Fight Club with Katie Nguyen

Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus form a secret organization with special guest Katie Nguyen to examine Fight Club, but it turns out that Caitlin Durante has been Jamie Loftus this whole time!!

(This episode contains spoilers)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up. It's Caitlin and Jamie and you're about to
hear in episode that is a live show that we
recorded in Portland, Land never heard of it with our
fabulous guests Katie when she is wonderful and we are
talking about one of the big ones, Mr. Fight Club,

(00:22):
a very cool movie that we all love. Yes, it
was super fun. If you're at the show, you already know,
and uh yeah, we're excited to have you heard a
few quick notes at the top. We are going on
tour again because we're addicted to it, so we're gonna
be on the in the Northeast again. We've got the
following dates locked in. On ap we're going to be

(00:43):
at the Bell House in Brooklyn. On a we will
be at Good Good Comedy Theater in Philadelphia. On May first,
we'll be at the Drafthouse Comedy Theater in Washington, d C.
And on May two, we will be at the Rockwell
in Boston for the Women in Comedy Festival. We're in
the process of confirming guests and movies for those shows,

(01:05):
so stay tuned. We're also going to be doing a
live show at The Ruby in Los Angeles on April
six at we are covering Bring It On with a
friend of the cast, Maggie May, who you might remember
from our Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone episode, and
tickets are on sale for that now on our website

(01:26):
backtel cast dot com. Also, Jamie and I are going
to be in Denver in mid April doing a bunch
of stand up shows, so check out our websites and
our social media for more details on that. Uh and
then a couple of quick plugs for me personally, your gal, Caitlin.
I'm going to be doing a stand up show at

(01:47):
penn State University. Ever heard of it? It's where I
got one of two of my degrees. It's gonna be
on April. I still don't know the location or the
time of the show, but hopefully they tell me soon.
But um, if we've got any central Pennsylvania listeners out there,
check out that show. Also, I am teaching a three

(02:10):
hour screenwriting crash course in New York. Now, I don't
know if you know this or not, but I do
have a master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University. I
don't like to bring it up, but I am teaching
this class on April, starting at eleven am, so please
sign up for that and learn a bunch of stuff

(02:32):
about screenwriting. And then I'm also going to be doing
some additional shows in Boston for the Women in Comedy
Festival in early May, so you can check out my website,
Caitlin Dronte dot com slash shows for all the details
you need about all of those things, uh. And then
also you can go to Bechtel Cast dot com for
all the details you need about the live podcast shows

(02:54):
we're doing. And then we recommend you keep an eye
on our social media or Twitter uh and Instagram especially
for updates about these upcoming shows. And if you don't
live in any of those places, we're working on coming
to you soon. And then finally, we just wanted to
plug our campaign to raise money for Black Girl's Code,
and we're doing that by selling T shirts that say

(03:16):
Rise of the Matriarchy. So by one of those t
shirts to help us support this great organization, and you
can grab that shirt at t public dot com slash
the Bechtel Cast. Sorry that there were so many plugs,
but what can we say. We've we're doing a lot
of stuff. Yeah, with that, enjoy Enjoy episode Cast questions

(03:42):
tab win minutum. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Or do they have individualism? The patriarchy zef invest start
changing it with the del cast. Hello, Marlan, what's uh? Wow?

(04:08):
Are the second we walked out? Someone in the front
rose wearing if I'm in the cyclone off for Billina's shirt?
Already losing my mind? Welcome. Hi, I'm Caitlin, I am Jamie,
and welcome to the Bechtel Cast. Thank you for coming.
Yeah okay man, Yeah, we have been stressing out about

(04:31):
this episode for days. Like we're currently on a tour
and this is the only thing that we keep talking about.
Uh it, we couldn't have chosen a more stressful Why
did we do this to ourselves? I don't know why
we were like this has to be a live episode.
I don't know that that's true, but uh, in any case,

(04:54):
here we are regardless. Yeah, no, that this is gonna
be hoof, We got a lot of lord it into
red Pilling? Ever heard of it? You know? It's just
I'm stressed. How are you? I similarly upset that I
had to watch this movie again? Um? But remember when

(05:14):
we all used to love it? Though? Yeah, remember when
we saw this poster in someone's room and we're like,
this person is probably cool, not like leave right away,
this person is dangerous. And they say scary things on
Reddit under assumed names like this is literally I like
read it. Read it was adapted into a future length movie.

(05:37):
It's just scariest thing I've ever seen. So we're talking,
of course, about fight club. By round of applause, don't
talk about I'm so sorry. We're not talking about more
of that ever again. There, I just did something my
dad used to do. My my roommate, my freshman now

(05:57):
my sophomore college roommate used to have a fight club
post her. At the time. I was like, she's awesome,
but it was like she hates herself. But um my dad,
I remember my dad was like helping me move in
and he walked in. He was like, don't talk about
it though. It was like, you're a fascist, you know,
this is crazy. Which one of us do you think, though,
is Tyler? And which one of us is Edward Norton.

(06:21):
I don't know what does the audience think. Well, actually
we're asking you to talk in full sentences, um, so
instead let's find out By rand of applause. Who has
seen the movie Fight Club? Good doing your homework, and
clap if you have the good fortune of not having
seen it A smattering A smattering okay, and then also

(06:46):
clap if if you've heard our show before. That was
just to get us all horned up. No kive uh,
and clap if you have not heard our show before.
If you were brought wow front row we have we
have a convert um. Okay. So just to uh for

(07:09):
for you, sir, uh, we will tell you what the
show is about. So as as most folks here know,
the Bechtel Cast is a show where we talking about
women in movies, um, or the lack of women in movies,
or we're fascism today. Uh. Using the Bechtel test as
a jumping off I'm sorry, I'm making eye contact with you.

(07:29):
We use the Bechtel tests as a jumping off point. Uh.
Bechtel Test, of course, being a test invented by Alison
Bechdel in which two women with names have to talk
about something other than a man for two lines of
dialogue or more cool awesome, Okay, Well, thank you for
coming in there. Should we introduce our guests? Yeah, I'm

(07:52):
so slash. We've got a guest today. She's wonderful. She
does a weekly show here in Portland called Earthquake Hurricane,
and she was a recently published in The New Yorker.
Give it up for Katie Wynn. Hello, he holcome, thank you,
thanks for thanks for joining us for this holacious journey

(08:16):
we're gonna take. Yeah. Yeah, it was unpleasant. Um in
so many ways. What's your history with the movie? I
watched it for the first time in middle school with
my older brother. Loved it. I haven't seen it since.
Uh And now I am a high school teacher. Uh

(08:39):
and um, I see a lot of gratuitous punching already,
so I don't I don't need that in a film
form as well. Do your do your students still watch
this movie? No? No, no, kids, just always be punching,
like Caitler wins. Your history with this movie? I saw

(08:59):
it for the first time in high school. I had
like dated a few guys who all loved this movie
and like, not for the right reasons, not that there
are any right reasons. Have you ever heard a guy
be like, it's actually a satire? Like, No, they were
so enamored with it that I was like, well, it's

(09:21):
probably stupid then, because I recognized that these guys were
stupid and from the beginning, so I had this like
initially had a very anti flight Club stance, having never
seen the movie, and then a weird thing happened where
I finally watched and I was like, actually, it's not
that bad. Again. I was in high school, and then
I bought it on DVD and but then, like one

(09:46):
of those things, like the DVD sat on the shelf,
never really rewatched it, uh until like maybe a couple
of years later, like a couple of years ago, I
don't remember, and I was like, oh, this is torture
to watch, and that is my history. What's yours? I
had heard about this is one of This was one
of my dad's favorite movies. Yikes, Mike this, I know

(10:10):
Mike slipped on this one. I think my dad truly,
as I alluded to before, he really just did like
the rules bit and really because this movie came out
when I was six, But my dad used to like
when I was playing with like my stuffed animals, he'd
be like, the first rule about Jamie's Tea Party is
don't talk about Jamie's Tea Party. And I'd be like,

(10:31):
ha ha awesome. So I knew what the rules were
very young. But I saw it in high school, and yeah,
I thought it was fucking awesome. Read the book, read
a lot of Chuck Poulainuk, which is how you say it.
I think no one is sure. There's no canonical way
to say it. From what I can tell is how

(10:52):
you say it. But I read the book, and then
I read a couple I got like really into his
books in high school, and then I, um, I don't know,
I'm at some When I was, I saw it again,
it was like, wait a second, what happened? Like I
don't know what. I don't know. It's hard to tell,
like where the switch flips? Where was like the moment
in time where all of a sudden we were like,
wait a second, this is about in cells like this?

(11:19):
I'm not sure. I would guess maybe sometime around there
was a moment there seemed to be like a vague
cultural moment where everyone was like, ah, yes, that was
not good for the world. Well, but I loved it
for too long. Yeah, should I do the recap? Okay, okay, Katie,

(11:40):
You're welcome to interject at any time and exercising my right.
So we meet the narrator who in the book he's
called Sebastian, which is that name is never brought up
in the movie. Yeah, like film theorists call him himself
as Jack and the movie so for all intense and purposes,

(12:03):
we'll call him Jack. That's Edward Norton's character. He works
in a vague corporate setting. He like, uh, he has insomnia,
So he starts going to these support groups for people
with conditions that he does not have but pretends to have,

(12:25):
and meat Loaf is there, meet loaf is, He meets
Bob and then after a while he meets SmartLess Singer
that's telling the bottom Carter's character, who is also pretending
to have things that she doesn't have, and he's like,
you're ruining everything because you're a faker. The only line

(12:45):
that made me laugh in the movie this time was
this chick marlst Singer did not have testicular crincer. That's
still still get me. So he confronts her and they
like work out a schedule so that he never has
to see her again. Then he's traveling a lot for

(13:07):
work and he meets on a plane Tyler Durdon and
Tyler Dirton is not like the other guys. He's a
little counterculture. Yeah, he's a conspiracy theorist. He makes explosives.
We've all dated someone like that, um in which that
scene where Okay, there's so many irresponsible things you can

(13:29):
do when making a movie. Giving someone instructions to make
napalm is among the worst things you can do, and
just especially leading in with like it's so easy, anyone
can do it. Yeah, Fight Club but gives you the
recipe for dynamite. By contrast, Paddington Too gives you the

(13:50):
recipe for marmalade. So like, which one is the better movie?
Make responsible choices? Yeah, I was gonna the paar it
trapped The Lindcy Lohan one does teach people how to
pierce their ears in a way that oh, it seems
like almost everyone tried at least once. Yeah, irresponsible, and
hocus Pocus teaches you how to steal the soul of

(14:12):
a young person. Yea, your own benefits. So it's true
we learned what we want to learn. I think we
just learned a lot about all three of us. So
Jack the narrator, he arrives home and he discovers that
his apartment has exploded, so he calls Tyler Dirton for

(14:36):
a place to stay and he's like, I'm so sad
that I all my ikeya stuff is gone. And then
Tyler Dirton is like, fuck stuff and ever or Ever
Norton's like, I've never thought of it. That one. He
literally has had like three SIPs of beer and he's like, wait,
fuck stop, we're dumban Yeah, I think a very like

(15:02):
George and Tony situation from Seinfeld, where Tyler is Tony
the cool rock climber who eventually loses his good looks um,
and then Morton Norton is George Costanza. And then they
got into a parking lot and Tyler's like, I want
you to hit me as hard as you can. And
then they punched each other for a while and we're like, yeah,

(15:28):
I'm like, wonder what's gonna happen based on that. Brad
Pitt says fuck mart the Stewart and we're like yeah,
and then they like start punching each other more and more,
and then it evolves into fight club. It like makes
them feel alive, and it becomes this like regular fighting
is good for infer to boys and yeah, yeah, it

(15:52):
was what was on everybody's mind. Yeah, everybody was already
doing it apparently, and they organized it, that's what they said.
It's just it was a lot of random fights and
they just harnessed they fed an organizer. Yeah, rule they
needed rules, and two of the rules repetitive that you

(16:16):
don't talk about fight club. And then there's some other
ones that as it's weirdly the same rules of Jamie's
tea party. Whoa, And so I'm breaking the first two
rules by how dare you being here? Yeah? So then
we hear from Marla again. She gives our friend a
call and he walks away from the phone, but then

(16:38):
Tyler comes and picks it up, and that initiates their
ongoing sexual relationship where he like saves her from committing
suicide in a weird scene that and then she like
is there the next morning, He's like, what the funk
are you doing here? And then she's like, well, wait,
you're spoiling man for fight club Kitlin because the narrators

(17:01):
thing around the morning and he's like, Marlo, what are
you doing here? Yeah, but they don't know that, and
they don't fight. They don't know you don't know. I'm
so sorry. We're Norton and Tyler during were the same person.
Oh my god, someone didn't know. So then they're like, hey,
what if we take this like cyclub thing and like

(17:23):
make it more serious? And then Project Mayhem is born
and it's such a stupid name. The guys to fight
each other. Okay, can we make a fascist organization? And
yes they can't. Meet Loaf is there and they're you know,
they're committing acts of vandalism. They're like sticking it to

(17:46):
the main. They're like folk Starbucks, and they're giving specific
tasks like those like birthday parties he invited to. It's
like a scavenger hunt, and like everybody's like so excited
and yeah, so they go and they have to blow
up up certain things and destroys certain types of businesses.
They're very incentivized by like homework assignments, which I have

(18:07):
never found men to be. But this is project based learning.
It's the new thing in education. You know, you're making
it sound kind of like a good idea. Uh. And
then at like at one point, Tyler admits to being
the person who blew up Jack's condo, and he's like,
what he crashes a car on purpose. He's wild so sexy,

(18:32):
so we say, okay, project ma'am is in full swing.
And then Jack is like, this doesn't sound good. I
better go and stop Tyler. But then like, Tyler disappears
for a while, and he basically like follows Tyler to
like the different cities he went to, and he finds

(18:53):
out he's been setting up fight clubs all over the place,
you know. And then at one spot a guy is like,
you're Tyler dirt In and he's like, what wild that
it takes this long? Because I mean, I think technically
in the movie is at least tight enough that we
don't see anyone that would know he's Tyler Dirt up

(19:16):
to then, although I'm not that seems confusing too, but
it takes him like I don't know what time span
does this take over? Is it like it at least
a few months? He said? At one point he said
he'd been living with um Tyler for two months at
one point, right, Okay, so it happens fast. But then yeah,
someone has to tell him in a different city months

(19:36):
later that he's Tyler dirt In, right, Yeah, so is
he just like putting on sunglasses and they're like, oh,
different guy, I don't know. And then Tyler Dirton shows
up in Jack's hotel room and he's like, yeah, I'm
you and you're me and we're the same person. He

(19:56):
really breaks it down the best parts they do that
my um hand to hand mirror things. I really wondered
when Caitlyn you said that for someone in the audience
to be like like, wait a second. So basically we

(20:18):
all learned that Tyler is a manifestation of Jack's imagination
and that he like dissociates and becomes Tyler Dirting at
different points because Tyler is cool and he fucks good.
And then he realizes that what Project Mayam had been
planning was to blow up several different buildings that have

(20:39):
credit card companies in them to reset the debt and
like everyone goes back to zero, which wouldn't have worked
because computers still existed. So computers still existed. It was
a big like, oh, it's in the computer kind of
kind of thing. Destroy the shell you need to destroy

(21:03):
that were of a hardware is. So he like tries
to turn himself into the police, and the police are
like weird Project Mayhem too, and then he goes and
tries to dismantle the bomb, and then Tyler's like, don't
do that. And then he's like, well, I know how
to get rid of you. I'll shoot myself in the head.

(21:26):
And then he stays alive. But Tyler dies. Uh that's
not how that works. Um. You know when you shoot
yourself in the head and it cures your of your
mental illness, well you have to stay alive for the
Hollywood ending king, right, which is that Marla gets brought
in and she's like, hey, you were mean to me

(21:48):
and he's like yeah, and then they hold hands and
then the music swells and then that's the end of
the movie and then all the buildings are blown up. Yeah.
So so I mean a powerful narrative to be sure.
Thank you for that recap, Caitlin, absolutely anytime, helpful. Oh

(22:12):
thank you. Where should we jump in? I don't know, Uh,
this is so stressful. I don't know. I guess let's
start with just like a little bit of background for
the book versus the movie. Um, because a lot of

(22:32):
my problems with this movie are like a failure of adaptation,
because I I haven't read the book in some time,
but from everything I've read, it appears to be a
very clearly satirical book where it's not supposed to be
like a blueprint for the alt right, which is literally

(22:55):
what the movie is is a blueprint for the all Right.
But the book, I'm and I think that uh, it
gets comparisons to American Psycho a lot for this reason.
The book is pretty clearly supposed to be like tongue
in cheek and the characters are satirical in the way
it's written. Uh is supposed to make you, you you know,
like hate these characters, but the way it was adapted

(23:18):
was very much not that. Also, the book ends differently.
The book does not end with it ends. There was
also a fight Club too. I don't know if anyone
knows this. I don't know book only right now, book
only book only. But at the end of Fight Club
the book he he does shoot himself in the head
and then he wakes up the narrator who is a

(23:40):
Sebastian in the book, God knows why, but he wakes
up in a mental hospital and the doctors are like,
where in brad Jack, ma'am, where's Tyler? And then he's
like no, and then the book's over. Then in Fight
Club Too, which is also called Fight Club Too and
Extremely an Extreme fight Folk either one an Extremely Fighty

(24:05):
Club and the Spy Club Too. I have certainly not read.
It came out like two years ago. I don't know
if like Chuck Polinick had some debts or something, but
like by all accounts, it sucks. And it's like a
graphic novel that starts with the narrator has gotten rid
of Tyler Dirton and Mary's Marla, and they're happy until

(24:27):
Tyler comes back, and Tyler decides just he's like Project
Mayhem is so ninety nineties, I'm gonna start Project Chaos,
and then he starts Project Chaos, and then at the end,
Chuck Palinus in the book and Tyler kills Chuck Palinuck.
It sounds terrible, But the last thing that I think

(24:50):
is like required like contextualizations setting up the book to
the movie, is that, Yeah, I mean, it was clearly
a satire that wasn't adapted as clearly a satire. I mean,
based on the people who seemed to still love it.
Uh doesn't seem to be like with any ironic detachment,
but Chuck Polinick wrote it as a satire. Uh, he

(25:14):
had a kind of bizarre, troubled life. He was closeted
until his early forties. Um. I don't think a lot
of people even know that Chuck Palinock is as a
queer writer. Um. But a lot of his later books
tackle queer topics. And around the time the book comes out,
his father died in like a double homicide. Like he's
he has like a very like interesting and troubled and

(25:37):
intense background. Um. And I guess the last thing I
wanted to say on the author of the original story,
because I cannot wait to roast David Fincher is uh,
Chuck Polinock. He's like hard to get interviewed, but when
he does, he's pretty like upfront. And he was interviewed
in like late seventeen about Fight Club and how he

(25:59):
felt like it had, you know, like radicalized a generation
of young men for the worse and perhaps had a
net negative on the world. And you know, he's maybe
not so sold on that idea, but he he says
that he does understand that Fight Club is a book
about Tyler Dirton kind of effectively red pilling this cult

(26:21):
that he creates, but sort of has a take on
it that is what you can make of it. I
will read a portion of this interview he did in quote,
you want to put the book in the movie producer's
hand and have them adopted like a baby, raise it
and put a huge amount of energy into it. And
doing so, the movie producer is going to change it

(26:42):
so that it reflects the movie producer's experience. And when
that material passes on to an audience, the audience adopts it,
it will become the child of the audience, and it
will serve whatever purpose the audience has for it. It
would be insane to think that the author could control
every iteration or every interpretation of the work, which I
was like, huh. That made me think. And then the
next question is do you believe in toxic masculinity? And

(27:05):
then he says, oh, boy, I really don't. So you know,
it's just kind of all over the place in terms
an interesting uh per So, so that's the setup for
the author of the original work. Yes, that's helpful, thank you.
It's confusing, like it's just like everything about Chuck Palak

(27:28):
confuses me. It's a lot of hard lefts. I haven't
read this book or any of his work. I was
too busy reading Harry Potter eleven times brag. I know. Yeah,
So everything I have to say about Fight Club is
as it pertains to the movie rather than the book

(27:49):
or anything like that. But there's still a lot to
talk about because I mean so much has already been
written and said about this movie, especially as it pertains
to gender and you know, masculinity and femininity. Like a
common recurring thesis is that this movie can be seen
as a commentary on the emasculine, emasculate. Oh my god,

(28:13):
I'm Caitlin, Oh my god, the the emasculation is that
the word great? Oh that was not a way masculinization.
No too, It's to emasculate, not to emasculinize, right, yeah,
so it's the emasculation, Thank you so much. I have

(28:34):
a master's degree in screenwriting and writing in words from
Boston University. I I don't know how to read this word. Okay,
the emasculation of men in American culture. So that's like
a common thesis where it's like men they like to

(28:57):
shop now, so they are not men anymore. Um, So
that's what has often been commented about this movie. Okay.
I was curious, what was like the general ship. I mean,
if you haven't seen this movie since you were in
middle school, what were like the big things that stood
out to you on a rewatch? The fascism part. That

(29:17):
definitely didn't pick up that at first, um, because I
didn't know what it was even it was all around me.
It's like, God, it's the how grandiose the plans got
and how like successful he was at Tyler as Tyler Dirton.

(29:40):
That's what really stood out to me the most, because
now I as an adult, I realized how easy it
is to fail. Uh. And the fact that his alter ego,
of which he was completely unaware is like incredibly successful
at literally everything he does and it's very charismatic and
people like him and he has sex and and he
knows all the bombs. Um. Is like if if I

(30:03):
could create an alter ego and be way more successful
at that, Like yeah, I dissociated away. Yeah. Like technically
Project Mayhem should have been like Firefest, like in terms
of how it played out, Like I just should have
been like, who's in charge here? What Tyler Dirton in
to run Firefest? And you don't need the documentaries then,

(30:26):
because it I have had a hit. I want Amazon
Prime to release a Firefest documentary where it's like Tyler
Dirton and Jar Rule a Jar rules, Like I want
to wish a happy birthday to Tyler Dirt and the
coolest guy in the world. Uh, yeah, that's a guy
I hadn't even thought of that, Like, there's there's no
way that this should have worked out. And it's also

(30:47):
not even like we're made to think that Edward Norton's
character is like hypercompetent. He seems like that's like the
opposite of what his character is very average, and that's
the whole point. He's the everyman, but within every man,
learn a brad bit not the message of the movie. Yeah,

(31:09):
um that was. There was a great video that we
highly recommend to to all listeners that past guest of
our show, Maggie may Fish, made about this movie. It's
all about the fascism undertones of this movie, so which
we will only lightly get into, So definitely watch that
if you if you want to learn more about it.
But she opens her videos so funny where she she says,

(31:32):
there's a guy who's really cool and has a lot
of sex and fights and always wins, and that awesome
guy is me. It's literally the movie, that's all it is.
It's like, if you feel like an Edward Norton, don't worry, dog,

(31:55):
you are a funck machine. Oh gosh, well, let's let's
talk about the romantic relationship. I'd like to start there
because that's pretty much the only context with which Marla
Singer exists in this story. Because we have pretty much
exactly one female character in the movie. Her name is

(32:15):
Marla Singer. There's a woman named Chloe, and we can
touch on her, but she gets maybe thirty seconds of
screen time. Not that. More like, it's much more than that.
This movie hates women in a way that I never like.
With each subsequent viewing, I recognize something like this movie
has absolute contempt for women and all things vaguely feminine. Yes,

(32:41):
So if we're looking at Flight Club sort of as
like a love story, uh, which it is, because I
mean the movie opens with the narrator saying, like, because
we see all the imagery of like Brad Pitts has
a gun in Edward Norton's mouth, and we're like, oh, felic,

(33:03):
We're like yes, and they're talking about all the bombs
and stuff, and that voiceover narration says, like, all this
is happening right now because of a women named Marla Singer.
She ruined everything. And then the middle of the movie
is this pretty much ongoing sexual relationship between her and

(33:24):
Tyler Dirt in which is Jack the narrator Imagine if
you were like just having sex with Edward Norton, what
a bummer. And the the end, like I said, is
like them holding hands, They're looking at each other kind
of googly eyed, and like the music swells and we're like, oh,
what a moment they're having. But this just like feels

(33:47):
like the type of romance that Hollywood thinks appeals to men,
or that should appeal to men, because this is a
relationship where like Jack has all of the power over
the woman, he is constantly miss treating her, and she
keeps coming back despite all that. And then we're meant
to believe that the one of the reasons that she
does come back is that he is just so good

(34:08):
at fucking, Like he focks her brains out and it's
amazing she's putting up Edward Norton. I mean, you know,
and as someone who has returned to Dick that it
was not admirable like you're like Edward Norton, Okay, Like,

(34:29):
but a movie like this like sends a message to like,
you know, the teenage boys that I was trying to
date in high school that are like, oh, you can
like treat women like shit and like they'll just come
back to you if you have a dick, and to
young women. I think that the implication of this movie
is like men are more complicated than they appear, which
I have not found to be true. Like there's a

(34:55):
whole another person in there that's it's not true. It's
usually just the one. Yeah. The context in which they
meant to just kind of weird because it wasn't like
a common interest so much as like how do you
have as many problems that I have? Um? And then
just like meeting up in like a very commiserative kind
of like way. It's like super romantic. Um, when somebody

(35:18):
sees you miserable, that's really hot, right, and then like
negotiates with her so that he never has to see
her again. But at the end there in Love their
meeting is really is really interesting because like the way
the movie introduces her, because this movie is so voice
over heavy and David Fincher apparently I was God. The

(35:40):
more I read about this person, the more I just
wanna just I don't know what. I just thought of
five horrible things and I won't say anything. But he
made a movie that was like, no, Mark Zuckerberg is cool,
Like he's horrible. He's the worst. Mark Zuckerberg is, above
all things not not cool. He's also waging wars in

(36:04):
foreign countries, but above all he is not cool. But
David Fincher said he fired a producer who said that
the voiceover sounded stupid, who may have been the smartest
person working on the movie. Yes, but the way, anyways,
the way we meet Marla, like, immediately she is framed

(36:24):
as kind of like a fem Fay Tall kind of character,
where she's taking a dragon a cigarette, she's wearing the
tilted hat. She's like framed as like the dirtiest, grimiest
possible version of a fem Fay Tall and the yeah,
the voiceover literally says she ruined everything. She's a parasite,
and then explains, I mean in a more like clear

(36:44):
way than I remembered that the reason that Jack doesn't
like her is because she reminds him of himself, which
is an interesting theme and could I think speak to
how some toxic relationships work, But the movie doesn't do
that at all. It then just spends the rest of

(37:04):
the their story distracting you from what Marla is going
through by you not knowing what's going on, and then
a second viewing, it's more just like showing what the
magic trick is and like, oh, I guess she really
would be confused and hurt here, Oh well, right, which
I want to go over the like story beats of

(37:25):
the movie from Marla's point of view, because she is
in an emotionally abusive relationship with Edward Nor honestly so,
she even brad Pitt. She meets a guy who is
like very contemptuous of her, and then she calls him
because she's in the middle of what may or may

(37:47):
not be a suicide attempt. Hard to really tell because
the movie does not handle suicidality or a mental illness.
Well no, it makes it seem like a bid at
attention and wanting to see someone again, which is like
we don't even need to say it's sucked up, but
it's sucked up. And then apparently he like takes her
and brings her back to his dilapidated house and then

(38:10):
like fox her better than she's ever been had sex
with before. Uh, I don't know why I said it
like that, but um. And then the following morning he
acts as if he has no memory of them having
sex or hanging out or anything like that. And then
he's like, what are you doing in my house? And

(38:32):
she's like what fuck you? Then and then like leaves
because at this point he does not know that he's
Tyler during and it takes two hours to figure it out.
And then this pattern repeats itself for again what we
can assume to be months. And then she shows up
at one point towards the end and he tells her

(38:52):
to her face, Tyler is not here. That would be
like if I came to your house, Jamie and I
was like hey Jamie, and then you were like, Jamie's
not here. That's like dating Edward Norton and being like
Edward Norton here right now, and you'll be like you,

(39:13):
I guess I'm not dating Edward Norton anymore. Also, he's
like holding like a handle of liquor when he's saying that, Like,
why wouldn't you just assume he's drunk? Yeah, I mean,
it's like nothing about their relationship, and I think that
that kind of speaks to like some of the like
counting on the audience to be paying more attention to
the magic trick than the characterization, because it does seem

(39:35):
like if Marlow were written realistically, that she would catch
on sooner. But the way women are written in this
movie are as complete idiot, incompetent consumers, which is expressed
through the like I'm selling rich women's fat asses back
to them when Tyler starts making the soap and selling
it like there's no female character that is made to
seem anything less than completely oblivious, and that includes the

(39:58):
Chloe character as well. It's just yeah, I mean, the
whole setup of the movie, the fact that we're going
in and out of his mental illness and from his
point of view, makes it such that she can never
be an expert, She can never know anything. He will
constantly be both the expert and the person discovering themselves
throughout the journey, so she can have no input whatsoever
because we're just seeing what's going on in his set,
So like, it's set up so that she has no
input or any impact whatsoever what's going on with totally. Yeah,

(40:22):
she would have discovered in months. I mean, like, would
you not figure out that the person you're with is
dressing like you know, at least something wasn't right, you know.
It's like it seems like they were spending I mean,
I guess I don't know how much time they were
spending together, but she seems invested in the relationship, and
so I don't I mean, I don't know. She's also
not a real person, So I was like, I don't

(40:43):
want to hurt her, feeling like she's she's fake. Well,
there is a theory something you know when you go
onto Jack Dirton dot com and two hours reading about
a fan theory about it presented some compelling arguments that
both that Jack Dirton dot com Yeah, that both Bob

(41:07):
and Marla, like the Tyler Dirton character, are figments of
Jack's imagination, which I'd buy that it feels there's a
lot of clues. I'm not gonna, you know, go conspiracy
theorists on anyone, but so she might not even be real.
But I think that's not really helpful for us to
talk about because the movie at least presents her as

(41:28):
being real. So yeah, and then the rest of their
relationship is they meet up somewhere and he's like, oh,
the full extent of our relationship and not been clear
to me until now. Sorry, I haven't been treating you
so well. And then in his apology he says, give
me fifteen seconds and shut your mouth and don't move.

(41:49):
So that's really nice hot and then she's brought back
at the very end against her will. And then he's like,
you caught me like a really strange time in my life.
And she's like, hold on hand. And then she's like,
better hold hands with him, maybe like hold his jaw.

(42:12):
That's what he means. Yeah, he needs medical attention. Tyler. Yeah,
so yeah, I mean the movie like skips over all
the complexities of a woman staying in a relationship with
an emotionally abusive partner, like glasses over all of that,
and it, Yeah, it does make her out to just
seem like a crazy, desperate idiot, which is how Tyler

(42:32):
views her at least, and sort of Elusa several times.
But the movie does nothing to challenge that, which means
it's a poor adaptation of us attire if it presents
a stupid idea with no like it's just oh God,
David Fincher, You fucking idiot. I can't stand damn there. Okay,

(42:53):
some things David Fincher has said. Sorry, literally, David Fincher
has quote, I think a film set is a fascist dictatorship.
Uh So, if you want any ideas on how David
Fincher feels about fascism besides the fact that he made
a movie about how Mark Zuckerberg is cool, that direct

(43:16):
quote might be helpful that I mean, maybe his film
stand sort of fascist dictatorship. It sounds like they are
because he's like the director that does a shot like
he's like, I'm an a tour, which just means I'm
emotionally abusive to people around me. Um, but he like
makes everyone do the same shot like nine thousand times
and then like, I don't know, he's a he's an

(43:38):
icky guy. Hey, Jamie, what do you say we take
a real quick break and then we'll come back for more.
Sounds good to me, right, Marla. I don't know how
much validity this has, but I did right in my

(44:00):
eltes that she's a manic pixie nightmare girl. Oh We've
got okay if people like it, good, um, because she's
like doing all this stuff for she like walks into
traffic and just like stands in the middle of the road.
She's like stealing other people's clothes from a laundromat and
then taking them immediately to a thrift shop to sell them,

(44:21):
like Zoe Decanelle didn't mess exactly. There's her famous line
of like, I haven't been funked like that since grade school.
I'm sorry, I haven't been head sexed with like that
since grade school, which is which is unfortunately kind of
like a subtext that is used in stories a lot

(44:45):
to like imply that, like this woman is damaged because
she was sexually abused as a child, Like it's a
real classy yeah for a character you're not even intending
to write. And then in Maggie Mayfish's videos say about
this movie, she also points out that the way that
she's framed by the camera is that the camera is

(45:06):
often above her, and like cinematic language dictates that we
are like literally and figuratively looking down on her, like
it's a way to convey that she has no power.
And then conversely, like Tyler Dirton is often shot with
like an upshot, so he's made to seem like powerful
and empowered and all of that, so really an abs
based culture. And then just like the way that the

(45:31):
men talk about Marla, Jack says at one point, I'm
gonna grab that little bit Marla singer and scream at her.
See his fantasy where he does, which is yeah. And
then a little later on, Tyler says, you flucked her, right,
and then he's like, she's limber a silly cuz, which
I had to look up with that ment it basically

(45:54):
that's a couzy. It's a diminutive, yeah, because yeah, it's
basically like a slut um. And then he says something like, oh,
she's in love with the sport fucking yeah. So it's
just constantly like Tyler's talking about her as though she's

(46:15):
an object. Jack is talking about her as though she's
a parasite. She's repulsive, yeah, I mean. And then and
then there's that one scene between Jack and Marla that
seems to be their whole relationship and sort of like
as close as you can get to the movie statement
on who she has, where there's that question of what
does a weaker person get by latching onto a stronger person,
When like Jack asks Marla that directly, and she responds

(46:40):
as if that is just true and that's how their
relationship is, and she accepts the fact that she's the
weaker person and he's the stronger person. And even though
at this point in the movie we don't know that
they're the same person. Uh sorry spoilers that, you know,
she just passively accepts that she's the weaker person in
the relationship, which is how that argument would go for

(47:02):
no one I can think of if like, so you're
like fully the sub right, so like why am I
so amazing? Like who would have who would have that?
Or like it's just totally irrational even in the world
of the movie that that conversation could happen so directly,
but she's written in such a like one dimensional way

(47:25):
where she can't respond. And also, like gender essential ism
is like at full blast in this movie, where women
are women in the most traditional possible sense, where they're
you know, like when we were talking about with a
lot of things about Marlo's character, where she's you know,
she's emotionally dependent on him. She kind of go on
with without him, and she needs the strength of a

(47:47):
man to go on, like and on the other side,
I mean this movie is more famous for being like
male gender essential is um of tough boy fight Uh no, homo,
but we're almost kissing kind of vibe. And like, given
this movie's attitude towards men, the way Marla and Chloe

(48:09):
are written, like kind of line up with that like
essentialist view. But you know it's wrong and this movie
is wrong. But everything. Yeah, like satire is like really
dangerous if it's not taking seriously, Like you know, like
Rachel Ray was definitely satire and then they gave her
a talk show. Um. But I mean like if if
people are the majority of people consuming it are interpreting

(48:31):
it in the wrong way, then obviously it's that negative.
Like it's not it's not helping, it's only hurting, and
that at that point you're doing a disservice to society
and like generations to come. Because I think it's still popular.
I still see those posters. But yeah, I really hope
people still don't watch this movie, but I think they do.
It's I if you're a youth out there and you're
considering watching Fight Club, try not to, like, just don't

(48:54):
watch it. I don't believe in encouraging young people to
watch problematic movies as a study. I'm just like, just
forget it. Ever happened, it would we would all be
better off. And unfortunately, there's not that much to talk
about about Marla otherwise, because that's really all you know
about her is how she exists in relation to either
Tyler or Jack, especially because she like disappears for large

(49:17):
chunks of the movie and like it's not on screen
for like twenty minutes at a time kind of thing. Um.
But going back to you know, the satire and the
message that the movie is attempting to send, which is
that you know, consumerism is bad. Stuff is bad, which
is like true, but the answer to consumerism isn't fascism,

(49:38):
like right, it seems like really shooting a band aid,
especially because like I mean, you can kind of boil
down a story into the Jack narrator character being so
upset that he's bought into consumers culture, and part of

(50:01):
that is like him feeling emasculated. He's like, I buy
Ikea and I know what a duvet is, so I'm
feminine and that's horrible. I'm gonna pull up everything I own.
So it's basically equating. Well, first of all, it's like well,
women be shopping, um, and it's equating like consumerism with
like femininity, right, and how that's horror. Anything feminine is

(50:27):
is bad. That's the most confusing. Like equalization this movie
does is like consumers equal women equals bad and then
just like uses the transitive property like, oh, women equal bad.
Sick like the because everything Tyler says about consumerism is
made to sound super feminist, like the way he's saying

(50:49):
like in that conversation where Tyler is about to be
like I'm hot, punch me, you know, like his whole
selling jack on on the idea of like stuff is bullshit.
Is he's like condemning the idea of homemaking or nesting.
He uses that word specifically, which is like associated with women,

(51:12):
especially like in the nineties. And then like part of
the reason I think this movie was able to come
out because two years after this movie came out, it
couldn't come out. You couldn't make a movie about domestic
terrorism in two thousand and one. I wonder why because
of Shrek, because of the big event of two thousand one.

(51:34):
So because Shrek's on the horizon, Uh, everything Tyler is
saying is like consumerism is making you a girl. And
so the way to not be a consumer is to
be a boy, which is what and like that's literally

(51:54):
what he's saying. He's like, fuck mart the Steward, punch
me in the mouth, that kill your friends. Like, wait,
doesn't just say funk Martha Stewart. He says funk Martha Stewart.
Martha's polishing brass on the Titanic Titan. Okay, anyway, but yeah,

(52:15):
it's like, don't be a girl who shops, be a
man who fights other men, and you're like punched into
a bloody pulp, which is like one of the more
frustrating messages of this movie because if it was just
like no one should be a consumer, I still wouldn't
be Like, okay, so we should engage in domestic terrorism,

(52:36):
but like adding that middle step of like because consumerism exists,
like it just totally blames consumerism on women, who, in
the ninety nineties are the primary like products are pushed
more at women because women are the primary consumers of
beauty products and fashion products and home products because of

(52:57):
the way society's works since forever. And that's not but
but there's no accountability in like Tyler's creative, Like yeah,
and there's these billionaires that are like making it impossible
to be a woman who exists without these products. Like
that is never addressed. It's just like, yeah, they buy it.
They're fucking idiots. Let's make soap and like it's just

(53:20):
it's for like it totally blames American consumerism on women,
where even if women are a large amount of American
consumers and they are, part of that reason is because
of how society is set up, where you know, women
have to in theory, engage in consumerism more to be
considered legitimate. Right, Obviously, it's men in power who are

(53:42):
making upstream or making decisions that are causing the women
downs to consume more to begin with, because we're not
the ones making all those decisions. We're not trying to
spend more money. We just want buy It's all right,
I just want a job, some respect. Just still frowned on.
And along that same line is like the movie's obsession

(54:04):
with testicles, Dick's buildos, breasts. Yeah, it's like he's all
of these Caitlin, don't say those words. Everyone's peeps and nuts. Sex.
Don't say that, definitely don't. But there's all this talk

(54:26):
of Bob not having testicles because they had to be
removed because of his testicular cancer. Uh, and he's all like,
I'm still a man, right and h then he grows
what are described as bitch tits? Can we talk about Bob?
Because I first, what about Bob? What about? Sorry? I

(54:50):
just first of all, I love Bad out of Hell
and Bad out of Hell too, and I love meat
Love and I think thank you me Love. Okay, meet
Love kills it in this movie, funk. Everyone who disagrees
Meet Love absolutely destroys. Meat Loaf is interesting and cool.
Meat Loaf was there when jf K was assassinated, but

(55:14):
he was like ten But that's just a fun fact
about him. He didn't do it, but what if he did?
New theory? Anyways, meat Loaf is good in this movie.
Just had to say that because I really, I'm just like,
why didn't me Love get more roles? Answer? According to
every theory read, because he's mean and difficult to work with.

(55:38):
So anyways, Meet Love does a good job in spite
of his personal you know, shortcomings. Uh. But the Bob
character in general is so frustrating because he is the
only man in this entire story who is capable of emotion,

(55:58):
or like the only character we get to know was
capable of emotion, who's capable of empathy, who's capable of
building like non sexual relationships with other men, like just
he's able to do a lot like he's by today's standard,
I'd like to think, like a better feminist icon, Bob,

(56:23):
where's that shirt? Where I it's And it's like, and
I even when I saw this maybe the first time,
I'm like, man, Bob fucking rules. But what I was
probably saying was I love Bad out of Hell and
I love Melo. But his character is the only man
we get to know in this story capable of emotion
and empathy, And it is made out at every turn

(56:46):
to look ridiculous, to look emasculating, to look embarrassing. That
a man capable of empathy is not a man. Is
the message to the point where like you're saying, like
he's given like essentially female breasts, and he his testicles
are are taken away from him by the story, and

(57:06):
it's just meant to, you know, it's clearly saying a
man who can empathize with other people is a woman,
is not a man, And women, as we know from
the transitive property are bad and so what happens to Bob,
which I don't think we we hit on in in
the recap is Bob is radicalized by Tyler dirtan uh

(57:29):
and he comes meat Love is really acting the hell
out of this scene. He goes up to Edward Norton,
He's like, have you heard about this club? And he's like,
there's a couple of rules. But the first rule is
I can't say anything, and we're like, oh, meat Love,
you're great and that he so anyways, meat Love joins
fight Club and we're like no, and and then meat

(57:52):
Love joints Project Mayhem, which also requires I mean, it's
it's extremely ficious dick where they're like the rules for
Project Mayhem if you can pass muster and getting the
ship kicked out of you by strangers every week is
you get to stand outside Tyler Dirton's ship whole house
for three days while being called a number of epithets,

(58:16):
and then you can go inside his ship whole house
and work for free. But first you have to become
a skinhead. You have to shave off all your Oh
yeah that like, yeah, the fashion imagery is strong and
like yeah, you're stripped of your identity and you lose
your name. So so Bob enters Project Mayhem and then
one of the Project Mayhem outings and this is the

(58:38):
most frustrating, ridiculous death I've ever heard, and the movie
makes you think it is so fucking cool and righteous.
Is Bob is smashing in the window of a Starbucks
and is shot to death. And they killed the only
man capable of empathy. And then Tyler Dirton brings him
back to the ship whole house and is like this

(59:01):
was worth it, and everyone's like, uh huh. And then
they finally give Bob his name back, and I just
wish that they had chanted his name was meat Low.
I think that would have been a power. But that
was just horrible. Yeah, but I wasn't even just like
the only one capable of empathy so much is the
only one that really showed any genuine emotion, Like when

(59:22):
he was sad before, he was like jubilant when he joined,
he was super excited about it. None of the other
members of Mayhem, including Tyler, including Edward Norton, actually really
showed any kind of excitement or disappointment. Anger is like
the only other thing. But he adn't showed any even
Marlin didn't really show much right the frustration like bouncing off,
but like he was the only one who had who

(59:42):
was a dynamic character, and that's I guess he was
kind of a gro straight man, who's the person we
were supposed to like, so that when he died it
was and there's and there's a few moments where at
least Edward Norton's side of the character shows some if
not like not empathy, but some sort of attack matchment
to Bob, because you remember the scene where Bob standing

(01:00:02):
outside and time I was like, fuck you get out
of here, but then Edward Norton goes after him, is like, no,
join my club and and effectively killing meat Loaf just
like meat Loaf saw JFK get killed. So really a
full circle. Thank you so much. I can't believe meet
Love saw JFK get killed. That's so interesting. Yeah, that's

(01:00:26):
that's why r I P JFK. I mean, I say
it in every episode, but now more than one. Last
thing I want to touch on regarding the movies, like
fixation on like oh, if you have testicles, you're a man.
If you have breast you're a woman like that, that's
just like a very STIs normative stands to take. And

(01:00:49):
of course the movie wasn't thinking anything about that. Besides
just like, oh, how dare men ever be emasculated in
any way? It's horrible if that happened. It's so oh yeah,
it's so essentialist, and it's so yeah, disregarding of anything
outside of his head norms. And and it's again bizarre
and frustrating because it is a story that was written

(01:01:12):
by a queer author who deals with a lot of
queer topics and deals with trans characters like later in
in his books. And so it's just like, I don't know,
this book is just is so repressed. It is. It
is repression for for two hours. It's so long too,
it's like two hours and twenty minutes. Dare they I

(01:01:35):
just the movie allowed to be that long or longer?
Is of course Titanic um? I mean? And I'd say
even about the a lot of the testicles to it.
They didn't just use it to defend the men's masculinity.
They also use it. They had Marlo very explicitly state
that she does not own testicles. It's just like another
like looking down pointing out the fact she's not like
because she doesn't of this and she's hanging out these

(01:01:57):
people who don't have this, and that's why they don't
deserve it. Yeah, I mean, it's I think we assumed that, like,
we assumed that she didn't. But the line was even
that funny. It was a hack line. I love uh,
but it is true that that the the normativity of
I mean, and even in the way you see the
room full of men who, with the exception of Marla

(01:02:19):
and Jack, don't have their testicles anymore, they are suddenly
reduced to these comically emotional sobbing rex and the subtext
of that is because they don't have testicles anymore. And
the one man we see speaking group says his wife
left him because he didn't have his wife. It didn't
left him because he wasn't able to give her children,

(01:02:41):
which both implies one women are bad and also implies
that relationship can only be one exact way or it
will never work. And so you know, Fuck, here's a
fun line that gets said in the movie. Um it's Tyler.
He's in a bathtub. He says, we're a generation of

(01:03:04):
men raised by women. I wonder if another woman is
really what we need, because they're talking about whether or
not they should get married. Basically that whether well oh yeah,
because that's the same scene where Edward Norton's like, I'm thirty.
I can't handle nothing. I'm a thirty year old boy.
Bo grow up it you live in a ship hole.

(01:03:29):
I want to yell that at every thirty year old minute.
And then also, um, there are various references to the
Jack character feeling alone because his father abandoned him when
he was a kid, which kind of suggest it's like
the movie suggesting that a lack of a male presence
or a father figure in his life might be responsible
for like whatever mental illness break that's happening to you

(01:03:53):
up without a dad, and then later on you want
to make up for all that lost fighting times, for
fighting wherever you get it is that you a Chad
Tyler is just hoping he'll accidentally hit his dad. That's
like very much a palaic message, where in everything written

(01:04:13):
about his book, he's like, well, there's not enough good
male heroes for men, and like you're just like, that's
the hill you're choosing to die on. Read the room, dummy,
But um, yeah, I wanted to touch really quickly on

(01:04:33):
the time period where this movie is coming out, because
the book was released in nineties six, the movie is
released in ninety nine, so it's all like second Clinton administration,
which does explain a lot of the hatred of the
consumerism because this is like when the when the economy
is doing relatively well, and so anytime people have a

(01:04:54):
little bit of money, you know, they're like, hey, wait,
who has my money? And they get angry fair. Uh
consumerism sucks. That said, I do enjoy products, so confusing,
but uh, but the way it connects to women, and
I was trying to do some research connecting you know,
like why does this book and then the movie make

(01:05:18):
such an unapologetic women equal consumers equals bad like equivocation,
And I mean, if you think about there's so many
villainized women in the nineties, and there's also a lot
of feminism that comes up in the nineties, so there's
a lot of stuff that's going on at once that
made men angry at women. So on one side, in

(01:05:40):
n you have the Violence Against Women act Um, which
did a lot of net good in theory for American women.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg is put on the Supreme Court. There
are a number of good things that happened for American
women around this time. However, a lot of the main

(01:06:00):
nineties American women that are remembered are remembered as villains
of the moment. And that's like you're Monica Lewinski's and
you're Anita Hills, and your Tanya Hardings and your Hillary
Clinton's at times of different women who were villainized for
being to something or other, and then the general public

(01:06:22):
and like literally everyone would just kind of run with
the narrative of like their fucking things up, and feminism
have empowered these figures too much and now they're wrecking society.
And so that's as close as I've gotten to, uh,
why it is so easy and why people were so
responsive at this specific time to like, oh, yeah, it

(01:06:45):
makes sense that women are ruining everything and that the
answer is to be is like old school michiesemo and
and and killing meat loaf, God, killing meat. Love's never
the answer. I don't think I agree, Thank you. Can
we touch a little bit on the portrayal of mental

(01:07:05):
illness in this movie, Yeah, let's do it. Someone just
inhaled deeply. M I mean, the Jack character has some
unidentified well, he has insomnia, and he's like, when you
have insomnia, you're never really awake and you're never really asleep.
As someone who has insomnia, I can attest that that

(01:07:30):
is not true. Um, so that that's wrong first of all,
and then he has some other unidentified mental illness where
he is, you know, he has an alternate personality, right, So,
I mean the movie doesn't handle anything about this well.
And then as far as like Marlow with her suicide attempt,
her quote about that is this isn't a real suicide thing.

(01:07:54):
This is probably one of those cry for help things
which just like completely minimizes it's suicidal. It's so cavalier,
and it's supposed to make her seem like a manipulative
woman and or the manic pistie nightmare Lady Maths. Dechanelle
just took a bottle of hills. I don't know, I'm
crazy like that, like stop, yeah, I mean, it's the

(01:08:20):
mental illness is not treating one of the things I
was retroactively grateful for just based on how mental illness
is treated in in a lot of movies, is at
the very very very least they don't name what the
narrator is supposed to have. I think if they had
named a specific mental disorder that Jack was supposed to have,

(01:08:42):
which almost certainly would not have been portrayed remotely correctly,
that would have been ten times worse than not naming it,
because so often it's like anyone who's named bipolar in
a movie is fucking over every functional bipolar person in
the in the world. Or you get the case of
Halloween where the killer is diagnosed by his psychiatrist as evil.

(01:09:10):
Is that knowledge diagnosis? I don't know. I haven't read
the I mean, I think it's great that they didn't
name a specific mental illness, and I'm sure that did
a lot of good. But also I could have I
don't know if that was the intention of so much
as like now I can mix and match the coolest
symptoms and then create the coolest ill person, Like insomnia
is like a cool disease, right, thank you? Yeah, and

(01:09:34):
like and becoming someone cool that sounds like a cool symptom.
Like if the side effects were like you might have
trouble sleeping, but you'll be real cool. Yeah, you'll also
be brad Pitt. You'll startup script yeah, you're right, this
could have done a lot of good for the mental
mentally ill community. I know that that does make a

(01:09:54):
lot of sense. Though, yeah it is. It does seem
to be like kind of copy pasting a lot of
different symptoms to to make Brad Pitt possible. I don't know.
I mean, this movie is about a group of men
who clearly need therapy, and then they're like, what if
we just punch the ship out of each other instead?

(01:10:16):
I mean, also, Edward Norton's character must have had good
health insurance because he seemed getting fixed. So I'm like, well,
you probably could see a therapist. But right his men,
it seems like at his job he's got which is
another thing that is so nineties about this movie. I'm like,
he can just go to the doctor, Like that was
something I was thinking. I was like, I wish I

(01:10:36):
could just get in a fight and go to a doctor,
but unfortunately I must bleed to death. Like I can't
go to a fucking doctor. Imagine do you think podcasters
can see doctors? They can't. They can't. Is there anything
else that anyone wants to talk about? I think the
name is Great Fight Club because it's two things it

(01:10:59):
does of right violence and being exclusive about it, and
you know immediately there's no girls in that fight club.
We know that in the movies, Like there's a conversation
with like Marla and Jack is like I found a
new support group and she's like, what is it? He's like,
it's for men only? Yeah? Yeah, And Marla runs with

(01:11:20):
Darla like from the Little Rascals and singer is a
recognized name brand of sewing machines sexist. Oh wow, I'm
not the only one tin hatting over here. Uh. The
last thing I had in my too Many notes is

(01:11:41):
just the the way that sex is treated in this
movie is treated like it's both a weakness and a
physical illness, where every ways sex is depicted is made
to be extremely grotesque, and even in this extremely like
rigidly had her enormat of movie that Yeah, I mean

(01:12:02):
it's like sex with Marla is we're told and from
what we see is supposed to be gross like it's
and and paired with what you were saying earlier, if
everyone is always like is my dick hard or my
boobs falling off? Like everyone is physically decaying and and
their teeth are you know, the men are having their

(01:12:22):
teeth punched out and their bodies are being desecrated, and
every woman in the movie thinks they have breast cancer.
And it's just like everything about the physical body and
and sex is made to seem like this big disgusting
I mean, maybe they got that right. I don't know.

(01:12:43):
I mean, the only other named woman in the name
female in the movie, she's dying of cancer. I think
we are meant to assume. Basically, she says, um, I
no longer have a fear of death, and everyone's like,
that's great, and then she says, but I'm lonely. No
one will have sex with me, and all I want
to do is just get laid one last time. And

(01:13:05):
then she does this whole thing where she's like frantically
being like, I have lube. Does anyone here want to
have sex with me? And it's made she's made it
just seem very pathetic, and that which brings me to
my next play. I have lube. Uh No, I agree

(01:13:27):
with what she has just done. A huge disservice by
the movies. And then and then she dies, we find
out Marla tells us super afterthought, Yeah, which is I mean,
it's the way everything that character. I mean, yeah, like
she's made to look like Marla physically repulsive, which is

(01:13:48):
and which the characters that the movie chooses to make
look physically repulsive to the narrator, because it always is
in relation to Jack, Like Jack thinks Marla, Chloe and
Bob are disgusting and those three. I mean it's the
two women that we meet and the one man who

(01:14:09):
has feminine traits. Um, so Edward Norton hates women. I mean,
let's use the transit of property. Um. But yeah, Chloe's character,
I mean it's it's unfortunate because she's again like one
of the not completely nihilistic characters in the New and anyone,
i mean, anyone who isn't subscribing to this like boring

(01:14:30):
funck boy edge Lord nihilism is killed. Like it's fucking ridiculous.
Oh god, I mean this is It's at the very
top of the red flag faith movies list. If someone
says that they still, you know, hold a candle for
this movie run in the other direction, they're very dangerous. Um. Yeah,

(01:14:54):
i mean it's it's right up there with you know
what raw the raw gosh drive? Yeah what else? Um,
we've made a list. Fun was the Alpa scar faced scarface? Oh?
What's the one with the Irish guys the Boondock Saints? Yeah,

(01:15:17):
not that one either. God, most Quentin Tarantino movies are
just white guys who want to say the N word,
like it's just all you know. Don't meet anyone and
don't spend time with anyone, is the lesson. Do we
have any questions or comments from the crowd? Is anything? Gang? Yes, here,

(01:15:38):
I'll come to you so you can talk into the mic.
What's your name? My name is Marina. Always loved Martha Stewart,
and so has my mother, and she would randomly yell
free Martha when she was in jail, and she always
was saying if she was a man, she would have
never gone to prison for insider trading. Do you think

(01:16:00):
that's true? Your mom is right? I mean, obviously your
mom is right, But I mean all I I do
think that at least Martha Stewart got the street cred

(01:16:21):
she rightfully deserved as a shameless girl boss capitalist. I
mean she's yeah, I mean I personally stand Martha. She's
probably evil, but you know some people, I I've wiped
my but with a lot of her towels. So I
guess I feel close to her the way you would

(01:16:42):
feel close to a Sharman beard. She's innocent. I wiped
my ask with towels and a lot. Okay, well wipe.
It implies like when you're I'm after a shower. Oh

(01:17:03):
so you dry, you're asked, I've got a big ass.
I try it with a towel. So well, does anyone
else have a question? Jesus Christ, if you want some
coming closer to the stage. If you can't, my name
is Rachel Jamie. I bought you a PBR so later on,

(01:17:24):
I know, so they're holding it for you back there.
So with Marla, I feel like my whole relationship with
Marla is creepy. Do you think that her sleeping with
the narrator could be rape because he didn't know that
he was sleeping with her and then she asked about
it later or like sexual assault? Okay, I just want

(01:17:45):
to make sure I might understanding the question. So it
was later on when she goes back and she's asking
like about Tyler, and Tyler is not here, but it's
like he's already had sex with her and not acknowledging it.
That's kind of creepy. Be totally so is the implication
that she is raping him. He's raping Okay, oh huh,

(01:18:10):
that's an interesting I I hadn't thought of it that way,
in the sense that he's not being truthful about his identity,
doesn't remember it, and that he doesn't yeah, I mean
he never remembers it. It's this thing. Fuck. We never
see the actual scenes though, right. Yeah, I guess that that.
That's an interesting I I'd be interested to like talk
about that more. And I feel like I need to

(01:18:32):
watch the movie again to answer that question better. And
I never want to watch this movie again. Um. Yeah,
I haven't getten that I thought, But but I understand
where you're coming from me. That's an interesting question. I
don't know. Does anyone have opinions on that? They were
they heard some some murmurs of agreement. Yes, Hey, what
was your name? Sorry to get so physically close. I

(01:18:52):
prefer not to say my name. But as far as
horrible mistakes that we may or may not have made
in high school with regards to drugs and alcohol in sex,
mutual non consent is very much a real thing that
a lot of us have to work through in terms
of ways that we were irresponsible and we're also hurt,

(01:19:12):
and I feel like this movie does not handle that well.
But I think that's what that's an instance of, is
neither party being in a sober, present and active mental
capacity for consent. Yeah. That makes a lot of a
sense to me. Thank you. Sure, Yeah, no, that's helpful,

(01:19:32):
Thank you. That was you guys should hang out? Uh?
Any any other there? Yes, there was some. Come on,
come on down. Um, I just want to know what
y'all think about Jared Letto's character. Um, you talk about

(01:19:56):
femininity being painted as disgusting or repulsive, and Jared Letto
is described as beautiful and then Edward Norton beats the
ship out of him because he wanted to destroy something beautiful.
So yeah, well, as we all know, Jared Letto is
not beautiful. So right off the bat, it's like, who

(01:20:16):
was like, we need someone beautiful, and they cast Jared
Letto and made him look like a neo. Not clearly
you haven't seen the first half of Requiem for a
Dream because he's pretty beautiful. I haven't seen that movie.
Did you get through the second half and just forget that,
just forget that part but I liked his face tattoo
and he was the joker, but I mean he was

(01:20:40):
damaged boy. He uh yeah, he's described as beautiful and
then yeah, that's a good beats him to a pulp
and and the next thing you see him in his
face is pretty badly disfigured. Um. So that, I mean,
that is just yet another horrible thing Upward Norton does.
And if you're given the choice between, they're like, you

(01:21:02):
can date Edward Norton or Jared Letto, You're like, I
would I'd rather be you know, I'm okay. I guess
I'm just not going to have sex anymore and I
feel good about that. Does that answer your question? A
few more hands one up? All right? Yeah, you know,
I just want to say, when we watched this the

(01:21:22):
other day, my girlfriend did also refer to her as
a nightmare Pixy dream girl. Um. And probably a bad question,
but if there were a role that Alfred Molina would
play in this movie, what do you think it would be?
Do you think it would make it better? Or do
you think that Alfred Molina is too much of a
classy person to go anywhere near this project? You know, Alfred,

(01:21:43):
everyone makes mistakes. Let's say in theory he'd make this mistake.
I hope if he made this mistake. As a close
personal friend of mine at this point, I hope if
he made this mistake, he would make it of the
way and it would be like, you know, like when
Deep Roy was all the Lumpa's. It would be like
an all Alfred Molina reboot of Fight and you play

(01:22:09):
every character like and you would be so confused if
it was all Alfred Millina. First of all, would take
years to shoot and but so so there'd be slight
age differences, which would be interesting. I don't know. But
so at the end, when you find out that Alfred
Molina and Alfred Molina were the same person, you'd just

(01:22:32):
be like, oh, I guess that makes sense. So that's
what I would do. I think I think he is
too classy to be anywhere near this movie. I mean,
he's our friend. We know he's our friend. He touched
my dog, we're friends. My question is not gonna be

(01:22:58):
Angywhears goes, oh this, um, Jamie. Since you read the book,
I was wondering that, since David Fincher is a garbage person,
if maybe there was some director that could go over
it and adapted again, like a Paul Verhoeven who is
a little bit more experienced with doing like fascist satire,
if maybe that would make it more redeemable as a

(01:23:20):
as a work. That's interesting. Um, I have a great question,
Like full Disculture, I have not read the book proper
in many years, but I went back over, like what
was changed in the adaptation and and all that stuff
before when we were probably for this episode. I don't know,
it's that's like kind of I don't know. I worry
that right now, like our culture as it is does

(01:23:43):
not seem very prepared for satire. There seems to be
such like a everything that's happening feels like a badly
written satire, And so I don't I mean, I don't know.
I think that, you know, hopefully in years where people
are not constantly descending into active hell as we are now,
UM that I I guess if if an adaptation was

(01:24:07):
done that I don't know, took the original author's biases
into account and was able to clearly I mean, it's hard.
It seems hard for a filmmaker to demonstrate when something
is clearly satire. But David Fincher. I mean, I don't know.
I kept thinking this as we were watching this movie.
I was like, David Fincher probably thinks Elon Musk is awesome,

(01:24:29):
but I don't know if this source material is worth readapting.
And I think if I think it's important to send
the message that like consumerism and capitalism are bad, and
I think a much better movie that does that is
of Course and the Pussycats. So I think we just

(01:24:52):
need to keep making let's see some Josie sequels, like
what And then that kind of reminded me of how
I was like, oh, this is an incredibly white movie there,
you know, I like, hardly any, if any people of
color in the payment, and that's pretty much. Yeah. And
then there's you know there as we discussed there are

(01:25:13):
hardly any women in the movie. But then I was
I was like, do I want those people to be
in fight Club? I don't. I don't want anyone to
be in fight Club. I don't know if I would
wish fight Club in the world. Again, yeah, probably probably
enough for me. Dog another adaptation we had we had
another question, Yeah, we have I think we have time
for one more. Hey, I'm Andrew um same birthdays. Yeah,

(01:25:38):
it's pretty big deal. Um, I wanted to get your
thoughts on something, so I read the book to not
you know, I got a couple of literatis. I like,
read it once and didn't really like it. My dad
still buys and we chuck polic books and I'm like,
please stop. Anyways, marla Is line, I think was something
along the lines of when she says, I haven't been
funk like that since grade school. Originally, I want to

(01:26:01):
have your abortions. I want to know your thoughts. Read
that I have agency and I'm making a joke about
like what I can do with my body instead of
this thing happened to me and it was terrible. Well,
David Fincher hates women, so I think that that is
a beginning, mill and end of that. Uh, well, Fincher
is evil. Does this movie pass the Bectel test? Say

(01:26:21):
it with us. No, that's a hard, no, big fat note.
What if it did? Do you have to be like
feminist texts? We take it all that. The only moment
where where women even interact is when Chloe is being like, someone,
please fuck me right now, and then another unnamed woman says,

(01:26:46):
h thanks Chloe, and then pulls her away from the microphone.
So that's the only time women interact in the whole movie.
What if it's like super meta and Tyler Dirden spliced
in a scene of like two sisters is discussing Judith Butler. Wow,
and we just didn't see it. Yeah, I saw it.

(01:27:07):
Instead of that being like that dick shot at the end,
it's just feminist talks, Tyler, what a missed opportunity? So wait,
was Edward Norton working part time jobs at night? I
guess yeah, he was doing the projectionist thing and industrious.

(01:27:28):
I love him. I take it all. Everything we said back, um, yeah,
this does not this doesn't um. Hey, should we just
also have the audience announced how many nipples would give
this movie? Yes, let's do that count of three, one, two, three, amazing, Katie,
do you dispute that does not merit any nipples? Yeah,

(01:27:52):
although if if it did, which it doesn't, but if
it did, it would be Jill's nipples, which is gets
said in the movie Your Moment. He's like, I'm Jack's
madula aban goata, I'm Jill's nipples. Anyways, I can't believe
they let Edward Norton say nipples. I guess ruined nipples

(01:28:12):
for me. Yeah, so yeahs you're on nipples. Yeah. It's
just you know, Marla is treated like ship by the
characters and by the movie every I mean, I mean,
the concept of femininity is treated like shit. Um, any
man who displays a traditionally feminine trait is murdered like
it's just the glorification of men punching each other is

(01:28:37):
and really does like give and down to the I mean,
we didn't talk about the symbolism of soap, which you know,
I guess you could read any college freshman's essay if
you want to read, but the symbolism of soap and
fight club. But you know, the whole concept of like
women are dumb enough to have their own fats sold
back to them. It just has like contempt of women

(01:28:59):
and glorifies the most toxic possible masculine date to the
point where it's like an effect of laying out of
like the in cell lifestyle. So if that was what
they were trying to do, they were successful. So congratulations
to the movie Thing Club for radicalizing people and ruining

(01:29:24):
the world. Thank god for Shrek, Katie, Thank you so
much for being here. Thank you. Where can people follow
you online? Is there anything you would like to plug? Yeah? Instagram, Twitter,

(01:29:45):
Katie Nuggan, it's easier to spell in my last name,
uh Katie and your g G I n oh yeah,
website Katie hype and when I got my brother made it.
Oh and one time he held a hostage but it's
up now out and I'll find him a file again. Well,
thanks again for being here. Thank yous all of you

(01:30:07):
for coming to the show. Give it up for Curious
Comedy Theater for having us. Have a good night. Yeah,
thanks for coming. There you go, There you go as
a feminist text. Just like we all suspected. We we
broke the first couple of rules because we talked about

(01:30:29):
fight club. Yeah, which means that we can't be really
cool fascist, which is too bad. Thank you again to
Curious Comedy Theater for having us. Thank you to everyone
who came to our Portland's shows. Thank you to Katie
um follow her on all the socials. She's wonderful. Thanks
to Sammy Junio friend of the show, for recording for us.

(01:30:51):
And we just Dog for road dogging with us. And
uh yeah, check us out on all the all the
regular socials, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. All at Bechtel Cast. Check
out our live shows what we talked about at the top,
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(01:31:12):
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(01:31:34):
gonna want to sign up? Yeah um, and thank you
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