What Just Happened? (18 page)

‘Hey, Mike. You, of course, know Jerry.'

Ovitz glanced at Jerry, then looked for another escape route, but he was trapped.

‘Before you did,' he said through his teeth.

‘Hiya, Mike.'

‘Hello, Jerry.'

I pushed my chair off to the left, giving Mike a bit more space to get through. He darted off.

‘Great to see you,' I said.

‘Yeah,' he said.

That was it, short and uncomfortable. I looked over at Jerry. I could only imagine what sort of horror had occurred between those two when Jerry was still in action. Both were well known for inflicting pain, a great deal of pain, when they enjoyed the upper hand. We sat there in silence until Ovitz finally made it through the door.

‘Let me tell you a story.'

‘Go ahead, Jerry, I'm a sucker for showbiz stories.'

‘No. It's a World War Two story, s'got nothing to do with Tinsel Town.'

‘Go for it.'

‘It was during the final stages of the war. Himmler was the head of the Gestapo. You remember Himmler, right?'

I nodded.

‘Sometime in the early part of 1944, he was hosting an awards dinner for his men. They had just finished a sumptuous meal, had drunk cases of the finest French Bordeaux
rouge
, when Himmler proudly got up to make a toast, celebrating their effort in the final solution. Standing in front of a giant swastika, he removed his side pistol and clanged it against his glass, calling for quiet. “Gentlemen,” he went on to say, “in the future, our future, history will record that one of our greatest accomplishments …” Himmler took a pause for emphasis. “We did the thing we had to do while never losing our innate sense of
decency
.”'

Jerry then fell silent. I dug deep trying to respond. I even opened my mouth a couple of times, but nothing surfaced.

I called for the check.

The exterior door to Screening Room C opened abruptly and out spilled seven of nine Fox film executives. Two of them remained inside. It was late in the afternoon on the Fox lot, and the deep shadows from the surrounding buildings camouflaged their expressions as they tried to adjust their eyes to the daylight. The director, David Fincher, and I had just screened a high-quality video rough cut of
Fight Club
. At one time or another over the past eighteen months, this group had all read some incarnation of the script, and a few of them had even watched some of the dailies. This was the day that they experienced the full impact of what they had paid for. The anticipation had been high. After all, the movie starred Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter and was directed by one of the truly gifted young filmmakers. The last time Fincher and Pitt had joined forces, the movie
Se7en
had surprised everyone in Hollywood with its riveting originality and, more important, its over three-hundred-million-dollar worldwide grosses.

Numbers like that can make an executive's year. Hell, in most cases, that kind of success can define his or her tenure. The executives might not have admitted it, but they had as much personally riding on the outcome of
Fight Club
as did the filmmakers. They walked in, almost giddy, all smiles and chatty, backslapping and hugging Fincher before taking their seats. The mere possibility that Fincher and Pitt might provide the same kind of lightning a second time made them all rubbery with expectation.

I had met David five years earlier when he was editing
Alien 3
. I'm not sure how the meeting came about, but I received a call that he was interested in talking to me about some ideas. I'd heard that he'd had a difficult time dealing with the studio on his first movie, so I assumed he was interested in taking advantage of a producing partner on future stuff. He was already being touted as a wunderkind. He had a big rep as a sophisticated music-video director, had done some remarkable commercials, had dated Madonna, and although he was still in his twenties, Fox (under the Joe Roth regime) had given him one of their family jewels, an
Alien
sequel, to be his first feature directing assignment.

He was unassuming. His office was bare: two chairs and an empty desk. He told me that he used to work as a projectionist in Oregon and had seen hundreds of movies, even some forgettable movies that I was involved in, hundreds of times.

‘I'm working on something that interests me.'

‘I'd love to hear it.'

‘Let me tell you the opening.'

‘Great.'

‘Manhattan's Lower East Side is crisscrossed with magnetic lines for elevated trains. These magnetic tracks cut massive chunks through the old buildings to make room for the high-speed cornering of the train cars.'

‘Nice.'

‘Three guys enter a Lower East Side Manhattan hovel carrying pizza and begin to watch television. Inside the kitchen, we see a figure dressed in a full-length coat and glacier glasses hanging upside down outside the window. One of the guys enters to get a beer. Suddenly the guy with the glasses is standing next to him by the refrigerator. He shoots him with a dart gun in the throat, walks into the TV room, announces that he is body hunter number 209, says, “All of your rights are rescinded,” and coldly shoots the rest of them in the throat.'

‘Okay.'

‘He then proceeds to take out large plastic sheets, spread them on the floor, and line up the bodies in a symmetrical row.
He thoughtfully closes their eyes, inserts a large rubber plug in his mouth, and begins to smear his face with thick Vaseline. The rubber plug serves as an air hole. He then takes out a laser knife and splits each body from the esophagus to the pubic bones, rips them apart, and methodically removes the kidneys and other assorted organs.'

‘I see.'

‘He carefully places each organ in separate plastic bags, and leaves.'

‘So, who's going to get this guy?'

‘No one.'

‘He gets away with it?'

‘No. No.
He's
our
hero
.'

‘The guy with the plastic bags filled with organs?'

‘Yeah. What do you think?'

This was vintage Fincher taking delight in the wild mixture of irreverence and audaciousness. His first movie had yet to be released and he was already excited about ideas that were almost indefensible in the corporate culture that would pay for it. At the time, we were still climbing out of the Reagan years, with a climate in Hollywood that made making this kind of movie almost unthinkable. In addition, I was at the point in my life where coasting downhill had enormous appeal. This guy was trouble. I knew I was around somebody whose ambition was to maul and excite. I wasn't sure I had the stomach anymore for the fight. I liked him, but I could barely muster the energy to say, ‘Very nice to meet you, I've gotta go.'

The screening of
Fight Club
was about to start. I moved to a seat near the door. Then, after the lights went down, I spent most of my time standing in the back of the room. I found that whenever I was at an early screening, I got too caught up in watching those who were watching, and I completely lost my concentration for the film. I couldn't help it. So as not to distract the person next to me, I preferred to observe the audience from the rear. In this case, the studio's reaction turned out to be a hard read.

A costly title sequence filled the screen. With the music blasting, a computer-generated tracking shot pierces the darkness and
flies through the motor neurons, navigating the folds of a human brain, revealing electron-microscopic synapses squirting clouds of cerebral fluid, for some ninety seconds, until it emerges from the prefrontal lobe above the eyes to reveal a badly beaten Edward Norton. And then the shot pulls farther back to reveal a loaded .38 jammed into his face.

This was a quick appetizer from the mind and imagination of the hot chef in town. Fincher had devised this intro with Digital Domain before he'd ever started to shoot
Fight Club
, but permission to execute it was only granted later by the studio as a sugar bonus for his being
good
– a euphemism for his keeping on schedule. I glanced around the screening room. They were hooked.

When the unnamed narrator, whom we call Jack (Edward Norton), was smothered by the huge breasts of a large fat man (Meat Loaf) while participating in a support group for those suffering from testicular cancer, the executives were so still you could watch the movie reflected off their eyeglasses. I remember that Ziskin, who had left us pretty much alone during the start of filming, was concerned about the giant nipples on the giant breasts and wanted them removed from the fat suit, or at least not have them appear so erect. Fincher denied the request; the nipples remained vast and hard.

Moments later, when Marla enters the hall (Helena Bonham Carter's introduction), chain-smoking, and interrupts the all-male testicular support group with the line ‘This is cancer, right?' the executives froze. Did we go too far? A woman in sunglasses joining a testicular cancer meeting! Every time I've watched this scene, I've laughed. But there were no chuckles from this group. For the remainder of the first hour, they sat absolutely motionless, as if they were marines on full parade. No hand movements, no facial spasms, nothing. They were either rapt or stunned or both.

In the second hour, I began to notice that some of the women, and a couple of the men, would occasionally jerk their heads backward, a sudden ticlike movement, as if they were trying to avoid a collision. When Tyler (Brad Pitt), in front of his men, begged his assailant (Lou) to hit him again even harder, even though his face
was already pulverized, a young assistant to Ziskin put her hands over her eyes and dropped her head. I was getting apprehensive, but I could tell they were jolted.

Perhaps one of the most provocative scenes in the movie is where Tyler initiates Jack into the mayhem with a savage acid/lye burn to the hand in the form of a kiss. While Jack is overwhelmed by the searing pain and quivers around the room in tears, Tyler, the darkly drawn devil in all of us, grabs him by the arm. Jack tries to pull his hand free. Tyler won't let go. Jack tries to think of a series of images to distract himself from the overwhelming pain. Tyler doggedly insists Jack confront the moment while he explains its purpose:

T
YLER
: This is the greatest moment of your life and you're off somewhere, missing it.

J
ACK
: No, I'm not …

T
YLER
: Shut up. Our fathers were models for God. And, if our fathers bailed, what does that tell us about God?

J
ACK
: I don't know …

Tyler SLAPS Jack's face again
.

T
YLER
: Listen to me. You have to consider the possibility that God doesn't like you, he never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen …

J
ACK
: It isn't … ?

T
YLER
:
We don't need Him
…

J
ACK
: We don't … ?

T
YLER
: Fuck damnation. Fuck redemption. We are God's unwanted children, and so be it …

Jack looks at Tyler – they lock eyes. Jack does his best to stifle his spasms of pain. He bolts toward the sink, but Tyler holds on
.

T
YLER
: You can run water over your hand or use vinegar to neutralize the burn, but first you have to give up. First you have to know, not fear, that someday, you are going to die. Until you know that and embrace that, you are useless.

J
ACK
: You … you don't know what this feels like, Tyler.

Tyler shows Jack a LYE-BURNED KISS SCAR on his own hand
.

T
YLER
: It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.

Tyler grabs a bottle of VINEGAR – pours it over Jack's wound
.

Jack slumps to the floor
.

There are tears in Tyler's eyes
.

T
YLER
: Congratulations. You're a step closer to hitting bottom.

There was no need to check out the audience anymore. Instead, I glanced over at Fincher. He was curiously relaxed. He looked like a man who was getting his money's worth. He wasn't at all concerned if the impact of what he had done was gratifying to them or not. He knew he was doing something to these onlookers, something darkly powerful, and that pleased him.

One of the true surprises for me during the making of
Fight Club
was Brad Pitt. He never showed any evidence of an actor who was out there trying to protect his ‘Brad Pitt–ness.' Usually when this happens to a young actor, the first instinct is hang on and play it safe. He doesn't want to fuck things up. And for sure, his manager, agent, and lawyer don't want to fuck things up. An awful lot of money is at stake. The result is that actors tend to repeat the same performances and the same kind of roles that created the most success. Without a shred of false vanity or the use of old tricks to win over an audience, Pitt proved to be a formidable actor of enormous talent. Can anyone imagine, thirty years ago, Robert Redford or Warren Beatty shaving his head or working without caps on his teeth or exposing himself so raw and ruthless as Brad had done and just let the chips fall? With all the hype that's associated with movie stardom, I was not expecting Brad to be almost reckless about challenging the boundaries of what others were expecting him to do. His work in
Fight Club
was stellar.

Five minutes were left before the movie ended. On the screen, Jack had just blown a hole through Tyler's head. I headed for the door. Soon Marla would join Jack on the top floor of an unoccupied
office building to witness the total annihilation of a simulated Century City from a series of bombs that were planted by Project Mayhem. A massive explosion would rattle the glass walls as buildings collapsed into each other and imploded in a cloud of dust. Jack, utterly beaten and bloodied, would wearily turn to Marla and end with the ironic line ‘I'm sorry … you met me at a very strange time in my life.'