The Bechdel Cast - Fight Club with Katie Nguyen

Episode Date: March 21, 2019

Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus form a secret organization with special guest Katie Nguyen to examine Fight Club, but it turns out that Caitlin Durante has been Jamie Loftus this whole time!!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @ktnuggin on Twitter.  While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister? Or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. had done before, tried to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current. Hear episodes of Rip Current early and completely ad-free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to i heart true crime plus only on apple podcasts what's up it's caitlin and jamie and you're about to hear an episode that is a live show that we recorded in portland portland never heard of it uh with our fabulous guest katie winn she is wonderful

and we are talking about one of the big ones mr fight club it was a very cool movie that we all love yes it was super fun uh if you're at the show you already know and uh yeah we're excited to have you hear it a few quick notes at the top we are going on tour again because we're addicted to it yeah so we're gonna to have you hear it. A few quick notes at the top. We are going on tour again because we're addicted to it. So we're going to be in the Northeast again. We've got the following dates locked in. On April 28th, we're going to be at

the Bell House in Brooklyn. On April 30th, we will be at Good Good Comedy Theater in Philadelphia. On May 1st, we'll be at the Drafthouse Comedy Theater in Washington, D.C. And on May 2nd, we'll be at the Drafthouse Comedy Theater in Washington, D.C. And on May 2nd, we will be at the Rockwell in Boston for the Women in Comedy Festival. We're in the process of confirming guests and movies for those shows, so stay tuned. We're also

going to be doing a live show at the Ruby in Los Angeles on April 6th at 930. We are covering Bring It On with friend of the cast Maggie Mae, who you might remember from our Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone episode, and tickets are on sale for that now on our website Bechtelcast.com. Also, Jamie and I are going to be in Denver in mid-April doing a bunch of stand-up shows. So check out our websites and our social media for more details on that. And then a couple quick plugs for me personally, your gal Caitlin. I'm going to be doing a stand-up show at Penn State University. Ever heard of it? It's where I got one of two of my degrees. It's going to be on April 20th. I still don't know the location or the time of that show, but hopefully they tell me soon. But

if we've got any central Pennsylvania listeners out there, check out that show. Also, I am teaching a three-hour screenwriting crash course in New York. Now, I don't know if you know this or not, but I do have a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University. I don't like to bring it up, but I am teaching this class on April 28th, starting at 11 a.m. So please sign up for that and learn a bunch of stuff about screenwriting. And then I'm also going to be doing some additional shows in Boston for the Women in Comedy Festival in early May. So you can check out my website, caitlindronte.com slash shows for all the details you need about all of those things. And then also you can go to bechtdelcast.com for all the details you need about the live podcast shows we're doing.

And then we recommend you keep an eye on our social media, our Twitter and Instagram, especially for updates about these upcoming shows. And if you don't live in any of those places, we're working on coming to you soon. And then finally, we just wanted to plug our campaign to raise money for Black Girls Code. And we're doing that by selling T-shirts that say Rise of the Matriarchy. So buy one of those t-shirts to help us support this great organization. And you can grab that shirt at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. Sorry that there were so many plugs. But what can we say?

We're doing a lot of stuff. Yeah. With that there were so many plugs, but what can we say? We've, we're doing a lot of stuff. Yeah. With that, uh, enjoy. Enjoy the episode. The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hello, Portland! What's up? Wow! Here we are. The second we walked out, someone in the front row was wearing a feminist icon

Alfred Molina shirt. Already losing my mind. Welcome. Hi, I'm Caitlin. I am Jamie. And welcome to the Bechdelcast. Thank you for coming. Yeah.

Yay. Man. Yeah. We have been stressing out about this episode for days. Like, we're currently on a tour, and this is the only thing that we keep talking about. Yes. We couldn't have chosen a more stressful... Why did we do this to ourselves?

I don't know why we were like, this has to be a live episode. I don't know that that's true. But in any case, here we are, regardless. Yeah, no, this is going to be, we got a lot of lore to get into. Red pillin', ever heard of it? It's just, I'm stressed. How are you? I'm similarly upset that I had to watch this movie again. But remember when we all used to love it, though? Yeah. Remember when we saw this poster in someone's room

and we're like, this person's probably cool. Not like, leave right away. This person's dangerous. And they say scary things on Reddit under assumed names. This is literally if Reddit was adapted into a feature length movie. It's just the scariest thing I've ever seen.

We're talking, of course, about Fight Club. By round of applause... Don't talk about it. I'm so sorry. We're not talking about Fight Club. No more of that ever again. I just did something my dad used to do. My roommate, my freshman, no, my sophomore college roommate used to have a Fight Club poster.

And at the time, I was like, she's awesome. But it was like, she hates herself. But my dad, I remember my dad was like helping me move in. And he walked in, he was like, don't talk about it, though. I was like, you're a fascist. It's crazy. Which one of us do you think though is Tyler and which one of us is Edward Norton? I don't know.

What does the audience think? Well, actually, we're asking you to talk in full sentences. So instead, let's find out by round of applause who has seen the movie Fight Club. Good, doing your homework. And clap if you have the good fortune of not having seen it. All right. A smattering, a smattering.

Okay. And then also clap if you've heard our show before. That was just to get us all horned up no kidding uh and clap if you have not heard our show before if you were wow front row we have we have a convert um okay so just to uh for for you sir uh we we will tell you what the show is about. So as most folks here know, the Bechdel cast is a show where we talk about women in movies or the lack of women in movies

or fascism today. Using the Bechdel test as a jumping off. I'm sorry I'm making eye contact with you. We use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. The Bechdel test, of course, being a test invented by Alison Bechdel test as a jumping off point. The Bechdel test, of course, being a test invented by Alison Bechdel in which two women with names have to talk about

something other than a man for two lines of dialogue or more. Cool? Awesome. Okay, well, thank you for coming. Should we introduce our guest? Yeah, I'm so excited. Oh my gosh, we've got a guest today. She's

wonderful. She does a weekly show here in Portland called Earthquake Hurricane, and she was recently published in the New Yorker. Give it up for Katie Wynn. Hello. Hey, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for joining us for this hellacious journey we're going to take. Yeah, it was unpleasant in so many ways. What's your history with the movie? I watched it for the first time in middle school with my older brother. Loved it. Haven't seen it since. And now I am

a high school teacher and I see a lot of gratuitous punching already so I don't need that in a film form as well do your students still watch this movie? no no no

kids just always be punching Caitlin wins her history with this movie? No, no, no. Amazing. Kids just always be punching. Yeah. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie? I saw it for the first time in high school. I had, like, dated a few guys who all loved this movie

and, like, not for the right reasons. Not that there are any right reasons. Have you ever heard a guy be like, it's actually a satire like no they were so enamored with it that i was like well it's probably stupid then because i recognize that these guys were stupid and edge lord from the beginning so i had this like initially had a a very anti-flight stance, having never seen the movie.

And then a weird thing happened where I finally watched, and I was like, actually, it's not that bad. Again, I was in high school, and then I bought it on DVD. Whoops. But then one of those things, the DVD sat on the shelf, never really re-watched it until maybe like maybe a couple years later like a couple years ago i don't remember and i was like oh this is torture to watch and that is my history what's yours i had heard about this is one of this was one of my dad's favorite movies yikes uh mike

this i know mike slipped on this one i think think my dad truly, as I alluded to before, he really just did the rules bit. Because this movie came out when I was six, but my dad used to, when I was playing with my stuffed animals, he'd be like, the first rule about Jamie's Tea Party is don't talk about Jamie's Tea Party. And I'd be like, ha ha, awesome! So I knew that the rules were

very young. But I saw it in high school and yeah, I thought it was fucking awesome. Read the book, read a lot of Chuck Palahniuk, which is how you say it? I think. No one is sure. There's no canonical way to say it.

From what I can tell, it's how you say it. But I read the book and then i read a couple i got like really into his books in high school and then i um i don't know at some point i was i saw it again and was like wait a second what happened like i don't know what i don't know it's hard to tell like where the switch flips where was like the moment in time where all of a sudden we were like, wait a second. This is about incels. I'm not sure. I would guess

maybe sometime around 2012, 2013. There seemed to be a vague cultural moment where everyone was like, ah, yes. That was not good for the world. Wow. I loved it for too long. Yeah.

Should I do the recap? Yeah, why don't you do the recap? Okay. Okay. Katie, you're welcome to interject at any time in the recap. I'm just exercising my right. So we meet the narrator who...

In the book he's called Sebastian. Which that name is never brought up in the movie. That's a good edit, yeah. Like, film theorists call him Jack. It's kind of a fun Oscar Wilde thing. He refers to himself as Jack in the movie. So for all intents and purposes, we'll call him Jack. That's Edward Norton's character.

He works in a vague corporate setting. He loves Ikea. He loves Ikea. Oh no, what a freaking loser. He has insomnia, so he starts going to these support groups for people with conditions that he does not have, but pretends to have. And Meatloaf is there.

Meatloaf, he meets Bob. I love Meatloaf. I'm a Meatloaf stan. And then after a while, he meets Marla Singer. That's Helena Bonham Carter's character, who is also pretending to have things that she does not have. And he's like, you're ruining everything because you're a faker.

The only line that made me laugh in the movie this time was, this chick, Marla Singer, did not have testicular cancer. That's pretty funny. That still did get me. So he confronts her and they work out a schedule so that he never has to see her again. Then he's traveling a lot for work and he meets on a plane Tyler Durden.

And Tyler Durden's not like the other guys. He's a little counterculture. Yeah, he's a conspiracy theorist. He makes explosives. We've all dated someone like that. In which, that scene where, okay, there's so many

irresponsible things you can do when making a movie. Giving someone instructions to make napalm is among the worst things you can do when making a movie giving someone instructions to make napalm is among the worst things you can do yes and just and especially leading in with like it's so easy anyone can do it yeah yeah fight club that gives you the recipe for dynamite by contrast paddington 2 gives you the recipe for marmalade, so which one's the better movie? Make responsible choices, yeah. The Parent Trap, the Lindsay Lohan one,

does teach people how to pierce their ears in a way that it seems like almost everyone tried at least once. Yeah, irresponsible. Yeah, and Hocus Pocus teaches you how to steal the soul of a young person for your own benefit. It's true.

We learn what we want to learn. I think we just learned a lot about all three of us. So Jack, the narrator, he arrives home and he discovers that his apartment has exploded, so he calls Tyler Durden for a place to stay and he's like I'm so sad that I all my IKEA

stuff is gone and then Tyler Durden's like fuck stuff and then we're or ever Norton's like I've never thought of it that way he literally has had like three sips of beer and he's like, wait, fuck stuff? What a dumbass. Yeah, it's like a very like George and Tony like situation from Seinfeld where Tyler is Tony, the cool rock climber

who eventually loses his good looks. And then Orton Orton is George Costanza. Yeah. who eventually loses his good looks. And Edward Norton is George Costanza. Sounds like a big... Yeah. And then they got into a parking lot, and Tyler's like, I want you to hit me as hard as you can. And then they punch each other for a while. And we're like, yeah.

And we're like, wonder what's gonna happen based on that? Brad Pitt says, fuck Martha Stewart. And we're like, wonder what's going to happen based on that. Brad Pitt says, fuck Martha Stewart. And we're like, yeah. And then they start punching each other more and more. And then it evolves into Fight Club. It makes them feel alive. And it becomes this regular weekly thing.

Fighting is good and for the boys. Yeah. Yeah, it was what was on everybody's mind. Everybody was already doing it, apparently, and they just organized it. That's what they said. It was a lot of random fights and they just harnessed the

power of the fights. They just needed an organizer. Like Cesar Chavez. They needed rules. They needed rules and two of the rules, repetitive, that you don't talk about Fight Club. And then there's some other ones that don't matter. It's weirdly the same rules of Jamie's Tea Party.

Whoa! And so I'm breaking the first two rules by being here. How dare you? So then we hear from Marla again. She gives our friend a call, and he walks away from the film, Being here, yeah. So then we hear from Marla again. She gives our friend a call, and he walks away from the film, but then Tyler comes and picks it up,

and that initiates their ongoing sexual relationship where he saves her from committing suicide in a weird scene that we will for sure talk about. Suicide is treated very weird in this movie. And then she is there the next morning. He's like, what the fuck are you doing here? And then she's like... Well, wait, you're spoiling the end for Fight Club, Caitlin. What? Because the narrator was there in the morning

and he's like, Marlo, what are you doing here? Yeah. But they don't know the end of Fight Club. They don't know. You don't know. I'm so sorry. Edward Norton and Tyler Durden are the same person. Oh my god. What if someone didn't know? So then they're like

hey what if we take this like psych club thing and like make it more serious and then Project Mayhem is born and it's such a stupid name. They're like can we get guys to fight each other? Okay. Can we make a fascist. They're like, can we get guys to fight each other? Okay.

Can we make a fascist organization? And yes, they can. Yes. Meatloaf is there. And they're committing acts of vandalism. They're sticking it to the man. They're like, folk Starbucks. And they give them specific tasks. It's those like birthday parties you get invited to

it's like a scavenger hunt and like everybody is like so excited and yeah so they go and they have to blow up certain things and destroy certain types of businesses they're very incentivized by like homework assignments which I have never found meant to be no

this is project based learning it's the new thing in education you know you're making it sound kind of like a good idea This is project-based learning. It's the new thing in education. You know, you're making it sound kind of like a good idea. And then at one point, Tyler admits to being the person who blew up Jack's condo. And he's like, what? He crashes a car on purpose. He's wild.

He's crazy. But so sexy. So we say, okay. Project Ma'am is in full swing, and then Jack is like, this doesn't sound good. I better go and stop Tyler. But then Tyler disappears for a while, and he basically follows Tyler to the different cities he went to, and he finds out he's been setting up fight clubs

all over the place. Oh, no. And then at one spot, a guy is like, you're Tyler Durden. And he's like, what? I'm Tyler Durden? Wild that it takes this long. Yeah.

I mean, I think technically the movie is at least tight enough that we don't see anyone that would know he's Tyler Durden up to then. Although I'm not convinced. That seems confusing too. But it takes him like, I don't know. What time span does this take over? Is it like a couple months? It feels like at least a few months.

At one point he said he had been living with Tyler for two months at one point. Right. Okay. So it happens fast. But then, yeah, someone has to tell him in a different city months later that he's at one point. Right, yeah. So it happens fast, but then, yeah, someone has to tell him in a different city months later that he's Tyler Durden. Right.

Yeah, you would think it. So is he just, like, putting on sunglasses, and they're like, oh, different guy. I don't know. I hate David Fincher. And then Tyler Durden shows up in Jack's hotel room, and he's like, yeah, I'm you, and you're me, and we're the same person.

Yeah, he really breaks it down. The best part is when they do that mime hand-to-hand mirror thing. I really wanted when, Caitlin, you said that, for someone in the audience to be like, like, wait a second, what? So basically, we all learned that Tyler is a manifestation of Jack's imagination

and that he dissociates and becomes Tyler Durden at different points because Tyler is cool and he fucks good. And then he realizes that what Project Mayhem had been planning was to blow up several different buildings that have credit card companies in them to reset the debt and everyone goes back to zero. Which wouldn't have worked because computers still existed.

It was 1999. Computers still existed. Yeah, it was a big like, oh, it's in the computer kind of thing. Destroy the shell, you need to destroy them. More of a hardware issue. So he tries to turn himself in to the police, and the police are like, we're in Project Mayhem 2. And then he goes and tries to dismantle the bomb,

and then Tyler's like, don't do that. And then he's like, well, I know how to get rid of you. I'll shoot myself in the head. And then he stays alive. But Tyler dies. That's not how that works. You know when you shoot yourself in the head and it cures you of your mental illness?

Well, you have to stay alive for the Hollywood ending, Caitlin. Right, which is that Marla gets brought in and she's like, hey, you were mean to me. And he's like, meh. And then they hold hands and then the music swells and then that's the end of the movie. And then all the buildings are blown up. Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, a powerful narrative to be sure. Thank you for that recap, Caitlin. Oh, absolutely. Anytime. Helpful. Where do you want to go? Oh. Oh.

Thank you. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Teddy Mellencamp and Tamara Judge, better known as the Twats. Yep, you heard that

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We're putting your favorite people in the twat seat and getting the juicy stories everybody wants to know. So join us as we stir the pot and get ourselves into some trouble. Okay, maybe a lot of trouble. It's not really trouble when it's truthful. Let's just say we can be a little twatty. Listen to Two Teas in a Pod on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life.

It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours. BPM 110. 120.

She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything?

You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Where should we jump in? I don't know. This is so stressful. I don't know. I guess let's start with just like a little bit of background for the book versus the movie. Sure.

Because a lot of my problems with this movie are like a failure of adaptation. Because I haven't read the book in some time, but from everything I've read, it appears to be a very clearly satirical book where it's not supposed to be like a blueprint for the alt-right. Right.

Which is literally what the movie is, is a blueprint for the alt-right. Right. Which is literally what the movie is, is a blueprint for the alt-right. But the book, I mean, and I think that it gets comparisons to American Psycho a lot for this reason. The book is pretty clearly supposed to be like tongue-in-cheek and the characters are satirical and the way it's written is supposed to make you, you know, like hate these

characters but the way it was adapted was very much not that also the the book ends differently the book does not end with it ends there was also a fight club too i don't know if anyone knows this i don't know book only right now book only yeah book only but uh at the end of fight club the book he does shoot himself in the head and then he wakes up the narrator who's sebastian in the book god knows why but he wakes up in a mental hospital and the doctors are like we're in project mayhem where's tyler and then he's like no and then And then the book's over. Then in Fight Club 2. Which is also called Fight Club 2, an extremely fightful book.

Either one. An extremely fighty club. And Fight Club 2, I have certainly not read. It came out like two years ago. I don't know if Chuck palahniuk had some debts or something but like by all accounts it sucks and it's like a graphic novel that starts with the narrator has gotten rid of tyler durden and marries marla and they're happy until tyler comes back and tyler decides to he's like project mayhem is so 1990s. I'm going to start Project Chaos.

And then he starts Project Chaos. And then at the end, Chuck Palahniuk's in the book. And Tyler kills Chuck Palahniuk. It sounds terrible. But the last thing that I think is required contextualization, setting up the book to the movie, is that, yeah, I mean, it was clearly a satire that wasn't adapted as clearly a satire.

I mean, based on the people who seem to still love it, doesn't seem to be with any ironic detachment. But Chuck Palahniuk wrote it as a satire. He had a kind of bizarre troubled life. He was closeted until his early 40s. I don't think a lot of people even know that Chuck Palahniuk is a queer writer. But a lot of his later books tackle queer topics. And around the time the book comes out, his father died in like a double homicide like he's he has like a very like interesting and troubled and intense background um and i guess the last thing i wanted to say on the author of the original story because i cannot wait to roast david fincher is uh

chuck palahniuk he is like hard to get interviewed but when he does he's pretty like up front and he was interviewed in like late 2017 about Fight Club and how he felt like it had you know like radicalized a generation of young men for the worse and perhaps had a net negative on the world and you know he's maybe not so sold on that idea. But he says that he does understand that Fight Club is a book about Tyler Durden kind of effectively red-pilling this cult that he creates. But sort of has a take on it that is what you can make of it. I will read a portion of this interview he did in 2017. Quote, you want to put the book in the movie producer's hand and have them adopt it like a baby.

Raise it and put a huge amount of energy into it. In doing so, the movie producer is going to change it so that it reflects the movie producer's experience. And once that material passes on to an audience, the audience adopts it. It will become the child of the audience and it will serve whatever purpose the audience has for it. It would be insane to think that the

author could control every iteration or every interpretation of the work, which I was like, huh, that made me think. And then the next question is, do you believe in toxic masculinity? And then he says, oh boy, I really don't. So, you know, he's just kind of all over the place. All right.

An interesting person. So that's the setup for the author of the original work. Yes, that's helpful. Thank you. It's confusing. Like, it's just like everything about Chuck Palahniuk confuses me. It's a lot of hard lefts. I haven't read this book or any of his work uh i was too busy reading harry potter 11 times brag i know yeah so everything i have to say about fight club

is as it pertains to the the movie rather than the book or anything like that but there's still a lot to talk about yeah because i mean so much has already been written and said about this movie especially as it pertains to gender and you know masculinity and femininity like a common recurring thesis is that this movie can be seen as a commentary on the emasculate oh my god i'm caitlin oh my god the the uh emasculate... Oh, my God. I am... Caitlin, oh, my God. The emasculation. Is that the word? Great.

Oh, that was not... Oh, wait. Emasculization? Oh. No, it's to emasculate, not to emasculinize, right? Yeah, so it's the emasculation. Thank you so much.

I have a master's degree. In screenwriting? In writing. In words. From Boston University. I hate to bring it up. Very stressed out. I don't know how to read this word.

Okay. The emasculation of men in American culture. So that's like a common thesis where it's like, men, they like to shop now, so they are not men anymore. So that's what has often been commented about this movie. Kate, I was curious, what was like the general shit?

I mean, if you haven't seen this movie since you were in middle school, what were like the big things that stood out to you on a rewatch? The fascism part. I definitely didn't pick up on that at first because I didn't know what it was, even though it was all around me.

It's like, God. God. how grandiose the plans got and how successful he was as Tyler Durden that's what really stood out to me the most because now as an adult I realize how easy it is to fail and the fact that his alter ego

of which he was completely unaware is like incredibly successful at literally everything he does. Yeah. And is very charismatic, and people like him, and he has sex, and he knows how to make bombs. Like, if I could create an alter ego and be way more successful at that, like, yeah.

Dissociate away. Yeah. Like, technically, Project Mayhem should have been like a fire fest like in terms of how it played out. Like it just should have been like who's in charge here? What? Yeah bring Tyler Durden in to run Fire Fest and you don't need

the documentaries then because it goes off without a hit. I want Amazon Prime to release a Fire Fest documentary where it's like Tyler Durden and Ja Rule. And Ja Rule's like I want to wish a Firebuzz documentary where it's like Tyler Durden and Ja Rule. And Ja Rule's like, I want to wish a happy birthday to Tyler Durden, the coolest guy in the world. Yeah, that's a guy, I hadn't even thought of that.

Like there's no way that this should have worked out. And it's also not even like we're made to think that Edward Norton's character is like hyper-competent. He seems like that's like the opposite of what his character is. He's very average. Yeah, that's the whole point. He's the everyman, but within everyman lurks a Brad Pitt. Is it not the message of the movie?

Yeah. There was a great video that we highly recommend to all listeners that a past guest of our show, Maggie Mayfish, made about this movie. It's all about the fascism undertones of this movie, which we will only lightly get into. So definitely watch that if you want to learn more about it. But she opens her video so funny where she says,

there's a guy who's really cool and has a lot of sex and fights and always wins, and that awesome guy is me. It's literally the movie. That's all it is. It's like, if you feel like an Edward Norton, don't worry, dog. You are a fuck machine oh gosh well let's let's talk about the the romantic relationship i'd like to start there because

that's pretty much the only context with which marla singer exists in this story because we have pretty much exactly one female character in the movie. Her name is Marla Singer. There's a woman named Chloe, and we can touch on her, but she gets maybe 30 seconds of screen time. Not that Marla gets much more than that. This movie hates women in a way that I never, like, with each subsequent viewing,

I recognize something. Like, this movie has absolute contempt for women and all things vaguely feminine true yes so if we're looking at fight club sort of as like a love story uh which it is yeah because i mean the movie opens with the narrator saying like we because we see all the imagery of like Brad Pitt's has a gun in Edward Norton's mouth and we're like oh phallic we're like yes and they're talking about all the bombs and stuff and uh that voiceover narration says like all this is happening right now because of a woman named marla singer she ruined everything the movie and then the middle of the movie is this pretty much ongoing sexual

relationship between her and tyler durden which is jack the narrator imagine if you were like just having sex with edwardorton. What a bummer. And the end, like I said, is them holding hands. They're looking at each other kind of googly-eyed, and the music swells, and we're like, oh, what a moment they're having. But this just feels like the type of romance that Hollywood thinks appeals to men, or that should appeal to men,

because this is a relationship where like Jack has all of the power over the woman he is constantly mistreating her and uh she keeps coming back despite all that and then we're meant to believe that the one of the reasons that she does come back is that he is just so good at fucking like he fucks her brains out and it's amazing and that's why she's putting up edward norton i mean you know and as someone who's returned to dick that it was not admirable like you're like edward norton okay like but a movie like this like sends a message to like you know the teenage boys that i was trying to date in high school that are like, oh, you can treat women like shit,

and they'll just come back to you if you have a dick. And to young women, I think that the implication of this movie is like, men are more complicated than they appear, which I have not found to be true. Like, there's a whole other person in there. That's not true. It's usually just the one. The context in which they

met, too, was just kind of a weird thing because it wasn't a common interest so much as, like, how do you have as many problems as I have? And then just meeting up in a very commiserative way, which is super romantic. When somebody sees you miserable, that's really hot, right?

And then negotiates with her so that he never has to see her again. But at the end, they're in love. Their meeting is really interesting because the way the movie introduces her because this movie is so voiceover heavy

and David Fincher apparently the more I read about this person the more I just want to I don't know what I just thought of five horrible things and I won't say any of them but he made a movie that was like no Mark Zuckerberg is cool

he's horrible. He's the worst. Mark Zuckerberg is, above all things, not cool. He's also waging wars in foreign countries, but above all, he is not cool. But David Fincher said he fired a producer who said that the voiceover sounded stupid.

Who may have been the smartest person working on the movie. Yes. But the way we meet Marla immediately, she is framed as kind of like a femme fatale kind of character where she's taking a drag on a cigarette. She's wearing the tilted hat. She's framed as

the dirtiest, grimiest possible version of a femme fatale and the yeah the voiceover literally says she ruined everything she's a parasite and then explains i mean in a more like clear way than i remembered that the reason that jack doesn't like her is because she reminds him of himself which is an interesting theme and could i think speak to how some toxic relationships work but the movie doesn't do that at all it then just spends the the rest of the their story distracting you from what marla is going through by you not knowing what's going on and then on a second viewing it's more just

like showing what the magic trick is and like oh i guess she really would be confused and hurt here oh well right which i want to go over the like story beats of the movie from marla's point of view because she is in an emotionally abusive relationship with ed Edward Norton, honestly. Not even Brad Pitt. She meets a guy who is very contemptuous of her, and then she calls him because she's in the middle of what may or may not be a suicide attempt. Hard to really tell, because the movie does not handle suicidality

or mental illness well no it makes it seem like a bid at attention right and wanting to see someone again which is like we don't even need to say it's fucked up but it's fucked up yeah and then apparently he like takes her and like brings her back to his dilapidated house and then like fucks her better than she's ever been had sex with before i don't know why i said it like that but um and then the following morning he acts as if he has no memory of them having sex or hanging out or anything like that and then he's like what are you doing in my house and she's like well fuck you then and then like leaves because at this point he does not know that he's tyler

durden it takes two hours for us to figure it out and then this pattern repeats itself for again what we can assume to be months and then she shows up at one point toward the end and he tells her to her face tyler's not here that would be like if i came to your house jamie and i was like hey jamie and then you were like jamie's not here that's like dating edward norton and being like edward norton's not here right now and you'd be like ew i guess i'm not dating edward norton anymore also he's like holding like a handle of liquor when he's saying that like why wouldn't you just assume he's drunk yeah oh yeah i mean it's like nothing about their relationship and i think that that kind of speaks to like some of the like counting on the audience to be paying

more attention to the magic trick than the characterization. Because it does seem like if Marlo were written realistically that she would catch on sooner. But the way women are written in this movie are as complete idiot, incompetent consumers, which is expressed through the, like, I'm selling rich women's fat asses back to them when Tyler starts making the soap. Like, there's no female character

that is made to seem anything less than completely oblivious and that includes the Chloe character as well. The whole setup of the movie, the fact that we're going in and out of his mental illness from his point of view makes it such that she can never be an expert. She can never know

anything. He will constantly be both the expert and the person discovering themselves throughout the journey. So she can have no input whatsoever because we're just seeing what's going on in his set so like it's set up so that she has no input or any impact whatsoever right what's going on totally yeah she would have discovered in months i mean like would you not figure out that the person you're with is dressed like you know or at least something wasn't right you know it's like it seems like they were spending i mean i guess i don't know how much time they were spending together but she seems invested in the relationship

and so I don't know. She's also not a real person so I was like I don't want to hurt her feeling. She's fake. Well there is a theory. You know when you go onto jackdurden.com and spend two hours

reading about a fan theory. Kaelin got real tin hat about this. Yeah, I'm sad. It presented some compelling arguments that both, that... Jackdurden.com?

Yeah. That both Bob and Marla, like the Tyler Durden character, are figments of Jack's imagination. Which, I'd buy that. It feels, there's a lot of clues. I'm not gonna go conspiracy theorist on anyone. So she might not even be real,

but I think that's not really helpful for us to talk about because the movie at least presents her as being real. A person who, yeah. And then the rest of their relationship is, they meet up somewhere and he's like oh the full extent of our relationship had not been clear to me until now sorry i haven't been treating you so well and then in his apology he says give me 15 seconds and shut your mouth and don't move so that's really nice hot and then she's brought back at the very end against her will.

And then he's like, you caught me at a really strange time in my life. And she's like, let's hold hands. Yeah, he just shot himself in the head. And then she's like, better hold hands with him. Maybe hold his jaw. Maybe that's what he needs. Yeah, he needs medical attention uh tyler yeah so yeah i mean the movie like skips over all the complexities of a woman staying in a relationship with an

emotionally abusive partner it like glosses over all of that and it yeah it does make her out to just seem like a crazy desperate idiot right which is how Tyler views her, at least, and sort of alludes to that several times. But the movie does nothing to challenge that, which means it's a poor adaptation of a satire if it presents a stupid idea with no, like, it's just, oh, God, David Fincher, you fucking idiot. I can't stand him.

Okay, some things David Fincher has said sorry literally david fincher has said quote i think a film set is a fascist dictatorship uh so if you want any ideas on how david fincher feels about fascism besides the fact that he made a movie about how Mark Zuckerberg is cool that direct quote might be helpful. Maybe his films did sort of fascist dictatorships. It sounds like they are because he's like the director that does a

shot like he's like I'm an auteur which just means I'm emotionally abusive to people around me but he like makes everyone do the same shot like 9,000 times and then like i don't know he's an he's an icky guy hey jamie what do you say we take a real quick break and then we'll come back for more sounds good to me all right all right it. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks.

Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

Hey, it's Teddy Mellencamp, on Apple Podcasts. As we always say, every episode and give you our opinions. We cover it all. OC, Jersey, Beverly Hills, New York City, Dubai. As we always say, you're only as good as last week's episode. Plus, we're talking to all your favorite Bravo Leberties and not just housewives. We're putting your favorite people in the twat seat and getting the juicy stories everybody wants to know. So join us as we stir the pot and get ourselves into some trouble. Okay, maybe a lot of trouble. It's not really trouble when it's truthful. Let's just say we can be a little twatty. Listen to Two Teas in a Pod on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours.

BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're allowed to be doing this we passed the review board a year ago we're not hurting people there's nothing dangerous about what you're doing they're just dreams dream sequence is a new horror thriller from blumhouse television iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Marla, I don't know how much validity this has, but I did write in my notes that she's a manic pixie nightmare girl.

Oh, we've got, okay, people like it. Good. Because she's like doing all this stuff where she like walks into traffic traffic and just stands in the middle of the road. She's stealing other people's clothes from a laundromat and then taking them immediately to a thrift shop to sell them. It's like if Zooey Deschanel did meth. Right. Exactly. There's her famous line of like,

I haven't been fucked like that since grade school. I'm sorry, I haven't been had sexed with like that since grade school which is which is unfortunately kind of like a subtext that is used in in stories a lot to like imply that like this woman is damaged because she was sexually abused as a child right like it Like, it's real classy. Yeah. For a character you're not even intending to write. And then in Maggie Mae Fish's video essay about this movie, she also points out that the way that she's framed by the camera is that the camera's often above her,

and, like, cinematic language dictates that we are, like, literally and figuratively looking down on her like it's a way to convey that she has no power and then conversely like tyler durden is often shot with like an upshot so he's made to seem like powerful and empowered and all of that so yeah really an abs based culture and then just like the way that the men talk about Marla, Jack says at one point, I'm going to grab that little bitch Marla Singer and scream at her. And then we see his fantasy where he does, which is awesome. And then a little later on, Tyler says, oh, you fucked her, right?

And then he's like, she's limber. A silly coos, which I had to look up what that meant. Isn't that something you hold a beer in? That's a coosie. Oh. It's a diminutive of coos, which I had to look up what that meant. Isn't that something you hold a beer in? That's a coosie. Oh. It's a diminutive of coos. Yeah. Is it a small beer coos?

It's just, yeah. It's basically like a slut. And then he says something like, oh, she's in love with sport fucking. Yeah, so it's just constantly like, Tyler's talking about her as though she's an object jack is talking about her as though she's a parasite she's repulsive yeah i mean and then there's that one scene between jack and marla that seems to be their whole relationship and sort of like as close as you can get to the movie statement on who she is where there's that question of what does a weaker person get by latching on to a stronger

person when like jack asks marla that directly and she responds as if that is just true and that's how their relationship is and she accepts the fact that she's the weaker person and he's the stronger person and even though at this point in the movie we don't know that they're the same person uh sorry spoilers that you know she just passively accepts that she's the weaker person in the relationship which is not how that argument would go for no one i can think of if like so you're like fully the sub right so like why am i so amazing like who would have who would have that like it's just totally irrational even in the world of the movie that that conversation could happen so directly yeah right but she's written in such a like one

dimensional way where she can't respond and also like gender essentialism is like at full blast in this movie where women are women in the most traditional possible sense where they're, like what we were talking about with a lot of things about Marla's character where she's emotionally dependent on him. She cannot go on without him and she needs the strength of a man to go on.

And on the other side, I mean, this movie's more famous for being male gender essentialism of tough boy fight uh no homo but we're almost kissing kind of vibe and like given this movie's attitude towards men the way marla and chloe are written like kind of line up with that like essentialist view sure uh but you know it's wrong and this movie is wrong about everything. Well, yeah, satire is really dangerous

if it's not taken seriously. Rachel Ray was definitely satire, and then they gave her a talk show. But I mean, if the majority of people consuming it are interpreting it in the wrong way, then obviously it's that negative. It's not helping, it's only hurting, and then at that point you're doing a disservice to society

and generations to come, because I think it's still popular. I still see those posters. Yeah. I really hope people still don't watch this movie, but I think they do. If you're a youth out there, and you're considering watching Fight Club,

try not to. Just don't watch it. I don't believe in encouraging young people to watch problematic movies as a study. I'm just like, just forget it ever happened. We would all be better off. And unfortunately, there's not that much to talk about Marla otherwise

because that's really all you know about her is how she exists in relation to either Tyler or Jack. Especially because she disappears for large chunks of the movie and is not on screen for 20 minutes at a time kind of thing. Yeah. But going back to the satire and the message that the movie is attempting to send,

which is that consumerism is bad. Stuff is bad. Which is true, but the answer to consumerism isn't fascism. Like... Right. Seems like really shooting a Band-Aid. Especially because, like, I mean, you can kind of boil down this story into the Jack narrator character being

so upset that he's bought into consumers culture and part of that is like him feeling emasculated he's like i buy ikea and i know what a duvet is so i i'm feminine and that's horrible i'm gonna blow up everything i own so it's basically equating well first of all it's like well women be shopping um and it's equating like consumerism with like femininity right so and how that's horror anything feminine is is bad that's the most confusing like equalization this movie does is like consumers equal women equals bad and then just like uses the transitive property like oh women equal bad sick like the because everything tyler says about consumerism is made to sound super feminist like the way he's saying like in that conversation where tyler's about to be like i'm hot punch me you know like his whole selling jack on on the idea of like stuff is bullshit is he's like condemning the idea of

homemaking or nesting he uses that word specifically uh which is like associated with women especially like in the 90s. Part of the reason I think this movie was able to come out because two years after this movie came out in 1999, it couldn't come out. You couldn't make a movie about domestic terrorism in 2001. I wonder why.

Because of Shrek. The big event of 2001. So because Shrek's on the horizon, everything Tyler is saying is like, consumerism is making you a girl, and so the way to not be a consumer is to be a boy.

Which is, what? And that's literally what he's saying. He's like, fuck Martha Stewart. Punch me in the mouth and kill your friends. Wait, he doesn't just say fuck Martha Stewart. He says, fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing brass on the Titanic. Titanic.

Okay. Anyway. But yeah, it's like, don't be a girl who shops be a man who fights other men until you're like punched into a bloody pulp which is like one of the more frustrating messages of this movie because if it was just like no one should be a consumer i still wouldn't be like, okay, so we should engage in domestic terrorism. But like adding that middle step of like, because consumerism exists, like it just totally blames consumerism on women who in the 1990s are the primary, like products are pushed more at women because women are the primary consumers of beauty products and fashion products

and home products because of the way society's worked since forever. But there's no accountability in Tyler's creed of yeah, and there's these billionaires that are making it impossible to be a woman who exists without

these products. That is never addressed. It's just like, yeah, they buy it. They're fucking idiots. Let's make soap. it impossible to be a woman who exists without these products like that is never addressed it's just like yeah they buy it they're fucking idiots let's make soap and like it's just it's ridiculous like it totally blames American consumerism on women where even if women are a large amount of American consumers and they are part of that reason is because of how society is set up, where women have to, in theory, engage in consumerism more to be considered legitimate. Right, and obviously it's men in power who are making upstream or making decisions that are causing the women downstream to consume more to begin with, because we're not the ones making all those decisions.

We're not trying to spend more money. We just want pockets, all right? Just want a job. Some respect. She's still frowned on. And along that same line is like the movie's obsession with testicles, dicks, dildos, breasts. Yeah, it's like all of these things. Caitlin, don't say those words. I'm so say those words please say pps in front of me everyone's pps and nuts sacks don't say that definitely don't say nards but there's all this

talk of bob not having testicles uh because they had to be removed because of his testicular cancer. And he's all like, I'm still a man, right? And then he grows what are described as bitch tits. Can we talk about Bob? What about Bob? What about Meatloaf? First of all, I love Bad Out of Hell and Bad Out of Hell 2 and I love Meatloaf and I think

thank you! Meatloaf okay, Meatloaf kills it in this movie. Fuck everyone who disagrees. Meatloaf absolutely destroys. Meatloaf is interesting and cool Meatloaf was there when JFK was assassinated

but he was like 10, but that's just a fun fact about him he didn't do it but what if he did wow new theory anyways Meatloaf is good in this movie just had to say that because I really I'm just like why didn't Meatloaf get more roles answer according to everything I read because he's's mean and difficult to work with. So anyways, Meatloaf does a good job in spite of his personal shortcomings. But the Bob character in general is so frustrating because he is the only man in this entire story who is capable of emotion or like the only character we get to know who's capable of emotion who's capable of empathy who's capable of building like non-sexual relationships with other men like just he's able to do a lot. Like he's, by today's standard,

I'd like to think, like a better definition. Feminist icon? Feminist icon Bob. Where's the shirt? Where's the shirt? And it's like, and I,

even when I saw this movie the first time, I'm like, man, Bob fucking rules. But what I was probably saying was I love Bat Out of Hell and I love Meatloaf. But his character is the only man we get to know in the story capable of emotion and empathy.

Right. And it is made out at every turn to look ridiculous, to look emasculating, to look embarrassing, that a man capable of empathy is not a man, is the message, to the point where, like you were saying, he's given essentially female breasts. And his testicles are taken away from him by the story. And it's just meant to, you know, it's clearly saying a man who can empathize with other people is a woman, is not a man. And women, as we know from the transitive property,

are bad. And so what happens to Bob, which I don't think we hit on in the recap, is Bob is radicalized by Tyler Durden and he comes, Meatloaf is really acting the hell out of this scene.

He goes up to Edward Norton. He's like, have you heard about this club? And he's like, there's a couple rules, but the first rule is I can't say anything. And we're like, oh, Meatloaf, you're great. And, but he, so anyways, Meatloaf joins Fight Club. And we're like, no. And then Meatloaf joins Project Mayhem, which also requires, I mean, it's extremely fascistic where they're like,

the rules for Project Mayhem, if you can pass muster and getting the shit kicked out of you by strangers every week is you get to stand outside Tyler Durden's shithole house for three days while being called

a number of epithets and then you can go inside his shithole house and work for free. But first, you have to become a skinhead. You have to shave off all your hair.

Oh, yeah. Like, yeah, the fashy imagery is strong. And like, yeah, you're stripped of your identity. You lose your name. Yeah. So Bob enters Project Mayhem,

and then in one of the Project Mayhem outings, and this is the most frustrating, ridiculous death I've ever heard, and the movie makes you think it is so fucking cool and righteous, is Bob is smashing in the window of a Starbucks and is shot to death. And they killed the only man capable of empathy. And then Tyler Durden

brings him back to the shithole house and is like, this was worth it. And everyone's like, uh-huh. And then they finally give Bob his name back.

Yeah. And I just wish that they had chanted his name was Meatloaf. I think that would have been a powerful scene. Bob's just horrible. Yeah, Bob wasn't even just the only one capable of empathy so much.

He's the only one that really showed any genuine emotion. He was sad before. He was jubilant when he joined. He was super excited about it. None of the other members of Mayhem, including Tyler Durden, including Edward Norton, actually really showed any kind of excitement or disappointment. Anger is the only other thing, but he didn't show any.

Even Marla didn't really show much emotion, other than frustration, like bouncing off. But he was the only one who was a dynamic character, and I guess he was kind of our straight man. He was a person we were supposed to like. So that, when he died, it was heartbreaking. And there's a few moments where at least Edward Norton's side of the character shows some,

if not, like not empathy, but some sort of attachment to Bob. Because you remember the scene where Bob's standing outside and Tyrone's like, fuck you, get out of here. But then Edward Norton goes after him and is like, no, join my club. And effectively killing Meatloaf. Just like Meatloaf saw JFK get killed. Wow. Really a full circle.

Thank you so much. I can't believe Meatloaf saw JFK get killed. That's so interesting. Yeah, that's wild. R.I.P. JFK. I mean, I say it in every episode. But now more than ever. One last thing I want to touch on uh regarding

the movie's like fixation on like oh if you have testicles you're a man if you have breasts you're a woman like that that's just like a very cis normative stance to take and of course the movie wasn't thinking anything about that besides just like oh how dare men ever be emasculated in any way it's horrible if that happens it's so yeah it's so essentialist and it's so yeah disregarding of anything outside of cis het norms and and it's again bizarre and frustrating because it is a story that was written by a queer author who deals with a lot of queer topics and deals with trans characters later in his books. And so it's just like, I don't know,

this book is just so repressed. It is repression for two hours. It's so long. It's like two hours and 20 minutes. How dare they? The only movie allowed to be that long or longer is of course Titanic.

I mean. I'd say even about the testicles too. They didn't just use it to defend the men's masculinity. They also used it. They had Marla very explicitly state that she does not own testicles. It's just like another looking down, pointing out the fact she's not like this, she doesn't have this, and she's hanging out with these people who don't have this,

and that's why they don't deserve it. Yeah, I think we assumed that. We assumed that she didn't. But the line wasn't even that funny. No. It was a hack line. I love it. But it is true that the normativity of,

I mean, and even the way you see the room full of men who with the exception of Marla and Jack don't have their testicles anymore they are suddenly reduced to these comically emotional sobbing wrecks and the subtext of that is because

they don't have testicles anymore and the one man we see speak in group says his wife left him because he didn't have testicles anymore. And the one man we see speak in group says his wife left him, because he didn't have... His wife. His wife. It didn't... Left him,

because he wasn't able to give her children, which both implies, one, women are bad, and also implies that a relationship can only be one exact way, or it will never work. Right. And so, you know, fuck.

Here's a fun line that gets said in the movie. It's Tyler. He's in a bathtub. He says, We're a generation of men raised by women. I wonder if another woman is really what we need. Because they're talking about whether or not they should get married, basically.

Oh, yeah, because that's the same scene where Edward Norton's like, I'm 30, I can't handle nothing. I'm a 30-year-old boy. And you're like, boo. Grow up, bitch. You live in a shithole. I want to yell that at every 30-year-old man I know. And then also

there are various references to the Jack character feeling alone because his father abandoned him when he was a kid, which kind of suggests it's like the movie suggesting that a lack of a male presence or a father figure in his life might be responsible for whatever mental

illness break that's happening to him. You grew up without a dad and then later on you want to make up for all that lost fighting time. She's up for fighting wherever you get it. Is that you, Dad? Tyler's just hoping he'll accidentally hit his dad on death. That's very much a Palahniuk message, where in everything written about his book, he's like,

well, there's not enough good male heroes for men. And you're just like, that's the hill you're choosing to die on? Read the room, you dummy. But yeah, I wanted to touch really quickly on the time period where this movie is coming out, because the book was released in 96, the movie is released in 99. So it's all like second Clinton administration, which does explain a lot of the hatred of the consumerism, because this is like when the economy is doing relatively well. And so anytime people have a little bit of money, they're like, hey, wait, who has my money?

And they get angry. Fair. Consumerism sucks. That said, I do enjoy products. So confusing. But the way it connects to women, and I was trying to do some research connecting, you know know like why does this book and then the movie make such an unapologetic women equal consumers equals bad

like equivocation yeah and i mean if you think about there's so many villainized women in the 90s and there's also a lot of feminism that comes up in the 90s so there's a lot of stuff that's going on at once that made men angry at women so on one side in 1994 you have the violence against women Act which did a lot of net good in theory for American women Ruth Bader Ginsburg is put on the Supreme Court there are a number of good things that happened for American women around this time. However, a lot of the main 1990s American women that are remembered are remembered as villains of the moment. And that's like your Monica Lewinsky's and your Anita Hill's and your Tanya Harding's and you're Hillary Clinton's at times of

different women who were villainized for being too something or other and then the general public and like literally everyone would just kind of run with the narrative of like they're fucking things up and feminism have empowered these

figures too much and now they're wrecking society and so that's as close as i've gotten to uh why it is so easy and why people were so responsive at this specific time to like oh yeah it makes sense that women are ruining everything and that the answer is to be is like old school machismo and and and killing meatloaf god killing meatloaf's never the answer i don't think i agree thank you can we touch a little bit on the portrayal of mental illness in this movie yeah let's do it oh someone just inhaled deeply deeply i mean the the jack character has some unidentified well he has insomnia and he's like when you have insomnia you're never really awake and you're never really asleep as someone who

has insomnia i can attest that that is not true um so that that's wrong first of all and then he has some other unidentified mental illness where he is you know he has an alternate personality right so i mean the movie doesn't handle anything about this well and then as far as like marla with her suicide attempt her quote about that is this isn't a real suicide thing this is probably one of those cry for help things which just like completely minimizes its suicidality so cavalier and it's supposed to make her seem like a manipulative woman and or the manic pixie nightmare lady meth is de chanel just took a bottle of pills i don't know i'm crazy like that like stop yeah i mean it's the the mental illness is not treated one of the things i will i was

retroactively grateful for just based on how mental illness is treated in in a lot of movies is at the very very very least they don't name what the narrator is supposed to have. I think if they had named a specific mental disorder that Jack was supposed to have, which almost certainly would not have been portrayed remotely correctly, that would have been 10 times worse than not naming it because so often it's like

anyone who's named bipolar in a movie is fucking over every functional bipolar person in the world. naming it because so often it's like anyone who's named bipolar in a movie is fucking over every functional bipolar person in the world. Or you get the case of Halloween where the killer is diagnosed by his psychiatrist as evil.

Is that not a legitimate diagnosis? I don't know. I haven't read the DSM in a while. I think it's great that they didn't name a specific mental illness, and I'm sure that did a lot of good, but also I don't know if that was the intention so much as now you can mix and match the coolest symptoms and then create the coolest ill person.

Insomnia is a cool disease, right? Thank you. Thank you, parenting. Yeah, and becoming someone cool, that sounds like a cool disease, right? Thank you. Thank you, Perky. Yeah, and becoming someone cool, that sounds like a cool symptom. Like if the side effects were like, you might have trouble sleeping, but you'll be real cool.

Yeah. You'll be so productive. You'll be fucking Brad Pitt. You'll start a cult. You're ripped. Yeah. You're right. This could have done a lot of good

for the mentally ill community. I mean... That does make a lot of sense, though. Yeah, it does seem to be kind of copy-pasting a lot of different symptoms just to make Brad Pitt possible. I don't know.

I mean, this movie is about a group of men who clearly need therapy, and then they're like, what if we just punch this shit out of each other instead? We got this. I mean, also, Edward Norton's character must have had good health insurance

because he seemed getting fixed. So I'm like, well, you probably could see a therapist, bud. Right. It seems like at his job, he's got, which is another thing that is so 90s about this movie. I'm like, he can just go to the doctor? Like, that was something I was thinking. I was like, I wish I could just get in a fight

and go to a doctor, but unfortunately, I must bleed to death. Like, can't go to a fucking doctor. Imagine. Do you think podcasters can see doctors? They can't. They can't. Is there anything else that anyone wants to talk about?

I think the name is great. Fight Club? Because it's two things that dudes love, right? Violence and being exclusive about it. And you know, immediately, there's no girls in that Fight Club. We know. They even say that in the movies. There's a conversation with Marla, and Jack is like,

I found a new support group. And she's like, what is it? And he's like, it a conversation with like marla and jack is like i found a new support group and she's like what is it he's like it's for men only yeah yeah marla rhymes with darla like from the little rascals and singer is a recognized name brand of sewing machine sexist oh wow i'm not the only one tin-hatting over here, then. The last thing I had in my too-many-notes is just the way that sex is treated in this movie is treated like it's both a weakness and a physical illness, where every way sex is depicted is made to be extremely grotesque. And even in this extremely rigidly heteronormative movie,

that, yeah, I mean, it's like sex with Marla is, we're told and from what we see is supposed to be gross. And paired with what you were saying earlier of everyone is always like is my dick hard are my boobs falling off like everyone is physically decaying and and their teeth are you know the men are having their teeth punched out and their bodies are being desecrated and every woman in the movie thinks they have breast cancer and it's just like everything about the physical body and and sex is made to seem like this big disgusting i mean maybe they got that right i don't know well i mean the only other

named woman in the named female character in the movie she's dying of cancer i think we uh are meant to assume basically she says um i no longer have a fear of death. And everyone's like, that's great. And then she says, but I'm very lonely. No one will have sex with me. And all I want to do is just get laid one last time. And then she does this whole thing where she's frantically being like, I have lube.

Does anyone here want to have sex with me? And she's made it just seem very pathetic and desperate. To be fair, I do that. Which brings me to my next point. I have Luke. No, I agree with what you're saying.

She's just done a huge disservice by the movie as well. And then she dies we find out uh marla tells as a super afterthought yeah which is i mean it's the the way everything that character i mean yeah like she's made to look like marla physically repulsive which is and which the the characters that the movie chooses to make look physically repulsive to the narrator because it always is in relation to Jack. Jack thinks Marla, Chloe, and Bob

are disgusting. Those three characters, I mean it's the two women that we meet and the one man who has feminine traits. Edward Norton hates women. Let's use the

transitive property. Chloe's character, it's unfortunate because she's, again, one of the not completely nihilistic characters. Anyone who isn't subscribing to this boring fuckboy

edgelord nihilism is killed. It's fucking ridiculous yeah oh god i mean this is it's at the very top of the red flag fave movies list if someone says that they still you know hold a candle for this movie run in the other direction they're very dangerous um yeah i mean it's it's right up there it is yeah with you know what rock the the rock gosh drive yeah what else um we've made a we've made a list oh fuck what's the alpacini scarface scar oh god yeah. Oh, what's the one with the Irish guys? Oh, the Boondock Saints? Yeah. Not that one either.

God, most Quentin Tarantino movies are just white guys who want to say the N-word. It's just all, you know, don't meet anyone and don't spend time with anyone is the lesson, really. Do we have any questions or comments from the crowd? Do we miss anything, gang? Yes. Here, I'll come to you so you can talk into the mic.

What's your name? My name is Marina. Hi, Marina. And I've always loved Martha Stewart, and so has my mother. And she would randomly yell, free Martha when she was in jail. And she always was saying if she was a man,

she would have never gone to prison for insider trading. Do you think that's true? Your mom is right. I mean, obviously, your mom is right i mean obviously your mom is right but i mean although i i do think that at least martha stewart got the street cred she rightfully deserved as a shameless girl boss capitalist i mean she's yeah i mean i personally stand martha she's probably evil but you know some people i i've wiped my butt with a lot of her towels so i guess i feel close to her the way you would feel close to a shaman bear jamie she's innocent i wipe my ass with towels I meant a lot. Okay.

Well, other questions. No, wait, hold on. Wipe, it implies. Like when you're, I meant like after a shower.

Oh, so you dry your ass. I've got a big ass. I gotta dry it with a towel. Circular. Yeah,

so do we all. Well, does anyone else have a question? Jesus Christesus christ okay we've got if you want to come up come up closer to the stage if you can my name is rachel jamie i bought you a pbr so later on i know so they're holding it for you back there wow i know so with marla i feel like my whole relationship with marla is creepy. Do you think that her sleeping with the narrator could be rape? Because he didn't know that he was sleeping with her.

And then she asked about it later. Or, like, sexual assault. Okay, I just want to make sure I'm understanding the question. So, like, it was later on when she comes back and she's asking, like, about Tyler. And, oh, Tyler's not here but it's like he's already had sex with her and not acknowledging it. That's kind of creepy. Totally.

So wait is the implication that she is raping him? No that he's raping her. He's raping. Okay. Oh. Huh. That's an interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way. In the sense that he's not being truthful about his identity. And that he doesn't remember it.

And that he doesn't, yeah, I mean, he never remembers it. It's his thing. Fuck. We never see the actual scenes, though, right? Yeah, I guess that that's an interesting, I'd be interested to talk about that more, and I feel like I need to watch the movie again to answer that question better. And I I need to watch the movie again to answer that question

better and I never want to watch this movie again but yeah I haven't gotten that I thought but but I understand where you're coming from I mean that's an interesting question I don't know does anyone have opinions on that there were I heard some some murmurs of agreement yes hey what was your name sorry to get so physically close I prefer not to say my name. Sure. As far as horrible mistakes that we may or may not have made in high school with regards to drugs and alcohol and sex, mutual non-consent is very much a real thing that a lot of us have to work through in terms of ways that we were irresponsible and were also hurt.

And I feel like this movie does not handle that well but i think that's what that's an instance of is neither party being in a sober present and active mental capacity for consent yeah that makes a lot of sense to me thank you yeah sure yeah no that's helpful thank you no that was you guys should hang out uh any any other questions oh yes there was someone in the back oh goodness come on come on down um i just want to know what y'all think about jared leto's character. Boo! You talk about femininity being painted as disgusting or repulsive, and Jared Leto is described as beautiful,

and then Edward Norton beats the shit out of him because he wanted to destroy something beautiful. What do you think? Well, as we all know, Jared Leto is not beautiful. No. Right off the bat, it's like's like who was like we need someone beautiful and they cast Jared Leto

and made him look like a neo-nazi clearly you haven't seen the first half of Requiem for a Dream cause he's pretty beautiful I haven't seen that movie how'd you get through the second half and just forget that just forget that part I liked his face tattoo when he was

the joker but i mean he was damaged boy he uh yeah he's described as beautiful and then jack yeah that's a good uh beats him to a pulp and in the next scene you see him in his like face is pretty badly disfigured yeah um so thatured. That is just yet another horrible thing Edward Norton does. And if you're given the choice between you can date Edward Norton or Jared Leto you're like, I'd rather be okay, I guess I'm just not going to have sex anymore.

And I feel good about that. Does that answer your question? A few more hands went up. All right, yeah, you. I just want to say, when we watched this the other day, my girlfriend did also refer to her as a nightmare pixie dream girl.

And probably a bad question, but if there were a role that Alfred Molina would play in this movie, what do you think it would be? Do you think it would make it better? there were a role that Alfred Molina would play in this movie, what do you think it would be? Do you think it would make it better? Or do you think that Alfred Molina is too much of a classy person to go anywhere near this project? You know, Alfred,

everyone makes mistakes. Let's say in theory he'd make this mistake. I hope if he made this mistake, as a close personal friend of mine at this point, I hope if he made this mistake, he would make it 100% of the way, and it would be like, you know,

like when Deep Roy was all the Oompa Loompas? It would be like an all Alfred Molina reboot of Fight Club. And you would play every character. And you would be so confused. If it was all Alfred Molina, first of all, it would take years to shoot and but so there'd be slight age differences which would be interesting I don't know but so at the end when you

find out that Alfred Molina and Alfred Molina were the same person you just be like, oh, I guess that makes sense. So that's what I would do. I think... You're welcome. I think he is too classy to be anywhere near this movie. I mean, he's our friend. He's our...

We know him. He's our friend. He touched my dog. Yeah. We're friends. My question's not gonna be anywhere as good as that one was Jamie since you read the book I was wondering that since David Fincher is a garbage person yes yes yes if maybe there was some director that could go over it and adapt it again like a Paul Verhoeven who is a little bit more experienced

with doing fascist satire, if maybe that would make it more redeemable as a work. That's interesting. That's a great question. Full disclosure, I have not read the book proper in many years, but I went back over what was changed in the adaptation and all that stuff before

when we were prepping for this episode. I don't know. That's kind of... I don't know. I worry that right now our culture as it is does not seem very prepared for satire. There seems to be such a... Everything that's happening feels like a badly written satire.

And so I don't know I mean, I don't know. I think that, you know, hopefully in years where people are not constantly descending into active hell as we are now, that I, I guess if an adaptation was done that I don't know, took the original author's biases into account and was able to clearly, I mean, it seems hard for a filmmaker to demonstrate when something is clearly satire,

but David Fincher, I mean, I don't know. I kept thinking as we were watching this movie, I was like, David Fincher probably thinks Elon Musk is awesome. I don't know if this source material is worth readapting and I think it's important to send

the message that like consumerism and capitalism are bad and I think a much better movie that does that is of course Josie and the Pussycats so I think we just need to keep making let's see some Josie sequels like what and then i that kind of reminded me of how i was like oh this is an incredibly white movie there are no i like hardly

any if any people of color in the movie and that's pretty much it yeah and then there's you know there as we discussed there are hardly any women in the movie, but then I was like, do I want those people to be in Fight Club? I don't want anyone to be in Fight Club. I don't know if I would wish Fight Club on the world again. Yeah, probably a nah for me, dog. Another adaptation. We had another question.

Yeah, I think we have time for one more. Hey, I'm Andrew same birthday as Alfred not to brag it's a pretty big deal I wanted to get your thoughts on something so I read the book too I got a couple literatis

I read it once and didn't really like it my dad still buys me Chuck Palahniuk books and I'm like please stop anyways Marla's line, I think, was something along the lines of when she says, I haven't been fucked like that since grade school, is originally, I want to have your abortion,

so I want to know what your thoughts are. Yeah, I read that. Hey, I have agency, and I'm making a joke about what I can do with my body instead of this thing happened to me, and it was terrible. Well, David Fincher hates women,

so I think that that is the beginning, middle, and end of that. Well, on that note... David Fincher hates women, so I think that that is the beginning, middle, and end of that. Well, on that note... David Fincher is evil. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Say it with us. No. Yeah, that's a hard no. Big fat no.

What if it did? We have to be like feminist texts, we take it all back. The only moment where women even interact is when Chloe is being like, someone please fuck me right now. And then another unnamed woman says, thanks Chloe, and then pulls her away from the microphone.

So that's the only time women interact in the whole movie. what if it's like super meta and tyler durden spliced in a scene of like two sisters discussing judith butler wow and we just didn't see it yeah we saw it instead of that being like that dick shot at the end it's just feminist talks tyler what a missed opportunity so wait was edward norton working part-time jobs at night i guess yeah he was doing the projectionist thing industrious i love him i take it all everything we said back um yeah this this does not. This doesn't. Hey, should we just also have the audience announce how many nipples we give this movie?

Yes, let's do that. On the count of three. One, two, three. Zero! Amazing! Correct! Katie, do you dispute that at all? No.

Does not merit any nipples. Yeah, none. No, no. Although if it did, which it doesn't, but if it did, it would be Jill's nipples, which is said in the movie. Remember when he's like, oh, I'm Jax Medulla Abongata.

I'm Jill's nipples. Anyway. I can't believe they let Edward Norton say nipples. I guess. Ruined nipples for me. So yeah, zero nipples. me yeah so yeah zero nipples yeah it's just you know Marla is treated like shit by the characters

and by the movie everything I mean the concept of femininity is treated like shit any man who displays a traditionally feminine trait is murdered like it's just the glorification of men punching each other is...

And really does, like, give... Down to the... I mean, we didn't talk about the symbolism of soap, which, you know, I guess you could read any college freshman's essay if you want to read about the symbolism of soap in Fight Club. But, you know, the whole concept of, like,

women are dumb enough to have their own fat sold back to them, it just has contempt of women and glorifies the most toxic possible masculinity to the point where it's ineffective laying out of the incel lifestyle. So if that was what they were trying to do, they were successful. So congratulations to the Movie Fan Club for radicalizing people and ruining the world! Thank God for Shrek. Katie, thank you so much for being here. Give it up for our guest Katie Wynn

thank you where can people follow you online is there anything you would like to plug yeah Instagram Twitter Katie Nuggin it's easier to spell than my last name Katie N-U-G-G-I-N

oh yeah I have a website Katie-Wynn.com my brother made it. Wow. And one time he held it hostage. But it's up now. And I'll fight him if I go through it again. Whoa. Thanks again for being here.

Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks to all of you for coming to the show. Give it up for Curious Comedy Theater for having us. Have a good night. Yeah, thanks for coming there you go there he goes a feminist text just like we all suspected we uh we broke the first couple rules because we talked about fight club yeah which means that we can't be really cool fascists which is too bad um thank you again uh to curious comedy theater for having us thank you to everyone who came to

our portland shows thank you to katie um follow her on all the socials she's wonderful thanks to sammy junio friend of the show for recording for us and just dog for road dogging with us and uh yeah check us out on uh all the regular socials facebook twitter instagram all at bechtel cast check out our live shows which we talked about at the top and get some merch at tpublic.com slash the bechtel cast and our matron don't forget about that oh yeah five dollars a month patreon.com slash bechtel cast and our matron don't forget about that oh yeah five dollars a month patreon.com slash Bechtel cast gets you two bonus episodes every month yeah uh and in March holy shit it is what are we calling it Zac Efron March we're calling it Zac March Ron or March Efron so high school musical and 2007 Hairspray are not to beto-be-missed month on the Matrion. So scoot over. You're going to want to sign up.

Yeah. And thank you for listening. Yeah. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was assassinated.

Crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of lucha libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar.

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