Al Weisel
Summer Movie Previews: Fight Club
By Al Weisel
Premiere, June 1999, p. 60
Not the usual light summer fare, Fight Club seems more appropriate for winter—nuclear winter. Brad Pitt (reteaming with his Seven director, David Fincher) and Edward Norton star as the founders of a group of bored young men who spend their weekends beating the hell out of each other; their secret society grows into a national messianic movement, a sort of anti-Promise Keepers. "I think a lot of people will relate to the film, and in so doing will be connecting to a darker part of themselves," says screenwriter Jim Uhls, who adapted the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The film is told from the point of view of a yuppie (Norton) so numb to life that he attends cancer support-group meetings just so he can feel intense emotions. Pitt had caps removed from his teeth and his head shaved to play a charismatic anarchist who intrigues Norton's character on their first meeting by discussing how to make explosives out of household products. As the club's membership grows, the two men. find something real to fight over: a sexy, suicidal woman played by a thoroughly uncorseted Helena Bonham Carter. "One fun moment I saw them shoot was when Norton is checking Carter for breast cancer," Uhls says.■
Al Weisel is the co-author, with Larry Frascella, of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, being published in October 2005.