The Rewatchables - ‘Fight Club’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

The Ringer's Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan break the first rule of Fight Club after rewatching David Fincher’s 1999 classic ‘Fight Club’ starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter. Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It is called Woodstock 99. It is the reason we are doing this pod for reasons we're about to explain. But if you have HBO, if you have HBO Max, put it on your radar. It's a great one. and the movie we're about to talk about, it ties into a lot of the things the movie is about. Chris Ryan is here. The first rule of fight club is you not talk about fight club. Fight club is next. How much can you know about yourself you've never been a fight?

From the director of seven. The first rule of fight club is do not talk about fight club. I've got to take a fight club up a notch. What did you guys do? Without pain, you would have nothing. What kind of sick game are you playing? Brad Pitt. We're not killing anyone.

Set free. This isn't too much. Edward Norton. Something terrible is about to happen. What did you expect? Fight Club, Rader Dar. All right, Chris. I remember seeing this movie in the theater.

I never read the book. The reveal that Ed Norton was actually both characters, blew my mind. I loved it. It made me read the book after I saw the movie. This was an iconic 1999 movie. when we did our rewatchable's 1999 season on Luminary, we left Fight Club out.

We were like, no, it's got to be the perfect time. This is the perfect time. We have this Woodstock 99. That's coming up. But this is a movie that has aged very strangely over the last 22 years. I have a complicated relationship. What is your relationship with Fight Club? I love this movie,

but I think this movie is one of the most fascinating flashpoints about the debate between taking something seriously and taking something literally. So, like, when you watch this movie and to have kind of, like, grown up with it because it came out when I was about 20, 22, and then to have it like just in your life for the last 20, 20, like an additional 20 years, you watch how like different generations of people treat it, how they like look at it differently, how it changes two or three times over the last two decades in terms of its kind of conventional wisdom and public opinion about it. Yeah. Well, it comes out in 99. but after they filmed it, before it comes out, Columbine happens,

with Stock 99 happens, and, you know, angry young males becomes this new narrative, this kind of post-generation X, this lost generation, which is what this film is about, and it's satirizing, but all of a sudden doesn't feel like

as much of a satirization. But I think one of the great things about art that I think has gotten lost a little bit, especially over the last five years, is art is supposed to reflect the moment, right? And you're supposed to take whatever is kind of happening and put into some sort of perspective. And that's why I love Fight Club, because Fight Club is capturing something that was going on that I was in the middle of. I was in my mid to late 20s at that point.

And I didn't realize it was happening, you know, until a little bit after it was happening. I think Fight Club is one of the first things that put a nail into the ground and said, hey, there's this other post-generation next generation happening right now, and it's getting weird. Yeah, you know, I always think of this movie as kind of like a bridge movie

between two generations because when I was kind of like at my most impressionable was probably during like the alternative rock explosion of the early 90s and like alternative culture and you're growing up

and it's like Richard Linklater and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and those ideas getting introduced to you by popular culture, right? And I still like remember like Eddie Vedder writing pro-choice on his arm during unplugged. And like, those were kind of like these iconic images to me growing up. And you have all this anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerous kind of sentiment in that, in that bracket.

And then that sentiment just kind of is allowed to fester for a while. And nobody knows what to do with these sort of revolutionary ideas and feelings that they have. And then they just become rage. You know what I mean? Then they just become unarticulated anger. and nihilism. And that's what this movie captures. Is that moment in 99.

Now, you could do chicken and the egg stuff about like, did Limp Biscuit and Fight Club invent that kind of person? Or did that person invent Limp Biscuit Fight Club, Maxim Magazine? None of which are the same exact thing. But there was that moment in 99, 2000, 2000, whatever, like right before 9-11

where you did feel like it was just, there was just so much anger in the air. And it was like being directed in the most like destructive, way as possible. Yeah, and this movie's trying to do it in the absurdest way, but then the absurdest way actually becomes the way and a path for some people at least. And I think that was why we became so fascinated by Woodstock 99 just as a prop to do an audio podcast and eventually a doc, because it's like things fall apart over the course of three days at that festival in a way that

even as it's happening, you're like, wow, what is what's going on right now? What is everybody protesting. There wasn't that much to protest that I know, but there, but there kind of was because there was this disenfranchised generation combined with people pushed in the envelope in the wrong ways, a lot of different ways. You have the birth of the internet at that point where that's started to really take root by the late 90s and message boards and all these different ways to express. The music kind of sucked as you, as you found out of the festival, it's this really weird time for rock music right before that early 2000s when music took back off. you know,

Fight Club ends up being tied right into this. I was blown away by this movie in the theater. I thought I loved Ed Norton. I loved Brad Pitt. Love Fincher at that point because he had done seven in the game. And I knew I got the movie. It just made sense to me. I thought it was just an amazing.

It was a little too long. The critics did not get it. It really got pretty battered and people didn't like it that much. And it didn't do that well. And it really wasn't until DVD in 2000. It was one of the great DVDs of all time. And the DVD, which came out, I think, middle of 2000, and then it got this second shelf life and cable

and became a rewatchable. But it really was embedded in pop culture. I think over the next five, six years, no different than, you know, Boogie Knights, almost famous, like some of those other popular, big, autur movies that came out. And that kind of faded, I would say, in the 2010s.

And I don't think Fight Club kind of had the same. lasting kind of Shawshank, almost famous Boogie Nights, Goodfellas, casino type of run. Don't you feel like that faded after a while? Yeah, and I think also, I think that there was like, there have been multiple course corrections

in terms of how people feel about this movie. I think that there are people who look at it and just think it's like, it's for cavemen, and that it is actually celebrating the very behavior that it depicts and that it romanticizes this kind of like masculine aggression

and sort of mindless violence and destructive behavior. even though I think that the filmmakers and the stars would say, no, we were satirizing and lampooning and making fun of that. And this kind of like, you know, we talked a little bit about this during Goodfellas, but this idea that you get to have your cake and eat it too, that you get to make something look really cool and romanticize it. Like in Goodfellas's case, like Mob Violence and Fight Club's case, this kind of, you know, bare-knuckled violence that these guys are inflicting on each other and then this project mayhem stuff, that you get to show it

in a very like cool, slick fincher way and make it look like a music video, but at the same time, you're critiquing it and lampooning it and satirizing it. And I think that that's what people ultimately have a problem with, because we've become, I think generally speaking, this become a little bit more literal. Like art has become a little bit more like,

here's what this is about. Here's like the moral stance of this piece of art. So it's unambiguous. Like here's what you should take away from this. And that's not to say that there isn't really, really amazing art being made. but I think that the idea of having 50% of people be like, this movie is an atrocity and 50% of people will be like,

this movie's a masterpiece. It's been a minute since that's happened, right? Yeah, this movie spawned actual fight clubs. Critical fight clubs. The guys are the heroes. And there's this one scene when you're rewatching it in 2021, when there's like seven or eight guys in the room and they're watching news footage of how they had blown up some different stuff.

And they're like, yeah. And, you know, and in 1999, you're watching this being like, oh, this is cool. Right. These guys have flipped the system. Yeah, this is, I like where this is going. These are my movie heroes for this movie where I know I'm not supposed to root for them. But I'm glad they're flipped. But now in 2021, you're watching, you're like, oh, this is how some crazy.

So it's a complicated movie for a lot of different ways. David Feard, Rolling Stone, in 2019, because by the 20th anniversary of this movie, it's now considered a masterpiece. And he was saying how, this is what he wrote. Watching buildings collapse is really, it's tough to think circa 2019 that watching buildings collapse is really a blast and a half.

Pixie songs are not, that the generation that came after did, in fact, get not one great war, but two to define them in the anxiety that a great depression has felt like it's always just around the corner since 2008, that the way repressed males have turned the primal therapy of elicit violence,

into a toxic creed in the way the internet and the powers that be, one person in particular, would metastastise the very thing this movie would be satirizing. That's really well put, and it's true. Yeah, and that's kind of where we are. I think you think about the book, so say the author's name for me because I'm going to mess it up. Chuck Polonik. Yeah. You know my pronunciation issues.

I don't even know if I nailed it, but let's go with that. writes a book in 96. The movie's pretty faithful to the book. I think it actually, by all accounts, even Chuck admits it may be improved on a couple of themes from the book, but the basic themes are these two Tyler Dirden quotes. We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires,

movie stars, and rock stars, but we won't. Don't fuck with us. So you have disappointment, disillusionment, and the anger that you're being sold this lifestyle that you're probably not going to have. And then the other quote is, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

And I do feel like those are the fundamental two points of this movie, right? Yeah, that and the fact that these are, like my favorite line from the movie and the one that I think is really important, generationally speaking, is our fathers were our models for gods. If our fathers abandoned us,

what does that tell you about God? not to get too heady about it, but I do think that this was like, this is a generation of people who grew up when divorce was a little bit more common. And it wasn't that uncommon for your dad to leave when you were in eighth grade or when your dad, you know, your dad just disappeared from your life in a really functional way. And I don't know that we necessarily really reckon with that. I mean, I'm sure that there are a lot of like really unhappy marriages and fucked up families that stayed together because they didn't want the sort of social stigma of divorce before that.

but, you know, when you break up a family like that, it has these effects on people. And that's like a really important thing. That and the sort of empty consumerism of this sort of fat of the land era of America where there's just like nothing to fight against and nothing to sort of identify yourself against. So it's just, it's just I'm accumulating shit. But all the people in Tyler Durdens army by the end of this movie are office drones and waiters and parking valley guys and like people just like kind of going around. in circles in their life. Yeah, and you have Mike Judge

is doing office space around the same time. This is becoming a recurring theme and the corporations piece of it. The 90s is when the big corporations figured out how to market stuff to everybody and just make as much money as possible and infect our lives without us totally realizing it.

And I think by the late 90s, you saw some of the art reflecting. It wasn't just this movie. Like Austin Powers, they make the second one and Dr. Evil's compound has the Starbucks the little mini Starbucks in it with the barista. And the point was, you know, it's funny, but the point was like Starbucks is everywhere.

It's even in Dark the Rearville's Compound. In this movie, Starbucks is everywhere, right? IKEA, one of the, in the first 20 minutes, and he's decorating his apartment and just looking, sitting on the John, looking at the IKEA catalog. And over and over again, they're banging in. You read the research of this movie. And at one point, it's, it's Andrew Kevin Walker,

who wrote Seven, who was helping the rewrite, Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Ed Norton. They're just hanging out, innovating, rewriting stuff. And there's this conversation they have about the Volkswagen Beetle, how that represents a lot of what they want to be in this movie where you have this car in the late 60s that's this symbol of an era, right? This cool car. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of a kind. A lot of people had it, but it just was very authentic to that era.

And then in the 90s, they brought it back in the most sterile way possible. And they're like, the Volkswagen Beetle, you loved it. This once meant a lot. here's a shitty version of it. You should buy it. And that was kind of what was driving the mentality of this movie. How do we tap into that? That this generation is now being sold nostalgia and stupid shit they don't need and things that ultimately are paying off for the corporations and not them. That's the sort of goes back to what I was saying about like this being a bridge movie from that early 90s sensibility because there was like a real aversion at least publicly stated to selling out.

And there was this idea that if you sold your music to a commercial, if you were a band and you sold your music to a Volkswagen commercial, you sold out. And like that you were supposed to make money somehow organically through touring and selling records, but you shouldn't be placing your songs in movies. You shouldn't be placing your songs in commercials. You shouldn't be allowing corporations to have banners behind you when you're performing. And that music ethos really did bleed over into other parts of popular culture. And you remember like when I think when 30, Rock came on, so this is much later, but 30 Rock was making fun of the idea of product placement. And it's a pretty slippery slope from, we're like winkingly acknowledging that to this movie is sponsored by IKEA at Starbucks. If you made Fight Club now, you might still make fun of those things, but you would definitely have all that stuff like would be, like, it would be SpanCon within your movie. Right. Well, now people have figured out how to more seamlessly integrate this stuff, right? We do it in podcasts. We do it in all the. these different ways.

Well, maybe people just see it as a reality of, like, this is how this bills get paid, right? Right. Well, remember reality bites, which we did in the rewatchables? She's so upset that Ben Stiller's character took this, you know, kind of docu-series show she was creating about her friends and turned it into the most stereotypical MTV-type show ever

with like just little snippets and no soul at all. And she's like, I'm not going to sell out. doesn't even want to consider working with another cut. He's like, no, no, I fucked up. Let's get, she's out. She was like, I'm not going to sell out. And you're right. That was, I would say, from 89 to 95,

one of the prevailing things, don't sell out. Don't, don't, you know, even a band like Pearl Jam, which had two massive hits that ended up on Time Magazine. And Eddie Vitter almost had like, you know, a nervous breakdown about it and deliberately tried to move away from becoming too famous because to a guy like him, fame meant all bad things. Nothing good. There was no good art that could come out of being super famous.

And that was the mentality for a long time. It's so funny to go back and watch this movie now because, you know, we're coming out of this period, hopefully, of being, you know, really isolated from one another. And like, while the world is on fire, like this last year, I know for me, like, one of the more soothing things would just be to, like, kind of like, kind of, like, like, kind of, like, mindlessly shop for stuff. You know what I mean? And that kind of like that narcotic feeling of accumulating crap.

And like there was like a good month there where I was just buying like different like baseball hats from different soccer clubs. Like I'm like I don't need this. But like I'm just kind of like going losing my mind. But like the way to like kind of fix it is to just buy more stuff. That's how the baseball card boom happened by the way. The last boom from the 18 months is very similar reasoning. But this movie is so prophetic in that way. Because it's just like these guys are all just, you know,

the main character, the narrator in this movie is basically articulating this like, I'm in my early 30s, I have like a stable but boring job. And I basically fill my life with these single serving experiences and getting this sort of like stable but like unremarkable Swedish furniture. And like it's you you realize like this movie, it's like these movies that come along once a generation do still speak to us. throughout the years. Yeah, and you think, like, we've talked a lot about this 96 to 99 stretch

and how unbelievable it was for so many different reasons. A whole new generation of stars, a couple of them are in this movie, Pitt and Norton, a whole bunch of storytellers, guys from Tarantino to Fincher to, who am I leaving out out of the big ones? Oh, I mean, well, so, you know,

there's a million of them. Yeah, there's like, It's like Soderberg and like all these people who were like before it's Spike Jones. There's just a million things go. West Anderson. PTA. Yeah. Yeah.

PTA. That's the other big one to leave in there. But there's just so much going on. And it was a cool era in the moment. You knew it. Sometimes with stuff you don't realize it until after. I think with this movie you don't realize some of the themes that are you're going to look at them differently. But in that era in the late 90s, you knew what was happening.

You knew like this was. was an electric time to love movies to go to the theater. And that was like something like Fight Club. I knew about Fight. We've talked about this too, where by the early 90s, you had a sense of what movies were coming and who was working on what projects because of premiere magazine and stuff like that. Now at the internet, starting in 9798, and the whole infrastructure that was in place, you knew this movie was going on. You knew it was Fincher. You knew it was Norton. You knew it was Pitt. You knew it was called Fight Club. You knew it was based on this book. There was real anticipation for it, which was so funny that so many people were disappointed by it. To me,

I felt the opposite. I was absolutely delighted by the experience. This is everything I want from going to a movie theater. And I just couldn't believe read the reviews, like how disappointed people are. It's really strange. I think that they were turned off by the philosophy of the movie. I think that they were turned off by the nihilism. I think they were turned off by the underlying suggestion that maybe that there's, that Tyler Durdon somehow had like some good points. You know, I mean, I think that like if you're, if you were a middle-aged film critic and you go see this movie, I mean, also like you got to remember like, the people who were doing film criticism in that time period were not like cool young bloggers.

Yeah. There were guys like my dad who were like in their mid-40s. 30-year careers. Yeah, didn't like the idea that this is what their kids were watching. So Laura Ziskin from Fox 2,000 pictures, she options a novel for 10,000 bucks. That's all our guy Chuck got. Hires Jim Ewells to write the adaptation. Fincher gets involved, starts developing the script, then starts trying to get actors and talks to Norton.

Norton says you're going to do this as a comedy, right? And Fischer's like, oh, yeah, that's the whole point. Norton and Pip eventually become involved. We'll go into casting what ifs. There's some good side swipes that almost happen. And then as I said, Norton Pitt, Pitt, Fincher, Andrew Kevin Walker, they're all revising the script and all really, really honing in on how to really make a great movie that is going to stand the test of time. And you could argue, Ed Norton notoriously difficult, right? It's always been the thing.

You could argue it was because of this movie and his experience on it and how involved he was, not just in the innovation of the script and scenes and stuff like that, but even when you read about on the set and him and Fincher litigating everything and trying different things. And Fincher shot three times as much film as he wanted or as a normal person would shoot for a 140-minute movie. You could argue after that experience, it's hard to go back. You can't really make Red Dragon and not be like, here are my ideas? But so basically they realize like, what's at stake here?

is this generation's version of Rebel Without a Cause or The Graduate? Yeah, right. How do we get there? What's our message? What's our main message? And their main message was like, advertising is fucking up. Advertising and the illusion of you need something is fucking up an entire generation. Let's hone in on that and we'll go.

Do you agree with that? Do you agree with that angle that advertising was ruining? because I think there were other forces too. I mean, at the point of a movie is to go all in on an angle and have fun with it. But do you agree with that basic premise? Because I partially believe it.

I don't totally believe it. I like the argument, but I don't totally believe it. What are we talking about? Because we're two people, you're a little bit older than me, but we're obviously like middle-aged people now. And we're probably like a little bit less, like I don't have as much skin in the game.

Like I know that this is killing my soul. You know what I mean? Like I know that when you watch an NBA finals game, and there's just like shit tons of Oculus and jungle crews tie-ins and everything is like every 15 seconds we have to cut away to have another T-Mobile ad or whatever it is. Like I understand that that is like a huge barrier to just actually enjoying myself while I'm watching the NBA finals. But I have now just kind of like accepted the fact that there is no other way.

You know what I mean? Like that there is no other way to get what I want where I get to see Chris Paul and Janus play against one another. apparently we need to have all this other crap going into it and have all this other circus around it to like prop up that game. So I think it's just like I'm less angry. But I do agree and I definitely felt at that time because that's why I was like into punk rock at that time

which was that like this fucking sucks. This is not like a pure human experience. Yeah, I think the thing that it gets credit for what we just talked about this movie. But I think that thing that really matters the most here about the 90s is there's a loneliness to it, which we've discussed on pods about other movies from this time. But the Internet hasn't really rounded in a shape yet. Pop culture is basically pop culture and sports and music are like the three things everybody has in common. And maybe politics too.

But for the most part, everybody's kind of not totally connected. Yeah, it's tribal. the internet reconnected everybody. And at first it seemed awesome. And then the internet did what it did. And now in a weird way, people are as disconnected as they've ever been. But I do feel like there's a sense like, you know, I'm in Boston. I have these jokes with my friends or these things we care about.

And we think we might be the only one with these jokes, you know, or the only one with these running bits. And then the internet, by the time we get 2004, you realize like, oh, everybody. was joking about Buffalo Bill and Sous of Limbs. We thought it was just us with the James Gum jokes. We thought we were special. But that was it. We were all like on our own little islands.

And I think in some cases that was great. In other cases, not so great. And now Twitter, you know, now it's like we're in the group think era, which is the complete opposite of what the 1990s were like. Yeah. I do think that though it tapped into if you have a bunch of aimless men together, the odds are that like you're not going to love the result. Yeah, nothing great. And that obviously is like still the case with Twitter now. When you watch

this movie when it first came out and you had like your friends and stuff, like I remember we're going to see the Matrix and coming out of the Matrix and being like, could I jump over Storo Drive? Right. You know what I mean? Like Fast and Furious was like that too. It was like, can I drive 120 right now? Is that possible? Did you walk out of this movie and tell your friend to take a shot at you? No. It did make you wonder, like, do I just need to get to a fight this weekend? That was definitely a thing. Am I really going to be able to understand myself unless somebody punched me in the face? Yeah. And I think that there was like fight club. And I remember like just like watching jackass and stuff like that. And just like the idea of like putting yourself at physical

risk just to feel something was definitely like in the air. That like all the, like people just started bungee jumping and you're just like, if this goes wrong, it's the exact, like, it's the absolute worst case scenario. Well, you also saw it in professional wrestling. That was when the attitude era starts and the bumps just start getting crazier and crazier and you have guys falling 30 feet. And it just in general, it just pushed in the envelope with everything we were doing. Video games was another one.

I don't know enough about like the actual history of mixed martial arts, but couldn't you draw a connection between Fight Club and UFC is this idea that this is the real version of it? Oh, yeah. Well, UFC's in there in the 90s. It's not, it hasn't rounded into the shape it would hit into the early 2000s. But it's there. It exists. And there is a weird, weird parallel to it. There's obviously this thing at the center of this movie that is at the center of a moment that we're living through right now, which is very intoxicating when someone comes along in some way and says, everything you think is real is not. Yeah. Everything around you is fake. I'm flipping this and I'm a leader. And the only person who sees it for what it is is me, so you've got to listen to me. And obviously, that is a very seductive thing for some people. Well, Fincher said Fight Club, he wanted to be a coming-of-age film like the graduate for people in their 30s. Norton said it examines the value conflicts of Generation X is the first generation raised on television, which is true.

Generation told one could achieve spiritual happiness through home furnishing. So this movie, they make it. They're all excited about it. Columbine happens on April 20th. The studio gets freaked out. There's a couple scenes in here that feel a little Columbiney. They decide to delay it.

That delay ends up also having Woodstock 99 happen. So now we have two things that are like, wait, what's going on here? And then they finally premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Italy in September. And Pitt said, it gets to one of Helena's scandalous lines. I haven't been fucked like that since grade school.

And literally, the guy running the festival got up and left. Edward and I were the only one's laughing. You could hear two idiots up in the balcony, cackling through the whole thing. Norton said, it got booed. It wasn't playing well at all.

Brad turns and looks at me and said, that's the best movie I'm ever going to be in. He's so happy. That was from Brian Raftery's book. He did a thing about Fight Club. So it came out. It got destroyed by everybody, and we're going to talk about that after the break.

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make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. enjoy the fresh flavors of spring, save at Whole Foods Market. So this movie comes out, everybody goes nuts. Most of their views are angry. Even our guy Raj, we'll get to him in a second.

But it's so bad that Rosie O'Donnell, who has a big talk show at the time, comes on our show, destroys the movie, says, don't go see it, and then gives away the revelation in the third act, that Brad Pitt and Ed Dorton are the same person. Actually, intentionally ruins the movie, and everybody goes, that's about that. But that's how dark it was. It flips.

10 years after the New York Times writes a piece and says it's the defining cult movie of our time. Did Rosie ever come back in and change your mind about that? Within a year, nobody cared what Rosie thought. The DVD sold 6 million copies in its first decade, and it just climbed up a rewatchable amount. pretty quickly. I got to say,

the defining cult movie of our time, is this just a really expensive cult movie? Because they spent like almost $60 million on it. But do you think of this as a cult movie or a big budget studio movie? Oh, I think of it as a cult movie. I think it's way too dark and way too fucked up to be like, what were they trying to sell you here?

Like, what was the, this is new Hollywood ideas with Blockbuster Filbaking Chops. So it's like, it's got that sensibility of like a late 70s movie. And that's probably the reason why guys like Fincher and Norton and Pitt wanted to make movies in the first place is those Scorsese and Coppola and Altman movies

from that era anyway. But it's shot like an aerospace video from that time period. So it just looks outrageous because Fincher just can't make something that doesn't have that kind of texture and depth. And he basically so he had a bad experience with Fox Searchlight

with Alien 3. Didn't want to do another movie with them. And basically it was like, I'm only doing if we're actually spending real money on it. So he ends up making how much of this movie cost? Let's see, I have that $63 million budget to make a cult movie. But he has two major stars. It's like one of those, it's that weird territory where from like 94 to 99,

where things felt like they were cult movies, but they were independent movies, but they really weren't. Pulp Fiction was allegedly an independent movie, but it had, you know, eight truly famous people and one of the best directors of that generation. Norton and Pitt quickly. Who do you want to talk about first? Let's talk about Pitt. Pitt's 95 to 99 looks like this.

Seven. Twelve monkeys. Sleepers. Seven years in Tibet. Starts dating Jennifer Aniston. Devil's Own. Meet Joe Black. So he's an A-list movie star.

And all those movies are interesting for whatever reason. But there's a little bit of the feeling. So interview with the Vampires 94, but a little of the feeling of like, we have anointed this guy, a little like Janice. This guy's headed for a title someday. Wasn't quite happening.

He's the blonde. I feel like he needed this movie probably more than anyone else than the movie. He's kind of, yeah, and what you realize here, and I think what Pitt realized after doing me, Joe Black, which was a piece of shit, is that there's a difference between being a leading man and a movie star, and you can be a movie star

and not always have to be the leading man. And so what he does really well throughout his career is, yeah, he does like movies where he's in like World War Z. and he's in every shot or whatever. But he is so good at being in an ensemble or being in like a two-hander with somebody like, you know, like even like a spy game with Robert Redford. He's just like really good at sharing. And that's not something you really think about a lot with movie stars because you assume like they're there to choose scenery. Like I don't think it's Tom Cruise as like a great scene partner or somebody who can like play the back. in certain scenes. But Pitt floats through this movie like a ghost. And he is because you're just like, this guy is electrifying,

but he's almost like too hot and too cool to be real. And that's because he is. Yeah, I feel like there was this battle with him through the 90s of, am I Robert Redford or am I an actor? Yeah. Like I'm a character. I'm like Harvey Keitel. Yeah.

A plus list character actor basically. And what am I? And Michele Black is the last movie where it's like, I'm going to be Redford. And after that, it's like, I'm not Redford. I'm me. I'm going to start doing all kinds of stuff. And that's when his career becomes really interesting right after that.

Because he's got Fight Club. He's in Ocean's 11. Sometimes he'll go big budget, Troy. He can do Moneyball. He's just all over the map, starts producing more. And really the only downside is he beats Angelina Jolie and ends up with like a seven-kid family. A crazy relationship that plays out of the tablets. But his, this is a great Brad Pitt part.

If we're going to rank the greatest Brad Pitt parts of all time, this has to be in. Moneyball. I think Oceans is in there. Oh yeah, Oceans 11. And then once upon a time in Hollywood. Yeah. And then maybe the fifth one can vacillate depending on what you like about Brad Pitt. Yeah.

Then there's like the whole school of like Brad Pitt's borderline cameos like true romance. Right. True romance might be in there actually. You're right. But that's like, you know, Floyd, Fight Club, that's kind of the Brad Pitt I like. Yes. I think what's interesting about him is he can go full movie star, which he does the best in Ocean's 11, once upon a time in Hollywood and Moneyball.

Those are a movie star parts where it's like, my charisma will carry this role. I don't think a lot of people could have carried Moneyball. He's one of the very few. Redford could have done it. So that was his Redford parts. but what I liked is just the goofy side too. Norton, Norton's first six movies are pretty,

I don't know if these are the greatest first six movies anyone made, but it's got to be in the conversation. Primal Fear, the one stinker as everyone says, I love you, the Woody Allen movie. People versus Larry Flint, American History X,

Rounders Fight Club. Just from a batting average standpoint, that's pretty bonkers. Yeah, and also worth noting that when he does primal fear, it's like, what's, it would be like, you don't know who the fuck he is. It's just unbelievable.

And it was like one of the most hotly contested parts. Everybody was trying to go for it because that everybody knew that like what a meaty role it was. And he gets it. I hope we do primal fear one day. And like, and he's, it's just like a revelation to see him in that movie and the idea that

he's just like out of nowhere doing this. It's just, it's so great. American History X. He's unbelievable. I don't know if we'll end up doing that one at, and that's another one that he, was deeply involved with like, editing and writing. He basically took it over, like took over the

directing of it. Rounders, worm. Yeah. So he's played all types of guys, but, you know, this is, we did 25th hour a while ago during the pandemic. And I think that's the best Ed Norton performance out of all of these and kind of the last piece of this. And then I think at that point, maybe it, maybe it shifts a little bit. He's not an A plus Lister as in the same way after 25th hour. But 25th hour, to me, is the last piece of the list I just mentioned of just really fascinating leading man parts that are all trying to do something different and feel like they belong to him. Like, do you feel like Matt, I'll do one casting what if now. There's this really weird, the studio wants Matt Damon or Sean Penn. Fincher wants Norton.

Norton's up for the talented Mr. Ripley, Man on the Moon, the Indy Coughman movie, and runaway jury, a movie that ends up getting postponed and not made for a while. And all of these guys are all up for the same parts and jockeying and it's like a merry-go-round. Norton and Jim Carrey both crushed their Indy Coughman edition. Milos Foreman is basically like, I can't choose.

They want Carrie because he's a bigger name. At the same time, Damon grabs talented Mr. Ripley, and the merry-go-round stops and Norton ends up with rounders. But, like, there is a weird alternate universe where Damon does Fight Club and Norton does talented Mr. Ripley. And I'm not sure both movies aren't better, even though I love both actors in those roles. I think Damon and Ripley,

that was one of the best roles he's ever had. But it's really fun to think about this alternate universe where they just switch those two parts. And they were doing that for years. There was a great Norton interview where he talked about how he and Damon were both up for Rainmaker. but Coppola talks him into doing American History X, basically, because he's like, you obviously want to go make this instead.

Well, Damon was on my podcast talking about how he didn't get primal fear. He's devastated. Yeah, right. He said, like, everybody read for that. Like, those guys were all going for the same roles. Sent of a woman was another one, but somehow, what's his face got it? Chris O'Donnell, yeah. Chris O'Donnell, yeah.

Yeah, there were a lot of prep school movies back then. You really couldn't, you could throw, if you threw a rock, you would hit a prep school movie back in, like, the late night. Chasing Amy was another one that people wanted. but there's like seven or eight of them and there's seven guys going for the same parts every time. So Damon brings an inherent relatability to every role he does. And I think Norton brings an inherent cerebral nature to every role he does.

So you're basically choosing, do I want to have the narrator and fight club be somebody who feels like a nicer guy, who feels like a more normal, more everyday guy, or someone who could seemingly have so much going on upstairs that he could create this alternate reality within his head. Yeah, Damon, it's funny, I think Damon could have played either part in this movie.

Yeah, he could have played Tyler. I think Pitt could have only played Tyler. I don't think Ed Norton could have played Tyler, but that's what makes Damon so interesting, right? Leo's the other one who conceivably, he's a little young, but you think like post-Titanic, he's probably five years too young, but they could have maybe aged him up a little bit. You're right, it's probably 2004-2015, Leo, this would have been like his dream part. Right. I mean, the genius thing about casting Pitt and Pitt doing the role the way he did it is that it is actually the manifestation of a lot of what guys wanted to be. You know what I mean? Like if you ask the guy like if you could like be anybody in the world right now in 1999, a lot of them would be like, I'd like to look like Brad Pitt. Yeah. You know? So the idea that somebody who would be like an Edward Norton who's wearing is like his white Oxford at his weird insurance job, if he's daydreaming, he's going to daydream himself.

into this character. Yeah, and don't sleep on Brad Pitt's off-the-screen stuff either. Like, he's dating Gwyneth Paltrow. They almost get married. He's a huge story. He's like, everybody's in love with her in the mid-90s. And then goes right to Aniston, who's this iconic friends part, where everybody's in love with Rachel, people are cutting their hair like her.

And then all of a sudden he's with her. And it's like, this guy, man, he's got it going. And it made perfect sense that he was up. He's been part of like five or six of like the biggest tabloid stories. Oh, yeah. I would say he's been in the moat. Him and Affleck, it's probably 1A-1B. So, Oscar's time, this movie just gets shut out left and right.

It only gets nominated for Best Sound Editing. Fincher not nominated. We're going to talk about Fincher one second. None of the actor parts get nominated. Retroactively, I'm going to give you Best Actor, which Norton would be eligible for, and I'll give you Best Supporting Actor for Pitt. Okay.

Spacey wins for American Beauty. other nominees are Russell Crowe, The Insider, Richard Farnsworth, The Straight Story, Sean Penn, Sweet and Lowdown, yikes, Denzel watched in the hurricane. Yeah, I'm doing that over again. Ed Norton's got to be in there. I think he gets the Sean Penn spot.

Best supporting actor, Michael Kane wins for Ciderhouse Rules. I'm good with that, at least, be nominated. Tom Cruise, Magnolia, definitely. Michael Clark Duncan, Green Mile. Hard to believe that was like a thing. Yeah. I don't even know if we would do that on the rewatchables. It's kind of like the,

believe this is over, O'Bulls? It's like, is it over yet? O'Bulls? It's like three hours. That and Road to Perdition. We're like, I feel like that's like the same movie and they're like seven hours long. Jude Law, talented Mr. Ripley, Haley, Haley, Jailie Joel Asman, the sixth sense. Right. So those are five, I got to say, like, in the moment and then now, I'm like, I can't really

argue with the five, but there's probably five other parts. I think Pitch should be in there. I don't know who would I, who would you bump out of those five? maybe Michael Clark Duncan. Who was the first nomination? Who was the first nominee? Michael Kane wins. And you like that.

People like Sirehouse rules, I guess. I don't know. I never really cared. It was the time of the career achievement nomination. There was always the one old guy in the category. It just was, that's why Farnsworth is in best actors. Just how they did it back then.

I would bump either Kane or Haley Joel. Yeah, Haley Joel. Clark Duncan was a thing. It's hard to explain, but it really was a thing. Every once in a while, they nominated the kid. Like, you know, they nominated, and a pack one from the piano. It's like it happens.

He's good in that movie, but Brad Pitt was one of the best five performances. And then Fincher for director, Sam Mendez wins for American Beauty, Spike Jones, Malcovic, Lassie Haustrom, Siderhouse Rules, Michael May and the Insider, our guy.

Yeah. And then M. Night Shyamalan for the sixth sense. Listen, Fy Coble wasn't that successful. It makes sense who was nominated, but this is, in a lot of ways, the ultimate Fincher movie. And he does seven the game and then this, and this feels like he's using all the pieces in this movie.

It's so cool, too, to like go back because when you list off those Oscar nominees, it's like, Sider House Rules is like the quintessential Oscar movie. Yeah. It's like a really prestigious adaptation of a beloved literary property with a lot of, like, really great actors. And it makes you feel good. And then you leave it and you're like, okay, and you never think about it again. Yeah, there's never been a Siderhouse Rules conversation. conversation in 15 years.

Somewhere talk about fight club every single day. Like people think about fight club all the time. And like the impact that movie had on the culture. And it's just sort of, it's fascinating. I can't think of that many more movies that have such a huge impact on the culture, but were so disregarded or sort of slighted at the time, both in terms of their commercial and critical success.

I think seven was Finchers. I'm here to stay movie. The game was his. I can play by the rules kind of His, no, the game was his Just in case you weren't 100% positive, I'm really good at this Here's the game

And then Fight Clubless his movie He was like, oh, now we're talking This guy is a generational director Yeah, this was whatever, however Remember this whole stretch, this guy's name will be one of the first three or four names And that's how this is going to play out And at this point

I had season tickets after seven Yeah He really would have had to make a bad one for me to cancel the season tickets. But by Fight Club, it's just like, it's weird because he crosses over. He casual movie fans, the super nerds like fantasy. And then you and I are probably in between that. You're a little closer to the fantasy side. I'm probably right in the middle.

Yeah, but the thing is that all of us are in on Fincher. You know, Soderberg was just talking about, I think it was either on the Marimpod that he did, but he was talking about no sudden move. And he was talking about the difference between films and movies. and this idea that you're making something that's primary focus to entertain and for as dark as Fight Club is because Fincher is completely aware of that dichotomy

and this idea of like the difference between a film that might have just like entirely purely artistic aspirations versus a movie that's also functionally there to entertain people like Fincher definitely Fight Club is fucking entertaining. It's got like a Dust Brothers soundtrack. It's got music video quick cutting. It's got explosions.

It's got fighting. it's got jokes, it's got profanity, it's got nudity. It's like, it's pulp, man. So he knows how to make art out of, out of like anything. He can give you the popcorn, but he can also give you the something to think about. Also doesn't work that much. And it's interesting, him versus Soderberg.

Soderberg's just like, I have to work. What's my next thing? I'll make stuff. I don't even care if this is the biggest movie. Future goes 7, 995, the Game 97, Fight Club, 99, Panic Room 02, Zodiac 07, Ben Button, oh, wait, I call it Ben Button, Social Network 10, Dragon Tattoo 11. That was actually pretty prolific for him. That was a lot for him. First two episodes of House of Cards, 13, Gone Girl 14, and then your favorite show, Mind Hunter,

17 through 19, then Mac, 2020. But really, like, once every two, two and a half years, he's making something, whereas Soderberg's made a lot more. I think both of them have been equally influential for different reasons and equally valuable. And I think both of them find themselves trying to figure out their place in this current landscape. Soderberg obviously makes things at incredibly low budgets, very fast. He shoots and edits and directs his own stuff. Fincher, I think, is trying to figure out whether or not he needs to be on streaming to make the movies that he wants or whether they work better as TV shows.

So it's kind of a pivotal point for both of them. And it's interesting. Has Soderberg, what's his, what's his peak? I think you have to say the traffic, Ocean's 11, like the sort of 2000. That era. I agree with that. Yeah.

But Fincher makes the best movie of the 21st century, social network. Right. So if you're going head to head, I think Fincher, it's like he wins the fight 114 to 113 maybe, maybe 115 to 112 on the scorecards. Yeah, I think Soderberg's like retirement comeback and then making like 11 movies in eight years

has been kind of like mixed results, but also really fascinating. So six, three million budget made 101.1.2 million, only 37 million domestic, which was considered disaster at the time. Ebert, our guy, Raj, two stars. Said it was visceral and hard-edged. Said it was a thrill ride masquerading his philosophy. But was disappointed that a promising first act eventually pandered to macho sensibilities and trickery.

He's disappointed. Later, he acknowledged the film was, quote, Beloved by most, not by me. It's not his cup of tea. I'm not surprised. I think that a lot of people had the second half started to turn their stomach a little bit. Yeah, the Jared Lido scene especially, it's so brutal.

And Project Mayhem as an idea is a little bit tough to like to stomach. Most rewatchable scene. I really like the opening, the semi-opening scene with the insomnia, IKEA, the Grande Latte, Enameau, as Tyler, we don't know he's Tyler yet, but he's Ed Norton setting up, we'll call him Ed Norton for the pot. Ed Norton's setting up his life and the things he hates, basically. It's a nice, it's basically an internet blog post as a narrator slash,

here's what my life is like thing, but I thought it's a, Call me from the road if there's any snakes. He was full of pet. Must have had his Grande Latte enema. Like so many others, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct. Oh, yes. I'd like to order the Erica Picari dust ruffles. If I saw something clever like a little coffee table in the shape of a yin-yang,

I had to have it. The first 32 minutes, so I think like they start fighting for the first time outside the bar. at like minute 31. Yeah. That includes the very elaborate and cool title sequence. That whole 30 minutes is like relentless. Yeah.

Because from his setting up the narrator character, going to the groups, meeting Marla, the fantasy of the plane exploring. Bitch hits. Yeah. And then meeting Tyler after the flight is just like, where am I, man? Right.

This is fucking amazing. Like what city is this? What is happening? He's also using the quick one-frame flashes of Brad Pitt and the different scenes. Yeah, yeah. Another rewatchable scene. The second Tyler and narrator scene,

the things you own end up owning you. We get some senior yearbook quotes there. My insurance is probably going to cover it. What? The things you own end up owning you. I want you to hit me as hard as you can. How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight.

What do you want me to do? You just want me to hit you? Come on, do me this one favor. Why? Why? I don't know why. I don't know. Never been to fight. You? No, but that's a good thing. No, it is not. How much can you know about yourself? You've never been in a fight? I don't want to die without any scars.

Come on, hit me before I lose my nerve. They have their first fight. Putsches in the ear. Yeah. Oh, mother fucker. You hit me in the ear. Well, Jesus, I'm sorry. Ow!

I just fly the ear, man. I fucked it up. Oh, that was perfect. Fincher told Norton to really hit pit in the ear, so hit him so that whole reaction is genuine. It definitely seems that. Yeah. So got that one, got the first actual fight club scene when the fight club gets together. Tyler's speech to the fight club leading to the incredible cameo from Lou, but we had the Tyler

speech where he's like, God damn it, entire generation pump a gas waiting table. slaves with white collars. Let's just play that speech because it's really good. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars

and clothes. Working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. 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.

How great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. We're very, very pissed off. That's great stuff. And then Lou comes in and they have an awesome fight. Next, rewatchable scene, the, you know I love montages.

the starting a fight with a stranger montage leading to narrator fighting himself in boss's office to the first project mayhem montage to me the most rewatchable stretch of this movie is the Tyler speech all the way through to him fighting himself in the boss office and the project mayhem like that 20 minutes is really great

right so if you take what I said and what you said that's an hour of the movie That's pretty fucking, the first hour of the movie, you're just like, even watching it now, and it's like, you know, when you, like, by like 2002 or three, it was pretty common to, to see just like first rule of fight club is never talk about fight club. Like, it would be written on bathroom stalls. It would be like in people's yearbooks. It was like what people were using in their early, like, social media, like, MySpace profiles.

They would have fight club lines in their, in their, like, bios and stuff like that. So, by, like, quickly, this movie becomes, like, a cliche of itself. But when you watch it now and you watch, like, if you just watch that first hour, like, the hair on your arm stands up still. Agree. The car accident is a half-re-watchable scene, but really great how they shot that. Yeah. It's really, really cool.

There's never quite been a small scene like that. Quit screwing around. Take the wheel. Take the wheel. Look at you. You're fucking pathetic. Why? Why? What are you talking about? Why do you think I blew up your condo?

What? Getting Bottom isn't a weekend retreat. It's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go! All right, fine. Fine. Next we watchable, narrator realizing that he's actually Tyler in the hotel room is just great. The reveal of that, hard to overstate.

No. Do not fuck with us! Say it. Say it. Because we're the same person. That's right. We are the all sing-me, all dance, and crap. I don't understand this. You were looking for a way to change your life.

You could not do this on your own. All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you want to look. I fuck like you want to fuck. I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not. No, no. Tyler's not here. Tyler went away.

The whole chasing Tyler all over the map stuff is just great. And people, the way people are responding to him and he's like, what's going on here? The guy in the halo who's like, security is tight as a drum, sir. The final pit Norton scene. And then I have the Pixies ending. What's the most rewatchable scene for you? I think honestly for me, the most rewatchable scene is still the first fight. in a lot of ways.

Because like the whole idea of like his apartment exploding and the way. Because either the first, and we haven't really even talked about the twist. And it's really interesting that this came out. Um, at a time when there were like these big twist movies were, we're hitting. And this is the one that I think age is the best.

And also I care about the least. You know, like, because you can enjoy the film as this relationship drama for the first hour and a half of it before it becomes apparent. he's the same person. But my most rewatchable scene is just like the bar and then their first fight.

I like the speech, the Lou cameo, and starting a fight with a stranger montage, that whole section. I would go with that. What's age the best? You mentioned it. The twist.

I also have this in What's Age the worst? Because the twist was awesome. But when you rewatch the movie, you're looking for the little clues that, you know, that they do all the stuff with the suitcases on the airplane that they're identical. Yeah. Somebody has it online. There's like 27 instances of little tiny hints that they might be the same guy.

So that's what's aged the best. And we'll get to the what's age the worst piece of that in a second. The DVD has aged the best. I really feel like that 99, 2000 range was when we figured out DVDs in the best possible way. Incredible director commentary. Oh, man. Commentary, give me the double disc, give me deleted scenes, the whole thing.

Give me like a cool looking DVD. I was so excited to buy it and take it home and put it in my little bookshelf. I miss those days. The famous picture that you see with this movie, I think, is the age the best of shirtless pit with the black guy and the cigarette. And he's like in the fight thing.

It's just like, that's the one picture you always see with Fight Club. It would be a good poster. his name is Robert Paulson. Oh my God. His name is Robert Paulson. I had columns where I would just throw, I would be doing like football picks

and I would just put his name is Robert Paulson in there. And this was, I saw this movie twice in the theater. And after the second time, I was like, I'm just making fight club jokes in my column. This is what I was on my old website. I didn't even care who gets it. The five people who saw the movie will get it.

But his name is Robert Paulson shit. I think I wrote once upon a time that would have been my favorite chant for the crowd to randomly start doing it. Oh, instead of seven nation army? When somebody's at the free throw line, everybody just starts chatting. His name is Robert Paulson.

His name is Robert Williams. Maybe that Suns fans should do that to Yadis. The quote, when people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you when he's explaining why he's going to these groups. All the group therapy stuff in the beginning. It could have been 30 seconds for me. Okay. If you're talking about places to cut

because this movie's too long, I think we could have zip through the We get it. He's going to these weird groups. He's looking for something. When you think like that's, that stuff's 10 minutes, but then other parts of this movie

they're zipping through in 30 seconds. Like I would have, I would have cut from there. That's something, that all the narration during those groups is the first real clue that he and Tyler are the same because they,

the way he talks about group is the way that Tyler talks to everybody else, where it's like these aphorisms and like fortune cookie statements. The narrator, as you know, I don't like narrators. Couldn't work better in this movie.

It's great. Fincher, what this movie means to the Fisher universe, I think it's weirdly important because it's, it just kind of makes sense when you put his movies together and you just look at his IMDB.

And I don't know, for some reason I feel like this one, at this point in time, the fact that he does it here and then he does it again with social network when he catches that moment too, when right as Facebook is about to

in social media and Facebook, Twitter, and these other places are about to start dominating our life and he makes a movie about it how this all kind of happened before it actually really happens. His timing over and over again is just really great.

And I think that's one of the true ways to win, you know, in the biggest way, is timing. Michael Lewis is another example. He knows how to provoke and entertain at the same time. My other, which is the best, that's Fincher related. And I think we kind of have talked about this when we talked about seven in the game,

but the Fincher City, the like, the nameless, it's sort of San Francisco, it's sort of Seattle, and it's sort of, L.A. It's always raining.

It's always dark. Yeah. No people, no homeless people, nothing. Right. It's like an abandoned city. Escape from New York is the movie

he should have directed. I would have loved to have seen what he did with Snake Pliskin and that whole thing. He probably would have been like, This version of Manhattan's too nice. Yeah. Can we make it worse? Can we give a plague?

I like Helena Bonham Carter's line. The condom is the glass slipper of our generation. I thought just slipping that one in. Throw that in high school yearbook, quote. It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything. I remember you said that to me after Grant Landfolded. That's right. We were trying to figure out the ringer, and you looked me right in the eye, and you said that.

The rules of fight calls. That was also what we told Calangelo when we called for comment. And you somehow ended up with Zaire Smith. The rules of fight club, one, you do not talk about fight club. Two, you do not talk about fight club. Three, if somebody else stop, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Four, only two guys to a fight. Five, one fight at a time.

Six, no shirts, no shoes. Seven, fights will go on as long as they have to. And eight, if this is your first night, you have to fight. Do you wish there had been two more? Eight strong rules. Yeah, the editor to me used to just make it 10, you know? Yeah, like number nine, take your wedding ring off. Like, I felt like they could have stuck to it.

Number 10, don't eat before. Lou will validate your parking on your way out. All right, we're going to take a break and then do what's age the worst. What's age the worst? The reveal that Tyler and narrator are the same person. It's hard to, if you didn't read the book, the impact of the oh moment of that

the first time in the theater was it's just great and it's happened I don't know less than 15 times at a movie for me in my life were just like oh and then you're mad at yourself you didn't figure it out sooner or it's one of those yeah it's not as much of a puzzle

as six senses where immediately after it happens or like let's go back and like kind of yes like forensically check every scene so you think it's age the worst because now people just know it and then nobody gets to watch it for the first time.

You don't get that rush of, oh, my God, I can't believe it. Now, maybe you would if you're under 25, you just never seen the movie. Like, as we found out from producer Craig, producer Craig's generation has missed a lot of the classics. So maybe he found out when he watched this. Well, I would say that the only thing that's also aged the worst about that twist is there's a reason why they so fleetingly show the self-fighting scenes. And I think that, like, he knows it visually, that just doesn't,

work. You know, like, you could say like it looks cool or like the guys would be attracted to that if they saw this dude beating himself up in a bar parking lot, but they only show it really quickly. Or they would be like, let's get away from this guy. Sure. Right. Yeah. Right. Another would change the worst. It satirizes stuff that now, I think people

would be completely terrified to satirize. I mean, it's, there's things kind of semi-glorified in this movie that there's people would just not go near. And just the fact, there's, when they have the whole headquarters. There's a box that says disinformation

on it. Right over a box that says mischief. And I was just thinking like, wow, what a perfect combo for the 2021 generation weird now. Disinformation, mischief. More would stage the worst. It's 15 minutes too long. I really think this could have been a two hour

five, two hour ten. But, you know, Fincher's like, fucking I'm going for it. I'm not killing them on it. It's just the way it is. Lido getting just destroyed. Yeah, it could have been worse too. It's tough to watch. Yeah, it's just like from a rewatchability standpoint. That's in research, but it was like the original, like, they shot it where it's just

rivers of blood coming out of his head. Yeah, and his face caves, basically. I have one more with Sage's the Worst, but do you have any before I do my last one? No, it was basically the same thing that it's really, when you watch like all the project mayhem stuff after like January 6th and all the stuff that we've kind of seen, it's kind of creepy. Yes. Helena Bonham Carter for What's Age is the Worst.

Can't do it. Can't go there with you. Can we talk it out? Yeah, let's do it. First of all, you know me. I love Jumpy women. I get it. Jumpy, twitchy, cigarette holding damage movie characters.

I was going to say she's way more in What's Age the Best for Me than What's Age is the worst. Is it her performance or is it the Marla character? Here's my case. This is a home run part. part. This is a part that, especially with the dearth of great parts for females year after year after year, this is a part where you should at least be nominated for an Oscar, even if the movie doesn't do that well. Here are our best supporting actress nominees that year.

Angelina Jolie, ironically, wins for Girl Interrupted. Tony Collette for the Sixth Sense. I'm fine with that. Catherine Keener being John Malkovich. I'm good with that, I think. Samantha Morton's Sweet and Lowdown. Chloe 70 and Boys Don't cry. People were just drunk on Sweet and Lowdown that year. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Chloe 70, Boys Don't Cry. This part, I think in stronger hands,

it's an undeniable Oscar nomination part. There's so much to work with. Is there a better kind of character, supporting character part to play than this? All the things you get to do in that part? No, I mean, every line that she gets is pretty much a home run line. The problem is she doesn't get a lot of, like,

agency. So she's like basically always reacting. She's only on screen really when narrator sees her or talks to her. We'll get into this when we do recasting couch. But I just just marked this spot. Casting what ifs. David O. Russell, they tried to get to direct. He declined.

One producer went for Russell Crow. The other producer, Linson wanted Pitt. Linson was senior, so it ended up being Pitt instead of Russell Crow. It is worth mentioning the fact that Crow might have been as famous as Pitt at this moment, like in terms of like the movies like this is in the middle of Crow's gladiator insider beautiful mind.

Like that's the run he's about to go on here. It's a good what if. Yeah. I personally much rather would have Pitt. But I think Crow at the point of the career that he's at where he's about to become the biggest actor in the world, this would have been, I think he would have crushed the part. Crow also has that like Aussie hooligan vibe to him where you're like, I bet you actually have been in a couple of fight clubs. Yes. So there might be an authenticity.

You're saying this movie's better with Russell Crow? I'm saying I'm not saying you can't have this movie without Pitt. Like Pitt is this movie to me, but I'm just saying that's it. That's an interesting. What if? I double research this because it blew me away and I was just so dumbfounded by it. But Fincher's first choice for the role of Marlowe was Janine Garofalo. Yeah.

So there's like a whole thing where she's like that she got cast actually. So yeah, initially she allegedly turned down the. part, but then recently she admitted she accepted it, but then Norton was like, she's not right for the world. We got to get rid of her. So they dropped her. Norton was right. This, I'm telling you, this is when the Ed Norton behind the scenes monster was created during Fight Club. According to Variety Magazine, they tried to get Sarah Michelle Geller, but she was doing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, couldn't get the part. And then the studio wanted to cast Reese Witherspoon. Fincher thought she was too young.

studio wanted Courtney Love. She was dating at Norton at the time. It was too weird. They decided to know and they landed on the bottom car. She has like incredible Marla energy though. Like I...

It feels like crossing the beams. It's too close. I don't even... I always wonder whether or not they dress Marla like Courtney and have her like smoking like that. You know what? Because she has like kind of like Courtney Love

meets Joan Crawford kind of vibe to her. I am. Dull parts. Fincher wanted radio. I never would have begged you for a Miss World fan. Oh my. Are you fucking kidding me? Are you a big hole fan? Oh my God.

We've never talked about this? No. They really want you. They really want. I think they had like six songs that I think are in like my top 50 from the 90s. That's great. I fucking love Toll. I adore Holden.

Plus like Kobe. and Billy Corrigan basically ghost wrote all of those songs. That's something like the little sister of, of, uh, that, or holes the little sister of the whole grunge era, I feel like. That's always like the, the sort of theory is that they, they had a hand in it, yeah. It's not a theory. They, what are you talking about?

Corgan has like songwriting credits on the, on celebrity skin. Did Kurt write, I don't think Kurt wrote in this world. No, but I think, you know, I don't, this is, this is, conspiracy bill is going to come out and we don't, want them out. We don't want them in the fight quo. We don't want Project Mayhem starting. We don't want Project Mayhem happening at the pod. Fincher wanted Radiohead to do the score, which would have been amazing. We've never talked about like a musical what if like this, that could have had this big of impact. Fantastic. Catching Radiohead at maybe the best possible

time to catch Radiohead. By the way, I saw them at Suffolk Downs this year. Did you really? Yeah. It would have been a totally different movie because the Dust Brothers wind up doing the soundtrack and it's kind of like this techno, you know, dance electronic soundtrack that's very much of the period of time, but gives the movie much more of a like kind of pop art feeling, whereas like radiohead, I think would have been like way more eerie, way more ethereal, way more like kind of maybe tragic and somber. So I'm going to use two more adjectives.

Gloomy and eerie. Yeah, that's right. Well, we could have, you could have been a music critic back then. No, I'm just that the movie has a completely different feel. with Radiohead. And I don't think it's necessarily better, but I would love to have seen it. It might have been better.

I do think it needs the energy of the Dust Brothers, though. Somebody could go out there and like, rescore parts of this movie with Radiohead songs. I'd love to see it. Norton, I don't know why I had this here, but Norton ends up getting the part and worked 129 days on Fight Club. Oh my gosh.

That's like an amazing, about it. That's over four months filming a movie. So anyway, they end up with Norton. The Matt Damon was pretty good. A lot of good what-ifs in this. Best that guy, I kid, the Joey Pants Award. Wait, there was more Marla, actually. The one that I thought was incredible was Julia Louis Dreyfus. I didn't see. Sometimes I throw the stuff out

when I see the, like, that can't be true. That's the whole point of the section. This isn't like we vetted this, but like... Listen, I'm good for half-ass, but that one just seemed like somebody threw that into an IMDB trivia thing. Because she kind of looks like how of Bonner. I just don't buy that. Who's casting Julie Louis Dreyfus as Marla? And Winona Ryder was also in the research as like a possible Marla. I felt like that one was made up too. Nobody's casting Winona Ryder in 1999 in a major movie.

I think they're thinking like this is a little Winona Ryder and Heather Zee feel, but I don't think she's actually getting kicked around. Best that guy I kid the Joey Pants of Word. It's pretty easy. So Holt McAllenie is that guy from Fight Club. When I see him, for the years after I was thought. He's kind of like he's one of Tyler's right-hand guys in this movie. He's not Jared Lato, but he's leading a lot of the stuff. So I have to mention it, but it's got to be narrator's boss, right? Zach Grenier.

Yeah, Zach Rennier. Yeah, just like he's, he's just that guy. He's, I kind of knew him from this and from Curbier enthusiasm because he's in a couple, he's like a Hollywood exec and Kirby enthusiasm is in the doll. And so those two movies. And then he's been in 70 other things that I could have named. But I know him from those two. So Zach Grenier.

Vincent Hanna, give me all you got a word for overacting. Can we pull Helena in here or no? Yeah. She's definitely going for it. I'll allow it. Okay. Jed Nelson Award for a guy or girl who seems like they're in a different movie. Welcome to the Jed Nelson Award, Lou.

I don't know where Lou came from. Lou came from the fucking set of Goodfellas. He was like, I couldn't get in that one. There's a sign on the front that says, Lou's tab. I'm fucking Lou. Who the fuck are you? Lou got turned out at the Sopranos casting session,

and then he got three calls, and they ended up not getting it, and they just put him right into Fight Club. Dionne Waiter's Award, I mean, it has to be meatloaf, right? Just because of the, also, the significance of this was this kind of campy, rock, star from the 70s, whose name was Meatloaf, and we kind of given up on him, and then he pops up

in this movie as bitch tits? Yeah, he's in three or four scenes in this. I think Meatloaf probably wins, but can I give you one other candidate? I'm ready for five other candidates. How about Chloe the cancer patient? Ooh, that's a good one. With her speech about, I mean, that is like, she's really deansing out out there. Jared Leto was a big deal because he was basically disfigured in this movie and he had blonde hair, and it was, very un-Jarred Letoey, because at that point he had been the guy from my so-called life and the bad pre-Fontaine movie. Yeah.

So this was in the moment of big Deanne Waiters kind of movie for him, but re-watching it. I didn't feel like he really stood out that much, did you? No, I didn't actually. I mean, he's a guy, I think he's way better in Panic Room. Yeah. So I'm going to say Meatloaf. Okay. Recasting Couch.

Can we revisit Reese Witherspoon as Marla? Yeah, so she apparently, like, I read something that she actually turned this down. What happens to her career if she's Marla? This is the part I always wanted Reese to play. Like she kind of dabbles in it in freeway. She puts her toe in the waters. And then by the 2000s, she's not playing a part like this.

Is Hello Sunshine a $1 billion company if she plays Marla Singer? Well, I'll flip it around. I think she's definitely nominated for an Oscar. Yeah. people are like, holy shit, Reese Witherspoon is Marla. Didn't see that coming. I think she could have done it.

I think she would have been great. The other one, I was thinking, ironically, Angelina. Is it, but is she like too, like, I always can't get my head around sometimes with Angelina Jolie. Like, even for as much as I liked, those who wished me dead,

I'm still like, that's Angelina Jolie pretending to be a forest ranger. But we have no history with her in 1999. We just know her from a couple things, right? And so you could make her uglier up, but obviously you're not going to totally ugly her up because she's beautiful. But then that leads to,

if Jolie is Marla, this leads to this whole sliding Doris history with what happens with the Anniston Joe Lee love triangle. Do we get a Mr. and Mrs. Smith thing? Yeah, right. So we get it five years early. What if they hook up on the set once?

He's not feeling it because she's too weird. Does Billy Bob Thornton happen? Does seven adoptive kids happen? The vile of blood. Yeah. It's just incredible. What if's left the, Right. But I really, really, really like the idea of Reese Witherspoon as Marla in this movie.

I think she's a little young for it, but I think she could have done it. I think she would have been great. It would have been really cool. I think what's the darkest Reese Witherspoon role? Is it Wild? Even that's pretty like life. It's freeway. Freeway. I mean, she's a hooker. She shoots Kiefer Suther in the face. She's, yeah, Wilde's probably at the end. What was that one called? She's called Wild. Yeah, right? That's the one where she's walking around. I know, but at that point in her career, I felt like she's like,

I have to make a movie like this, but it wasn't really 100% committed. I feel like at this point of her career to try to break out of the child actress, teenage star thing, I think she would have really dialed up. I think she would have been great. I think she gets nominated.

Have fast internet research. This is weird. Pitt voluntarily visited a dentist, had pieces of his front teeth chipped off so his character would not have perfect teeth. The pieces were restored after filming concluded. Don't ever forget Brad Pitt's a lunatic. Like really, honestly. I didn't even know you could do that. Yeah, who knew? Um, the makeup artist, Julia Pierce, studied mixed martial arts and pay-per-view to portray the fighters and the damage

accurately, designed an extra ear so cartilage could be missing because she was inspired by the Tyson-Holyfield fight. Meatloaf, I never knew this, were a 90-pound fat harness to give him the bitch tits. Yeah, to give Bob the chest, yeah. And then this seems crazy, but this came up in the research.

He wore eight-inch lifts in his scenes with Dorton so he could tower over him. I was watching it knowing that. In the hugging scenes? Yeah, so, but I,

maybe he, maybe that's true, but eight-inch lifts is a lot of, I mean, those are pretty, pretty high. Marketing executives at Fox Searchlight just could not figure out

how to market this movie. And they finally did a $20 million large-scale campaign that basically highlighted the fight scenes and made people think it was a fight movie and they didn't highlight how smart it was. I thought going into it. I thought it was like a sports movie. Yeah. That's why I wanted to go.

I was like, cool. Brad Pitt's going to fight some people. And then you watch it. You're like, what is happening? But they fucked that up. I mentioned the Rosie O'Donnell thing. Ed Norton, Brad Pitt, and David Fincher discussed this on their DVD commentary track. And Brad Pitt called the Donald's actions.

forgivable. I wonder how that's played out over the last 20 years. Entertainment Weekly 2001, kind of peak Entertainment Weekly. Sure. Did its list of 50

essential DVDs Fight Club was first. I would have gone boogie nights, Fight Club second, but because the Boogie Nights DVD, I still think, is the greatest DVD of all time. But that's how good

the Fight Club DVD was. Ed Norton refused to smoke in Rounders smoked in Fight Club. Why did he refuse to smoke in Rounders? Because he's Ed Norton. Starbucks pulled their name from the coffee shop destruction scene. They allowed them to place the product

throughout the movie, but they drew the line with that. But they wouldn't let them blow it up. That's why it's called Gratifaco Coffee. Fincher and the cast studied tapes featuring Ultimate Fighting Championship to get the fight club stuff ready. And Fincher said it was so raw. You see someone get hit with the palm of somebody else's hand,

their nose just moves over like an inch and half across their face. It really seems like he loved filming this movie. Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter spent three days recording their orgasm sounds for the sex scenes we never saw. I haven't been fucked like that since grade school was the second choice. This is my favorite piece of research. Oh, you know this one. So initially she said,

I want to have your abortion. And the president of Fox, of production for Fox 2000 pictures, Laura Ziskin, said, we can't have that movie. You have to cut that. Right. But Fincher's response is,

I'll cut it, but you can't tell me no again with what I replace it with. And she agreed. She's like, cool. So then the new lad is, I haven't been fucked like that since grade school,

which is, I don't know. What's worse? I want to have your abortion or I haven't been fucked that that since grade school? Either way, It's not what you want.

Either way, not great. So that was that. Last thing, I was stunned by this. Brad Pitt paid $17.5 million for his role in the movie. Ed Norton, 2.5. Yeah. Well, when Norton was like, that he still wasn't like a box office draw, right?

Yes, it seems like a disparity. That would cause a lot of problems in 2021 or an NBA. I think it costs a lot of problems in like 2002. Yeah, Ed Norton was like, pay me my fucking money. It's like, Red Dragon. You will pay me? suitcases of cash. You would drop them on my mansion.

Apex Mountain. Brad Pitt? No. No. Because the movie wasn't that successful. Ed Norton, I'm going to say yes. Because it's Rounders, American History Acts, and then this, and then this movie, the cult stuff from it.

And it's just like, it just rounds out the sixth movie run that he had that by the end of it. Arguably, he's never been as big of a star as he was. at this moment, whereas I think Pitt has. Yeah. Fischer, I'm going to say still social network. Generation X, no. No. Rosie O'Donnell, maybe. She had her own talk show?

No, I think the view... She's starting fights with Fight Club. I think her getting into it with Megan McCain was really where it all peaked for her. I can't believe it movie twists. Well, this year, certainly. So you have this and the Sixth Sense and Blair Witch and probably like two others that were not thinking

of. But like when, is there ever been another year where people's heads were spinning like that coming out of movies? No. Internet's around, but not around to the point that you could have your movie spoiled. Yes. Right. Helena Bonham

Carter, yes. I still don't love her in this movie. The Pixies. No. No, probably not. Although... Somewhere 91 range. I do feel like having the Pixies at the end of this is like the start of like, the, like, I'm going to have like my, the close of my movie or the close of the

season of TV show, we're going to put a pop song over it. I don't think we sold hard enough in what stage the best of ending with the Pixies song. I fucking loved it. I was so happy the first time I saw this when it was like, that's how we're ending this with the fucking Pixies? God, can I give more money to somebody who's walking around? Can I pay the theater another $20? It's in the trailer too, right?

The Pixies. Yeah. It's just, it's great, great, perfect song choice. But if you're going to pick 90s songs, it's definitely would be in the finals. It also gives away the movie essentially. It really does. Yeah. It's their nine inch nails, maybe it could have been going there.

And you might have gone some sort of goofy radiohead. But even Radiohead, as we talked earlier, it would have changed the feel a little bit. IKEA, I think Apex Mountain. I was going to say IKEA. Great job. Great job by the late 90s. And then eventually, maybe not. Were you a big IKEA consumer back then?

No. Unreliable narrators, Apex Mountain? Where do you stand on unreliable narrators? Well, I'm into it. I sometimes think that it's an excuse people make for shoddy storytelling, but I think I do like the idea that you can't trust the narrator. Because we had this and we have Memento, which we just did on the rewatchable is the next year. We talked about this too with like what Henry Hill's perception of the events of Goodfellas are.

You know what I mean? Like, it's like, I enjoy that. I'm going to say no for unreliable narratives. Fight clubs, definitely. I mean, fight clubs sprung up all over the place. And then you get to backyard wrestling and shit, yeah. Blown up apartments, probably not. Jared Lito, no.

Meatloaf, I still say 70s, he probably peaked. Yeah, Paradise by the dashboard light, definitely. Picking Nets. Feels like there would be just more facial damage from Fight Club. Like more broken eye sockets. broken noses, missing teeth. For as real as it is, they're like, all you have to do is, like,

cut your nails and keep your hair short. And it's all good. You can just go to work. No, you have to wear these gloves, nothing. It's just, I just feel like Ed Norton has double vision, maybe at the hour 20 mark of this movie from his fractured orbital bone

that never got healed, then he got punched in it again or something. That's right. He gets hit by a bus because he has no depth perception. Why didn't the Tyler face damage match the narrator face damage. Why did it?

Why didn't it? That's a great question. This is why I think that the twist of this movie is like, it's not sloppy at all, but it is a little bit less important to the movie than the sixth sense twist is. Great and Marla is not exactly like swimming with options in this movie. But at what point do you kind of realize

maybe it's not going to work out with this dissociative, bipolar fucking maniac? I think maybe Marla is attracted to these types. But yeah, I think that what Marla does on a day-to-day basis aside from steal clothing from laundromats and sell them to vintage stores, I'm not really sure. Any other pick-in-nits?

Oh, I had one more. At what point does the police just shut down this house of domestic terrorists who are having fight clubs all over the city? Well, but the thing is that there's cops in the fight clubs, though. There are cops in Project Mayhem. Any other pick-in-nits? No, I have a probably unanswerable question, though.

Could this be remade? is a 10-episode Netflix show. I mean, it probably could, but please no, nobody out there. Please don't remake this. No.

This movie belongs to 1999 and would not make sense. And if you did the gossip girl thing where it's like, we've brought back gossip girl and we've reimagined it. You want to have woke fight clubs? Yeah, and now the teachers

are the gossip. No, please don't. Probably answerable questions. This first one might be answerable. There's a lot of confusion and there's a lot of internet chatter about what's the narrator's name and people have decided it's Jack

because he says, I am Jack's Spineke. I'm Jack Spite. I'm Jack's. The original screenplay has him as Jack. Ed Norton revealed on the audio commentary that he referred to the character as Jack on the DVD.

And then the press packages, the character is referred as Jack. So I actually think this is answered. I think his name was Jack. As opposed to Tyler or whatever, right? Yes. Okay.

Yeah, I'll go over that. I think Tyler was the alter ego of Jack. Did this movie create the anti-hero? No. You think it was Tony Soprano? No, I mean, I think anti-heroes go back to like Dustin Hoffman and the graduate. But I'm saying that anti-hero run that we go on starting in 99. No, because I think most people watch this movie and think of, I think that this, I don't think a lot of people watch this movie and we're like, Edward Norton isn't a hero.

I think that they think of him as like a good guy in this movie. He seems like a pretty nice person. Great answer. Wouldn't MMA training have quickly ruined Fight Club? By 2004 you can't have Fight Club because somebody's putting somebody else in like a Komoto clutch or some crazy. It's like, oh cool. Can you know how to my Bob? Do you think that there would be like Fight Club ringers?

Yeah, I just feel like MMA makes Fight Club. this is the old school like bare knuckles just people trying to beat the shit out of each other but then once MMA got good now you can put people

in the guillotine choke and all these different things and it's like hey fight club's not fun anymore can we just punch each other in the face again when does it like when does Fight Club

have its first doping controversy it probably probably happened during the thing and Tyler Tyler has to do a Players Tribune article about

why I'm walking away from fight club It's because I see four things at all times because of my seven broken orbital buns. Did Reddit and Twitter replace Fight Club? I mean, I definitely think social media has sucked up the space for this kind of cultish devotion to ideas.

For sure. And for just, I just want to roll up my sleeves and get in a fight with somebody. Right. I'm just going to drop a bomb on somebody and let's mix it up. And also like the degree to which these guys have anonymity

because you're not supposed to talk about it so you can go into this world and then be somebody else and then come out of it. All right. So if you agree with my theory that Reddit and Twitter has replaced Fight Club,

does this mean that 1999 Kevin Durant would have had to have been in a fight club because he wouldn't have had Twitter to mix it up. He just would have actually been in Luz's basement. That's the thing. It's like at one point can famous guys join Fight Club? Yeah.

Why not? cops could be in there. Like, you know, you didn't know anybody's name. I guess you would draw the line maybe with the seven-foot athlete, but... Do you think Kyrie would have been into Fight Club? Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I think Kyrie would have started his own chapter.

So what NBA players would have started Fight Club? Well, Bobby Portis might actually have a fight club, right? I don't think the Yokage and the Yokinj brothers could be counted out either. You some Nurkich? Let me tell you what I'm not getting involved in is Balkan Fight Club. Right. Yeah, stay out of that one. Last time here was a question.

We just have to at least mention it, the Trump, Tyler Darden. The cult of personality. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the idea that basically you're saying the things that, like, actually everybody, not everybody, but that you would be articulating things that people are too afraid to say and polite company and somehow, you know, and that there, that this is like this, you can see, like, how it's a cult.

You can see how it like is, it is like not attractive. I'm trying to think of the right way to phrase this. But like, I agree with what you're saying, essentially. You're tapping into some sort of loneliness slash disenfranchisement. Yeah. And offering people who think the alternate path. Yes. You're offering them an alternate path that ultimately is a path to nowhere,

but the people don't care because at least there aren't a path now. Okay. what piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? The soap would probably be the obvious pick. Good one. I would enjoy maybe a couple of the printouts. Why is the narrator character like printing out the fight club rules at work? Right, that's a good one.

But I wouldn't mind having that piece of paper. I was thinking of the, what were those two boxes? One was disinformation, and the other was just having those two boxes in my office. Be like, what's that? Oh, those are my boxes from Fight Club. I think Brad Pitt's first jacket would be cool to have too. Oh, my God.

The leather one with the lapels, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And he wears it for a good 20 minutes. I thought those would be a good one. All right, big question. This is a tough one. Who won the movie? So I'm going to go Pitt because

watching it this time around, I was just like, this is rock star more than movie star performance. and for as good as Norton is, every time Pitt's on the screen, the movie jumps up like five notches. So I'm gonna go Pitt, but I would hear it for Norton or Fincher.

I didn't have, I had Norton as the bronze medalist. Okay. So it was between Pitt and Fincher for me. I think Pitt needs it more than Fincher. Dave. He needs this movie at this point in his career. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a more meaningful win for him. Fincher at this point had established everything I do is going to be awesome and different and unlike anything you've seen and there's going to be a meticulousness to how I do these things. Yeah, even like when you look at Tyler's house, the paper street house and it's like all the magazines stuck on top of each other like the design, the set dressing is everything is so well thought out and deep. it's the

Fincher had reached the stage of I'm the only one who would make this movie and even if we covered the credits you would know I made this because there's nobody else like me. So you could make the case because it turns out to be

I think one of the three most important movies he made that it's Fincher but I'd feel like it's Pitt I think Pitt leaves this movie it's such a we always say the word iconic on this pot it's such an iconic 90s performance it's on the short list

of whatever 90s these performances you're going to throw out there, it has to be mentioned. And it pushes his career to a different level, you know? I think his career falls into place because of this movie in a lot of ways, even though it was already going really well. Yeah, I agree with you. I think, and I don't know if anyone else could have played it. Who was the other person we said was...

Damon. Damon could have played either part, but Brad Pitt's better in that part. I think Damon could have potentially been better than Edward and the other part. Other than that, like, I don't think. even think out of the modern guys who could have played this. Like Crow of like yeah, like of guys today you mean? Yeah, Crow is the other one who could have done it. I think I would have felt like he was Russell Crow.

I think what's cool about Brad Pitt is he kind of can disappear into roles where you kind of forget it's Brad Pitt in some ways. But out of like the modern new wave guys, like Chris Evans. I can't. It's hard to imagine anybody gambling with their career this much. It's like just being like, I'm okay making a movie that it's. is reviled. Yeah, well, and ultimately loved.

And a great document of an awesome stretch of movies, 96 to 99, maybe a little 2000 there, but really those four years. And then a bizarre year, 1999, where you have all this stuff happening of the internet running in a shape, Clinton's about to come to an end. Y2K is looming, and we're actually like afraid of Y2K.

there's boundaries being pushed left and right with sexuality and behavior and all these different things. It just feels like America started to unravel, but nobody realizes it yet. And this movie captures that. So does Woodstock 99, this documentary who did for HBO.

I think that taps into it too and a few other things have. There's been some great books and magazine pieces. Yeah, check out Brian's book and check out Brian's pot on Gene and Roger running on the big picture of feet. But Brian's book about 99 is incredible. But it's funny, like, I didn't feel like 99 was momentous as it was happening.

But now I look back and it feels momentous for all these different ways. Even like we had an NBA lockout that year, we had Pedro versus the Yankees and baseball. We had all the Bonds, McGuire, Sosa, the steroid boom and baseball and tigers coming on. So like from a sports standpoint, there were some great stuff. Football had the 99 Rams, which basically redefined how we do football. So we have that TV soprano starts that year. Oz is going on HBO hard and it feels like TV's moving into a different direction. Music doesn't know where the fuck it is.

It was a tough music time. It's this renaissance. Music's the one that just was a mass murder. I mean, the music was so bad. I have playlist from every year in the 99 playlist of my favorite songs. The 99 playlist has the least amount of songs by far. I think that what this movie captures as a capstone of this pot is that the way in which society works and the way in which we're conditioned to kind of participate in the business of culture and the business of life sometimes makes it hard to recognize in the moment when things are really changing or things feel are really momentous. Yeah.

You know, like we were just talking about. Like you can kind of like while away your days making these like stupid purchases instead of actually recognizing what's going on. And I think that this movie kind of tapped into it. that. Chris Ryan was great to see you. This was podcast 197 on the rewatchables feed. This is the 197th movie we've done. We have three left until 200. It seems like there's going to be a three heat. Yeah. And we have to decide who's doing it with us. So that's mid-August? Yeah, but we'll tape up before then. Yeah, the three heat is on pace for, I think, August 16th. Okay. So we have to decide. Do we actually make a real run at getting Michael Mann?

Do we bring fantasy in? Do we, fantasy, you know, just, he's on the DL for a little bit here, but he might make a comeback. Like, what do we do? What do we do for the three heat? It can't just be yes. We've done heat twice, just the two of us. It's got it. We have to have a wrinkle for this one.

We need someone else to show us like a different side of heat. Who's that going to be? I don't check my Twitter replies, but Chris sometimes does. So if you have suggestions for who you would want on the three heat, start. hating us up now. And then we have some great ones coming still. This was a good one to do. It was great to see you, Chris Ryan. Don't forget Woodstock 99 premiering on HBO on July 23rd. The producers of this podcast were Craig Coralback and Kyle Creighton this time around. We'll see you next week on the rewatch.