'd seen it because i watched this movie between 1999 and 2008, I would say conservatively, a thousand times, two thousand times. Like truly watching it, it was just like a dream coming back to me. Like I knew every line,

every music cue, but had not seen it in like 15 years. And watching it again, I was so struck by like, it's just a great movie. It's so well made. Like David Fincher

knows what he's doing. Yeah. Can I just, I just, I'm going to make make a maybe a shit post of my own um no i'm saying something that is deliberate deliberately maybe a little out there but watching it this time i was like this movie is feminist and here's why um it sort of it creates a story that fills in the spaces that feminism doesn't fill in but it can coexist in the same space as feminism. I know this sounds crazy, but it blames capitalism for the plight of men rather than women,

which is something that in a lot of dude movies is not what is being blamed. And I think that a lot of, you talk about dorm movie culture, Emily, a lot of people who really glommed on to this movie missed what the who is to blame for the fact that these men are disaffected is that capitalism pushes them. It doesn't it doesn't value them. It doesn't care for them. It doesn't provide them with anything that's emotionally fulfilling.

And so as a result, they're pushed into this space of like nihilism they're like we have to in order for us to access what those things care emotional support we need to tear down capitalism because capitalism is the backbone of this patriarchal bullshit that only values us as like providers or office drones or people working within the system so i think in that way it's like kind of revolutionary. And I don't know if the filmmaker intended for that to happen, but are there any other movies about disaffected men doing dude shit? And they're like, it's capitalism.

It's the patriarchy. It's my fucking dad. It's not women. It's not my mom. It's like the dudes did this to the dudes there's very much there's a moment i think when when uh tyler tells the narrator is you know is a mother going to like i was just getting when he's in the bath but it is like very brief and what's interesting about this film is that we were talking about the fashion and i think this movie is fundamental

to men's fashion going forward from it but like marla the one major woman character i or a minor she's kind of like the the end point of a certain kind of 90s woman within a film and like i i'm fascinated by the way that she she's never demonized the movie's always like she's caught in a really messed up situation and like she's like we have a lot of sympathy for her even though she's by definition not a point of view character although the edward norton character does try to blame her but you're right that i think the movie takes the point of view that it's actually just edward norton's fucked up stuff that he's putting onto her or it's like enacting through her it's really interesting the way that this movie tries to

separate itself from all of the things that the influence it had even you know before that influence existed so it's really trying to tell a nuanced story about what it is to be a man today and like it falls short in some areas but it mostly doesn't blame women outside of a few small instances and then the movie's always like yeah but edward norton doesn't know what's going on yeah he's he's like the one who's off kilter. And even the narrator seems to know that the narrator is off kilter. And when he has a chance to just let her die of a suicide attempt, he shows up for her. And he shows up for her to check her blood.

Is he showing up for her? Maybe not in the sense that typically people mean that. If she were truly a detriment to his goals and he truly didn't care about her at all. He wouldn't have gone by. He wouldn't have gone by at all. He would have just let her die. And he showed up to, like, check the lump in her breast. Like he he did not possess the emotional capacity. Like part of the story is he doesn't have he he's not emotionally all there. He's missing something really important.

But yet he shows up for her in those moments in the way that he can. I am so glad that you were both here to champion this movie and its politics because I am simply not. I went into this so badly wanting to be like, it's satirizing all this. It's in on the joke. It understands what it's talking about. And like, I really think that it is like kind of satirizing and clearly intends to satirize it but i really think the movie ends up endorsing a lot of the like underlying stuff that becomes really influential about it it's so funny

like it is a very it's a very funny movie which i think i think helps it a lot um it is kind of a movie that is like it's this trap that movies about like revolutionary movements often get caught in, unless it's like an actual one from history, which is, okay, consumerism has broken us and has made us all lesser men. So we need to tear down consumerism, but we only know how to exist within this system that already exists. imagine something outside of that like project mayhem itself is a direct response to this that like offers them some emotional sustenance and stuff but it's mostly there to tear things down and like that's the problem with any story that's trying to posit a revolution because then the storyteller is like well we have to figure out what comes next and it's you know if i could reinvent society right now i would do it and it's a very difficult thing but that's the thing is that like i don't think that like yes it's about very difficult thing. But that's the thing is that like, I don't

think that, like, yes, it's about like capitalism, and like, we're going to blow up a Starbucks, and we're going to destroy corporate art. But I think that what they're really like getting at is just like, we feel disaffected, we feel dispossessed, we feel weak, because society has made us weak, and we don't know why. So we're going to go do something just to prove to ourselves that we're strong. I don't think that they have a like communist utopia that they're working towards. Yeah, I do. I think it's more along the lines of the film is positing, you know, the natural end result of this is tearing down society. Sure.

And like the film kind of blinks when it comes to that. like endorsing it in any way, but it's sort of like, it can't figure out a way to like square the circle of, okay, well, if you want to destroy society, you have to destroy society. And that's a bad thing. And like, obviously that's a catch 22. There's no way out of it. But I think the movie kind of, I love the ending of this movie. I do think it kind of blinks a little bit in that regard. I just, you mean the, just like the very, very last shot?

Yeah. The sense of like, we've just unleashed something but what have we done yeah i i the like last 20 minutes i was more and more like i don't know i don't know if they landed it i don't know if they really understand what they're endorsing but once you get to that last shot and the pixies come on like you can't not have fun you can't not have a great time has there ever been a better closing song in a movie that it really might be it. It's so good. Yeah.

I rewatched the end like five times. I went to YouTube and was like, fight club ending. And all of the YouTube clips cut it off before the quick frame of the penis. Because then you'll get flagged on YouTube. It's definitely one that you absolutely cannot watch on Amazon Prime because Bezos wants to fucking minimize it during the credits and that ruins it.

It absolutely ruins the movie. No, you need the dick. Don't listen to this podcast. For me, the biggest impact is that I really think this movie shaped everything about the early social web. Like I did for this book on social media and i like researched a lot about like 4chan which i was not there for at the time but like really

came back to it's like reading a lot about it and talking to a lot of people about like what was early 4chan 4chan culture like and what was the draw of it and it's really just like this movie it's like this sense of like young male anime it's this sense of like i don't have a place in society but i'm gonna get involved in like pranks and this like being a trickster and kind of like lashing back out at the world and it's just like the specific language of the movie too i think like really kind of created it but i know we're gonna get into like what is the movie's actual level of responsibility and influence for the like way that people have picked it up since then. But it's just like there is no denying the just incredible amount of influence this movie still has on the far right.

I'm not saying it's the movie's fault. But like I was just reading this long New Yorker investigation about like far right groups and far right militias and like all these different groups and like where they are and the work that they're doing and they all have fight clubs like they and they call them that too and what's crazy about that is that all of the guys in these groups are like 19 like they were this movie was not or they were not born when this movie came out and i think that speaks to and again we'll get into like to what extent is the movie satirizing versus door saying and it's like it's level of responsibility for it. But the just like the way that this movie got into the bloodstream of, I think, first the social web and then all of the like alt right MRA incel stuff that came out of that is like it's really staggering. I cannot believe those guys talk to those reporters about Fight Club. Like it's also against the rule.

It's also the second rule. But they break the rules. That's their whole thing is they break the rules. So maybe talking about Fight Club is actually what you're supposed to be doing. There's actually a really funny scene where they're like, wait, is this a trick? Like at the very end when the narrator is trying to figure out where Tyler is and he's just about to come to the truth. And he's at that bar and the man wearing the like braces like is this is this a trick like the it's so convoluted and it's so nonsensical when you kind of break it down to its base like i think that exposes the fact that the movie knows that it is like a it's it's the movie's in on it because it's like oh we okay so

wait so how how am i supposed how's this rule supposed to go like oh he's oh this guy died so now we can use this real name like okay like it's sort of it exposes the fact that the simplicity of the rules and the like brashness in which they're like conveyed to people is all bravado and if you try to take it any to his logical conclusion it kind of unravels it's uh also an important film in early kind of film geek online film yes culture because the dvd was like one of the best selling dvds it's a great dvd and it's like one you know it's a movie obviously that lends itself to re-watching but also the special features were wonderful david fincher always has great special features and like so you could really immerse yourself in the world of this film. I hadn't

seen it since probably 2004, 2005, but it was a movie that I watched several times just because the DVD was good. It was never my favorite, although Fincher is one of my faves. But I watched it because it was just so fun to see all of the layers of it.

And he consistently does some of the best director commentary tracks, which that was one of the layers of it. It's one of the great, and he is like consistently does some of the best director commentary tracks, which that was one of the first director commentaries I ever listened to. I was so disappointed to learn that most directors are actually like quite boring. That's a bad one to start on. It's like being raised in New York City.

You go anywhere else and you're like, oh. And it's amazing that he did such a great director commentary, even though he did not yet have a relationship with Ben Affleck and so could not shit on him, which is the source of his best director commentaries, I feel. OK, well, let's get into the biggest thing this movie gets right. There is so much that this movie is like about. I mean, there's the like Gen X malaise.

There's the crisis of masculinity stuff. There's the trolling culture. Like, where do you all want to start? Hmm. I start with dads i think uh i you mentioned this earlier i'm really curious to hear your take on this this movie has like a couple of different you can take a couple things from this obviously you can take a lot of different things from this movie but one of the things is bad dads will destroy the world um i want to play a clip from Tyler and the narrator having a conversation about God. You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you.

This is not the worst thing that can happen. It isn't? We don't need him. We don't agree. Fuck damnation, man. Fuck redemption. We are God's unwanted children. So be it. Okay.

Oh, this is the soap scene, right? Yeah, this is when he's getting a chemical burn. He's getting a lye burn on his hand, and Tyler is offering him vinegar to help the burn. But, you know, this theme of dads comes up a few times. And these are kind of like, the Project Mayhem is kind of a bunch of like lost boys and they're very emotionally arrested which is why some of the like, yeah, fuck your fucking society, man, is so adolescent. Listening

to it now, watching it now. I want to play another clip of them talking about dads. Fight my boss, probably. Really? Yeah, why? Who would you fight? Fight my dad. I don't know my dad. I mean, I know him, but he left when I was like six years old, married this other woman, had some other kids.

My dad never went to college, so it's real important that I go. That sounds familiar. So I graduate, I call him up long distance, I say, Dad, now what? He says, get a job. Same here. Now I'm 25. I make my yearly call again.

I say, Dad, now what? He says, I don't know. Get married. You can't get married. I'm a 30-year-old boy. We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need okay no misogyny there's okay come on so the line i'm a 30 year old boy it's a good one it's such a important one for understanding both tyler and the narrator because tyler

you cannot develop an alternative personality that is more mature than you i feel like you know you as a writer you can't write a character that's smarter than you. You can't, you know, you can't have an, you're both boys. They're both overgrown boys. And so there's like a boyishness to their approach to things. And so I think

bad dads and young men who are unsupported, who feel like they don't have space to be emotional, they don't feel like they're loved, they don't feel like they're cherished, they're not getting any physical affection, not necessarily like sexual affection, but just like physical affection, they will resort to really antisocial behavior. And they are susceptible to extremely dangerous cult-like organizations.

And this is where Fight Club reminds me a little bit of like the Andrew Tate of today, where, you know, the people that are falling in with Andrew Tate are a lot of times like adolescent boys and they're growing up and existing in a society where they don't feel like they can express themselves. They don't have healthy emotional outlets. They don't feel valued.

Maybe their dads aren't around to show them how to be good men. They don't know what good men are. They don't know what their purpose is in society. It's kind of a mirror. So in that way, you could take that there's like a misogyny strand in the film. But I think overall, I still stand by my take that it's a feminist movie. No, I take your point. Although it is, can I say, it is so funny that in that scene he's taking a bath they're

just doing a talented mr ripley in that scene i thought that was great they're so gay for each other it's great yes well like when you watch this movie knowing they're the same person like so many layers are unpacked but also like he like he wants to love himself so much that he creates this persona that's like kind of his boyfriend a little bit right it's uh i think you're you're i've been doing some research into um for a novel i'm working on for on into um the role of like basically parental abuse in the rise of fascism like oh interesting within the home this these structures are created and then they're replicated at scale within society. And obviously not every fascist has been parentally abused, anything like that.

But it is like this real indicator of if you create this system that is very much like built around obedience. And if you disobey the rules, you're going to get the crap kicked out of you. You know, creates this undergirding thing that society then can sort of be undermined by. And I think this movie, obviously we don't hear that, they shared a father, I guess, but we don't hear that that dad was directly abusive. He was just neglectful.

But in some ways that can be just as harmful. So I think that's an interesting point to bring up about fathers because now they're all like looking to Tyler as a father figure and that's a terrible idea. Right. Another thing is, I read this in the IMDb

trivia of the movie, but Tyler says we are God's unwanted children. Now there's a line that Marla says after she and Tyler have sex where she says, I haven't been fucked like that since grade school. That wasn't the original line. Right, they edited that in.

The original line in the script was, I want to have your abortion. And some exec was like, that is absolutely not. We can't, nope, that's a bridge too far. I know, it's so funny. That's the one that they subbed in. They were like, this is better?

Yeah, yeah, I want to have your abortion. The 90s. But I think that like if that line had stayed in the movie, it would have really like created a through line of like unwanted children, unwanted boys. And what that looks like in the world and what happens when children are in the world and they feel unwanted, specifically boys and men. Right. So I think that like we should talk about the like crisis of masculinity stuff because this was so in the culture in the late 90s. So this was the year that stiffed the betrayal of the American man came out. It was a book where this woman interviewed Sylvester Stallone, shipyard workers, a bunch of people to get at the quote,

root causes of America's crisis of masculinity. And the conclusion that she landed on was that men had been sold that the idea that masculinity was, quote, something to drape over the body, not draw from inner resources, that it is personal, not societal, that manhood is displayed, not demonstrated. And like, I was, I think we're all about the same age. I was only vaguely aware of this stuff in the culture at the time. But like, you go back and read and there was this real sense that like we're failing our men somehow. And like that was very jarred by that. Isn't there always a sense that we're failing our men?

It feels like every year there's a new book. There's a new article. There's a new discussion of like, well, we failed men. What are we going to do about it? At a certain point, I'm kind of like, maybe men are failing themselves. Maybe they can like deal with it. So that that gets to like what I think, like my kind of more critical take on this is I think that the movie is satirizing these guys specifically. And I think it takes very seriously the thing that they are ostensibly responding to.

And like Fincher has talked about that, like the thing that he was drawn to with this story is that like men are supposed to be hunters and there's nothing to hunt anymore and he's like he's talked about how he wanted to play with the audience's expectations of like are we really taking this seriously are we endorsing it not endorsing it and i think if you watch the way that the move this movie treats especially in like the first 30 minutes like the can see it. I think the movie is really saying that like these men are in a support group for the wrong reason. The real problem, like the first support group, the particular cancer group, it read to me like the movie is saying that their real problem isn't that they have been physically emasculated by cancer, but rather spiritually emasculated by society. And like the fact that it's the first thing that we see. It's the fact that they replaced the support group with Fight Club.

And that Bob the meatloaf character like comes back and replaces it with Fight Club. Oh that line where he says Bob loved me because he thought my testicles were removed too. And I think the movie wants us to think that they were. But they were removed by like capitalism and modernity and society. Like I really think that the movie takes seriously the idea, which I think we now know is, like, kind of a both wrongheaded and dangerous one, that, like, men have been robbed of their rightful place in the world. Which, like, now we recognize as some incel shit. This is like getting in the weeds, but the argument that men were always the hunters and they were bringing home the food and whatever is based. It was made up during a time with sexist assumptions. In reality, I think it was women.

Women also participated in the hunt and women were responsible for gathering something like 75 percent of the nutrition that ended up like feeding the. Yeah, most of the calories did not come from woolly mammoths. No. It was mostly from plants and it was yes exactly and and like nuts and seeds or whatever and also women participated in the hunt there's evidence that women participated in the hunt there wasn't that clear of a demarcation like this is men do this women do this except for when it came to reproduction so it just it's funny because this is a response to a an assumption that was based on something wrong.

So, I mean, we're not in the unintentionally gets right thing yet. But I think the movie unintentionally makes itself an even bigger satire because the thing they're fighting against was actually never true. Yes. You know, it's like built on a foundation that actually is wrong for reasons beyond what these men think. But you think the movie is intending to satirize that idea? I don't think so. I think that that's an unintentional thing that the movie does. Yeah, I think the movie buys on some level that men have to get back to being men.

It kind of has to for the plot to work. It's so core to everything. But it is like thematically interested in that in a way that i think has maybe aged the most poorly of it um while we're talking about things that it gets right this is a very weird thing to pull out but it's depiction of what's effectively dissociative identity disorder um which is like a large spectrum of things it's not just one condition that and like in many times including in movie, it's depicted very dramatically where suddenly like you're a different person and so on and so forth. But I have talked to folks in that community and like not everybody loves this movie, but some people do really like the way that it depicts. Oh, you have a person in your head who's wrecking all your shit.

And like you kind of can't like you kind of feel beholden to them, but also sometimes like you feel like you should take charge of them. It's like very intuitive. And I don't think that this movie is directly depicting DID. It's more interested in like the question of, you know, him inventing the person he wants to be. But it is like interested in this idea that you have a person in your head who you have this darkly symbiotic relationship with, and it becomes very stark and very codependent just by its very nature.

Not everyone in that community loves this film, but it is for some folks, it's a very interesting depiction of that quality. That's so interesting because I don't know if that was deliberate on behalf of Chuck Palahniuk who wrote it.

So maybe he just like arrived at that. It's very clearly just like a metaphor. Sure. And I think oftentimes the best depictions of these sorts of identities

that exist outside the cultural mainstream, trans identities, queer identities, more broadly speaking, are often like arrived at through an accidental metaphor somebody else comes up with. You know what I mean? And then once people, like once folks who have DID are making their own films, then yeah, we'll get like a more nuanced

look at it. But, you know, The Matrix was made by two trans women who didn't yet know they were trans women. And it's like, you know, that metaphorical level gave it something that all sorts of people could. Oh, that makes sense. Because you're dealing more with the kind of primordial, like, what are the feelings that are bringing me to this, which brings you to something deeper than just a like surface level representation. But yeah, I think it's just a metaphor that accidentally tapped into something for some folks.

That's interesting. And there's also like a bloodlessly Freudian read kind of where it's like, we've got, you know, oh, we've got the narrator who is the ego and we have the id who is Tyler and they somehow become these they separate and the id takes control and if every man's id took control

what would happen was the world would get destroyed and that is why we need these two things to be the same they need to be working in tandem with each other and they can't be like you can't let one control the other it's interesting the movie kind of posits marla as the super ego in that reading where she's like the one thing they can kind of both agree right and it is kind of the thing that's orchestrating all of yeah and it is very much a three-hander of a movie like it's about these three characters it certainly gets a broader scope

but so much of it is just these three people in a house. Right. Yeah. I mean, I read that Marla was also supposed to be played by Reese Witherspoon. Yes. Which would have been a different movie. It's very hard to imagine. She at the time was like 22, I think.

So it's like election era. Yeah. It's hard to imagine Reese Witherspoon being that guileless in a movie. I think she projects a little too clever to not know what's going on in the story. Okay, so let's talk about the role that this has played in, I think, basically inventing trolling culture, like 4chan culture that comes out of this. This whole worldview of we, we don't feel like we have a place in, like you were talking about this, Emily, we don't feel like we have a place in society. And like society is a threat to us and we find it menacing and scary. So we're

going to like retreat to our kind of safe space. And then we're going to go back out and like undermine and maybe destroy the world that is torturing us so much. Like this line that the narrator has, it was right in front of everybody's face. Tyler and I just made it visible. It was on the tip of everybody's tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name. We have a clip. This is from Brad Pitt narrating when they're down in the fighting pit.

We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. Ooh, that's deep. Well, guys, 9-11, coming right up. You got your wish.

It is so funny to think of this movie coming out like right before 9-11. Thank you, sweet summer child. Did you really want it? Yeah, they're all going to Anbar province. I think of this movie, and I've talked about this many times, so please fast forward 30 seconds if you've heard me talk about this on a podcast. I think about this movie and American Beauty

and being John Malkovich and The Matrix as part of a quartet of movies I call end-of-history movies after the Fukuyama essay, which is like, we've reached the pinnacle. We know what everything is. And we're looking out into the future and we're so bummed out about it. It's just like, everything feels meaningless. Why does everything feel meaningless? We're being told to buy things and that's not going to solve our problems. And like, that's a very short-lived period of film that lasts about two, three years because 9-11 radically alters everything, including pop culture. But it is this like, and a lot of those movies are still ones that people turn to, you know?

It's this idea of, oh, everything is just the same forever and I hate it. Right, right. And I'm angry and I don't know why. Yeah. Yeah, it's very Woodstock 99. I think part of what makes it, it is like so like anticipating the early social web is that the response to that is to kind of're not special, you're not a special slow flake, you don't matter, taking away people's identities.

And also the way that they put the chemical burns on their hand where it's like this initiation ritual of experiencing pain together. There's kind of like they bond together and find community in a world where they feel like they don't have one by embracing their self-hatred and their sense of being lost in the world,

which has turned out to be a really big thing. I always forget Jared Leto's in this movie. I know. I saw his name. Every time it's a jump scare. I saw his name in the opening credits and then forgot. And then he came in, I was like, oh, it's got Jared Leto. But he is kind of playing a Hitler.

Yeah. In a lot of ways, this is, I think, a movie about men who feel weak, making themselves feel strong by giving up and being nihilistic and by lashing out at the world, frankly, for no real reason. This like kind of made up ideology. I'm bored. I'm bored. And that becomes such a huge thing that becomes the entire subculture of the internet which becomes you know the the alt-right it becomes incels it becomes mras and i think that is a big part of how those groups go

back and like discover and repurpose this movie and i agree that they like misread a lot of it but i do think that they also it is speaking to them in like a real way it reminds me a little bit of like rotten.com if you guys remember that. Unfortunately, I do. It was like, for people who are too young or blessed to not know what it is, it was just a website where it was like a precursor to 4chan. And it was just a website that posted the most vile stuff imaginable.

And it was like a place for boys to go, mostly boys. I'm sure there were some women on there too, but it was like kids going on to like gross each other out and like maybe share in the trauma of like how awful it was to see like somebody die in a getting hit by a train

or like, you know, a dead animal or like all these really bloody, gory, or really disgusting like infection or something. It feels a lot like that to me. Absolutely. And we're seeing this every time there's a tragedy and you can witness atrocities

on your computer and just watch the footage. You run the real risk of giving yourself secondhand PTSD and I think we still don't understand that. And that was what we, like us who were on the internet very early on and getting links to like fucking Goatsea or whatever, we're like entering a space where,

oh, suddenly you can see the worst shit imaginable and it does things to your brain, but we didn't really understand it then. And we understand it a little bit better now, but we still don't really have a great sense of the internet has made it possible to experience everything all of the time and the human brain is not built to handle that.

Now we have phones. We went into a room with a box that had everything awful on it. Now we have everything awful in our pocket or in our bag all the time. David Fincher should make Fight Club 2 and it's just about phones. We are going to talk about this.

I have so many thoughts on why David Fincher should remake this movie. To your point, Erin, about Rotten.com is that I kept thinking watching this movie about this guy who interviewed once for a story who had been a former like 8chan, like extremist, like Gamer Gator. And he got out and he got help and everything. a lot about is a like big appeal of the culture on these forums that like led to extremism and radicalization was this kind of collective deliberate self-desensitization where you deliberately look at horrible things and horrible you know images and you deliberately post like the most provocative offensive things that you can and that the idea is that like the world hurts and the world is scary.

If you are someone who's like you're 14, you feel lost, you don't know who you are. And then you do this self desensitization to numb yourself to it. And that makes you stronger. And that made me think about like, that's kind of what the Edward Norton character is talking about with Fight Club, where he talks about like the rest of the world feels like a photocopy of a photocopy. The only thing is real is when they're just putting each other through these painful, extreme experiences so that they can then like go out and endure this world that they find so unendurable. It's like just they're like a one to ones that I felt like I kept tracking or just really staggering to me. Should we talk about the Gen X bullshit of this movie? There's so much Gen X bullshit in this movie.

Can I read an Ed Norton quote from you? He gave this to Brian Raftery for The Ruling Road, a great horror history of this movie. Can I read an Ed Norton quote from you? He gave this to Brian Raftery for The Ruling Road, A Great Horror History of this movie. And they did, I guess when they were working on the movie, they had these script writing jam sessions where it was, you know,

Andrew Scott Walker, Andrew Kevin Walker? I think so, yeah. And David Fincher and Edward Norton and then there was another guy who was adapting the script. And Norton talked about how he went on this long rant about how they were mad about the new VW Beetle. I read about this, too. Oh, did you really? Yeah.

Okay. It's a quote. They just wanted to repackage an authentic baby boomer youth experience to us. They just want us to buy sentiment for the 60s with a little fucking molded flower that you sit in your dashboard and they wonder why we're cynical. Shut up, Edward Norton. Who cares? Get over it.

Gen X is making all of us endlessly re-experience the 80s. And I'm like, I don't care about the 80s that much. Come on. Let's do some 90s, 2000s nostalgia, baby. God, you know what? I am married to a Gen X person who is very gen x coded and this is a person experienced gen a person experiencing gen x and i can a hundred percent

like some of our marital arguments are him being like why you gotta buy stuff man i'm like because the baby because the baby needs diapers and these are good diapers like why we got packages coming because i reordered soap my dude like it's um yeah that is that is some gen x bullshit for the gen x anti-consumerism where it's like i agree with you on the merits but you're like a little mad about it in a way that like the vw beetle is fine just don't buy it it's fine it's not hurting you're mad at the beetle but you're not mad at Exxon Mobil. Like you're mad at the Beetle, but you're not mad at whatever entities are preventing like mass pollution and the poisoning of our world. Explain to me why we have to smash a Starbucks.

Explain it to me. Like, yeah, why do we have to? Yeah. Why are you like punching something in effigy and not realizing that there are bigger problems? You're mad at symbols. The generation that most supported Trump, percentage-wise, was Gen X. And continues to be. It's a reflexive contrarianism, which is like, the system's broken, we need to tear it down. But it's the ending of Fight Club. It's like, we're going to tear it down. And then what? And I'm not saying Fight Club needs to answer. And then what?

I don't think any art does, but it's very much like, yeah, it sort of shows the limitations of that worldview in a way that I think the film actually captures somewhat adroitly. But yeah, it's very much like, you know what? We need to be skeptical of everything. Great.

Also, nothing is real. I'm like, you know. Some things are a little real. Some things are kind of real. Also, something in the movie gets wrong that I just couldn't get out of my head during the final shot. It was like, you didn't destroy the servers. That's not where the servers are. You just leveled the city.

That's not how a server works. It's like, okay, you want to erase credit card debt. You want to erase student loan debt. You want to start everybody off at zero. And you want to start everyone's credit score back. You want to erase student loan debt and you want to start everybody off at zero and you want to start everyone's credit score back and you want to erase all that. Find the servers and figure out whatever the backup system is. But you guys are boys.

You didn't bother to do any research. We needed Neo on this one. Yeah, we need an adult who's like, hey guys, that's not actually how the world works. And you can't just like punch a symbol of something and have the thing behind the symbol be destroyed. Yeah.

But that's the premise of Fight Club, I feel. Not to be all Ginger Rogers did everything backwards and in heels, but Marla would have pulled this off. She would learn how to code. She would go to a coder boot camp. She was the most resourceful person in the film. Like Marla is stealing meals on wheels. And on one hand yeah, that's pretty bad, but on the other hand, they're

dead, and she's poor. Also, great thrifter. Really great thrifter. Yeah, stealing clothes from laundromats and selling them. You know what? You gotta watch your clothes. If you're not taking them out, she's doing people a service by freeing up those dryers.

It does, not to keep singing the praises of Marla, but it does sort of posit her as the person who's actually doing the things that Brad Pitt is espousing. But like on a smaller local level, you know. All politics is local. Is local. That's what Marla always says. I do.

I love her monologue about the bridesmaids dress. I think it's just some of the monologues are like, I know they're deliberately overwritten. I know that's part of the of, as I was watching this, I was thinking like, boy, a lot of movies that are about or shape the internet seem like they are Gen X movies. It seems like maybe Gen X has like disproportionate influence on our like cultural understanding of the internet. So I would like to go through the 11 movies that we have done and identify which ones are like Gen X movies, meaning it's like, I don't know, like by or for Gen X, which ones done and identify which ones are like gen x movies meaning it's like i don't know like by or for gen x which ones are millennials and which ones are baby boomers i don't know if we're gonna have any zoomer movies um and see if we can test like how

much of this is gonna be gen x um okay the social network gen x movie millennial yeah i agree millennial everybody and that's millennial yeah her. God, we suck. Her is kind of Gen X. Her is Gen X. Super Gen X. Yeah. I think a Gen X person would fall in love with their personal assistant and millennial would not. On the other hand, Scarlett Johansson in that film does play a member of Gen Alpha. That's true.

What a great call. Yeah. Or maybe even younger than Gen Alpha. Yeah. But she's also ageless. So she's kind of like the silent generation she's joe biden uh beau burnham's that's a great call uh beau burnham's inside millennial millennial oh that is millennial core it's extremely unfortunately it's a big indictment of millennials the matrix it's super x right X. Gen X. You've got male? Gen X.

Kind of boomer. I was going to say boomer. Boomer, yeah. People having affairs over email. It feels like it's very much a boomer having a relationship with a Gen Xer, I think. Oh, you think Meg Ryan is Gen Xer? I think it's like cutting across, you know, it's cutting across. I guess, yeah.

Because Meg Ryan's like, we've got to resist capitalism. That's true. She wants to smash the system. I am capitalism. And then they kiss. Do you think that Meg Ryan goes on, we've got to resist capitalism. That's true. She wants to smash the system. I am capitalism. And then they kiss. Do you think that Meg Ryan goes on to join a fight club after that?

She does. I think she does, yeah. Wasn't she in In the Cut? Isn't that about fun? I mean, it's about dark sex, but yes. Yeah, yes. Okay.

Same principle. Perfect. Okay, Wally, I'm kind of not sure if this is, like, maybe it's a millennial movie because, like, we grew up with it. I think it's a Gen X movie. Really? I think it's a millennial movie because like we grew up with it. I think it's a Gen X movie.

I think it's a Gen X movie because because like fat people are depicted really negatively. And I don't think millennial like I don't know. It's animated by like it's depiction of environmental apocalypse is animated by consumerism more than anything else, which is a very Gen X. Right. And the corporations that leave all the trash. They did trick us into thinking that individual choices are like, the carbon footprint was something that was come up

with by oil. You know what, I sound like a Gen X member. A little bit. And it's about kind of a boxy man who falls in love with a really hot girl. But he is Jesus. Okay. WALL-E, Gen X. War Games? I i feel probably baby boomer it's in the 80s fighting cold war but he like matthew broderick is so gen x that's true and i guess it's about

they're growing up on the internet with the 80s yeah okay wow we're it's a gen x sweep so far i haven't tabulated it yet but uh the truman. That's Gen X. The Gen X, yeah. Okay, Zola. That's one for the millennials. That's millennial for sure. It's like young millennial. Yeah. It is, although they're 19, but they're like 19 in 2015. It's a zillennial costume.

It's zillennial. Tar, big time Gen X. Maybe the most Gen X movie ever made. I don't know. Every lesbian I know who is a millennial lesbian loves that movie. I mean, I love that movie. What is fascinating about Tar is that it breaks down on generational lines. Where, like, you let Gen X people watch it and they're like, cancel culture.

It's gone too far. And millennials are like, Lydia Tar deserved to go down, but also she's my hero. But that's where I am. Yeah. No, I agree. Gen X was the one, like, applauding at the Venice Film Festival screen. That was the Gen X audience. The brilliance of that movie is it

gives you that monologue where she's like, you kids are too soft, and then you know the boomers are all like, yeah. And then, like, it spends the next two hours being like, actually, she's a piece of shit. Absolutely, implicating them, yes. But also my hero. Fight Club, obviously Gen X. And then, I don't want to reveal the last movie that we're doing, but it's Edward Norton is in it. It's a Gen X director. I can tell you both afterwards, but extremely Gen X. Okay. So out of 12 movies, we have three millennial, one boomer and eight Gen X.

Gen X? Two thirds. What is going on there? I was thinking about this. You mentioning this, you know, Gen X sort of creating our internet culture. I was thinking about this in terms of the place that I saw that boosted this movie the most was the website ain'titcoolnews.com. Oh, yes. And a thing that people sort of don't realize is that Ain't It Cool News kind of invented our internet culture. It is a very big message for culture. It is literally the first website to have a comment section, which becomes so much of the social web. I didn't know that. Like it evolves into that. Forums existed and things like that. But we're going to put the forum right below the article. Ain't it cool news does that six months before anybody else does.

And there's a pretty good podcast about it called Download. Load Lotus spelled L-O-W-D in that. Oh, okay. It's about the history of Ain't It Cool News. But that site was full of rampant misogyny and sexism and just grossness about people. Loved Fight Club. And I'm like, so much of our culture, especially online movie discussion culture,

was born there. Right. And like, how much is that? How much of that is like a gen x thing and how much of it is just like oh art the internet was built by gross people right gross like i mean dudes in a sense the present dude excluded who's not a gross dude but like there is a the film bro culture i think is so pervasive on the internet like fight club is ranked number 13 of all time on IMDb. I'm sure it is. Which it is a great, I think it's a great film.

It is not number 13 of all time. That kind of is a testament to the type of people who are online discussing and rating movies. And I believe that they are so obnoxious that they've chased everyone else offline. It's interesting to see the IMDb Top 250, which is so defined by that early wave of film discussion culture which is in a cool news and gen x and online movie forums and then the letterboxd one

which is so driven by young millennials uh is very very different like it's it has its own blind spots but it's like much more it's one i i think is much better but also of course i'm a little right of course i think right in the same way yeah yeah you don't see Come and See on the IMDb top 200 movies. No, no. I don't want to see that movie. I get it. War, bad, scary. That's actually the last movie in the offline movie club is Come and See.

Oh, God. That is, you should get some young men, young disaffected men in there to watch something horrible together. It's kind of a Fight Club movie. Yeah. But to your point, Emily, I'm remembering now that the like, the like technologically the first ever message board is this thing called The Well. And it basically is a Grateful Dead fan board slash Silicon Valley job board.

And that's just like, that's it. It's fandom. It's these like small communities of people who find each other online. And it does tend to draw people who feel like they don't have a place in the real world. They have to go online to find a fandom or find a community, which there's nothing wrong with that inherently. But just the people who tend to be the most active on that in those early waves in the 90s just did tend to be overly representative. People who felt lost because their young man in the world is changing in a way that is scary and feels like they are losing their rightful place in the world. It wasn't.

It didn't well stand for Whole Earth Electronic Link. That's right. Yes, that's right. Also the catalog. We used to get that. Did you really? Yeah. It was the thing I read about when I was on the early Internet.

And I was like, that seems like something for grownups. But like it is. It's this interesting thing of like so often things are built by like crunchy granola hippies yes and then they get overtaken by like fascist alt-right like every like every neighborhood it's gentrification of the internet like it starts out where it's like artists and people who care about like culture and they're selling yeah they're selling homemade granola and then all of a sudden 10 years later it's all u.s bank atms well in a lot of cases it was the same people it was these like berkeley libertarians who had come out of the 70s come out of the back to the land movement they were like we're going to retreat from society and we're disaffected with nixon era blah blah

but then also we're like the internet is going to be our one true place where, you know, the power of ideas will flourish, which just happens to be all white men. Okay, two other things that this movie got right. So I looked at the subreddit for airline ramp agents. And they said that it's true that they do in fact have to pull a bag if it's vibrating, which I thought was kind of, but they said it's because of batteries overheating and not because they think it's a bomb. And a lot of them said that sometimes they'll just pop open the bag and turn it off so they don't have to pull it. Okay. Ramp agents are

ramp agents. Oh, the other thing I thought this movie got right was of course when the online alt-right extremist group starts, who's going to be in there? All the cops. All the cops are members, obviously. Made a lot of sense to me. And then they try to castrate their leader. You sure do. Alright, what is the biggest thing this movie gets wrong? are members, obviously. Made a lot of sense to me. And then they try to castrate their leader. That's true.

All right. What is the biggest thing this movie gets wrong? We probably already kind of covered a lot of this, but I'm curious what you all would have. For me, it was just endorsing the crisis of masculinity in a way that I think we know is just not the correct read now. These men are not good at sex. These men are not making Marla scream.

These men are not having Tyler Durden-style sex with people. These men are not making Marla scream. These men are not, they're not having Tyler Durden style sex with people. That's just not, that's no. There is a kind of trope that he like,

by leaving his head and by breaking somehow mentally, he's going to become good at sex, which like shows up a lot weirdly in the culture.

I think that if you're an anxious person, it is more difficult to be good at sex because you're in your own head head you're not in your body right so that makes sense but like the tyler of it all is like that that's those people are not they're not good i think this movie uh got wrong that there are no uh closeted trans women

in fight club that we see or know of like i don't know that like actually it should have depicted that i think it's beyond the scope of this film. But you look at spaces like 4chan and so much of online trans woman culture is simultaneously an embrace and a subversion of those ideals. There's a whole board on 4chan that's just trans women who refuse to come out because they think they're starving themselves and all of these things there's a really great video by the um uh contra points the um the youtuber about sort of deals with this uh uh it's called autogynephilia and uh oh yeah yeah autogynephilia is this discredited idea that a guy named bray blanchard came up with and he's uh you should not listen to anything he says but it's basically the idea that like there are two kinds of trans women and there are they initially present as gay men and then they transition because they're attracted to men and they're the good ones. And then there's trans women who are only attracted to themselves because they're lesbians and they're autogynophiles. This movie is kind of about an auto androphile, though. It's about a man who's attracted to.

Absolutely. Yes. He's absolutely obsessed with his own. But yeah, I do there like there is not the queerness in this film is present and i don't know that the movie knows it's there and i just wanted it to get like pushed a little bit so there is a a david fincher quote where he's i mean he gave this years after the fact so who knows if he like actually thought at the time or if he was just kind of like buying into the like queerness around the movie that has come out since kind of like buying into the like queerness around the movie that has come out since but he talked about the the studio didn't know how to promote

the movie and at one point they were advertising it around um wrestling like wwf which is an incredible wrist read of the movie and he said that at one point he told the like marketing head for fox like i don't know if you want to do this because this movie is very homoerotic. So he at least claims now to have known. I wouldn't be surprised if he was aware of it. I do think, I do like, I did want, and Polanyiuk obviously like was aware of it, but I did kind of wish that the movie

had like had that moment. I didn't want him to kiss, but I wanted him to think about it. It would be, there should be a little bit more of a gesture to, they get close when they're like bathtub scene, but he should have tried to get into the I want him to think about it. There should be a little bit more of a gesture. They get close when they're like bathtub scene, but he should have tried to get into the bathtub with him. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, you know what?

Something I learned from watching it this time, if you yell, kiss, kiss, when two guys are on screen. Doesn't work? No. You gotta keep trying. Sometimes your husband doesn't like it. Like you're yelling kiss, kiss when there's two men on scene in an unintentionally homoerotic context. Come on, that's fun.

I do have to say that there were some shots of Tyler. I mean, this is Brad Pitt at the height of his sexual powers. He looks great. He looks incredible. And there are some shots of him where it's like, is this like for women? Like, is this the way that he's shot?

Like how much of his body is in the frame it's like it seems like it's kind of like almost female gazy at some parts but simultaneously male gazy yeah there is like a look at this man i wish i was him i wish i could fuck him it's just like so right uh ripe in that way which i think is something we understand now and that was also like a fight that fincher talks about having with the marketing director for the movie is the marketing director was like, why would anybody want to see this? It's like men wouldn't want to see it because they wouldn't want to see

Brad Pitt with his shirt off looking this good because it would make them feel bad, which is like so incredibly wrong. And we know, I think we understand that now because like Andrew Tate's whole appeal is just like being for a straight cis male gaze of a like ideal for men to look at. I mean, obviously, don't agree with men's rights on many things. But I do think that like one of the things that they're right about is that men have body image issues, too.

And like also like to have idealized things to look at and be like, I want to look like this guy. And like, I don't know. I think that we're sort of just catching up to that as a society. Yes, I agree. One thing I think this movie gets wrong is I don't think

you could shoot yourself through the cheek and destroy your alter ego. I was going to ask about that. Like, do we think that would work? Because I don't think that would work.

It's a strange plan. I've talked to some mental health professionals. They said if you're hearing voices, that's not the recommended treatment. It's hard to get FDA approval for that test. They don't want to move that into...

That's okay. I think you do a lot more damage to yourself than just like... He has kind of a cosmetic wound. I know, but he's fine. Well, maybe Tyler lived in his cheek the whole time. Trauma is stored in the body and Tyler is stored in the body and tyler is stored in the

so all right moment you most related to personally what do we got oh boy um uh honestly going to a guy's house who doesn't have any curtains hung up yeah all the dishes are in the sink yeah there's water dripping everywhere yes because i think i think that it's a straight straight woman who went through a douchebag phase when I was younger, the best sex I've ever had has been in houses with no curtain. Well, it's true to the movie then. I thought there was something very real-life pandemic era about watching the group chat just get more and more radicalized. Yeah. In our case, it was not,

we didn't smash any Starbucks, but it was like being annoyed over the fireworks or like being mad at Kyrsten Sinema for voting on the minimum wage. I think for me, it was realizing that Meatloaf kind of rocks. Meatloaf is great in this movie. I was really,

I was thinking about this, it's really surprising he didn't get more of a career after this. Yeah, I think he's just like, yeah, I think he has his, his niche sort of, and like,

or he was perceived to have a niche. Like, you know, he probably wasn't going to be playing a lot of romantic leading roles, but he's very good. Great. He's very sweet in it. Yeah.

I related to your hormones going out of control when you start fucking with them. So, yeah. Yeah. I didn't, as a teenager um watching this i did not really get the whole like male grievance thing i think i was just too young for it but the idea of giving

the world a big middle finger i know it sounds pretty good when you're 15 it's pretty exciting it is funny though because the people that are most get the shit kicked out of the most in the world are not straight cis white guys right And they're the ones that make the biggest deal out of it. I mean, an unintentionally revealing thing is like, this was released not long after Columbine, and Columbine was... Which they delayed it because of. Yes, yes. And

one of the narratives that's been since disproven was that these guys were bullied. They were bullied and they were getting back at their classmates who bullied them. And they were not getting... They were the bullies. They were the shitheads. They were bullied and they were getting back at their classmates who bullied them. And they were not getting. They were the bullies. They were the shitheads.

They were assholes. If people who were the most put upon were the ones that enacted the most violence against the world, then it would be like fat trans kids doing all the violence. It would be like girls who don't look like other girls doing. It wouldn't be the people that are right at the top of the totem pole. So I was going to mention this earlier, this idea of like men feeling like something is being taken away from them. There's this sociologist, Michael Kimmel, who has a great book on this, and he has the phrase for it, aggrieved entitlement. And it's the idea that white men are supposed to be on top. And they'd like, because there's been like, inching movements towards equality, white men have this sense

that like something is being taken away from them, something is wrong with the world. And that's what leads to a lot of the white male backlash, which I think we understand now. But I think back in the 90s, like including this movie, just like, didn't really get that. And we're kind of like, oh, it's because of starbucks i've also meant to mention the show we were talking about gen x a friend of mine george zivers has a great line that this is a movie about gen x being triggered by an ikea catalog that was something speaking of ikea i was like oh ikea was like something only fancy people could get back then i guess it wasn't like it's funny to think of. And Starbucks too have this very white-collar, blue inner-city

kind of cultural association. There's still people upset about the idea that coffee is more than just coffee. If you go on Facebook, there's memes from people who are like, in my day, it was just called coffee and you could just put regular cow milk in it. And you're like, okay, grandma.

But the thing is, where are Starbucks now? They're in these suburban hellscapes. It's red state it. And you're like, okay, grandma. But the thing is, like, where are Starbucks now? They're, like, in these suburban hellscapes. It's red state now. And they're in red state cul-de-sac mazes. They're everywhere. Yeah. Like, there's a Starbucks in my neighborhood. And there's, like, six other coffee shops that you can go to before the Starbucks.

Like, the Starbucks is where you get citizen app alerts that are, like, machete-wielding man apprehended. Man with a stick escorted from store. Emily, you're so right. We talked about this in the You've Got Mail episode where Tom Hanks has his rant about Starbucks and he's so mad that they have different sizes and it's like, who cares? Who cares if

somebody wants vanilla coffee? It's fine. Let them have their fucking coffee, Tom Hanks. There's so much of our lives uh especially since the internet started making forcing us to look at everybody else so much of lives especially of people who've traditionally had a lot of power and privileges like seeing someone doing something different and being so upset about it right i'm very mad about it uh all right what else do we have for We kind of inched into it. Most unintentionally revealing moment. I volunteer one. Tyler Durden really became this online archetype we know now of the shy nerd who feels out of place and then invents the tough guy, edgelord, internet alternate persona in order to feel strong that ends up completely taking over their like actual personality it's just like that is the thing that happens all the time now the head writer for tucker carlson's show which i mean whatever they're not very much effort to hide that white hood but um he was it turned

out that he was like this this like really prolific shit poster and he ended up losing his he ended up being asked to resign over the like some of the shit post pretty hard to be he was shit posting harder than anyone had ever shit posted chat posted ask someone who writes for television for some reason it surprised me to learn that tucker carlson has a room has writers they're not they're not union though okay they're not they're not wga we're not yeah not adding to the pension uh what what else do we have for unintentionally revealing? I had one. I have to think of it. I got distracted by Tyler Durden.

We're all distracted by. So I will just add in the like Tyler Durden personality. I thought it was. I did think it was kind of interesting. I'd like updating of the Shakespeare like court jester. The like mad fool who can say the things that we all think, but no one else can say. But updated for like the Internet era. So he's quoting like the anarchist cookbook i was on my letterboxd i reviewed this film on letterboxd i looked at what all my friends said and somebody was like the the twist doesn't

pass muster because if you saw a guy beating himself up in the bar parking lot you would like walk away from that and i was like i think most people would be like go in and be like what the fuck is this guy doing and then if he was, you have to experience pain to experience life. I think a lot of people would be hooked by that. A lot of people are hooked by that. They're already drunk. Like they would be like, okay, that makes sense. If you buy a central premise of this film, which is that a lot of these men are traumatized, possibly because of neglect, possibly because of abuse.

Like the thing about trauma is it just wants to be perpetuated. You just want to constantly live in that pain. You want to stick your finger in that wound. And treating it is hard because you have to teach yourself to think a different way. And this movie is like, well, what if you just constantly gave yourself those wounds? He's also placing himself in a place where people with trauma go. He's not going to, I don't know, a park on a sunny day and punching himself in the face. He's going to a like dingy bar on

figueroa which no longer exists at night figueroa exists the bar does not exist um at night and he's he's doing it in front of people that are maybe there for their own reasons of being traumatized so i think this is another unintentionally revealing moment of the movie is louis bar we are supposed to think of as this most like disgusting, shitty dive. But like now, that place looks great. Plenty of parking. There's lots of space. You get a picture for I'm sure just a couple of bucks.

I would love to go to Loose Bar. Let's go. That looks fun. It's close, but let's like, let's rebuild it. Let's like, you know how like at Comic-Con

they have pop-up installations? I love that. Let's do that for Loose Bar. Yes, yeah. Go to the museum, walk around in Loose Bar. Biggest real world impact man it's it's hard to narrow it down for this one god i feel like you know the scene in sorcerer's apprentice where

mickey mouse takes the takes the wand and he changed yes i feel like that is the filmmakers like took the wand they're like woohoo look we have a successful movie. And now its impact has way outstripped what I think anybody's intentions were. And I think that in some ways it's negative. I kind of agree, yeah. What I think is fascinating is that this movie was a flop in theaters. Because, and I remember it coming out

and being told by the people who saw it, oh, it's so violent. And that was like a line in a lot of the reviews. It's overly violent. That's so funny because it's not that violent. And now you watch it and you're like, whatever. It's nothing. I do think honestly that. Yeah, The Boys is more violent than Fight Club. I do think honestly that's one of its biggest impacts is like it has increased our tolerance for onscreen violence.

Oh, that's interesting. And like obviously that's been many, many, many things. But this is like, this is sort of a fulcrum point in like, you know, it's not gun violence. It's people hitting each other. And it's not gun violence it's people hitting each other and it's very brutal and it's very not realistic is the wrong word but it's very much like giving you a sense of realism right that uh i do think has has played out not just in film but you know in real life i mean i feel like that maybe plays into your kind of end of history movies thing where it's like we all feel so bored and desensitized

that we need movies to shock us just so we can feel something, which is also what the characters are doing. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So we all agree that David Fincher should remake this movie. What is that movie going to look like?

Well, Tyler's going to live in a phone. Yeah, Tyler is somebody's Instagram, Finsta i want the tyler durden app i really i do honestly really think that they should i don't think he ever would do it but i really think that they should remake it to kind of like digest implicitly what the movie has become to kind of be a corrective not to like the movie itself like i don't think they should make like fight club 2 to apologize for fight club but like as a corrective, not to like the movie itself, like I don't think they should make Fight Club 2 to apologize for Fight Club, but like as a corrective to the like role that people have had at

play in our culture. Now like kind of what the fourth Matrix tried to do, they kind of tried to like comment on what the franchise had become. I think you could really use that. I think there's actually a really cool like, you could do a great film festival of Gen X filmmakers grappling with their hits many years on.

I think Matrix Resurrections is a great example of that. Trainspotting 2. I didn't know there was a Trainspotting 2. Clerks 2. All these movies that are like, oh, wait, life goes on. Now I'm an adult. Now I look back on my younger self with a certain degree of affection, but also a certain degree of embarrassment um i think uh train spotting 2 is a wonderful film if you haven't seen it but yeah it's the same reason jd salinger should have written catcher in the

ride too yeah and like i do think there is there could be some benefit to fincher and everyone revisiting this story in these characters maybe a continuation more than a remake but i do think there's the the tv show mr robot which is hugely indebted to this film really like does the thing where at the end of season one they actually wipe out everybody's credit they like are like we're taking away everything and then the subsequent three seasons are like here's what would happen if that happened. Corporations would just get more control. You know, you have like even bigger stakes, even bigger fish to fry. And like,

that is a show that like comes as close as an American television show can come to being like we need to tear down capitalism entirely. And it also blinks at the end, but I think you kind of have to exist in modern television or film. How are you going to advertise against the show? Yeah, what if all the ads were just like,

we agree we shouldn't exist, but... If you buy stuff from us, we promise we'll go out of business next year. Well, that's also how Escape from L.A. ends, the John Carpenter movie, where he hits the big button at the end, which I would love to... There are days I would like to hit that big button

to just wipe out all the computers. I do think if you remade this, I think you play a lot more with like the idea of fight clubs i think part of what makes the original like i don't age poorly exactly but like has had this kind of double-edged impact on our culture is that fincher really had to sell the idea of fight club being appealing and a red kid's character being appealing because that seemed so like implausible at the time. But you don't have to sell that now. Like no one needs to be convinced that a bunch of young men would go join a fight club and then like blow up a bunch of buildings.

So you can have it be less appealing. It's also like in this film, it is explicitly playing off the franchise model. Like, yeah, Tyler's going around starting new fight clubs like somebody would start like Ray Kroc would start in McDonald's you know and like I think now it would be a little bit more tapped into oh these ideas spread organically

that's a great point it's interesting you use the word franchise because that's how they talk about Edward that's how a narrator talks about his dad

yeah so oh that's a great point so then franchises yes setting up franchises just like his dad did

I think also if they remade it the Tyler Durden character I think is just Jordan Peterson I think he's telling thoseade it, the Tyler Durden character, I think is just Jordan Peterson. I think he's telling those guys to pick up their rooms. Oh, come on.

Don't flatter Jordan Peterson. But not as a compliment. I mean, I think that you can have the Tyler Durden character be like a little bit loathsome. If you compare somebody who Brad Pitt played to any of these people,

they will just ignore every other detail of the character and the top line will be Brad Pitt played this character. Brad Pitt would play me in a movie um i think that that if it were to be remade now this might complicate things but there is a way there there is a story where there is a shadow marla as well and she's like some sort of she's like a hyper feminine or like trad wife some some sort of online creation that doesn't exist in real life um that has kind of that marla has manifested what's interesting is the films that have tried

to do something like that with women i'm thinking of don't worry darling are like very much interested like they're very focused on men have created this society it's men are the problem that have created we just have to defeat the men which, you know, patriarchy is a system set up to benefit men largely by men. But I do think there is an element of self-imprisonment that those films refuse to get at that I think like... Right. It's not...

The women are not the ones programming their alternative selves, except for the Olivia Wilde character, which we get the impression that she consented to being a part of that. But there's no movie where there's a woman who has created a shadow self that she desperately needs

and her identity becomes tied up in it. And that's kind of like the way a lot of teenage girls are living. I mean, kind of Barbie. The Barbie movie does that a little bit. I have Final Draft right here, so we can just get started on this right now. We do.

We need more millennial filmmakers to make internet movies. Yeah, well, they're not making millennial films anymore. They're not making original IP. You have to write the book first, and then they buy the rights. Oh, sure. And then they're going to hire someone to write the screenplay.

I want to see Damien Chazelle's Greta Gerwig's. I know Jordan Peele is like kind of on the line. I really want to see Jordan Peele's internet movie. I really feel like I understand why Gen X ended up making so many of the internet movies, but I feel like millennials as much. Like Jean Schoenbrom is really the only one doing it, I feel like. Yeah. But also, you know, we're all going to the World's Fair is like a very specific experience

of the Internet. Not everyone has had. I do think like, yeah, there's a thing about we just went from I think we're about to see a wave of Internet nostalgia films. The new film, Dee Dee, is sort of like tapped. And I think that's going to start to get at how this affected our lives. Right, right. Should make a movie about Tom from MySpace. All right. Are we ready to about Tom from MySpace. All right.

Are we ready to finish things off with true or false? Any final thoughts before we get into it? Let's get to true and false. Okay, true and false. So read out a series

of quotes or plot points of the movies. You all tell me whether or not you agree. True or false, when deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations

that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy Planet, Starbucks. False. Yeah, I was not sold by that. I think, yeah, I think that they name stadiums. I think that the second they start naming stars, people are going to be like,

I don't think so. They're going to name them after Tolkien things, like the PayPal mafia tends to do anyway. Oh, that's right. Yeah, it'll be Elon Musk naming it anyway, so it'll be some bullshit. It'll be named something like Elrond or something anyway. Oh, that's right. Yeah, it'll be Elon Musk naming it anyway. It'll be named something like Elrond or something. I mean, it's not dumb. Daryl Tolkien is not dumb, but the obsession that...

The Peter Thiel interpretation of it is bad. Yeah, that J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel... Right, is a white nationalist kind of, yeah. Palantir. See, I think that, like, they should be a Peter Thiel character in the Fight Club remake. There's so much good stuff to play with.

Well, you won't call him Peter Thiel. It'll be a representation. Peter Thiel. Who can say who it is? That sounds like a great grocery store, actually. Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel. They've got great specials and produce.

True or false, if you tell your doctor that you're experiencing a medical problem and require medication, their response will be, why don't you go to a random cancer support group? What is that doctor? What is he doing? Okay, devil's advocate here. That is, first of all, that's false. But I think a lot of people can relate to the going to the doctor and the doctor's like,

are you sure you're not imagining it? Are you sure it's not anxious? Are you sure it's not stress? Are you sure you shouldn't lose weight? Are you sure? And it's like, I'm bleeding from my thigh it's pretty close to an artery i don't know if i'm imagining it you know it's like women experience this all the time like i know people who have had endometriosis for decades and only found out yeah and then finally went to the right doctor and the

doctor's like holy shit your body is full of like, like tissue that's hurting you. So yeah, that makes sense. But they wouldn't say go to a cancer center. We have this Calvinist streak in our society that's like, especially when you're experiencing a profound mental health crisis, as the narrator clearly is, where the doctor will be like, well, just, you know, buck up a little bit. Just, you know, have you tried losing weight? Have you tried exercising? Yeah. Yeah. His advice is basically, why don't you stop whining? Exercising is one of the things they tell you about postpartum depression. Like you should try exercising. It's like, really, should I? How about you try sitting on the butt? Just like, whatever. It's just like, ugh, awful. So this guy did your delivery is what

you're saying? No, my OBGYN is really good. But I think a really good but i think a lot of people especially a lot of people are just told that it's in their head sure right okay true or false soap is the yardstick of civilization true okay i'm gonna say good one it's a good one i think being clean is good yeah i think it's air conditioning i think it's gynecology uh i think that the the but which is dependent on on cleanliness and being able to sterilize. Sure. I think the ability for us to deliver and keep babies alive and keep women alive

is what allowed civilization to. Like if you think like, what's the question of, yeah, when does civilization, when does human society become civilization? Right. There are worse arguments than soap. I think soap, yeah.

Soap is a good one. Yeah. True or false, the things you own end up owning you. True. One of many Tyler Jordan-isms. Have you ever tried to move? You recently moved. I did move, yes.

It's true when you move. Yes. My wife and I moved out of our apartment in Long Beach in 2015. And today she was like, we've got to stop paying for the storage units. I'm like, we're going to go down and probably just throw right it's like you know we haven't had to have it in nine years so wait till your 10th anniversary with the thing throw it a little party yeah a little cake yeah but you got to stop paying and then watch it on storage wars yeah uh true or false gen x is the middle child of history oh that, that's so annoying.

I know. It is so annoying. It's annoying, but I think it is a little. I think it's true. Their parents hated being parents. The parents didn't want to have kids. They had kids because they thought they should. And then they didn't take care of them.

And then now we are stuck. I agree that it's true, technically, but it's false. I agree. I think we all agree that it's true, but they should shut on press I think we all agree that it's true but they should shut the fuck up about it because they just love the drama people are going to get so mad at our Gen X rants yeah they're going to get mad at us

no that's fine okay well actually let's bring to another true or false Gen X is the way it is because of absent fathers Aaron the real reason lead poisoning that's right those are the people that were born with the highest of absent fathers. Erin, the real reason? Lead poisoning. Lead poisoning. That's right. That's what should have been in this movie.

Yes, those are the people that were born with the highest amounts of lead in the air and it would have been the most effective on their psyche, ability to control

their feelings and impulses. Yeah, lead poisoning. True or false? This is, I think, one of the funniest moments in the movie for me. It's the poem that Edward Norton

has on the screen. I don't know if you remember this. Okay, true or false. Workers can leave. Even drones can fly away. The queen is their slave. I thought that was so funny. I had to pause it and just die laughing.

Workers can leave. Even drones can fly away. The queen is their slave. That's so stupid. The statement itself is false, but it's true that it's very funny. That's, yeah. I feel like if you don't write poetry. The thing is,

these guys are so obsessed with not being cringe, but then all their shit's their most cringe. Right. The thing that I thought was funny about that is that's not Gen X, anti-consumerist nihilism. That's just good old-fashioned union talk. That's some Upton Sinclair shit. True or false,

Marla is one of the greatest thifters of the 1990s. True. It's true. True or false, okay, we discussed this, if your alter ego gradually takes over your personality and leads you to start a terrorist organization, don't panic. It's not a big deal. You can retake control of your mind by just shooting yourself in the cheek. You know what? This movie's led me to believe it's true.

I've seen it enough times. No further medical advice. If the doctor would have listened to him and actually given medical advice, maybe he would have known. If the doctor had been like, I think the problem is your cheek. We're going to give you a cheek transplant. I'm so glad we agree the villain of this movie is the doctor. Oh, okay.

True or false? Okay, this is from the Raymond K. Hessel scene when he goes to the gas station. Tyler Durden has in fact seen Forrest Gump. True. Yeah, true. He worked in a movie theater. Yeah.

Do we think he spliced porn into it? Absolutely. Oh yeah, that would have been a one., honestly, though, that one kind of deserves. Okay. Do we think Tyler Durden liked Forrest Gump? No. Because he does quote it. Yes. You think he liked it?

Yeah. I think he's moved by it. I think that movie is... The Absent Father speaks to him. Yeah. I think that movie is so ubiquitous in 90s culture that I think Gen X just wanted their parents to love them so badly that they all loved Forrest Gump until they were like, oh, wait, this movie's... Yeah, I actually have a complicated relationship with Forrest Gump, which I think is kind of good, but not for the reasons anybody likes it. Really? Okay, what are the reasons? I think it's a movie about an extremely dull, not particularly bright man

who succeeds through falling upward. I think it's a brilliant satire of the Baby Boomer generation. I completely agree. The Baby Boomers were like, this is great.

Look at us. We're wonderful. Yeah, we did it. We won, but it's like they're wandering into the White House and hanging out with JFK. Sure, pulling their pants down.

Yeah, yeah. It's a movie about Baby Boomers pulling their pants down. Totally. Look, I love Forrest Gump, but I yeah. It's a movie about baby boomers pulling their pants down. Yeah. Totally. Look, I love Forrest Gump, but I just think it's a well-made, wonderful movie that just like, it makes me cry. I don't know.

The politics are bad, but whatever. That's fine. Politics are bad in Fight Club. I still love Fight Club. When I was a dissociated teenager, I decided I should not cry at anything, but I allowed myself to cry at Forrest Gump. I was like, this is the movie I will cry at. So I did. What was the scene? I think myself to cry at Forrest Gump. I was like, this is the movie I will cry at. So I did.

What was the scene? I think when he's mourning Jenny at the end. Oh, it's a beautiful scene. She's terrible. Jenny. It was a good performance by Robin Wright.

I have no issues with her. She's a great actor. The way the movie treats her where they're like, well, Jenny slept with too many men, so now we're going to kill her.

Punishment for her. Yeah. Yeah. Forrest went to Vietnam. I think that's worse than sleeping with a lot of, like what they were told and forced to do. There's a real puritanical streak. For me, it's the scene where he sees Haley Joel Osment. It's just, it's a beautiful scene about being a parent.

Okay. What a wonderful tangent about Forrest Gump. I could do a full hour on it right now, but Emma will kill us. True or false, if you're, she's saying, she's nodding yes. Fincher is like talking about is satirical, not satirical. He has this quote he gives to The Bringer. When my daughter was about nine years old, I went to a school function and she said, oh, I want you to meet my friend Max. Fight Club is his favorite movie.

I took her side and said, you are no longer allowed to hang out with Max. You are not to be alone with Max, which I feel like speaks to what David Fincher thinks this movie is about. Yeah. Yeah. It's not for kids. I think we can all agree. It's not for kids. And anybody whose parents are letting them watch this movie at age nine are creating their own little Tyler Durden.

You're steeping your brain in some pretty toxic stuff. So, okay. But what is the cutoff for when it becomes like... I don't think men should be allowed to watch movies until they're 30. I think that women can handle it from the time they're like, I would say 17 onwards. But I don't think men should be allowed to watch Fight Club until they're 30. Or Scarface. Definitely Scarface.

Or many Brian De Palma films. Sure. Yeah. I think all men should be required to watch it at 18. And then they should be banned from watching it again until they're 40. And then it's like now you can only watch films directed by women, people of color, or non-Americans. Well, then they might watch American Psycho. Well, listen, it's okay.

That's okay. I think American Psycho's good. It is great, but it's another movie that people take the wrong lessons from. I think the lesson from that movie is pretty clear. I think it's pretty explicit about neo-Nazis are bad. A lot of young people are very stupid. I have one living in my house right now

and she doesn't understand anything. Well, I don't think that she should watch American History X. No, I don't think so either. I watched this last night with Julie,

who's my partner, and she was like, young boys should not be allowed to watch this movie, which I agreed with and I was like, David Fincher says

the same thing. And I asked her, what do you think the age cutoff is? And she said 25, which I think is about right. I agree with it. Frontal lobe completion. That's right. I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Last one. True or false. This is also from the Raymond K. Hessel scene. Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of all of the podcast listeners lives.

Their breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted. True. Because they're done listening to this. Agree. Agree. Erin, Emily, thank you for joining me. This was great. Thank you.

Thank you. Offline Movie Club is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Max Fisher. It's produced by Emma by me, Max Fisher. It's produced by Emma Illick-Frank. Mixed and edited by Charlotte Landis, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Vasilis Vitopoulos. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music.

Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Adrian Hill for production support. 다음 시간에 만나요.