We got an open for this week.
Is this Groundhog Day?
Yes.
Swear jar.
If we swear five times in one episode they send photos of our phobias to Insta.
I got two crabs this week.
Good.
Photos of on my phone.
Oh right, okay.
I'm celibate.
Yeah, sure.
I mean you're ball-less now.
This is, you know, 9-11 happened and it took out both the towers.
That's one of many times 9-11 is going to come up in this episode.
Shall we start the show?
Let's get on with it, buddy.
Let's go.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Every Movie Ever podcast.
My name is Ben Groves.
My name is Rob Macfarlane.
Welcome to the show, a movie podcast slash mental health check-in for two broken-brained
best friends talking around their problems, but not about their problems while laughing
at movies.
So given that this is a mental health check-in, Ben, thinly veiled, how are you?
That's the more important question.
Before we get to what we're doing, how are you doing?
Aggressively mediocre, also a little bit ill.
You?
Absolutely awful, but don't have time to get into it.
Alright, so I can't swear enough to really explain it.
Yeah, swear jar.
What are we doing, Ben, now that we've really delved into our issue?
Yeah, being this vulnerable is a new feeling for me.
I feel so naked.
We are covering every David Fincher movie ever, and we have reached what some consider
the jewel in the crown of Fincher's 90s filmography.
And I'd love to tell you what that is, Rob, but unfortunately the first rule of this film
is I'm not allowed to talk about it.
It's Fincher's Crown Jewels.
It's Fight Club.
And I'm not in the club because I don't have Crown Jewels anymore.
You don't?
Oh my god, Loophole!
Loophole, exactly.
I've already had my testicles severed from my pea shooter.
Fantastic.
Because of reproductive rights.
Pea shooter!
Fantastic.
Sorry, my paste cannon, is that better?
Do you prefer that?
Much worse.
Yeah, exactly.
We've got so much, so, so much to get into this episode.
We're getting into how this was written, both as a book and a movie.
Why this is another perfect film for myself.
The criminal misinterpretation of the subtext of this film and how it leant very heavily
into the formation of bro culture.
How the making of this film leant on all of Fincher's prior filmography.
And I have a bit of an insane theory.
I mean, it is totally insane.
It's so insane.
The people that I hope this deeply upsets.
I cannot tell you, mate.
It's a theory that's going to deeply upset a chunk of the fandom of this film.
And I cannot, cannot wait.
This sounds incredible.
I think this film might controversially be one of the most misunderstood films ever made.
For sure.
It's massively important for a whole host of reasons.
But I think why it's massively important is misinterpreted by its fans and its critics.
I agree.
I want to, you know, set the record straight.
But before we do, where Fincher at, man?
What that Fincher do?
Where that man been?
I've got, I've got little information.
All right, hit me with it.
It's mostly, it's mostly what David Fincher wasn't doing.
Let's put it that way.
Okay.
So if we do what that man been doing, let's do what that man not been doing.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, so what he been doing is making Fight Club.
Yeah.
Because this is not long after the game.
This is again, two years after the game.
It's insane that he's done this.
He's made, he's literally throwing them out.
Throwing ropes left, right and center.
Oh, this is, I mean, it's appropriate to what we're going to get into later.
Like a perverse Spider-Man.
No, he was approached to direct a adaptation of the musical Chicago.
He turned that down.
Good.
He tried getting off the ground, a version of Blade, which eventually became the Blade
we know and love.
He sort of was still involved in trying to get that, you know, going.
Good, good.
Bin that off.
Yeah.
Then there was a script called the Night Watchman worked on that for a fair while.
I was going to get that made.
Yeah.
Bin that off, although it did see a release eventually as Street Kings with Keanu Reeves
and Forrest Whitaker.
You remember that movie, right?
Street Kings.
It sounds familiar.
It sounds like one of those forgotten movies that was like a blip on the radar as it was
released, let alone 25 years later.
Yeah, yeah.
This was like a number six at the box office.
Keanu did it for the money.
Forrest Whitaker was thinking it was going to be the big break in his career.
And he's now just sits in a petrol station carousel of DVDs.
That's where I know it from.
That's where I've seen it recently.
There you go.
My frequent DVD shopping.
Right.
So Finch has basically just been dodging duds.
All right.
That's fair.
For a year whilst making this.
All right.
Well, let's go on a little journey with me.
Let's go on a little journey.
The year is 1999.
Marilyn Manson is being blamed for the shootings of Columbine.
Oh, the good old days.
The good old days.
Remember when he did that documentary interview and we all thought he was the smartest man
in the world because he gave a slightly empathetic answer.
And we're like, wow, what an incredible guy.
And little did we know that in the cupboard behind him was a locked up woman.
Yeah, that's.
Don't man, because he was my favorite musician.
Yeah, I do most of my life.
Honestly, coma white mechanical animals.
That was my, that was my album.
It's only by the grace of God that I don't have his face large on my back.
Same.
Judging me.
I went to get his portrait on my leg and I chickened out last minute because I was like,
is this what I want next to my pee pee?
Turns out the answer was no, but it's 1999.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Sorry.
I forgot that's where we were.
Dads across the land are preparing their families for what could be the worst financial crisis
ever.
Right.
Why 2K is rapidly approaching buddy.
When we thought the wiping out of all the credit card companies would be a bad day.
Again, it's fight club.
It's fight club.
God predicted it, man.
He saw this coming, but it's 1999.
Oh right.
Okay.
Yeah.
Bill Clinton is impeached.
I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
Why have you turned into a sort of camp version of Cleveland from Family Guy?
Some people have listened to that and gone, Oh my God, did they get Bill Clinton to do
a gas spot on the show?
The answer is no.
Right.
This isn't a Disney channel moment, mate.
Just cause I'm really good at the Disney channel voice doesn't mean that you have to be good
at a voice now.
All right.
Just me.
I'm just not Bill Clinton.
The year is 1999.
Oh my God.
Ben and Rob are 11 years old, mincing about towns, prepping for Y2K.
Discovering their bodies.
Oh my dude.
Same 11.
Right.
Yeah.
That's all I did.
First time.
Same.
I was, I was an absolute fiend for it.
My hands were callous.
Just casually sanding down a sideboard with your palm.
Honestly, every time you open a door, the door knob gets a little smaller.
It's like, Oh man, you need to calm down.
But it's 1999 buddy.
And David Fincher has given $60 million to make Fight Club.
How much did it make?
Stick around to find out.
Ooh, a little hook for later.
Look at us getting slowly more professional live on it.
Reel them in.
Know what I mean?
I'm going to make an admission, mate.
I, I mainlined this film as a, as a young teenager and I thought it was the smartest,
coolest, most correct, most rebellious film in the world.
And I literally sort of sat around smoking a cigarette.
I'd twos off a mate.
Spouting philosophy.
I'd twos off this film.
Sound.
That sounds incredible.
I went a slightly different direction.
Every college trip to like Barmoth beach.
Right.
I would be done in the biggest pinkest cowboy hat and feather bow possible.
Cause I was just sort of like, you know what?
Oh my God.
I'm fine with it.
And it's just struck me that when I knew you in uni, you were a colorful little clown
man.
That was all about it.
I've only just realized now that basically you were just wearing remixes of Tyler Durden's
many outfits in this film.
All at once.
I was cosplaying it as every Tyler Durden ever.
Yeah.
All the time.
So we, we fell hook like, so we fell hook line and sinker for, for some of what we're
about to criticize others for still believing now.
Yeah.
Before we get into that train of hate.
Fun hate.
I love the hate with giggles and smiles.
Yeah.
For those of you who haven't seen the film in a long while and want a little refresher
and what it's about, or those of you who've never seen it and never planned to, we're
going to just very quickly break down the full plot of the film.
If you haven't seen fight club, there will be no point in doing so after listening to
the next five minutes of this podcast.
No pause the show, go and listen.
This is your spoiler warning.
The film will never be the same.
If you listen to this without seeing it, go, go watch it.
And then immediately come back to us to validate, to validate us.
Give me, give me the attention, please.
Let's play the jingle.
We're having a breakdown.
Fight club follows the journey of an unnamed narrator, a disillusioned and insomnia stricken
white collar worker who feels disconnected from modern consumerist society.
Been there.
Join the queue.
Been there.
He fills his evenings by attending support groups for various afflictions like testicular
cancer, blood parasites, all sorts, but not because he's suffering from them, but to gain
some sort of emotional release as he cries into the full boobs of an estrogen riddled
ex bodybuilder.
It's the sexiest version of meatloaf.
The narrator's emotional struggles are reflected in sort of subtle ways with his empty corporate
lifestyle.
He's crippling addiction to buying things from Ikea as well as less subtle ways like
the narrator telling us directly because you know, he's, he's the narrator.
He's the narrator and he just goes, this is how I feel.
And I go, Ooh, so subtle.
Ooh, very well.
Very well.
The narrator's fragile sense of masculinity is further undermined by Marla Singer, another
support group tourist.
Marla's presence disrupts the narrator's emotional relief and following an argument in the street,
they agree to split the support groups like a child of divorced parents on a work trip.
The narrator meets Tyler Durden, a charismatic, funny, gorgeous, gorgeous soap salesman.
It's offensive how attractive Brad Pitt is in this film.
Dude, you could crack walnuts with those cum gutters.
Oh, Lee, sir.
You really could.
Tyler Durden embodies an aggressive and rebellious version of masculinity that the narrator finds
oh, so appealing.
I mean, as a viewer, you do too.
The film's very good at making it seductive.
Tyler's philosophy though, they challenge the narrator's consumerist values and they
encourage him to embrace a more chaotic, carefree and sort of masculine attitude towards his
life.
And after a drunken discussion one night, Tyler and the narrator establish a fight club.
It's an underground group where men can gather to fight each other in consensually brutal
manner.
It's presented as an outlet for men to sort of reconnect with their raw masculine energy
free from societal restraints.
But Marla's still there.
She's complicating things.
She becomes romantically involved with Tyler, leading the narrator to experience jealousy,
confusion, permanent sex noise anytime he's home.
That's so true.
That shit's everywhere.
That stuff's everywhere.
As Fight Club evolves, it morphs into Project Mayhem, a more extreme Project Mayhem.
Totally tubular, man.
A more extreme version, an anarchistic organisation led by Tyler Durden.
This shift underscores how Tyler's toxic masculinity escalates from personal empowerment through
violence to social destruction.
The film highlights how men, in their attempt to reclaim a sense of power, may turn to destructive
behaviours that not only harm themselves, but also society at large.
Ben, just because I put a bit of insight into the breakdown doesn't mean you need to pretentiously
get up, alright?
This is saving us so much time to get into the real issues, alright?
Sorry.
Just let me smack my glasses up my nose bridge real quick.
Tyler's version of masculinity rejects vulnerability, empathy and introspection.
Been there, buddy.
All huge parts of what being a person are.
Instead, he promotes chaos, dominance and destruction as the ideal qualities for a life
well lived.
Tyler, meanwhile, remains on the fringes, often spoken about between them as Tyler insists
the narrator shares nothing with her about Project Mayhem.
In the final act, the narrator realises that Tyler, and again, spoiler warning, is a manifestation
of his own split psyche, representing the dangerous extremes of his masculinity crisis.
Oh my god, what?
Tyler's ultimate plan of destroying the credit card companies has in fact been his own insomnia
ridden brain and his own internal battle with Tyler symbolising the sort of broader struggle
that many men face when dealing with societal expectations of what it means to be a man.
He destroys Tyler by shooting himself in the mouth, rejecting the toxic masculinity and
reclaiming some sense of a balanced identity.
You go girl.
Although the ending's left kind of ambiguous, you know, whether he actually truly escapes
these influences and I've got a wild way of reinterpreting this film that will make much
of this irrelevant.
I can't wait for that to be honest mate, because you've not shared that with me and I've asked
you twice and you've flat out said no twice and it's honestly, it's a little hurtful at
this point.
It's a little hurtful.
Like I said, I watched this when I was 14 and I was like, oh my god, I also feel like society
is too commercialised and I also struggle.
I was a very homosexual looking teenager.
Yeah.
I can see it.
I had very long eyelashes.
I was small.
I was skinny fat.
You've always had great eyelashes though.
Since the day I met you, your eyelashes, I've always been like, god damn it.
But when I was a teenager, I would blink and girls fringes would fly backwards.
Their hair would immediately be brushed behind their ear.
Why do you think it was tornado season in Japan for all of the early 2000s?
Chaos effect is real.
Yeah, right.
Jeff Goldblum was right.
He's never wrong.
Come on.
So this film for me, I was like, yeah, I do feel unfairly bullied by the sort of James
Bond.
You're going to go out there and you're going to sleep with as many women as possible to
validate your masculinity.
And I was like, no, that's stupid.
And then just live the next 20 years of my life as if all of that were true.
Yeah, dude, super similar, man.
When we go into the Sigma stuff, it's not like we've got clean hands, right?
No, of course not, dude.
This is the thing.
And it's what I love most about this show.
We can hold ourselves accountable to this stuff, right?
When I first watched this film, I was so, I misinterpreted this to the T. It was like
textbook how not to read a film because I was young, I was dumb and full of calloused
hands, buddy.
Calloused hands.
I wasn't full of it.
Evidently.
I was meeting girls and just air was coming out and it was throwing their fringe behind
their ear.
I wasn't meeting girls because I was two, I was literally like, no, I'm busy tonight.
What are you doing?
Wanking nine times by three.
You know what I mean?
I hate this swear jar.
So sorry.
I'm trying.
Right.
But anyway, I took it on and being sort of like, I'm unfairly bullied.
It's too much pressure to do this.
I have to do X, Y, and Z to be like a high value male.
What is that?
That's stupid.
I don't want to do this.
I'm going to put my finger at everyone else by virtue of this film and go, it's everyone
else's fault.
It's society's fault.
It's this, that and the other.
It's not me.
It's the world that's wrong.
Principal Skinner.
Yeah, exactly.
That's it.
And then I grew up a bit and got a little bit more introspective and was like, oh, right.
Every room I walk into is stinking like dog excrement.
Yeah.
So maybe it's about time I looked at my own shoes.
Right.
So Chuck Palanick.
Chuck Palanick.
Chuckie P.
He's a gay gentleman.
I found out the research of this film.
Had no idea.
Okay.
But he wrote the book that this is based on.
Okay.
And it's a different book, right?
It is very different.
Right.
Okay.
The narrator ends up in a mental asylum at the end for a start.
Is it wrong that a bit of me kind of, I look forward to being, imagine how much of a relief
being sectioned would be.
I got within a Nat's wing of getting sectioned on my last breakdown.
Yeah.
And the police officer that escorted me to hospital was like, you had about another four
minutes to come with us.
Yeah.
And then we were going to section you.
Yeah.
That's part of me was so annoyed.
I was like, Oh, it would have been great.
I was only four minutes away.
Exactly.
God damn it.
Give a guy a heads up next time.
Cause I can really do with the time off.
Can't come into work.
Sorry.
I've been sectioned.
I just, I'd run out the clock.
You know what I mean?
I'd keep that time a ticket.
Right.
So Chuckie P he, he was on a camping trip, got into a fist fight.
As do camping always ends one way.
I don't know why people keep doing it.
I love camping.
I do specifically for this.
Someone plays a music a bit loud.
I'm going to go boot their tent until someone comes out.
You know what I mean?
Shut up.
I'm here to relax.
So he got into a fight whilst camping, right?
Went back to work, bruises on his face, found that people didn't ask him about his bruises.
It made them uncomfortable and everyone sort of skirted around the fact.
And because of that, he sort of got into more fights outside of work.
Okay.
And then it kind of got into like increasingly more fights.
Oh my God.
Till it became a thing.
And he wrote this, he wrote this book called Fight Club.
Right.
Okay.
After writing it, obviously he was sending it out left front and sending the manuscripts
floating around the, no one wanted to pick it up shockingly.
Oh really?
Wow.
Cause it was brutal.
For the time it was out.
Our female readers will love this Marla Singer character.
Exactly.
Look at the literary world of 1999, a fight club.
Yeah.
It's not the Joy Luck Club, is it?
Exactly.
You know what I mean?
So anyway, publishers VW Northern eventually picked it up, but they offered him a $7,000
advance.
Oh my God.
And it's just work minimum wage for six months.
It's actually more cost effective to work minimum wage.
It truly is.
You can work for between seven to eight pounds an hour in a pawn shop.
And it's worth more.
Yeah.
But emotionally way more taxing.
But Chuckie P turned around and this is a direct quote from Chuckie P.
It's what publishers called kiss off money.
Right.
They don't want to alienate the editor who wants to acquire the book, but they do want
to offend the writer enough that the writer just walks away from the deal.
Kiss off.
K-I-S-S.
Okay.
So it's a sort of repellent spray for when Gene Simmons won't leave you alone.
Exactly.
It's like, it's like when, when one guy doesn't want to leave the room and everyone's like,
I think it's time you leave now.
Gene Simmons just gives you a little tongue lick, like a little, that's the seven grand.
That's the seven grand whispering at you being sort of like, we're doing this out of pity,
mate.
I like it.
Now I'm going to argue that this is a perfect film for you.
I'm into it.
Let's hear it.
I think it's due with Fincher and how he, he writes the film, right?
Yeah.
So he tried to buy the rights for Fight Club.
The second he read it, he loved it.
He found it hilarious, right?
He was like, this is an incredible, incredible film.
Yeah.
By the nineties, America is in a huge period of peace.
It's post the Cold War, but it's pre 9 11.
The economy's good.
Commercialism's gone mental.
Yeah.
Eighties kind of hyper corporate Gordon Gekko stuff.
Okay.
Yeah.
Everyone was really inspired.
Yeah.
I'm going to go chase that.
And they've ended up in like lower middle management positions that never end.
Yeah.
And you get a kind of late nineties wave of cinema, which is all about kind of leaving
that behind office space.
I'm gonna need you to stay late.
Yeah.
The Truman show or if your normal life isn't normal.
Great show.
It's sort of nineties, clerks, man.
Clerks.
One of the greatest films that exists.
Think about this, when everything's fine, it's really hard to point at something and
say it's the reason you're not happy.
Exactly.
Right.
Exactly.
So we're lucky in a way because we can point at our jobs or our mental health and we can
go, oh, that's, that's what's wrong.
Can you imagine the terror of everything being all right?
What would we blame our own happiness on?
I mean, to be honest, mate, I'm rapidly approaching it.
Like my beige days are getting beige and I'm like middle of the road in it.
You know what I mean?
You've been being David Fincher in the nineties.
You've had box office success.
You've had critical acclaim and you're still not happy.
Yeah, that's rough.
And then this film lands on your lap.
A thousand percent.
I'm jumping at it and I'm being like, this is the one.
This is the one.
So he gets, he gets his mate, Andrew Kevin Walker involved.
Oh, okay.
Who, who wrote the script for Seven.
He wrote Seven.
Yeah.
He got Brad Pitt, who was hot off, um, Meet Joe Black and whole bunch of Brad, Brad bloody
Pitt.
Brad Pitt, man.
Come on.
Ed Norton.
He hooks off American history X because Ed Norton just really enjoys doing, you know,
uncontroversial roles.
Yeah.
And they would go around for brainstorming sessions at, um, David Fincher's house.
Okay.
Andrew Kevin Walker, by the way, they weren't allowed to legally credit him.
So there are three detectives in this movie.
There's detective Andrew, detective Kevin and detective Walker.
Oh, I love that so much.
And there's a book called best movie year ever, which is about all the films that came
out in 1999, you know, the matrix, this, uh, by a guy called Brian Raftery.
And he, uh, to quote, they'd hang out at Pitt's house or an office across from Hollywood's
famed Chinese theater, where they drink Mountain Dew, play Nerf basketball and talk for hours,
riffing on the film's numerous bulls eyes, masculinity, consumerism, and the aggravating
elders.
God, that sounds amazing.
So they're kind of going through this male bonding ritual.
Yeah.
The fight club later goes on to moan about, right?
They have a big moan session.
Incredible.
Um, Ed Norton got really wound up about a VW Beetle, which is why that's, I think there's
a scene where golf balls.
No, no, no.
It's where they've got the baseball bats.
It's when project mayhem doing their thing and they smack a Volkswagen Beetle.
Norton's there going, and he says about the beetle, they just wanted to repackage an authentic
baby boomer youth experience to us.
They don't even want us to have our own.
Wow.
They want us to buy sentiment for the sixties with a little fucking plastic molded flower
that you sit in the dashboard and then they wonder why we're cynical.
Dude, it kind of makes perfect sense though.
Right.
So it's a bunch of dudes who things have gone right for.
They should be living the dream.
You and I both know exactly how that feels.
Thousand percent.
They're still mad unhappy.
They find this book that really crystallizes that feeling into a narrative, a great narrative.
And then they take 60 million of Rupert Murdoch's money from Fox, the same studio that completely,
completely shafted David Fincher on Alien 3.
And then they turned in the script and Fincher says, I went back to Fox with this unabridged
dictionary size package.
It's Edward, it's Brad.
We're going to start inside Edward's brain and pull out.
We're going to blow up a plane.
All of this shit.
We've got 72 hours to tell us if you're interested.
Tell me that's not project mayhem.
Oh, this sounds like it should be a rage against the machine song.
What the hell, man?
For me, that is the gang that wrote this film going, let's take some corporate money.
Oh my God.
All the adverts are going to be between chunks of this movie when this gets played on the
network television.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's just have it be, don't buy this stuff.
You've literally taken the advertisers money to make a film to criticize the advertisers.
That is okay.
Okay.
So A, what you've done there in two fell sweeps is one made me want to desperately listen
to a raging as a machine full volume whilst driving around in my little full fiesta screaming
like a teenager.
Yeah.
Also, you've just proven to me that this is exactly my definition of a perfect film.
Yeah.
It is exactly my definition of a person.
They all just went down round to Brad's Modo Dojo Casa house and wrote Fight Club playing
Nerf basketball.
Modo Dojo Casa house.
I love this so much.
That's a great way to look at this.
But this film has been adopted by the Sigma bros.
So for the listeners who don't know, we've got a section on what a Sigma is.
We do.
Because this is quite relevant.
I found this article, right?
Okay.
But it's a cesspit out there, Ben.
It is.
And everyone says, oh, this is wildly misinterpreted.
Loads of problematic people say this is their favourite film.
Trying to find those problematic people saying it's their favourite film, quite difficult.
Oh, dude.
You've just got to watch nine hours of their podcast and find the one reference.
And I'm not doing that.
No, there's loads of subtle references in little TikTok clips.
I'm like, just say it though.
Just say it.
Right.
Just say that you're Tyler Durden.
Just say it.
So I found a blog.
Okay.
I found a blog and I won't quote this because I don't know if the guy stands by this and
it's embarrassing.
Okay.
But it's his definition of what a Sigma is.
I love this already.
I also have a definition and then I have my own definition.
Let's compare notes.
Right.
So this guy, this guy's talking about alphas and betas and all this kind of stuff.
And for the record, the whole alpha wolf science has been disavowed by the people who wrote
the original paper because it only existed in wolves in captivity and in free natural
wolves, alphas, betas, all of this kind of stuff does not exist, but it's been taken
up by the Manosphere.
And this particular member says, social hierarchies have been observed through countless periods
in many different species, including mammals, insects, birds, and even crustaceans.
We're here to talk about the classification of males considered an exception to the system.
Sigmas and I quote Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt's character from the movie Fight Club is an
excellent example of a Sigma male who's completely removed from the chains of so-called social
hierarchy.
Right.
Sigma males are free-spirited men, masters of silence, freedom, and independence.
They marched to the beat of their own drum without regard for social acceptance or hierarchy.
Sigmas are proud to be rebels, non-conformists, wanderers, and loners.
James Bond in all of his roles throughout history is a cream of the crop Sigma male.
Right.
Okay.
That's what the Manosphere counts as Sigma as.
Dude, the cream on my stomach then felt like my intestines were being wrung out like an
old dishcloth.
That was the worst thing.
Yeah.
Imagine if I now leaned in for a kiss.
Dude, don't because I genuinely love you.
That made me hate you a little bit.
All right.
I know you were reading someone else.
I didn't like it.
What have you found out there in the blog of these enlightened thinkers?
So I've come to the conclusion that like looking at the definitions of alphas and betas and
sigmas, I've put a loose sort of a loose, I don't know, summary together.
Sigma males are like a cross between an alpha and a beta male by the definitions that I've
read in these articles.
Right.
Okay.
In the way that sigma male attitude is when a beta male's inferiority complex is met with
the arrogance and the inflated ego of an alpha male.
And it's when those two points merge, you get the sigma thing.
Right.
Massive arrogance mixed with massive insecurity.
And it's so deluded to a point where you go, no, this makes me strong.
This makes me powerful.
This makes me dangerous to you.
And it's like, it made me sad because I was like, I just want to give you a cuddle, a
quick high five, and then we go get a cheesecake and play some card games.
You know what I mean?
Like I think this is what you need.
Yeah.
So I mean, you've got these sort of like big influencers and these big celebrities
that do the whole sort of thing.
We're not going to name them.
They get, you know who they are.
And if you don't know who they are, well done and keep it that way.
We're not going to ruin your life.
Yeah.
You're not on TikTok.
We get it.
You know what I mean?
Good for you.
Some of us have to be.
But the likes of these people, they view Tyler as like a positive masculine influence, right?
And I'm here to explain why this is categorically wrong.
Is it the fact that Tyler drives a man to blow his own brains out rather than hang out
with him anymore?
That's one reason.
Yes.
It's one reason that everyone seems to ignore that the narrator shoots himself in the mouth
to kill Tyler Durden because he, he cannot put up with the negative influence on his
life anymore.
Everyone ignores that.
And he's just sort of like, yeah, but he's so ripped and doesn't eat Kit Kats because
Kit Kats are advertised on buses.
Shut up.
Watch the end of the film.
You're insane.
In my mind, right.
And I think in many people's minds, I'm going to, I'm going to put this out and say that
you took a similar thing away from this.
This is an assumption on my part.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Tyler serves as a cautionary tale of what being like this leads to, right?
It's a warning sign.
Yes, he is the alarm bell.
Yes.
It's a, it's a, you know, those movies where people are sitting in their houses and join
family dinner and then just an anonymous siren screams throughout the land and it means aliens
or an asteroid is coming.
Yep.
That's Tyler.
Tyler's coming.
So all of these sigma icons, they meet the same gruesome ending, right?
There's a few of them going around.
Patrick Bateman is a big one as well.
Right.
The dude from American psycho is like a big incel sigma influence.
It's like, are we joking?
Right.
The guy who stares at himself in the mirror whilst having sex and slaps his own ass.
Yeah.
Because apparently, that's the guy you look up to.
Yeah.
Because of all the self care routine and the trying to better himself professionally and
all this stuff.
It's like, no, he's a psychopath.
That's why he does these things.
It's not healthy.
It's not good.
Yep.
But they all meet the same end.
It's all ignored because it helps with this manly man, misogynistic shite that sort of
thing.
Very misogynistic film.
I've got reasons as to why.
I also think it's not just the shooting in the mouth.
That subway bus, the advertising thing you mentioned, right?
Where they point at an underwear model and they go, huh, is that what men are supposed
to look like?
Huh.
That's exactly how Brad Pitt looks.
Yeah.
Dude, Ed Norton's not that bad in this film.
Do you know what I mean?
He's got some in there.
Right.
You know what I mean?
It's that irony that persists throughout this film.
Right.
Okay, the films that are taken by these like sigma incel weirdos that are just sort of
like, they run with it.
This is my inspiration.
Fight Club, American Psycho, Taxi Driver, Nightcrawler was an interesting one that I
found.
Oh, I love that film.
Love that film, right?
I love that film.
Yeah.
It's not anything to emulate.
Well, apparently we're wrong, bud.
That's everywhere.
What?
Dude, it's prominent.
It's like this loner who makes himself his own manmate.
It's like, no, he represents the media frenzy.
He is the problem.
Right.
All these things, they're just nursery rhymes for adults.
They're cautionary tales.
That's a really good point.
It's Little Red Riding Hood for adults.
That's what it is, man.
It's the boy who cried wolf to adults.
It's a cautionary tale to say, do not do this.
And it's so misunderstood that everyone's like, yeah, right.
Love that.
Yeah.
Well, they weren't at the time, right?
Because when this came out, flopped.
Yeah, massively.
Massively underperformed commercially at the box office.
Massively.
The critical response was divided.
They felt that they were scenes that served only as like a mindless glamorization of violence.
Yeah.
And there was a whole debate about, is it morally irresponsible?
They kind of feared that young men were going to go out and set up their own real life fight
clubs.
Oh, that makes more sense.
Which is always a thing where they're like, oh, old boy shows a man killing someone with
a hammer.
So the next time there's a hammer attack, we'll pin it on the film.
But also the main villain is like super good at yoga.
I don't think that that was like a main takeaway point.
Like, oh yeah, but evil people are just going to get really good at yoga.
It was, it was controversial.
I can see why.
The misogyny is particularly strong.
You know, Marla's dirty.
Marla's.
Oh, the way she's represented is awful in this film.
Yes.
Sure dropingly awful, but it has to be.
It has to be because we are dealing with an unreliable narrator.
Exactly.
And so we're seeing his insecurities as if it's reality.
Which is the subtext, which is wildly missed in every, in every opportune moment of people
like, yeah, filth.
I think it's a shame.
Like you say that, that the irony got misunderstood and got just taken at face value because there
is so much in this film that is beautiful.
That is incredible.
Stunning.
The soundtrack is stunning.
The pixies.
Where is my mind?
When that kicks in at the end, I have to listen to the pixies for a week solid.
Yeah.
I had them on earlier today.
It's all I've done today.
All of Doolittle.
Don't check out the new album.
It's yacht rock and it's awful and lonely.
Yeah.
Old pixies.
Yeah.
Incredible.
New pixies.
There's a couple of things he does in this film that I adore because they're lessons
from his earlier films.
Oh, okay.
So in Seven, we talked about the look of the film with Darius Conjie, the cinematographer
who did a thing called Bleach Bypass.
Yes.
Which is when you basically there's lots of chemicals involved in an analog film.
One of which is silver, silver nitrite.
And you have to wash that away for a colour image.
The Bleach Bypass process skips that step.
So what you have is you essentially have on the same frame a black and white version of
the scene and the colour version of the scene.
So it plays with the contrast, makes the grain really odd.
I love that.
So in Seven, but in this they amp it right up.
Okay.
Which gives the film that dirty, grainy, postmodern filth.
It feels like a bad memory or like a poorly remembered memory.
And that was all stuff learned from Seven, trying to do the John Doe apartment and do
that justice with the really dark lighting.
The second thing he does that's from earlier in his career, the Ikea catalogue scene with
the slow pan across his apartment where all the objects from Ikea drop in.
Yes.
Oh, it's so good.
Yeah, it's brilliant.
It's the same technology as the alien from Alien 3 and you loved that too, right?
I hate that so much.
But it's good to see that he's putting that technology to something that I can get on
board with.
He ruined the alien franchise with it, but then simultaneously, I like Ikea now.
But what you're seeing in this film is what the alien would have looked like in terms
of belonging in the scene.
If they'd given it the time it needed to be composited in properly.
Right, right, right, right.
Because what the technology is, is that the camera is fixed to a rail that's then computer
controlled.
Right.
Or is then controlled in a way where the movement of the camera is recorded.
Oh, okay.
So you can then track on your puppet exactly how the camera should move for it to be right
in the angle.
I remember you explaining this a little bit in the Alien 3 episode and it blew my mind
then.
And I'm not going to lie, bud.
I said I was going to look into it.
I have not.
My mind is still just blown.
So thank you very much for that.
There's little bits in this film where he's perfecting his process that I adore.
The performances are incredible.
Insanely good.
Insanely good, dude.
My main takeaway that's not sort of like in-universe is the fight scenes and the choreography that's
gone into this because you're looking at it and it is, it's brutal.
Like it's like, it's genuinely, some points I'm like wince in because I'm like, oh my
God, the slaps and the smacks, like the sound effects that hit.
You get both sides of the coin because there are some that you wince at except the ones
that are Jared Leto getting the shit kicked out of him.
Oh, that was amazing.
And then you're like, yes.
I was full.
I went full cheerleader at that point.
I was like, yes, baby face, get rid of angel face, whatever his name is, get him ugly.
Let's go buddy.
But the fight scenes and the choreography in this.
So Fincher, he hired Mike Runyard who he met when he was making the game because Mike Runyard
was the stunt double for Michael Douglas.
So Fincher hired him.
He's Michael Douglas's Chad Stahelski, but Michael Douglas didn't get shot.
Yeah.
That's sadly, I was going to say that's a very morbid way of putting it, but yeah, it's
exactly that.
So Fincher hired him as a stunt coordinator and in turn, Mike Runyard brought on board
martial artists, stunt men, Damon Caro and Jeff Imada.
I've got a couple of quotes here because we were talking about how gorgeous Brad Pitt
is in this, like just absolute godlike physique.
I've got a couple of quotes.
I've got one from Mike Runyard who is the stunt coordinator.
He says, Brad just turned up looking like that.
That was his deal.
I didn't do anything with him.
I saw him using hand weights on set, but that was it.
How infuriating is that as a quote, but also can you imagine being Brad Pitt and having
someone say that about you behind your back?
You're like, yeah, hand weights, buddy.
That's all it was.
Enjoy the perfect physique that people are still aiming to aspire 25 years later.
I've got a quote from Damon Caro, who was one of the martial arts experts.
He's a genetic freak.
Brad's got the ability to do whatever he wants.
He can build up, but for that one, he got lean.
While he was working out and lifting, he was restricting his calories.
I mean, he was shredded for that film.
Then I've got one more from Helena Bonham Carter who says, Brad just looked like a god
in three dimensions, but was nauseatingly normal.
I adore Helena Bonham Carter as an actress.
There are certain archetypes of women that have just been ingrained in my psyche as what
attractive is.
Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls.
Marla Singer in this film.
Jessica Rabbit.
Anything that Anya Taylor-Joy touches.
No, no.
I don't want to get a 30 quid Uber if I want to change from looking between her left eye
and her right eye.
How do you take that?
I can't swear.
I can't swear, but I'm full of rage.
I'm full of rage.
I can't swear.
I need you to know that I'm upset that you've just said that.
Helena Bonham Carter is an interesting one because she was on the fence about doing this
movie and I can see why.
There is an awful lot of misogyny in here.
Of course.
This would make any woman nervous.
There's a reason for it though.
There's a reason for it and it's because this is the stream of consciousness, mentalness
of a threatened, emasculated man.
In that, I think lies the key to how we can bring Fight Club forward and say, do you know
what, Sigma Man of the Manosphere, this isn't your fucking film.
Five.
I don't care.
It's worth it.
Because what we've now punched through is there's no other punishment, Ben, until we
get to like 10.
Until we get to 10.
So we can swear as much as we fucking want.
Yeah, fuck it.
You know what I mean?
There's seven.
It's a bit close.
I'm a bit nervous.
Okay.
For how we can save Fight Club.
Let's do it.
Bring it back for me.
Let's go.
Is Marla Singer even real?
Is Marla Singer real?
Tyler Durden is a projectionist.
Right.
He's a projection of the narrator.
Okay, I see what you mean.
But the only other character, the only other main character we see is Marla, who magically
appears at every single support group.
Oh, okay.
I see where this is headed.
That the narrator.
Okay.
Why is she even out the testicular cancer?
She walks in accidentally and then she stays.
Okay.
Why is she being allowed to stay?
Yeah, I get it.
How does that make any sense?
I did that.
That is a weird one because I think it would have been pointed out to everyone.
I've been so like, come on.
Right.
Come on.
But also.
And then when she starts going.
Yeah.
We stop seeing those support groups.
Okay.
That's a great point and I can't refute it.
I have a rebuttal to this and it's going to annoy me if I don't get it off my chest right
now.
I can literally think of two scenes where other characters interact with Marla Singer
outside of.
Okay, that's a good point.
I can think of lots of scenes where we see Tyler have physical fistfights with people.
Okay, no, no, no.
But it's assumed that that's the narrator doing it.
Why is the same not true for Marla?
Someone looks at Marla and addresses her and we go, oh yeah, she's definitely there.
Okay.
But the waiter in the restaurant, when the narrator is trying to get her to leave town,
the waiter in the restaurant is talking to the narrator on one side of the table and
then he takes Marla's order whilst looking at the other side of the table and acknowledging
her order.
Again, but the entire film is from the narrator's perspective.
Oh, I hate this.
We're seeing the scene presented as he pictures it, right?
But what about the end one when she gets carried back into the building at the end, she's carried
by like, by like, is it three or four of the members?
We'll leave, we'll leave that one in the Marla is real pile.
Okay.
Let me just add a few more to the Marla is not real pile.
But then if you're saying this, she could not be real and those members of Project Mayhem
could also be imagination.
That's a little messy and a little, I'm not sure if...
Oh, that's, that's a little messy, but Marla Singer not being real is fine, is it?
Are we on this train?
Because, because, because, because, because.
Okay.
We first meet her at a testicular cancer support group where men are missing their testicles.
Yeah.
So when they come at Project Mayhem, they snatch up a CEO and they pull his trousers
down and they go, don't, don't mess with service workers or we'll castrate you.
When he snitches on Project Mayhem, I was really proud, really proud of you, mate.
It's a great example, but now we're going to have to take your balls.
Yeah.
The coppers.
In the thrift shop where Marla is selling clothes, men's jeans that she grabs out of
the dryers.
Yeah.
She grabs up men's clothing, she takes it for sale and then she grabs the narrator by
the balls and goes, yes, I'm selling some clothes.
Okay.
Grabbing the balls.
I can agree with everything to do with Marla is, is balls related, right?
But she could have just grabbed random stuff out of a dryer.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
I guess she just happened to walk.
Cause that's a normal thing to do to just go in, start selling some clothes.
You are filling me full of doubt, but I'm trying to hold onto my ideals and not let
my world come undone.
No, good.
Keep fighting it.
So when the narrator gets off his plane and he's missing his luggage, he says, I've got
to go find a hotel and he's talking to Tyler and Tyler's like, yeah, okay.
Go.
Sure.
But you just stay with me.
Just ask me when we later go around to Marla's.
Yeah.
Where does she live?
Is that a hotel?
When the narrator steps outside, there's a big neon sign that says rooms.
Oh, there is.
It's a hotel.
Okay.
There's a hotel room where Marla lives and in that hotel room that Tyler and the narrator
can get to incredibly quickly.
Yeah.
There's a giant dildo on the cameras.
There is.
Right.
Cause Tyler walks in, he gives it a bobble.
Right.
And she turns to Tyler and she says, it's not a threat to you.
Now Tyler is a coping mechanism who represents peak masculinity.
So it wouldn't be a threat to him.
Because he's everything that narrator wants to be.
So it wouldn't be a threat to him.
The narrator would be threatened.
He would see that as a masculine.
Oh, okay.
Why does she have the dildo?
Because she likes dildos, right?
Sure.
What's the reason that the narrator's luggage gets seized at the airport?
Oh, shut up.
Cause it's vibrating.
Because it might have what in it?
A vibrator or a dildo.
He wouldn't have a vibrator.
He wouldn't have a vibrating dildo in his suitcase, would he?
Right.
He has no memory of packing that.
Oh, okay.
I like this.
This is like, this is, this is pickle in my brain, but I like it.
Now the sex scenes.
Yes.
Constant.
No matter where the narrator goes, he can hear them having violent rampant sex.
Yes.
Literally everywhere.
He's gardening.
And while he's doing that, he's gardening, he's cleaning, he's reading, right?
He's doing self-improvement, which Tyler Durden says earlier in the film, self-improvement
is masturbation.
Oh my God.
He's not reading or exercising.
He's masturbating and he's imagining being a hyper masculine sex god who's fucking a
woman who's broken and needy and doesn't represent a threat to the narrator's ego.
Okay.
Because she's a misogynistic representation of what the narrator imagines he would be
if he were a woman.
Oh my God.
He feels like a failure as a man.
He's emasculated, he's feminine and he creates Tyler, right?
He does.
He's the ultimate man.
But is it possible that this unwell incel imagines what type of woman he'd be first?
That he hates but also kind of wants to fuck.
And that the revulsion at the kind of woman that he would be, that society would see him
as, forces him to create the opposite.
And so he moves to Paper Street and a Paper Street is a real thing.
It's a street that's been planned by a city but has yet to be constructed.
Okay.
Alright.
And then in the final shot, he kills Tyler.
He does.
And he's there in his big top and his little shorts.
She's there in her fur coat and they hold hands.
They do.
And their silhouettes are really symmetrical.
And their hands holding in the middle is separated by the line of the window that they stare
at as they watch the twelve incredibly phallic skyscrapers crumble.
Dude.
This.
Okay.
Eh?
Thank you for not telling me this for the last couple of days.
Bike Club is a trans allegory.
It has been incredibly...
About a man debating his gender identity.
This is actually, this is actually insane.
This is actually insane.
Thank you for not telling me this over the last couple of days.
It's been incredibly hurtful but also incredibly worthwhile because that genuinely has given
me a new film to watch whilst watching one of my favourite films.
Now I have to say.
That's mental.
You're too kind.
I don't think there is a definitive answer that she definitely isn't real.
Of course not.
There's a couple people there that are like, she doesn't have a reflection in the security
mirror in the apartment.
Wait, does she not?
Apparently not, no.
But I've looked at the scene and it's tenuous for me whether she would appear in that mirror.
Right, okay.
People are like, oh no, she should be there.
I'm like, I don't know.
I think what's more important is that there's enough there that we can grab it from a certain
shaved headed sex trafficking peddler of lies.
Yeah.
This is my fucking film, Andrew.
That's ten.
We're at ten.
Alright.
Worth it.
Thousand percent.
It's not your fucking film, Andrew.
It's not.
But to be honest man, I'm so happy that I've got a new film to watch.
Like I'm genuinely, normally when we do these episodes I watch the film a couple times and
I'm done with it for a few months.
Do you know what I mean?
I'll revisit it at some point if I enjoy it.
I'm probably going to watch Fight Club again this week just with those ideas in mind because
that's amazing.
What a testament to a screenplay and a film that's been lovingly fought for tooth and
nail that 25 years later you can extrapolate all of this stuff and an entire new storyline
from this thing.
It's nonsense.
It's headcanon.
But you know what?
It's better than the alternative.
I'm just going yeah, Tyler's mint.
It's a great thought experiment.
It's a super fun thing to do with the material.
The fact that there is that much material there to play with.
Insane.
Now dear listeners, if you feel a bit like the narrator, you're feeling a little bit
disconnected from the world, feeling a little bit like we've all been there.
And I think what's important is we have all been there.
And last week we asked Comment Corner to be a little bit different.
We did.
Has anyone come back?
Has anyone come back to this?
We actually have got three.
We had two a couple of days ago and we had a new one that neither of us have seen or
read.
So I'm going to say that this is okay to read.
Happy National Poetry Day.
You asked for people to write in and tell you how they were doing.
So given it's National Poetry Day today, I wrote you a poem.
How are you they ask?
I'm fine I say.
I'm good.
I lie.
I'm tired.
A cautious truth.
Because it's not okay to say.
At night I can't sleep for worrying and each morning I'm not sure how to get out of bed.
The days are a constant struggle of noise and chaos and need and must.
No time to think.
I cannot keep up.
I can't stop as it keeps going without me.
I'm falling constantly and falling everywhere.
I'm tired.
So tired of keeping going, but I can't stop.
I never get up and I don't know how to human.
I'm not enough.
It's too hard.
Why is it so hard?
Is this all there is?
I'm wasting life.
It's not okay to say that and I don't even know if I want them to know.
So I'm fine I smile.
How are you?
Wow.
Well that hit way harder than I thought it was going to.
Jesus Christ.
Right.
That's incredible.
Right.
Do you want to read our next one?
Who sent this?
We're going to, I'm going to, we're going to anonymize.
I think for Uncle Ben's Spice, well for all of them, I think for Uncle Ben's Spicy Rice
Corner.
I think we'll keep it anonymous, but whoever wrote that in.
Thank you.
That is painfully close to the bone.
Oh Ben, you're right, mate.
Yeah.
Do good.
Oh, do good.
It's just a poem, mate.
We don't want such a woman about it.
Oh, Christ.
Get some alpha male energy, bro.
This is so not Sigma of me.
It's unreal.
So not Sigma of you.
I'm showing my omega.
Do you know what I mean?
We've got another one.
Do you want to read the one that we got on September the 30th?
I can try.
I might need a moment.
Do you want to do another one first?
Well, I'll do one more.
I'll do one more.
Hello dudes.
Just wanted to say a huge thanks for what you were doing.
Film is my absolute comfort blanket in whatever form that may be and being able to continue
and share that love in the form of podcasting in both the creative and listener sense is
awesome.
What you're doing is intrinsically part of that, but also takes a moment to confront our
mental dispositions as well, which is crucial.
I have recently been struggling a lot as I've been displaced in my job due to redundancy,
which has not only caused me to completely confront my worth as an individual, but also
shattered my pride.
It is hard to not take these things personally, even when I am completely aware.
It's just a numbers game that I never cared if I was completely aware that it's a numbers
game that never cared if I was delivering above and beyond what was expected.
But all of this just to say, I am not ashamed of my emotions.
I try my hardest to confront and work through them.
What you do with the podcast so openly is an extra comfort for me.
So I thank you.
The podcast is an absolute joy and a complete staple of my every day now.
Thank you very much for that.
Jesus Christ, man.
I'm just, I'm going to keep reading and Ben in the hope that I can get you to just turn
inside out with pain.
This is like the A, keep going buddy.
Cause it's a, it's a struggle, but honestly you're smashing it.
Good evening guys.
It's the first time I've actually managed to build up the courage to write to you.
Therefore I need to thank you two very much for what you do.
Most days I feel like I can't do anything but watch films and talk about them for hours
and end, but thanks to you guys, I guess it might not be such a bad thing after all.
I love that you chose to talk about cinema to figure things out for yourselves.
Your chemistry and care for each other really warms my heart.
This whole endeavor has proven that recovery looks different for everyone.
I love how unexpected each episode turns out and it resonates with me a lot on a less meaningful
note and this isn't all caps.
Okay.
Rob, how the hell did you manage to make me want to rewatch the game?
How?
Just how?
Have a good one.
I wish you both well.
Oh my God.
P.S.
By the way, I discovered, Oh, I'm so glad this is last.
By the way, I discovered you with the chaplain retrospective.
Love film, love film history and seeing you tackle such films out of the blue made me
an instant fan.
It makes it so much more meaningful that they found us through the chaplain series.
Cause I know that you're like, I hate that we did it.
It was a mistake.
I shouldn't have done it.
I loved it and clearly it resonates with the right people.
You know what I mean?
I'm glad that we spent three weeks of the podcast life.
Oh my God.
We'll listen.
I'm glad we got at least one listener.
Yeah.
A thousand percent man.
That's incredible.
Well, welcome to the show from the chaplain series.
Thank you for reaching out.
It's incredible to the person before that.
I'm sorry you're struggling right now, but, but honestly it gets easier and it gets better.
You are absolutely killing it right now.
Thank you for reaching out.
It's amazing.
I want to say to anyone, if that rang true for anyone, it rang true for us.
But if you heard that and you're like, Oh damn, join the discord.
We have a discord.
You're not alone.
We've got a whole community of people helping each other smile by doing nothing, but being
mean about films.
They're incredible.
Honestly, we are so incredibly lucky to have that little community of people all chatting
absolute waffle about the films that they've just watched.
And it's in the most wholesome loving way possible.
It's incredible.
And some of the memes that absolutely destroy us are also incredible.
You know what I mean?
It's amazing.
Get in touch, get in touch.
That was comment corner.
Send us an email.
Everymovieveruk at gmail.com.
Let us know how you're doing because I think as we can all see, none of us are doing great.
And that's fine.
It's completely fine.
It's okay to not be doing great because we can all be together, not doing great, helping
each other out.
Do you know what I mean?
We're all there for each other.
That poem keeps creeping back on me, man.
Well, I'm going to distract you now with a little David Fincher league table.
Yeah, let's do something.
This film, when we say this film flopped, this film flopped.
Okay.
So how much did it make?
Worldwide.
A hundred mil.
Jesus Christ.
Oh wait, it had a 60 mil budget.
That's terrible.
Right.
Domestically, it made 40 million.
Wow.
That's painful.
In America.
That is painful.
Bearing in mind, Seven had half the budget.
It made three times as much.
Jesus Christ.
This cost 13 million less than the game.
It made nine million less.
Oh, God damn.
And it reviewed about the same as the game as well.
I've seen a couple of the reviews and they are choice-worthy.
But the thing is, this found its life in DVD.
It really did.
And it is now currently the number one most seen film on letterboxd.com.
And it deserves to be wholeheartedly.
It's got 4.124 million users.
Amazing.
Having logged the film.
Amazing.
Guess what the second one was?
What?
Joker, baby.
Wow.
No way.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's awesome.
Very, very similar films.
I've got a good game for you, Ben.
Hit me with a game.
There's loads of trivia about this film that we just, we've not got the time to get into.
So I'm just going to quiz you.
Right.
What's special about Brad Pitt's sunglasses in this film?
Ooh, I'm not sure.
They're blue blockers.
Okay.
Because they're red frames.
They're specially designed glasses designed to block blue light, which is bad for sleep.
Ooh.
They're insomnia glasses.
Yeah.
Okay.
What's special about the scene where Ed Norton first punches Brad Pitt?
Um, I'm not sure.
Genuine punch.
Oh, really?
In the ear?
Yeah.
Oh.
He was originally going to fake hit him, but before the scene, David Fincher pulled
Norton aside and told him to hit him in the ear.
Oh my God.
Imagine being Brad Pitt after that take though.
Once it was all filled with it, Fincher goes, cut.
Now we're doing it 30 more times.
What's special about Marla Singer's line after her and Tyler Durden first have sex?
I think I know this one.
It's a good one.
Because it was a different line that one of the producers was like, nope, take that out.
Fincher switched it for the line.
I haven't been fucked that good since grade school.
And the producer was like, nope, put it back in.
And he was like, too late mate.
It's in the script.
You made it worse.
What's special about the scene or the specific shot where one of the space monkeys, members
of project mayhem sprays a priest with a hose?
I'm not sure.
It's a good one.
Camera shakes because the cameraman was unable to get the shot without laughing.
He ended up just using one with a laugh in it.
I love that so much.
It's so good.
I love that so much.
What are you going to rate Fight Club at 10 then?
Fat 10.
Fattest 10.
Fat 10.
Fattest 10.
I know we hated the game.
Okay.
The game's a great film, but it's just not for me.
I think without the game, we don't get this film.
I think they're cousins.
They're like both Twilight Zone-y stripping the ways of what the character has.
But the difference is in the game, we get a man who starts with everything and he's
worried about losing it where his Fight Club works because it's a man who thinks he has
nothing but kind of grows to fear losing what he didn't realize he had in the first place.
Yeah, definitely.
And with all the stuff that he kind of folds in from earlier bits in his career, this is
for me the first...
Not the first film, because Seven.
Seven.
It's just a damn fine film.
And I can't ever say it's my favourite because that's been ruined.
And it's not my favourite, but I do think it's a very funny, very well paced, very well
put together middle finger to toxic masculine culture.
It's only made better by the fact that toxic masculinity has adopted it as its sort of
poster child.
And it's the funniest thing to watch from the outside looking in, man.
It's incredible.
Unfortunately, buddy, I think that that's it.
I think we're up for time.
We're well over time.
Yeah, we're well over.
It was worth it though.
What an incredible, incredible venture through the Fincherverse.
And I, for one, am grateful that we did it, bud.
Thank you everyone for hanging out with us this week.
It has been an absolute pleasure.
As always, you are loved.
You matter.
We would not exist without you being here.
Thank you so much.
We love you dearly.
Genuinely, thank you for providing a reason for us to feel okay talking about our feelings.
We're not doing it for our own sake.
It's a show.
The best form of revenge, Rob, is massive success.
So if we can be vulnerable and make it a massive success, it's the best revenge, famously,
because of three of the posters I've just ordered.
Okay.
I'm beginning to regret putting you in a position where you were able to read this stuff.
Ben is now going to wrap up the thoughts, themes and feelings of this movie to thank
you for spending an hour of your week with us, especially at the start of the week.
So it's going to be a little Monday motivation pep talk that he's going to draw up from
the pages of this script while I just tell you to do what society always tells you to
do and this film tells you to do, which is consume.
Don't underestimate me.
I know more than I say.
I think more than I speak and I notice more than you realize.
Yeah, that's right, bro.
It's Sigma, bro.
You know what I mean?
Don't you dare show your emotions, bro.
Girls are kind of gross, huh?
Girls are gross, huh?
Like who wants to be around that beta stuff?
Just be lonesome, bro.
Sigma, bro.
I had a really funny bit, but honestly, that poem's changed me fundamentally as a human
person.
It's the most beautiful thing that's ever been sent to us and I'm genuinely, I'm cherishing
that.
Just, you know what I mean?
Getting out of bed is a big...
We're gonna have lots of大家!