Speaker 1: What's up. It's Caitlin and Jamie and you're about to
Speaker 1: hear in episode that is a live show that we
Speaker 1: recorded in Portland, Land never heard of it with our
Speaker 1: fabulous guests Katie when she is wonderful and we are
Speaker 1: talking about one of the big ones, Mr. Fight Club,
Speaker 1: a very cool movie that we all love. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was super fun. If you're at the show, you already know,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, we're excited to have you heard a
Speaker 1: few quick notes at the top. We are going on
Speaker 1: tour again because we're addicted to it, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: be on the in the Northeast again. We've got the
Speaker 1: following dates locked in. On ap we're going to be
Speaker 1: at the Bell House in Brooklyn. On a we will
Speaker 1: be at Good Good Comedy Theater in Philadelphia. On May first,
Speaker 1: we'll be at the Drafthouse Comedy Theater in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And on May two, we will be at the Rockwell
Speaker 1: in Boston for the Women in Comedy Festival. We're in
Speaker 1: the process of confirming guests and movies for those shows,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned. We're also going to be doing a
Speaker 1: live show at The Ruby in Los Angeles on April
Speaker 1: six at we are covering Bring It On with a
Speaker 1: friend of the cast, Maggie May, who you might remember
Speaker 1: from our Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone episode, and
Speaker 1: tickets are on sale for that now on our website
Speaker 1: backtel cast dot com. Also, Jamie and I are going
Speaker 1: to be in Denver in mid April doing a bunch
Speaker 1: of stand up shows, so check out our websites and
Speaker 1: our social media for more details on that. Uh and
Speaker 1: then a couple of quick plugs for me personally, your gal, Caitlin.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be doing a stand up show at
Speaker 1: penn State University. Ever heard of it? It's where I
Speaker 1: got one of two of my degrees. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: on April. I still don't know the location or the
Speaker 1: time of the show, but hopefully they tell me soon.
Speaker 1: But um, if we've got any central Pennsylvania listeners out there,
Speaker 1: check out that show. Also, I am teaching a three
Speaker 1: hour screenwriting crash course in New York. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know this or not, but I do
Speaker 1: have a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University. I
Speaker 1: don't like to bring it up, but I am teaching
Speaker 1: this class on April, starting at eleven am, so please
Speaker 1: sign up for that and learn a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: about screenwriting. And then I'm also going to be doing
Speaker 1: some additional shows in Boston for the Women in Comedy
Speaker 1: Festival in early May, so you can check out my website,
Speaker 1: Caitlin Dronte dot com slash shows for all the details
Speaker 1: you need about all of those things, uh. And then
Speaker 1: also you can go to Bechtel Cast dot com for
Speaker 1: all the details you need about the live podcast shows
Speaker 1: we're doing. And then we recommend you keep an eye
Speaker 1: on our social media or Twitter uh and Instagram especially
Speaker 1: for updates about these upcoming shows. And if you don't
Speaker 1: live in any of those places, we're working on coming
Speaker 1: to you soon. And then finally, we just wanted to
Speaker 1: plug our campaign to raise money for Black Girl's Code,
Speaker 1: and we're doing that by selling T shirts that say
Speaker 1: Rise of the Matriarchy. So by one of those t
Speaker 1: shirts to help us support this great organization, and you
Speaker 1: can grab that shirt at t public dot com slash
Speaker 1: the Bechtel Cast. Sorry that there were so many plugs,
Speaker 1: but what can we say. We've we're doing a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, with that, enjoy Enjoy episode Cast questions
Speaker 1: tab win minutum. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Speaker 1: Or do they have individualism? The patriarchy zef invest start
Speaker 1: changing it with the del cast. Hello, Marlan, what's uh? Wow?
Speaker 1: Are the second we walked out? Someone in the front
Speaker 1: rose wearing if I'm in the cyclone off for Billina's shirt?
Speaker 1: Already losing my mind? Welcome. Hi, I'm Caitlin, I am Jamie,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Bechtel Cast. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay man, Yeah, we have been stressing out about
Speaker 1: this episode for days. Like we're currently on a tour
Speaker 1: and this is the only thing that we keep talking about.
Speaker 1: Uh it, we couldn't have chosen a more stressful Why
Speaker 1: did we do this to ourselves? I don't know why
Speaker 1: we were like this has to be a live episode.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's true, but uh, in any case,
Speaker 1: here we are regardless. Yeah, no, that this is gonna
Speaker 1: be hoof, We got a lot of lord it into
Speaker 1: red Pilling? Ever heard of it? You know? It's just
Speaker 1: I'm stressed. How are you? I similarly upset that I
Speaker 1: had to watch this movie again? Um? But remember when
Speaker 1: we all used to love it? Though? Yeah, remember when
Speaker 1: we saw this poster in someone's room and we're like,
Speaker 1: this person is probably cool, not like leave right away,
Speaker 1: this person is dangerous. And they say scary things on
Speaker 1: Reddit under assumed names like this is literally I like
Speaker 1: read it. Read it was adapted into a future length movie.
Speaker 1: It's just scariest thing I've ever seen. So we're talking,
Speaker 1: of course, about fight club. By round of applause, don't
Speaker 1: talk about I'm so sorry. We're not talking about more
Speaker 1: of that ever again. There, I just did something my
Speaker 1: dad used to do. My my roommate, my freshman now
Speaker 1: my sophomore college roommate used to have a fight club
Speaker 1: post her. At the time. I was like, she's awesome,
Speaker 1: but it was like she hates herself. But um my dad,
Speaker 1: I remember my dad was like helping me move in
Speaker 1: and he walked in. He was like, don't talk about
Speaker 1: it though. It was like, you're a fascist, you know,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. Which one of us do you think, though,
Speaker 1: is Tyler? And which one of us is Edward Norton.
Speaker 1: I don't know what does the audience think. Well, actually
Speaker 1: we're asking you to talk in full sentences, um, so
Speaker 1: instead let's find out By rand of applause. Who has
Speaker 1: seen the movie Fight Club? Good doing your homework, and
Speaker 1: clap if you have the good fortune of not having
Speaker 1: seen it A smattering A smattering okay, and then also
Speaker 1: clap if if you've heard our show before. That was
Speaker 1: just to get us all horned up. No kive uh,
Speaker 1: and clap if you have not heard our show before.
Speaker 1: If you were brought wow front row we have we
Speaker 1: have a convert um. Okay. So just to uh for
Speaker 1: for you, sir, uh, we will tell you what the
Speaker 1: show is about. So as as most folks here know,
Speaker 1: the Bechtel Cast is a show where we talking about
Speaker 1: women in movies, um, or the lack of women in movies,
Speaker 1: or we're fascism today. Uh. Using the Bechtel test as
Speaker 1: a jumping off I'm sorry, I'm making eye contact with you.
Speaker 1: We use the Bechtel tests as a jumping off point. Uh.
Speaker 1: Bechtel Test, of course, being a test invented by Alison
Speaker 1: Bechdel in which two women with names have to talk
Speaker 1: about something other than a man for two lines of
Speaker 1: dialogue or more cool awesome, Okay, Well, thank you for
Speaker 1: coming in there. Should we introduce our guests? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: so slash. We've got a guest today. She's wonderful. She
Speaker 1: does a weekly show here in Portland called Earthquake Hurricane,
Speaker 1: and she was a recently published in The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: Give it up for Katie Wynn. Hello, he holcome, thank you,
Speaker 1: thanks for thanks for joining us for this holacious journey
Speaker 1: we're gonna take. Yeah. Yeah, it was unpleasant. Um in
Speaker 1: so many ways. What's your history with the movie? I
Speaker 1: watched it for the first time in middle school with
Speaker 1: my older brother. Loved it. I haven't seen it since.
Speaker 1: Uh And now I am a high school teacher. Uh
Speaker 1: and um, I see a lot of gratuitous punching already,
Speaker 1: so I don't I don't need that in a film
Speaker 1: form as well. Do your do your students still watch
Speaker 1: this movie? No? No, no, kids, just always be punching,
Speaker 1: like Caitler wins. Your history with this movie? I saw
Speaker 1: it for the first time in high school. I had
Speaker 1: like dated a few guys who all loved this movie
Speaker 1: and like, not for the right reasons, not that there
Speaker 1: are any right reasons. Have you ever heard a guy
Speaker 1: be like, it's actually a satire? Like, No, they were
Speaker 1: so enamored with it that I was like, well, it's
Speaker 1: probably stupid then, because I recognized that these guys were
Speaker 1: stupid and from the beginning, so I had this like
Speaker 1: initially had a very anti flight Club stance, having never
Speaker 1: seen the movie, and then a weird thing happened where
Speaker 1: I finally watched and I was like, actually, it's not
Speaker 1: that bad. Again. I was in high school, and then
Speaker 1: I bought it on DVD and but then, like one
Speaker 1: of those things, like the DVD sat on the shelf,
Speaker 1: never really rewatched it, uh until like maybe a couple
Speaker 1: of years later, like a couple of years ago, I
Speaker 1: don't remember, and I was like, oh, this is torture
Speaker 1: to watch, and that is my history. What's yours? I
Speaker 1: had heard about this is one of This was one
Speaker 1: of my dad's favorite movies. Yikes, Mike this, I know
Speaker 1: Mike slipped on this one. I think my dad truly,
Speaker 1: as I alluded to before, he really just did like
Speaker 1: the rules bit and really because this movie came out
Speaker 1: when I was six, But my dad used to like
Speaker 1: when I was playing with like my stuffed animals, he'd
Speaker 1: be like, the first rule about Jamie's Tea Party is
Speaker 1: don't talk about Jamie's Tea Party. And I'd be like,
Speaker 1: ha ha awesome. So I knew what the rules were
Speaker 1: very young. But I saw it in high school, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was fucking awesome. Read the book, read
Speaker 1: a lot of Chuck Poulainuk, which is how you say it.
Speaker 1: I think no one is sure. There's no canonical way
Speaker 1: to say it. From what I can tell is how
Speaker 1: you say it. But I read the book, and then
Speaker 1: I read a couple I got like really into his
Speaker 1: books in high school, and then I, um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm at some When I was, I saw it again,
Speaker 1: it was like, wait a second, what happened? Like I
Speaker 1: don't know what. I don't know. It's hard to tell,
Speaker 1: like where the switch flips? Where was like the moment
Speaker 1: in time where all of a sudden we were like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, this is about in cells like this?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I would guess maybe sometime around there
Speaker 1: was a moment there seemed to be like a vague
Speaker 1: cultural moment where everyone was like, ah, yes, that was
Speaker 1: not good for the world. Well, but I loved it
Speaker 1: for too long. Yeah, should I do the recap? Okay, okay, Katie,
Speaker 1: You're welcome to interject at any time and exercising my right.
Speaker 1: So we meet the narrator who in the book he's
Speaker 1: called Sebastian, which is that name is never brought up
Speaker 1: in the movie. Yeah, like film theorists call him himself
Speaker 1: as Jack and the movie so for all intense and purposes,
Speaker 1: we'll call him Jack. That's Edward Norton's character. He works
Speaker 1: in a vague corporate setting. He like, uh, he has insomnia,
Speaker 1: So he starts going to these support groups for people
Speaker 1: with conditions that he does not have but pretends to have,
Speaker 1: and meat Loaf is there, meet loaf is, He meets
Speaker 1: Bob and then after a while he meets SmartLess Singer
Speaker 1: that's telling the bottom Carter's character, who is also pretending
Speaker 1: to have things that she doesn't have, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you're ruining everything because you're a faker. The only line
Speaker 1: that made me laugh in the movie this time was
Speaker 1: this chick marlst Singer did not have testicular crincer. That's
Speaker 1: still still get me. So he confronts her and they
Speaker 1: like work out a schedule so that he never has
Speaker 1: to see her again. Then he's traveling a lot for
Speaker 1: work and he meets on a plane Tyler Durdon and
Speaker 1: Tyler Dirton is not like the other guys. He's a
Speaker 1: little counterculture. Yeah, he's a conspiracy theorist. He makes explosives.
Speaker 1: We've all dated someone like that, um in which that
Speaker 1: scene where Okay, there's so many irresponsible things you can
Speaker 1: do when making a movie. Giving someone instructions to make
Speaker 1: napalm is among the worst things you can do, and
Speaker 1: just especially leading in with like it's so easy, anyone
Speaker 1: can do it. Yeah, Fight Club but gives you the
Speaker 1: recipe for dynamite. By contrast, Paddington Too gives you the
Speaker 1: recipe for marmalade. So like, which one is the better movie?
Speaker 1: Make responsible choices? Yeah, I was gonna the paar it
Speaker 1: trapped The Lindcy Lohan one does teach people how to
Speaker 1: pierce their ears in a way that oh, it seems
Speaker 1: like almost everyone tried at least once. Yeah, irresponsible, and
Speaker 1: hocus Pocus teaches you how to steal the soul of
Speaker 1: a young person. Yea, your own benefits. So it's true
Speaker 1: we learned what we want to learn. I think we
Speaker 1: just learned a lot about all three of us. So
Speaker 1: Jack the narrator, he arrives home and he discovers that
Speaker 1: his apartment has exploded, so he calls Tyler Dirton for
Speaker 1: a place to stay and he's like, I'm so sad
Speaker 1: that I all my ikeya stuff is gone. And then
Speaker 1: Tyler Dirton is like, fuck stuff and ever or Ever
Speaker 1: Norton's like, I've never thought of it. That one. He
Speaker 1: literally has had like three SIPs of beer and he's like, wait,
Speaker 1: fuck stop, we're dumban Yeah, I think a very like
Speaker 1: George and Tony situation from Seinfeld, where Tyler is Tony
Speaker 1: the cool rock climber who eventually loses his good looks um,
Speaker 1: and then Morton Norton is George Costanza. And then they
Speaker 1: got into a parking lot and Tyler's like, I want
Speaker 1: you to hit me as hard as you can. And
Speaker 1: then they punched each other for a while and we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, wonder what's gonna happen based on that. Brad
Speaker 1: Pitt says fuck mart the Stewart and we're like yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they like start punching each other more and more,
Speaker 1: and then it evolves into fight club. It like makes
Speaker 1: them feel alive, and it becomes this like regular fighting
Speaker 1: is good for infer to boys and yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was what was on everybody's mind. Yeah, everybody was already
Speaker 1: doing it apparently, and they organized it, that's what they said.
Speaker 1: It's just it was a lot of random fights and
Speaker 1: they just harnessed they fed an organizer. Yeah, rule they
Speaker 1: needed rules, and two of the rules repetitive that you
Speaker 1: don't talk about fight club. And then there's some other
Speaker 1: ones that as it's weirdly the same rules of Jamie's
Speaker 1: tea party. Whoa, And so I'm breaking the first two
Speaker 1: rules by how dare you being here? Yeah? So then
Speaker 1: we hear from Marla again. She gives our friend a
Speaker 1: call and he walks away from the phone, but then
Speaker 1: Tyler comes and picks it up, and that initiates their
Speaker 1: ongoing sexual relationship where he like saves her from committing
Speaker 1: suicide in a weird scene that and then she like
Speaker 1: is there the next morning, He's like, what the funk
Speaker 1: are you doing here? And then she's like, well, wait,
Speaker 1: you're spoiling man for fight club Kitlin because the narrators
Speaker 1: thing around the morning and he's like, Marlo, what are
Speaker 1: you doing here? Yeah, but they don't know that, and
Speaker 1: they don't fight. They don't know you don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry. We're Norton and Tyler during were the same person.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, someone didn't know. So then they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: what if we take this like cyclub thing and like
Speaker 1: make it more serious? And then Project Mayhem is born
Speaker 1: and it's such a stupid name. The guys to fight
Speaker 1: each other. Okay, can we make a fascist organization? And
Speaker 1: yes they can't. Meet Loaf is there and they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're committing acts of vandalism. They're like sticking it to
Speaker 1: the main. They're like folk Starbucks, and they're giving specific
Speaker 1: tasks like those like birthday parties he invited to. It's
Speaker 1: like a scavenger hunt, and like everybody's like so excited
Speaker 1: and yeah, so they go and they have to blow
Speaker 1: up up certain things and destroys certain types of businesses.
Speaker 1: They're very incentivized by like homework assignments, which I have
Speaker 1: never found men to be. But this is project based learning.
Speaker 1: It's the new thing in education. You know, you're making
Speaker 1: it sound kind of like a good idea. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then at like at one point, Tyler admits to being
Speaker 1: the person who blew up Jack's condo, and he's like,
Speaker 1: what he crashes a car on purpose. He's wild so sexy,
Speaker 1: so we say, okay, project ma'am is in full swing.
Speaker 1: And then Jack is like, this doesn't sound good. I
Speaker 1: better go and stop Tyler. But then like, Tyler disappears
Speaker 1: for a while, and he basically like follows Tyler to
Speaker 1: like the different cities he went to, and he finds
Speaker 1: out he's been setting up fight clubs all over the place,
Speaker 1: you know. And then at one spot a guy is like,
Speaker 1: you're Tyler dirt In and he's like, what wild that
Speaker 1: it takes this long? Because I mean, I think technically
Speaker 1: in the movie is at least tight enough that we
Speaker 1: don't see anyone that would know he's Tyler Dirt up
Speaker 1: to then, although I'm not that seems confusing too, but
Speaker 1: it takes him like I don't know what time span
Speaker 1: does this take over? Is it like it at least
Speaker 1: a few months? He said? At one point he said
Speaker 1: he'd been living with um Tyler for two months at
Speaker 1: one point, right, Okay, so it happens fast. But then yeah,
Speaker 1: someone has to tell him in a different city months
Speaker 1: later that he's Tyler dirt In, right, Yeah, so is
Speaker 1: he just like putting on sunglasses and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: different guy, I don't know. And then Tyler Dirton shows
Speaker 1: up in Jack's hotel room and he's like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: you and you're me and we're the same person. He
Speaker 1: really breaks it down the best parts they do that
Speaker 1: my um hand to hand mirror things. I really wondered
Speaker 1: when Caitlyn you said that for someone in the audience
Speaker 1: to be like like, wait a second. So basically we
Speaker 1: all learned that Tyler is a manifestation of Jack's imagination
Speaker 1: and that he like dissociates and becomes Tyler Dirting at
Speaker 1: different points because Tyler is cool and he fucks good.
Speaker 1: And then he realizes that what Project Mayam had been
Speaker 1: planning was to blow up several different buildings that have
Speaker 1: credit card companies in them to reset the debt and
Speaker 1: like everyone goes back to zero, which wouldn't have worked
Speaker 1: because computers still existed. So computers still existed. It was
Speaker 1: a big like, oh, it's in the computer kind of
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Destroy the shell you need to destroy
Speaker 1: that were of a hardware is. So he like tries
Speaker 1: to turn himself into the police, and the police are
Speaker 1: like weird Project Mayhem too, and then he goes and
Speaker 1: tries to dismantle the bomb, and then Tyler's like, don't
Speaker 1: do that. And then he's like, well, I know how
Speaker 1: to get rid of you. I'll shoot myself in the head.
Speaker 1: And then he stays alive. But Tyler dies. Uh that's
Speaker 1: not how that works. Um. You know when you shoot
Speaker 1: yourself in the head and it cures your of your
Speaker 1: mental illness, well you have to stay alive for the
Speaker 1: Hollywood ending king, right, which is that Marla gets brought
Speaker 1: in and she's like, hey, you were mean to me
Speaker 1: and he's like yeah, and then they hold hands and
Speaker 1: then the music swells and then that's the end of
Speaker 1: the movie and then all the buildings are blown up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so I mean a powerful narrative to be sure.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that recap, Caitlin, absolutely anytime, helpful. Oh
Speaker 1: thank you. Where should we jump in? I don't know, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is so stressful. I don't know. I guess let's
Speaker 1: start with just like a little bit of background for
Speaker 1: the book versus the movie. Um, because a lot of
Speaker 1: my problems with this movie are like a failure of adaptation,
Speaker 1: because I I haven't read the book in some time,
Speaker 1: but from everything I've read, it appears to be a
Speaker 1: very clearly satirical book where it's not supposed to be
Speaker 1: like a blueprint for the alt right, which is literally
Speaker 1: what the movie is is a blueprint for the all Right.
Speaker 1: But the book, I'm and I think that uh, it
Speaker 1: gets comparisons to American Psycho a lot for this reason.
Speaker 1: The book is pretty clearly supposed to be like tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek and the characters are satirical in the way
Speaker 1: it's written. Uh is supposed to make you, you you know,
Speaker 1: like hate these characters, but the way it was adapted
Speaker 1: was very much not that. Also, the book ends differently.
Speaker 1: The book does not end with it ends. There was
Speaker 1: also a fight Club too. I don't know if anyone
Speaker 1: knows this. I don't know book only right now, book
Speaker 1: only book only. But at the end of Fight Club
Speaker 1: the book he he does shoot himself in the head
Speaker 1: and then he wakes up the narrator who is a
Speaker 1: Sebastian in the book, God knows why, but he wakes
Speaker 1: up in a mental hospital and the doctors are like,
Speaker 1: where in brad Jack, ma'am, where's Tyler? And then he's
Speaker 1: like no, and then the book's over. Then in Fight
Speaker 1: Club Too, which is also called Fight Club Too and
Speaker 1: Extremely an Extreme fight Folk either one an Extremely Fighty
Speaker 1: Club and the Spy Club Too. I have certainly not read.
Speaker 1: It came out like two years ago. I don't know
Speaker 1: if like Chuck Polinick had some debts or something, but
Speaker 1: like by all accounts, it sucks. And it's like a
Speaker 1: graphic novel that starts with the narrator has gotten rid
Speaker 1: of Tyler Dirton and Mary's Marla, and they're happy until
Speaker 1: Tyler comes back, and Tyler decides just he's like Project
Speaker 1: Mayhem is so ninety nineties, I'm gonna start Project Chaos,
Speaker 1: and then he starts Project Chaos, and then at the end,
Speaker 1: Chuck Palinus in the book and Tyler kills Chuck Palinuck.
Speaker 1: It sounds terrible, But the last thing that I think
Speaker 1: is like required like contextualizations setting up the book to
Speaker 1: the movie, is that, Yeah, I mean, it was clearly
Speaker 1: a satire that wasn't adapted as clearly a satire. I mean,
Speaker 1: based on the people who seemed to still love it.
Speaker 1: Uh doesn't seem to be like with any ironic detachment,
Speaker 1: but Chuck Polinick wrote it as a satire. Uh, he
Speaker 1: had a kind of bizarre, troubled life. He was closeted
Speaker 1: until his early forties. Um. I don't think a lot
Speaker 1: of people even know that Chuck Palinock is as a
Speaker 1: queer writer. Um. But a lot of his later books
Speaker 1: tackle queer topics. And around the time the book comes out,
Speaker 1: his father died in like a double homicide. Like he's
Speaker 1: he has like a very like interesting and troubled and
Speaker 1: intense background. Um. And I guess the last thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to say on the author of the original story,
Speaker 1: because I cannot wait to roast David Fincher is uh,
Speaker 1: Chuck Polinock. He's like hard to get interviewed, but when
Speaker 1: he does, he's pretty like upfront. And he was interviewed
Speaker 1: in like late seventeen about Fight Club and how he
Speaker 1: felt like it had, you know, like radicalized a generation
Speaker 1: of young men for the worse and perhaps had a
Speaker 1: net negative on the world. And you know, he's maybe
Speaker 1: not so sold on that idea, but he he says
Speaker 1: that he does understand that Fight Club is a book
Speaker 1: about Tyler Dirton kind of effectively red pilling this cult
Speaker 1: that he creates, but sort of has a take on
Speaker 1: it that is what you can make of it. I
Speaker 1: will read a portion of this interview he did in quote,
Speaker 1: you want to put the book in the movie producer's
Speaker 1: hand and have them adopted like a baby, raise it
Speaker 1: and put a huge amount of energy into it. And
Speaker 1: doing so, the movie producer is going to change it
Speaker 1: so that it reflects the movie producer's experience. And when
Speaker 1: that material passes on to an audience, the audience adopts it,
Speaker 1: it will become the child of the audience, and it
Speaker 1: will serve whatever purpose the audience has for it. It
Speaker 1: would be insane to think that the author could control
Speaker 1: every iteration or every interpretation of the work, which I
Speaker 1: was like, huh. That made me think. And then the
Speaker 1: next question is do you believe in toxic masculinity? And
Speaker 1: then he says, oh, boy, I really don't. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of all over the place in terms
Speaker 1: an interesting uh per So, so that's the setup for
Speaker 1: the author of the original work. Yes, that's helpful, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's confusing, like it's just like everything about Chuck Palak
Speaker 1: confuses me. It's a lot of hard lefts. I haven't
Speaker 1: read this book or any of his work. I was
Speaker 1: too busy reading Harry Potter eleven times brag. I know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So everything I have to say about Fight Club is
Speaker 1: as it pertains to the movie rather than the book
Speaker 1: or anything like that. But there's still a lot to
Speaker 1: talk about because I mean so much has already been
Speaker 1: written and said about this movie, especially as it pertains
Speaker 1: to gender and you know, masculinity and femininity. Like a
Speaker 1: common recurring thesis is that this movie can be seen
Speaker 1: as a commentary on the emasculine, emasculate. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm Caitlin, Oh my god, the the emasculation is that
Speaker 1: the word great? Oh that was not a way masculinization.
Speaker 1: No too, It's to emasculate, not to emasculinize, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's the emasculation, Thank you so much. I have
Speaker 1: a master's degree in screenwriting and writing in words from
Speaker 1: Boston University. I I don't know how to read this word. Okay,
Speaker 1: the emasculation of men in American culture. So that's like
Speaker 1: a common thesis where it's like men they like to
Speaker 1: shop now, so they are not men anymore. Um, So
Speaker 1: that's what has often been commented about this movie. Okay.
Speaker 1: I was curious, what was like the general ship. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen this movie since you were in
Speaker 1: middle school, what were like the big things that stood
Speaker 1: out to you on a rewatch? The fascism part. That
Speaker 1: definitely didn't pick up that at first, um, because I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was even it was all around me.
Speaker 1: It's like, God, it's the how grandiose the plans got
Speaker 1: and how like successful he was at Tyler as Tyler Dirton.
Speaker 1: That's what really stood out to me the most, because
Speaker 1: now I as an adult, I realized how easy it
Speaker 1: is to fail. Uh. And the fact that his alter ego,
Speaker 1: of which he was completely unaware is like incredibly successful
Speaker 1: at literally everything he does and it's very charismatic and
Speaker 1: people like him and he has sex and and he
Speaker 1: knows all the bombs. Um. Is like if if I
Speaker 1: could create an alter ego and be way more successful
Speaker 1: at that, Like yeah, I dissociated away. Yeah. Like technically
Speaker 1: Project Mayhem should have been like Firefest, like in terms
Speaker 1: of how it played out, Like I just should have
Speaker 1: been like, who's in charge here? What Tyler Dirton in
Speaker 1: to run Firefest? And you don't need the documentaries then,
Speaker 1: because it I have had a hit. I want Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime to release a Firefest documentary where it's like Tyler
Speaker 1: Dirton and Jar Rule a Jar rules, Like I want
Speaker 1: to wish a happy birthday to Tyler Dirt and the
Speaker 1: coolest guy in the world. Uh, yeah, that's a guy
Speaker 1: I hadn't even thought of that, Like, there's there's no
Speaker 1: way that this should have worked out. And it's also
Speaker 1: not even like we're made to think that Edward Norton's
Speaker 1: character is like hypercompetent. He seems like that's like the
Speaker 1: opposite of what his character is very average, and that's
Speaker 1: the whole point. He's the everyman, but within every man,
Speaker 1: learn a brad bit not the message of the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um that was. There was a great video that we
Speaker 1: highly recommend to to all listeners that past guest of
Speaker 1: our show, Maggie may Fish, made about this movie. It's
Speaker 1: all about the fascism undertones of this movie, so which
Speaker 1: we will only lightly get into, So definitely watch that
Speaker 1: if you if you want to learn more about it.
Speaker 1: But she opens her videos so funny where she she says,
Speaker 1: there's a guy who's really cool and has a lot
Speaker 1: of sex and fights and always wins, and that awesome
Speaker 1: guy is me. It's literally the movie, that's all it is.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you feel like an Edward Norton, don't worry, dog,
Speaker 1: you are a funck machine. Oh gosh, well, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about the romantic relationship. I'd like to start there
Speaker 1: because that's pretty much the only context with which Marla
Speaker 1: Singer exists in this story. Because we have pretty much
Speaker 1: exactly one female character in the movie. Her name is
Speaker 1: Marla Singer. There's a woman named Chloe, and we can
Speaker 1: touch on her, but she gets maybe thirty seconds of
Speaker 1: screen time. Not that. More like, it's much more than that.
Speaker 1: This movie hates women in a way that I never like.
Speaker 1: With each subsequent viewing, I recognize something like this movie
Speaker 1: has absolute contempt for women and all things vaguely feminine. Yes,
Speaker 1: So if we're looking at Flight Club sort of as
Speaker 1: like a love story, uh, which it is, because I
Speaker 1: mean the movie opens with the narrator saying, like, because
Speaker 1: we see all the imagery of like Brad Pitts has
Speaker 1: a gun in Edward Norton's mouth, and we're like, oh, felic,
Speaker 1: We're like yes, and they're talking about all the bombs
Speaker 1: and stuff, and that voiceover narration says, like, all this
Speaker 1: is happening right now because of a women named Marla Singer.
Speaker 1: She ruined everything. And then the middle of the movie
Speaker 1: is this pretty much ongoing sexual relationship between her and
Speaker 1: Tyler Dirt in which is Jack the narrator Imagine if
Speaker 1: you were like just having sex with Edward Norton, what
Speaker 1: a bummer. And the the end, like I said, is
Speaker 1: like them holding hands, They're looking at each other kind
Speaker 1: of googly eyed, and like the music swells and we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: what a moment they're having. But this just like feels
Speaker 1: like the type of romance that Hollywood thinks appeals to men,
Speaker 1: or that should appeal to men, because this is a
Speaker 1: relationship where like Jack has all of the power over
Speaker 1: the woman, he is constantly miss treating her, and she
Speaker 1: keeps coming back despite all that. And then we're meant
Speaker 1: to believe that the one of the reasons that she
Speaker 1: does come back is that he is just so good
Speaker 1: at fucking, Like he focks her brains out and it's
Speaker 1: amazing she's putting up Edward Norton. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: and as someone who has returned to Dick that it
Speaker 1: was not admirable like you're like Edward Norton, Okay, Like,
Speaker 1: but a movie like this like sends a message to like,
Speaker 1: you know, the teenage boys that I was trying to
Speaker 1: date in high school that are like, oh, you can
Speaker 1: like treat women like shit and like they'll just come
Speaker 1: back to you if you have a dick, and to
Speaker 1: young women. I think that the implication of this movie
Speaker 1: is like men are more complicated than they appear, which
Speaker 1: I have not found to be true. Like there's a
Speaker 1: whole another person in there that's it's not true. It's
Speaker 1: usually just the one. Yeah. The context in which they
Speaker 1: meant to just kind of weird because it wasn't like
Speaker 1: a common interest so much as like how do you
Speaker 1: have as many problems that I have? Um? And then
Speaker 1: just like meeting up in like a very commiserative kind
Speaker 1: of like way. It's like super romantic. Um, when somebody
Speaker 1: sees you miserable, that's really hot, right, and then like
Speaker 1: negotiates with her so that he never has to see
Speaker 1: her again. But at the end there in Love their
Speaker 1: meeting is really is really interesting because like the way
Speaker 1: the movie introduces her, because this movie is so voice
Speaker 1: over heavy and David Fincher apparently I was God. The
Speaker 1: more I read about this person, the more I just
Speaker 1: wanna just I don't know what. I just thought of
Speaker 1: five horrible things and I won't say anything. But he
Speaker 1: made a movie that was like, no, Mark Zuckerberg is cool,
Speaker 1: Like he's horrible. He's the worst. Mark Zuckerberg is, above
Speaker 1: all things not not cool. He's also waging wars in
Speaker 1: foreign countries, but above all he is not cool. But
Speaker 1: David Fincher said he fired a producer who said that
Speaker 1: the voiceover sounded stupid, who may have been the smartest
Speaker 1: person working on the movie. Yes, but the way, anyways,
Speaker 1: the way we meet Marla, like, immediately she is framed
Speaker 1: as kind of like a fem Fay Tall kind of character,
Speaker 1: where she's taking a dragon a cigarette, she's wearing the
Speaker 1: tilted hat. She's like framed as like the dirtiest, grimiest
Speaker 1: possible version of a fem Fay Tall and the yeah,
Speaker 1: the voiceover literally says she ruined everything. She's a parasite,
Speaker 1: and then explains, I mean in a more like clear
Speaker 1: way than I remembered that the reason that Jack doesn't
Speaker 1: like her is because she reminds him of himself, which
Speaker 1: is an interesting theme and could I think speak to
Speaker 1: how some toxic relationships work, But the movie doesn't do
Speaker 1: that at all. It then just spends the rest of
Speaker 1: the their story distracting you from what Marla is going
Speaker 1: through by you not knowing what's going on, and then
Speaker 1: a second viewing, it's more just like showing what the
Speaker 1: magic trick is and like, oh, I guess she really
Speaker 1: would be confused and hurt here, Oh well, right, which
Speaker 1: I want to go over the like story beats of
Speaker 1: the movie from Marla's point of view, because she is
Speaker 1: in an emotionally abusive relationship with Edward Nor honestly so,
Speaker 1: she even brad Pitt. She meets a guy who is
Speaker 1: like very contemptuous of her, and then she calls him
Speaker 1: because she's in the middle of what may or may
Speaker 1: not be a suicide attempt. Hard to really tell because
Speaker 1: the movie does not handle suicidality or a mental illness.
Speaker 1: Well no, it makes it seem like a bid at
Speaker 1: attention and wanting to see someone again, which is like
Speaker 1: we don't even need to say it's sucked up, but
Speaker 1: it's sucked up. And then apparently he like takes her
Speaker 1: and brings her back to his dilapidated house and then
Speaker 1: like fox her better than she's ever been had sex
Speaker 1: with before. Uh, I don't know why I said it
Speaker 1: like that, but um. And then the following morning he
Speaker 1: acts as if he has no memory of them having
Speaker 1: sex or hanging out or anything like that. And then
Speaker 1: he's like, what are you doing in my house? And
Speaker 1: she's like what fuck you? Then and then like leaves
Speaker 1: because at this point he does not know that he's
Speaker 1: Tyler during and it takes two hours to figure it out.
Speaker 1: And then this pattern repeats itself for again what we
Speaker 1: can assume to be months. And then she shows up
Speaker 1: at one point towards the end and he tells her
Speaker 1: to her face, Tyler is not here. That would be
Speaker 1: like if I came to your house, Jamie and I
Speaker 1: was like hey Jamie, and then you were like, Jamie's
Speaker 1: not here. That's like dating Edward Norton and being like
Speaker 1: Edward Norton here right now, and you'll be like you,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not dating Edward Norton anymore. Also, he's
Speaker 1: like holding like a handle of liquor when he's saying that, Like,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you just assume he's drunk? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like nothing about their relationship, and I think that
Speaker 1: that kind of speaks to like some of the like
Speaker 1: counting on the audience to be paying more attention to
Speaker 1: the magic trick than the characterization, because it does seem
Speaker 1: like if Marlow were written realistically, that she would catch
Speaker 1: on sooner. But the way women are written in this
Speaker 1: movie are as complete idiot, incompetent consumers, which is expressed
Speaker 1: through the like I'm selling rich women's fat asses back
Speaker 1: to them when Tyler starts making the soap and selling
Speaker 1: it like there's no female character that is made to
Speaker 1: seem anything less than completely oblivious, and that includes the
Speaker 1: Chloe character as well. It's just yeah, I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole setup of the movie, the fact that we're going
Speaker 1: in and out of his mental illness and from his
Speaker 1: point of view, makes it such that she can never
Speaker 1: be an expert, She can never know anything. He will
Speaker 1: constantly be both the expert and the person discovering themselves
Speaker 1: throughout the journey, so she can have no input whatsoever
Speaker 1: because we're just seeing what's going on in his set,
Speaker 1: So like, it's set up so that she has no
Speaker 1: input or any impact whatsoever what's going on with totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she would have discovered in months. I mean, like, would
Speaker 1: you not figure out that the person you're with is
Speaker 1: dressing like you know, at least something wasn't right, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like it seems like they were spending I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know how much time they were
Speaker 1: spending together, but she seems invested in the relationship, and
Speaker 1: so I don't I mean, I don't know. She's also
Speaker 1: not a real person, So I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to hurt her, feeling like she's she's fake. Well,
Speaker 1: there is a theory something you know when you go
Speaker 1: onto Jack Dirton dot com and two hours reading about
Speaker 1: a fan theory about it presented some compelling arguments that
Speaker 1: both that Jack Dirton dot com Yeah, that both Bob
Speaker 1: and Marla, like the Tyler Dirton character, are figments of
Speaker 1: Jack's imagination, which I'd buy that it feels there's a
Speaker 1: lot of clues. I'm not gonna, you know, go conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists on anyone, but so she might not even be real.
Speaker 1: But I think that's not really helpful for us to
Speaker 1: talk about because the movie at least presents her as
Speaker 1: being real. So yeah, and then the rest of their
Speaker 1: relationship is they meet up somewhere and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: the full extent of our relationship and not been clear
Speaker 1: to me until now. Sorry, I haven't been treating you
Speaker 1: so well. And then in his apology he says, give
Speaker 1: me fifteen seconds and shut your mouth and don't move.
Speaker 1: So that's really nice hot and then she's brought back
Speaker 1: at the very end against her will. And then he's like,
Speaker 1: you caught me like a really strange time in my life.
Speaker 1: And she's like, hold on hand. And then she's like,
Speaker 1: better hold hands with him, maybe like hold his jaw.
Speaker 1: That's what he means. Yeah, he needs medical attention. Tyler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean the movie like skips over all
Speaker 1: the complexities of a woman staying in a relationship with
Speaker 1: an emotionally abusive partner, like glasses over all of that,
Speaker 1: and it, Yeah, it does make her out to just
Speaker 1: seem like a crazy, desperate idiot, which is how Tyler
Speaker 1: views her at least, and sort of Elusa several times.
Speaker 1: But the movie does nothing to challenge that, which means
Speaker 1: it's a poor adaptation of us attire if it presents
Speaker 1: a stupid idea with no like it's just oh God,
Speaker 1: David Fincher, You fucking idiot. I can't stand damn there. Okay,
Speaker 1: some things David Fincher has said. Sorry, literally, David Fincher
Speaker 1: has quote, I think a film set is a fascist dictatorship.
Speaker 1: Uh So, if you want any ideas on how David
Speaker 1: Fincher feels about fascism besides the fact that he made
Speaker 1: a movie about how Mark Zuckerberg is cool, that direct
Speaker 1: quote might be helpful that I mean, maybe his film
Speaker 1: stand sort of fascist dictatorship. It sounds like they are
Speaker 1: because he's like the director that does a shot like
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm an a tour, which just means I'm
Speaker 1: emotionally abusive to people around me. Um, but he like
Speaker 1: makes everyone do the same shot like nine thousand times
Speaker 1: and then like, I don't know, he's a he's an
Speaker 1: icky guy. Hey, Jamie, what do you say we take
Speaker 1: a real quick break and then we'll come back for more.
Speaker 1: Sounds good to me, right, Marla. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much validity this has, but I did right in my
Speaker 1: eltes that she's a manic pixie nightmare girl. Oh We've
Speaker 1: got okay if people like it, good, um, because she's
Speaker 1: like doing all this stuff for she like walks into
Speaker 1: traffic and just like stands in the middle of the road.
Speaker 1: She's like stealing other people's clothes from a laundromat and
Speaker 1: then taking them immediately to a thrift shop to sell them,
Speaker 1: like Zoe Decanelle didn't mess exactly. There's her famous line
Speaker 1: of like, I haven't been funked like that since grade school.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I haven't been head sexed with like that
Speaker 1: since grade school, which is which is unfortunately kind of
Speaker 1: like a subtext that is used in stories a lot
Speaker 1: to like imply that, like this woman is damaged because
Speaker 1: she was sexually abused as a child, Like it's a
Speaker 1: real classy yeah for a character you're not even intending
Speaker 1: to write. And then in Maggie Mayfish's videos say about
Speaker 1: this movie, she also points out that the way that
Speaker 1: she's framed by the camera is that the camera is
Speaker 1: often above her, and like cinematic language dictates that we
Speaker 1: are like literally and figuratively looking down on her, like
Speaker 1: it's a way to convey that she has no power.
Speaker 1: And then conversely, like Tyler Dirton is often shot with
Speaker 1: like an upshot, so he's made to seem like powerful
Speaker 1: and empowered and all of that, so really an abs
Speaker 1: based culture. And then just like the way that the
Speaker 1: men talk about Marla, Jack says at one point, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna grab that little bit Marla singer and scream at her.
Speaker 1: See his fantasy where he does, which is yeah. And
Speaker 1: then a little later on, Tyler says, you flucked her, right,
Speaker 1: and then he's like, she's limber a silly cuz, which
Speaker 1: I had to look up with that ment it basically
Speaker 1: that's a couzy. It's a diminutive, yeah, because yeah, it's
Speaker 1: basically like a slut um. And then he says something like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's in love with the sport fucking yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: just constantly like Tyler's talking about her as though she's
Speaker 1: an object. Jack is talking about her as though she's
Speaker 1: a parasite. She's repulsive, yeah, I mean. And then and
Speaker 1: then there's that one scene between Jack and Marla that
Speaker 1: seems to be their whole relationship and sort of like
Speaker 1: as close as you can get to the movie statement
Speaker 1: on who she has, where there's that question of what
Speaker 1: does a weaker person get by latching onto a stronger person,
Speaker 1: When like Jack asks Marla that directly, and she responds
Speaker 1: as if that is just true and that's how their
Speaker 1: relationship is, and she accepts the fact that she's the
Speaker 1: weaker person and he's the stronger person. And even though
Speaker 1: at this point in the movie we don't know that
Speaker 1: they're the same person. Uh sorry spoilers that, you know,
Speaker 1: she just passively accepts that she's the weaker person in
Speaker 1: the relationship, which is how that argument would go for
Speaker 1: no one I can think of if like, so you're
Speaker 1: like fully the sub right, so like why am I
Speaker 1: so amazing? Like who would have who would have that?
Speaker 1: Or like it's just totally irrational even in the world
Speaker 1: of the movie that that conversation could happen so directly,
Speaker 1: but she's written in such a like one dimensional way
Speaker 1: where she can't respond. And also, like gender essential ism
Speaker 1: is like at full blast in this movie, where women
Speaker 1: are women in the most traditional possible sense, where they're
Speaker 1: you know, like when we were talking about with a
Speaker 1: lot of things about Marlo's character, where she's you know,
Speaker 1: she's emotionally dependent on him. She kind of go on
Speaker 1: with without him, and she needs the strength of a
Speaker 1: man to go on, like and on the other side,
Speaker 1: I mean this movie is more famous for being like
Speaker 1: male gender essential is um of tough boy fight Uh no, homo,
Speaker 1: but we're almost kissing kind of vibe. And like, given
Speaker 1: this movie's attitude towards men, the way Marla and Chloe
Speaker 1: are written, like kind of line up with that like
Speaker 1: essentialist view. But you know it's wrong and this movie
Speaker 1: is wrong. But everything. Yeah, like satire is like really
Speaker 1: dangerous if it's not taking seriously, Like you know, like
Speaker 1: Rachel Ray was definitely satire and then they gave her
Speaker 1: a talk show. Um. But I mean like if if
Speaker 1: people are the majority of people consuming it are interpreting
Speaker 1: it in the wrong way, then obviously it's that negative.
Speaker 1: Like it's not it's not helping, it's only hurting, and
Speaker 1: that at that point you're doing a disservice to society
Speaker 1: and like generations to come. Because I think it's still popular.
Speaker 1: I still see those posters. But yeah, I really hope
Speaker 1: people still don't watch this movie, but I think they do.
Speaker 1: It's I if you're a youth out there and you're
Speaker 1: considering watching Fight Club, try not to, like, just don't
Speaker 1: watch it. I don't believe in encouraging young people to
Speaker 1: watch problematic movies as a study. I'm just like, just
Speaker 1: forget it. Ever happened, it would we would all be
Speaker 1: better off. And unfortunately, there's not that much to talk
Speaker 1: about about Marla otherwise, because that's really all you know
Speaker 1: about her is how she exists in relation to either
Speaker 1: Tyler or Jack, especially because she like disappears for large
Speaker 1: chunks of the movie and like it's not on screen
Speaker 1: for like twenty minutes at a time kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But going back to you know, the satire and the
Speaker 1: message that the movie is attempting to send, which is
Speaker 1: that you know, consumerism is bad. Stuff is bad, which
Speaker 1: is like true, but the answer to consumerism isn't fascism,
Speaker 1: like right, it seems like really shooting a band aid,
Speaker 1: especially because like I mean, you can kind of boil
Speaker 1: down a story into the Jack narrator character being so
Speaker 1: upset that he's bought into consumers culture, and part of
Speaker 1: that is like him feeling emasculated. He's like, I buy
Speaker 1: Ikea and I know what a duvet is, so I'm
Speaker 1: feminine and that's horrible. I'm gonna pull up everything I own.
Speaker 1: So it's basically equating. Well, first of all, it's like well,
Speaker 1: women be shopping, um, and it's equating like consumerism with
Speaker 1: like femininity, right, and how that's horror. Anything feminine is
Speaker 1: is bad. That's the most confusing. Like equalization this movie
Speaker 1: does is like consumers equal women equals bad and then
Speaker 1: just like uses the transitive property like, oh, women equal bad.
Speaker 1: Sick like the because everything Tyler says about consumerism is
Speaker 1: made to sound super feminist, like the way he's saying
Speaker 1: like in that conversation where Tyler is about to be
Speaker 1: like I'm hot, punch me, you know, like his whole
Speaker 1: selling jack on on the idea of like stuff is bullshit.
Speaker 1: Is he's like condemning the idea of homemaking or nesting.
Speaker 1: He uses that word specifically, which is like associated with women,
Speaker 1: especially like in the nineties. And then like part of
Speaker 1: the reason I think this movie was able to come
Speaker 1: out because two years after this movie came out, it
Speaker 1: couldn't come out. You couldn't make a movie about domestic
Speaker 1: terrorism in two thousand and one. I wonder why because
Speaker 1: of Shrek, because of the big event of two thousand one.
Speaker 1: So because Shrek's on the horizon, Uh, everything Tyler is
Speaker 1: saying is like consumerism is making you a girl. And
Speaker 1: so the way to not be a consumer is to
Speaker 1: be a boy, which is what and like that's literally
Speaker 1: what he's saying. He's like, fuck mart the Steward, punch
Speaker 1: me in the mouth, that kill your friends. Like, wait,
Speaker 1: doesn't just say funk Martha Stewart. He says funk Martha Stewart.
Speaker 1: Martha's polishing brass on the Titanic Titan. Okay, anyway, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, don't be a girl who shops, be a
Speaker 1: man who fights other men, and you're like punched into
Speaker 1: a bloody pulp, which is like one of the more
Speaker 1: frustrating messages of this movie because if it was just
Speaker 1: like no one should be a consumer, I still wouldn't
Speaker 1: be Like, okay, so we should engage in domestic terrorism,
Speaker 1: but like adding that middle step of like because consumerism exists,
Speaker 1: like it just totally blames consumerism on women, who, in
Speaker 1: the ninety nineties are the primary like products are pushed
Speaker 1: more at women because women are the primary consumers of
Speaker 1: beauty products and fashion products and home products because of
Speaker 1: the way society's works since forever. And that's not but
Speaker 1: but there's no accountability in like Tyler's creative, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's these billionaires that are like making it impossible
Speaker 1: to be a woman who exists without these products. Like
Speaker 1: that is never addressed. It's just like, yeah, they buy it.
Speaker 1: They're fucking idiots. Let's make soap and like it's just
Speaker 1: it's for like it totally blames American consumerism on women,
Speaker 1: where even if women are a large amount of American
Speaker 1: consumers and they are, part of that reason is because
Speaker 1: of how society is set up, where you know, women
Speaker 1: have to in theory, engage in consumerism more to be
Speaker 1: considered legitimate. Right, Obviously, it's men in power who are
Speaker 1: making upstream or making decisions that are causing the women
Speaker 1: downs to consume more to begin with, because we're not
Speaker 1: the ones making all those decisions. We're not trying to
Speaker 1: spend more money. We just want buy It's all right,
Speaker 1: I just want a job, some respect. Just still frowned on.
Speaker 1: And along that same line is like the movie's obsession
Speaker 1: with testicles, Dick's buildos, breasts. Yeah, it's like he's all
Speaker 1: of these Caitlin, don't say those words. Everyone's peeps and nuts. Sex.
Speaker 1: Don't say that, definitely don't. But there's all this talk
Speaker 1: of Bob not having testicles because they had to be
Speaker 1: removed because of his testicular cancer. Uh, and he's all like,
Speaker 1: I'm still a man, right and h then he grows
Speaker 1: what are described as bitch tits? Can we talk about Bob?
Speaker 1: Because I first, what about Bob? What about? Sorry? I
Speaker 1: just first of all, I love Bad out of Hell
Speaker 1: and Bad out of Hell too, and I love meat
Speaker 1: Love and I think thank you me Love. Okay, meet
Speaker 1: Love kills it in this movie, funk. Everyone who disagrees
Speaker 1: Meet Love absolutely destroys. Meat Loaf is interesting and cool.
Speaker 1: Meat Loaf was there when jf K was assassinated, but
Speaker 1: he was like ten But that's just a fun fact
Speaker 1: about him. He didn't do it, but what if he did?
Speaker 1: New theory? Anyways, meat Loaf is good in this movie.
Speaker 1: Just had to say that because I really, I'm just like,
Speaker 1: why didn't me Love get more roles? Answer? According to
Speaker 1: every theory read, because he's mean and difficult to work with.
Speaker 1: So anyways, Meet Love does a good job in spite
Speaker 1: of his personal you know, shortcomings. Uh. But the Bob
Speaker 1: character in general is so frustrating because he is the
Speaker 1: only man in this entire story who is capable of emotion,
Speaker 1: or like the only character we get to know was
Speaker 1: capable of emotion, who's capable of empathy, who's capable of
Speaker 1: building like non sexual relationships with other men, like just
Speaker 1: he's able to do a lot like he's by today's standard,
Speaker 1: I'd like to think, like a better feminist icon, Bob,
Speaker 1: where's that shirt? Where I it's And it's like, and
Speaker 1: I even when I saw this maybe the first time,
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, Bob fucking rules. But what I was
Speaker 1: probably saying was I love Bad out of Hell and
Speaker 1: I love Melo. But his character is the only man
Speaker 1: we get to know in this story capable of emotion
Speaker 1: and empathy, And it is made out at every turn
Speaker 1: to look ridiculous, to look emasculating, to look embarrassing. That
Speaker 1: a man capable of empathy is not a man. Is
Speaker 1: the message to the point where like you're saying, like
Speaker 1: he's given like essentially female breasts, and he his testicles
Speaker 1: are are taken away from him by the story, and
Speaker 1: it's just meant to, you know, it's clearly saying a
Speaker 1: man who can empathize with other people is a woman,
Speaker 1: is not a man, And women, as we know from
Speaker 1: the transitive property are bad and so what happens to Bob,
Speaker 1: which I don't think we we hit on in in
Speaker 1: the recap is Bob is radicalized by Tyler dirtan uh
Speaker 1: and he comes meat Love is really acting the hell
Speaker 1: out of this scene. He goes up to Edward Norton,
Speaker 1: He's like, have you heard about this club? And he's like,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of rules. But the first rule is
Speaker 1: I can't say anything, and we're like, oh, meat Love,
Speaker 1: you're great and that he so anyways, meat Love joins
Speaker 1: fight Club and we're like no, and and then meat
Speaker 1: Love joints Project Mayhem, which also requires I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's extremely ficious dick where they're like the rules for
Speaker 1: Project Mayhem if you can pass muster and getting the
Speaker 1: ship kicked out of you by strangers every week is
Speaker 1: you get to stand outside Tyler Dirton's ship whole house
Speaker 1: for three days while being called a number of epithets,
Speaker 1: and then you can go inside his ship whole house
Speaker 1: and work for free. But first you have to become
Speaker 1: a skinhead. You have to shave off all your Oh
Speaker 1: yeah that like, yeah, the fashion imagery is strong and
Speaker 1: like yeah, you're stripped of your identity and you lose
Speaker 1: your name. So so Bob enters Project Mayhem and then
Speaker 1: one of the Project Mayhem outings and this is the
Speaker 1: most frustrating, ridiculous death I've ever heard, and the movie
Speaker 1: makes you think it is so fucking cool and righteous.
Speaker 1: Is Bob is smashing in the window of a Starbucks
Speaker 1: and is shot to death. And they killed the only
Speaker 1: man capable of empathy. And then Tyler Dirton brings him
Speaker 1: back to the ship whole house and is like this
Speaker 1: was worth it, and everyone's like, uh huh. And then
Speaker 1: they finally give Bob his name back, and I just
Speaker 1: wish that they had chanted his name was meat Low.
Speaker 1: I think that would have been a power. But that
Speaker 1: was just horrible. Yeah, but I wasn't even just like
Speaker 1: the only one capable of empathy so much is the
Speaker 1: only one that really showed any genuine emotion, Like when
Speaker 1: he was sad before, he was like jubilant when he joined,
Speaker 1: he was super excited about it. None of the other
Speaker 1: members of Mayhem, including Tyler, including Edward Norton, actually really
Speaker 1: showed any kind of excitement or disappointment. Anger is like
Speaker 1: the only other thing. But he adn't showed any even
Speaker 1: Marlin didn't really show much right the frustration like bouncing off,
Speaker 1: but like he was the only one who had who
Speaker 1: was a dynamic character, and that's I guess he was
Speaker 1: kind of a gro straight man, who's the person we
Speaker 1: were supposed to like, so that when he died it
Speaker 1: was and there's and there's a few moments where at
Speaker 1: least Edward Norton's side of the character shows some if
Speaker 1: not like not empathy, but some sort of attack matchment
Speaker 1: to Bob, because you remember the scene where Bob standing
Speaker 1: outside and time I was like, fuck you get out
Speaker 1: of here, but then Edward Norton goes after him, is like, no,
Speaker 1: join my club and and effectively killing meat Loaf just
Speaker 1: like meat Loaf saw JFK get killed. So really a
Speaker 1: full circle. Thank you so much. I can't believe meet
Speaker 1: Love saw JFK get killed. That's so interesting. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's why r I P JFK. I mean, I say
Speaker 1: it in every episode, but now more than one. Last
Speaker 1: thing I want to touch on regarding the movies, like
Speaker 1: fixation on like oh, if you have testicles, you're a man.
Speaker 1: If you have breast you're a woman like that, that's
Speaker 1: just like a very STIs normative stands to take. And
Speaker 1: of course the movie wasn't thinking anything about that. Besides
Speaker 1: just like, oh, how dare men ever be emasculated in
Speaker 1: any way? It's horrible if that happened. It's so oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so essentialist, and it's so yeah, disregarding of anything
Speaker 1: outside of his head norms. And and it's again bizarre
Speaker 1: and frustrating because it is a story that was written
Speaker 1: by a queer author who deals with a lot of
Speaker 1: queer topics and deals with trans characters like later in
Speaker 1: in his books. And so it's just like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: this book is just is so repressed. It is. It
Speaker 1: is repression for for two hours. It's so long too,
Speaker 1: it's like two hours and twenty minutes. Dare they I
Speaker 1: just the movie allowed to be that long or longer?
Speaker 1: Is of course Titanic um? I mean? And I'd say
Speaker 1: even about the a lot of the testicles to it.
Speaker 1: They didn't just use it to defend the men's masculinity.
Speaker 1: They also use it. They had Marlo very explicitly state
Speaker 1: that she does not own testicles. It's just like another
Speaker 1: like looking down pointing out the fact she's not like
Speaker 1: because she doesn't of this and she's hanging out these
Speaker 1: people who don't have this, and that's why they don't
Speaker 1: deserve it. Yeah, I mean, it's I think we assumed that, like,
Speaker 1: we assumed that she didn't. But the line was even
Speaker 1: that funny. It was a hack line. I love uh,
Speaker 1: but it is true that that the the normativity of
Speaker 1: I mean, and even in the way you see the
Speaker 1: room full of men who, with the exception of Marla
Speaker 1: and Jack, don't have their testicles anymore, they are suddenly
Speaker 1: reduced to these comically emotional sobbing rex and the subtext
Speaker 1: of that is because they don't have testicles anymore. And
Speaker 1: the one man we see speaking group says his wife
Speaker 1: left him because he didn't have his wife. It didn't
Speaker 1: left him because he wasn't able to give her children,
Speaker 1: which both implies one women are bad and also implies
Speaker 1: that relationship can only be one exact way or it
Speaker 1: will never work. And so you know, Fuck, here's a
Speaker 1: fun line that gets said in the movie. Um it's Tyler.
Speaker 1: He's in a bathtub. He says, we're a generation of
Speaker 1: men raised by women. I wonder if another woman is
Speaker 1: really what we need, because they're talking about whether or
Speaker 1: not they should get married. Basically that whether well oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's the same scene where Edward Norton's like, I'm thirty.
Speaker 1: I can't handle nothing. I'm a thirty year old boy.
Speaker 1: Bo grow up it you live in a ship hole.
Speaker 1: I want to yell that at every thirty year old minute.
Speaker 1: And then also, um, there are various references to the
Speaker 1: Jack character feeling alone because his father abandoned him when
Speaker 1: he was a kid, which kind of suggest it's like
Speaker 1: the movie suggesting that a lack of a male presence
Speaker 1: or a father figure in his life might be responsible
Speaker 1: for like whatever mental illness break that's happening to you
Speaker 1: up without a dad, and then later on you want
Speaker 1: to make up for all that lost fighting times, for
Speaker 1: fighting wherever you get it is that you a Chad
Speaker 1: Tyler is just hoping he'll accidentally hit his dad. That's
Speaker 1: like very much a palaic message, where in everything written
Speaker 1: about his book, he's like, well, there's not enough good
Speaker 1: male heroes for men, and like you're just like, that's
Speaker 1: the hill you're choosing to die on. Read the room, dummy,
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, I wanted to touch really quickly on
Speaker 1: the time period where this movie is coming out, because
Speaker 1: the book was released in nineties six, the movie is
Speaker 1: released in ninety nine, so it's all like second Clinton administration,
Speaker 1: which does explain a lot of the hatred of the
Speaker 1: consumerism because this is like when the when the economy
Speaker 1: is doing relatively well, and so anytime people have a
Speaker 1: little bit of money, you know, they're like, hey, wait,
Speaker 1: who has my money? And they get angry fair. Uh
Speaker 1: consumerism sucks. That said, I do enjoy products, so confusing,
Speaker 1: but uh, but the way it connects to women, and
Speaker 1: I was trying to do some research connecting you know,
Speaker 1: like why does this book and then the movie make
Speaker 1: such an unapologetic women equal consumers equals bad like equivocation,
Speaker 1: And I mean, if you think about there's so many
Speaker 1: villainized women in the nineties, and there's also a lot
Speaker 1: of feminism that comes up in the nineties, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that's going on at once that
Speaker 1: made men angry at women. So on one side, in
Speaker 1: n you have the Violence Against Women act Um, which
Speaker 1: did a lot of net good in theory for American women.
Speaker 1: Ruth Bader Ginsberg is put on the Supreme Court. There
Speaker 1: are a number of good things that happened for American
Speaker 1: women around this time. However, a lot of the main
Speaker 1: nineties American women that are remembered are remembered as villains
Speaker 1: of the moment. And that's like you're Monica Lewinski's and
Speaker 1: you're Anita Hills, and your Tanya Hardings and your Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton's at times of different women who were villainized for
Speaker 1: being to something or other, and then the general public
Speaker 1: and like literally everyone would just kind of run with
Speaker 1: the narrative of like their fucking things up, and feminism
Speaker 1: have empowered these figures too much and now they're wrecking society.
Speaker 1: And so that's as close as I've gotten to, uh,
Speaker 1: why it is so easy and why people were so
Speaker 1: responsive at this specific time to like, oh, yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes sense that women are ruining everything and that the
Speaker 1: answer is to be is like old school michiesemo and
Speaker 1: and and killing meat loaf, God, killing meat. Love's never
Speaker 1: the answer. I don't think I agree, Thank you. Can
Speaker 1: we touch a little bit on the portrayal of mental
Speaker 1: illness in this movie, Yeah, let's do it. Someone just
Speaker 1: inhaled deeply. M I mean, the Jack character has some
Speaker 1: unidentified well, he has insomnia, and he's like, when you
Speaker 1: have insomnia, you're never really awake and you're never really asleep.
Speaker 1: As someone who has insomnia, I can attest that that
Speaker 1: is not true. Um, so that that's wrong first of all,
Speaker 1: and then he has some other unidentified mental illness where
Speaker 1: he is, you know, he has an alternate personality, right, So,
Speaker 1: I mean the movie doesn't handle anything about this well.
Speaker 1: And then as far as like Marlow with her suicide attempt,
Speaker 1: her quote about that is this isn't a real suicide thing.
Speaker 1: This is probably one of those cry for help things
Speaker 1: which just like completely minimizes it's suicidal. It's so cavalier,
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to make her seem like a manipulative
Speaker 1: woman and or the manic pistie nightmare Lady Maths. Dechanelle
Speaker 1: just took a bottle of hills. I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: crazy like that, like stop, yeah, I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: mental illness is not treating one of the things I
Speaker 1: was retroactively grateful for just based on how mental illness
Speaker 1: is treated in in a lot of movies, is at
Speaker 1: the very very very least they don't name what the
Speaker 1: narrator is supposed to have. I think if they had
Speaker 1: named a specific mental disorder that Jack was supposed to have,
Speaker 1: which almost certainly would not have been portrayed remotely correctly,
Speaker 1: that would have been ten times worse than not naming it,
Speaker 1: because so often it's like anyone who's named bipolar in
Speaker 1: a movie is fucking over every functional bipolar person in
Speaker 1: the in the world. Or you get the case of
Speaker 1: Halloween where the killer is diagnosed by his psychiatrist as evil.
Speaker 1: Is that knowledge diagnosis? I don't know. I haven't read
Speaker 1: the I mean, I think it's great that they didn't
Speaker 1: name a specific mental illness, and I'm sure that did
Speaker 1: a lot of good. But also I could have I
Speaker 1: don't know if that was the intention of so much
Speaker 1: as like now I can mix and match the coolest
Speaker 1: symptoms and then create the coolest ill person, Like insomnia
Speaker 1: is like a cool disease, right, thank you? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like and becoming someone cool that sounds like a cool symptom.
Speaker 1: Like if the side effects were like you might have
Speaker 1: trouble sleeping, but you'll be real cool. Yeah, you'll also
Speaker 1: be brad Pitt. You'll startup script yeah, you're right, this
Speaker 1: could have done a lot of good for the mental
Speaker 1: mentally ill community. I know that that does make a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. Though, yeah it is. It does seem
Speaker 1: to be like kind of copy pasting a lot of
Speaker 1: different symptoms to to make Brad Pitt possible. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, this movie is about a group of men
Speaker 1: who clearly need therapy, and then they're like, what if
Speaker 1: we just punch the ship out of each other instead?
Speaker 1: I mean, also, Edward Norton's character must have had good
Speaker 1: health insurance because he seemed getting fixed. So I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you probably could see a therapist. But right his men,
Speaker 1: it seems like at his job he's got which is
Speaker 1: another thing that is so nineties about this movie. I'm like,
Speaker 1: he can just go to the doctor, Like that was
Speaker 1: something I was thinking. I was like, I wish I
Speaker 1: could just get in a fight and go to a doctor,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately I must bleed to death. Like I can't
Speaker 1: go to a fucking doctor. Imagine do you think podcasters
Speaker 1: can see doctors? They can't. They can't. Is there anything
Speaker 1: else that anyone wants to talk about? I think the
Speaker 1: name is Great Fight Club because it's two things it
Speaker 1: does of right violence and being exclusive about it, and
Speaker 1: you know immediately there's no girls in that fight club.
Speaker 1: We know that in the movies, Like there's a conversation
Speaker 1: with like Marla and Jack is like I found a
Speaker 1: new support group and she's like, what is it? He's like,
Speaker 1: it's for men only? Yeah? Yeah, And Marla runs with
Speaker 1: Darla like from the Little Rascals and singer is a
Speaker 1: recognized name brand of sewing machines sexist. Oh wow, I'm
Speaker 1: not the only one tin hatting over here. Uh. The
Speaker 1: last thing I had in my too Many notes is
Speaker 1: just the the way that sex is treated in this
Speaker 1: movie is treated like it's both a weakness and a
Speaker 1: physical illness, where every ways sex is depicted is made
Speaker 1: to be extremely grotesque, and even in this extremely like
Speaker 1: rigidly had her enormat of movie that Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's like sex with Marla is we're told and from
Speaker 1: what we see is supposed to be gross like it's
Speaker 1: and and paired with what you were saying earlier, if
Speaker 1: everyone is always like is my dick hard or my
Speaker 1: boobs falling off? Like everyone is physically decaying and and
Speaker 1: their teeth are you know, the men are having their
Speaker 1: teeth punched out and their bodies are being desecrated, and
Speaker 1: every woman in the movie thinks they have breast cancer.
Speaker 1: And it's just like everything about the physical body and
Speaker 1: and sex is made to seem like this big disgusting
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe they got that right. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, the only other named woman in the name
Speaker 1: female in the movie, she's dying of cancer. I think
Speaker 1: we are meant to assume. Basically, she says, um, I
Speaker 1: no longer have a fear of death, and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: that's great, and then she says, but I'm lonely. No
Speaker 1: one will have sex with me, and all I want
Speaker 1: to do is just get laid one last time. And
Speaker 1: then she does this whole thing where she's like frantically
Speaker 1: being like, I have lube. Does anyone here want to
Speaker 1: have sex with me? And it's made she's made it
Speaker 1: just seem very pathetic, and that which brings me to
Speaker 1: my next play. I have lube. Uh No, I agree
Speaker 1: with what she has just done. A huge disservice by
Speaker 1: the movies. And then and then she dies, we find
Speaker 1: out Marla tells us super afterthought, Yeah, which is I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the way everything that character. I mean, yeah, like
Speaker 1: she's made to look like Marla physically repulsive, which is
Speaker 1: and which the characters that the movie chooses to make
Speaker 1: look physically repulsive to the narrator, because it always is
Speaker 1: in relation to Jack, Like Jack thinks Marla, Chloe and
Speaker 1: Bob are disgusting and those three. I mean it's the
Speaker 1: two women that we meet and the one man who
Speaker 1: has feminine traits. Um, so Edward Norton hates women. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's use the transit of property. Um. But yeah, Chloe's character,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's unfortunate because she's again like one
Speaker 1: of the not completely nihilistic characters in the New and anyone,
Speaker 1: i mean, anyone who isn't subscribing to this like boring
Speaker 1: funck boy edge Lord nihilism is killed. Like it's fucking ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I mean this is It's at the very
Speaker 1: top of the red flag faith movies list. If someone
Speaker 1: says that they still, you know, hold a candle for
Speaker 1: this movie run in the other direction, they're very dangerous. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i mean it's it's right up there with you know
Speaker 1: what raw the raw gosh drive? Yeah what else? Um,
Speaker 1: we've made a list. Fun was the Alpa scar faced scarface? Oh?
Speaker 1: What's the one with the Irish guys the Boondock Saints? Yeah,
Speaker 1: not that one either. God, most Quentin Tarantino movies are
Speaker 1: just white guys who want to say the N word,
Speaker 1: like it's just all you know. Don't meet anyone and
Speaker 1: don't spend time with anyone, is the lesson. Do we
Speaker 1: have any questions or comments from the crowd? Is anything? Gang? Yes, here,
Speaker 1: I'll come to you so you can talk into the mic.
Speaker 1: What's your name? My name is Marina. Always loved Martha Stewart,
Speaker 1: and so has my mother, and she would randomly yell
Speaker 1: free Martha when she was in jail, and she always
Speaker 1: was saying if she was a man, she would have
Speaker 1: never gone to prison for insider trading. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's true? Your mom is right? I mean, obviously your
Speaker 1: mom is right, But I mean all I I do
Speaker 1: think that at least Martha Stewart got the street cred
Speaker 1: she rightfully deserved as a shameless girl boss capitalist. I
Speaker 1: mean she's yeah, I mean I personally stand Martha. She's
Speaker 1: probably evil, but you know some people, I I've wiped
Speaker 1: my but with a lot of her towels. So I
Speaker 1: guess I feel close to her the way you would
Speaker 1: feel close to a Sharman beard. She's innocent. I wiped
Speaker 1: my ask with towels and a lot. Okay, well wipe.
Speaker 1: It implies like when you're I'm after a shower. Oh
Speaker 1: so you dry, you're asked, I've got a big ass.
Speaker 1: I try it with a towel. So well, does anyone
Speaker 1: else have a question? Jesus Christ, if you want some
Speaker 1: coming closer to the stage. If you can't, my name
Speaker 1: is Rachel Jamie. I bought you a PBR so later on,
Speaker 1: I know, so they're holding it for you back there.
Speaker 1: So with Marla, I feel like my whole relationship with
Speaker 1: Marla is creepy. Do you think that her sleeping with
Speaker 1: the narrator could be rape because he didn't know that
Speaker 1: he was sleeping with her and then she asked about
Speaker 1: it later or like sexual assault? Okay, I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure I might understanding the question. So it
Speaker 1: was later on when she goes back and she's asking
Speaker 1: like about Tyler, and Tyler is not here, but it's
Speaker 1: like he's already had sex with her and not acknowledging it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of creepy. Be totally so is the implication
Speaker 1: that she is raping him. He's raping Okay, oh huh,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting I I hadn't thought of it that way,
Speaker 1: in the sense that he's not being truthful about his identity,
Speaker 1: doesn't remember it, and that he doesn't yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: he never remembers it. It's this thing. Fuck. We never
Speaker 1: see the actual scenes though, right. Yeah, I guess that that.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting I I'd be interested to like talk
Speaker 1: about that more. And I feel like I need to
Speaker 1: watch the movie again to answer that question better. And
Speaker 1: I never want to watch this movie again. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't getten that I thought, But but I understand
Speaker 1: where you're coming from me. That's an interesting question. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Does anyone have opinions on that? They were
Speaker 1: they heard some some murmurs of agreement. Yes, Hey, what
Speaker 1: was your name? Sorry to get so physically close. I
Speaker 1: prefer not to say my name. But as far as
Speaker 1: horrible mistakes that we may or may not have made
Speaker 1: in high school with regards to drugs and alcohol in sex,
Speaker 1: mutual non consent is very much a real thing that
Speaker 1: a lot of us have to work through in terms
Speaker 1: of ways that we were irresponsible and we're also hurt,
Speaker 1: and I feel like this movie does not handle that well.
Speaker 1: But I think that's what that's an instance of, is
Speaker 1: neither party being in a sober, present and active mental
Speaker 1: capacity for consent. Yeah. That makes a lot of a
Speaker 1: sense to me. Thank you. Sure, Yeah, no, that's helpful,
Speaker 1: Thank you. That was you guys should hang out? Uh?
Speaker 1: Any any other there? Yes, there was some. Come on,
Speaker 1: come on down. Um, I just want to know what
Speaker 1: y'all think about Jared Letto's character. Um, you talk about
Speaker 1: femininity being painted as disgusting or repulsive, and Jared Letto
Speaker 1: is described as beautiful and then Edward Norton beats the
Speaker 1: ship out of him because he wanted to destroy something beautiful.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, as we all know, Jared Letto is
Speaker 1: not beautiful. So right off the bat, it's like, who
Speaker 1: was like, we need someone beautiful, and they cast Jared
Speaker 1: Letto and made him look like a neo. Not clearly
Speaker 1: you haven't seen the first half of Requiem for a
Speaker 1: Dream because he's pretty beautiful. I haven't seen that movie.
Speaker 1: Did you get through the second half and just forget that,
Speaker 1: just forget that part but I liked his face tattoo
Speaker 1: and he was the joker, but I mean he was
Speaker 1: damaged boy. He uh yeah, he's described as beautiful and
Speaker 1: then yeah, that's a good beats him to a pulp
Speaker 1: and and the next thing you see him in his
Speaker 1: face is pretty badly disfigured. Um. So that, I mean,
Speaker 1: that is just yet another horrible thing Upward Norton does.
Speaker 1: And if you're given the choice between, they're like, you
Speaker 1: can date Edward Norton or Jared Letto, You're like, I
Speaker 1: would I'd rather be you know, I'm okay. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to have sex anymore and I
Speaker 1: feel good about that. Does that answer your question? A
Speaker 1: few more hands one up? All right? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to say, when we watched this the
Speaker 1: other day, my girlfriend did also refer to her as
Speaker 1: a nightmare Pixy dream girl. Um. And probably a bad question,
Speaker 1: but if there were a role that Alfred Molina would
Speaker 1: play in this movie, what do you think it would be?
Speaker 1: Do you think it would make it better? Or do
Speaker 1: you think that Alfred Molina is too much of a
Speaker 1: classy person to go anywhere near this project? You know, Alfred,
Speaker 1: everyone makes mistakes. Let's say in theory he'd make this mistake.
Speaker 1: I hope if he made this mistake. As a close
Speaker 1: personal friend of mine at this point, I hope if
Speaker 1: he made this mistake, he would make it of the
Speaker 1: way and it would be like, you know, like when
Speaker 1: Deep Roy was all the Lumpa's. It would be like
Speaker 1: an all Alfred Molina reboot of Fight and you play
Speaker 1: every character like and you would be so confused if
Speaker 1: it was all Alfred Millina. First of all, would take
Speaker 1: years to shoot and but so so there'd be slight
Speaker 1: age differences, which would be interesting. I don't know. But
Speaker 1: so at the end, when you find out that Alfred
Speaker 1: Molina and Alfred Molina were the same person, you'd just
Speaker 1: be like, oh, I guess that makes sense. So that's
Speaker 1: what I would do. I think I think he is
Speaker 1: too classy to be anywhere near this movie. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's our friend. We know he's our friend. He touched
Speaker 1: my dog, we're friends. My question is not gonna be
Speaker 1: Angywhears goes, oh this, um, Jamie. Since you read the book,
Speaker 1: I was wondering that, since David Fincher is a garbage person,
Speaker 1: if maybe there was some director that could go over
Speaker 1: it and adapted again, like a Paul Verhoeven who is
Speaker 1: a little bit more experienced with doing like fascist satire,
Speaker 1: if maybe that would make it more redeemable as a
Speaker 1: as a work. That's interesting. Um, I have a great question,
Speaker 1: Like full Disculture, I have not read the book proper
Speaker 1: in many years, but I went back over, like what
Speaker 1: was changed in the adaptation and and all that stuff
Speaker 1: before when we were probably for this episode. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's that's like kind of I don't know. I worry
Speaker 1: that right now, like our culture as it is does
Speaker 1: not seem very prepared for satire. There seems to be
Speaker 1: such like a everything that's happening feels like a badly
Speaker 1: written satire, And so I don't I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, hopefully in years where people
Speaker 1: are not constantly descending into active hell as we are now,
Speaker 1: UM that I I guess if if an adaptation was
Speaker 1: done that I don't know, took the original author's biases
Speaker 1: into account and was able to clearly I mean, it's hard.
Speaker 1: It seems hard for a filmmaker to demonstrate when something
Speaker 1: is clearly satire. But David Fincher. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking this as we were watching this movie.
Speaker 1: I was like, David Fincher probably thinks Elon Musk is awesome,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if this source material is worth readapting.
Speaker 1: And I think if I think it's important to send
Speaker 1: the message that like consumerism and capitalism are bad, and
Speaker 1: I think a much better movie that does that is
Speaker 1: of Course and the Pussycats. So I think we just
Speaker 1: need to keep making let's see some Josie sequels, like
Speaker 1: what And then that kind of reminded me of how
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is an incredibly white movie there,
Speaker 1: you know, I like, hardly any, if any people of
Speaker 1: color in the payment, and that's pretty much. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then there's you know there as we discussed there are
Speaker 1: hardly any women in the movie. But then I was
Speaker 1: I was like, do I want those people to be
Speaker 1: in fight Club? I don't. I don't want anyone to
Speaker 1: be in fight Club. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: wish fight Club in the world. Again, yeah, probably probably
Speaker 1: enough for me. Dog another adaptation we had we had
Speaker 1: another question, Yeah, we have I think we have time
Speaker 1: for one more. Hey, I'm Andrew um same birthdays. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty big deal. Um, I wanted to get your
Speaker 1: thoughts on something, so I read the book to not
Speaker 1: you know, I got a couple of literatis. I like,
Speaker 1: read it once and didn't really like it. My dad
Speaker 1: still buys and we chuck polic books and I'm like,
Speaker 1: please stop. Anyways, marla Is line, I think was something
Speaker 1: along the lines of when she says, I haven't been
Speaker 1: funk like that since grade school. Originally, I want to
Speaker 1: have your abortions. I want to know your thoughts. Read
Speaker 1: that I have agency and I'm making a joke about
Speaker 1: like what I can do with my body instead of
Speaker 1: this thing happened to me and it was terrible. Well,
Speaker 1: David Fincher hates women, so I think that that is
Speaker 1: a beginning, mill and end of that. Uh, well, Fincher
Speaker 1: is evil. Does this movie pass the Bectel test? Say
Speaker 1: it with us. No, that's a hard, no, big fat note.
Speaker 1: What if it did? Do you have to be like
Speaker 1: feminist texts? We take it all that. The only moment
Speaker 1: where where women even interact is when Chloe is being like, someone,
Speaker 1: please fuck me right now, and then another unnamed woman says,
Speaker 1: h thanks Chloe, and then pulls her away from the microphone.
Speaker 1: So that's the only time women interact in the whole movie.
Speaker 1: What if it's like super meta and Tyler Dirden spliced
Speaker 1: in a scene of like two sisters is discussing Judith Butler. Wow,
Speaker 1: and we just didn't see it. Yeah, I saw it.
Speaker 1: Instead of that being like that dick shot at the end,
Speaker 1: it's just feminist talks, Tyler, what a missed opportunity? So wait,
Speaker 1: was Edward Norton working part time jobs at night? I
Speaker 1: guess yeah, he was doing the projectionist thing and industrious.
Speaker 1: I love him. I take it all. Everything we said back, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: this does not this doesn't um. Hey, should we just
Speaker 1: also have the audience announced how many nipples would give
Speaker 1: this movie? Yes, let's do that count of three, one, two, three, amazing, Katie,
Speaker 1: do you dispute that does not merit any nipples? Yeah,
Speaker 1: although if if it did, which it doesn't, but if
Speaker 1: it did, it would be Jill's nipples, which is gets
Speaker 1: said in the movie Your Moment. He's like, I'm Jack's
Speaker 1: madula aban goata, I'm Jill's nipples. Anyways, I can't believe
Speaker 1: they let Edward Norton say nipples. I guess ruined nipples
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, so yeahs you're on nipples. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: just you know, Marla is treated like ship by the
Speaker 1: characters and by the movie every I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: the concept of femininity is treated like shit. Um, any
Speaker 1: man who displays a traditionally feminine trait is murdered like
Speaker 1: it's just the glorification of men punching each other is
Speaker 1: and really does like give and down to the I mean,
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about the symbolism of soap, which you know,
Speaker 1: I guess you could read any college freshman's essay if
Speaker 1: you want to read, but the symbolism of soap and
Speaker 1: fight club. But you know, the whole concept of like
Speaker 1: women are dumb enough to have their own fats sold
Speaker 1: back to them. It just has like contempt of women
Speaker 1: and glorifies the most toxic possible masculine date to the
Speaker 1: point where it's like an effect of laying out of
Speaker 1: like the in cell lifestyle. So if that was what
Speaker 1: they were trying to do, they were successful. So congratulations
Speaker 1: to the movie Thing Club for radicalizing people and ruining
Speaker 1: the world. Thank god for Shrek, Katie, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being here. Thank you. Where can people follow
Speaker 1: you online? Is there anything you would like to plug? Yeah? Instagram, Twitter,
Speaker 1: Katie Nuggan, it's easier to spell in my last name,
Speaker 1: uh Katie and your g G I n oh yeah,
Speaker 1: website Katie hype and when I got my brother made it.
Speaker 1: Oh and one time he held a hostage but it's
Speaker 1: up now out and I'll find him a file again. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks again for being here. Thank yous all of you
Speaker 1: for coming to the show. Give it up for Curious
Speaker 1: Comedy Theater for having us. Have a good night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming. There you go, There you go as
Speaker 1: a feminist text. Just like we all suspected. We we
Speaker 1: broke the first couple of rules because we talked about
Speaker 1: fight club. Yeah, which means that we can't be really
Speaker 1: cool fascist, which is too bad. Thank you again to
Speaker 1: Curious Comedy Theater for having us. Thank you to everyone
Speaker 1: who came to our Portland's shows. Thank you to Katie
Speaker 1: um follow her on all the socials. She's wonderful. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Sammy Junio friend of the show, for recording for us.
Speaker 1: And we just Dog for road dogging with us. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, check us out on all the all the
Speaker 1: regular socials, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. All at Bechtel Cast. Check
Speaker 1: out our live shows what we talked about at the top,
Speaker 1: and get some merch at public dot com, slash the
Speaker 1: bachtel Cast and our Matreon. Don't forget about that dollars
Speaker 1: a month. Patreon dot com slash Bachtel Cast to bonus
Speaker 1: episodes every month. Uh and in March, holy sh it,
Speaker 1: it is whatever we're calling it, Zach co Fron March
Speaker 1: we're calling it Zach Martron or March Ephron so high
Speaker 1: school musical and two thousand seven Hairspray and not to
Speaker 1: be missed months on the matreons. So scoot over, you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to sign up? Yeah um, and thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. Yeah, see you next week by