Posted on 11/10/2009 2:37:03 PM PST by Borges
Cult films, the critic Danny Peary wrote in his 1981 book “Cult Movies,” “are born in controversy” and elicit “a fiery passion in moviegoers that exists long after their initial releases.” By those measures David Fincher’s “Fight Club,” a movie that stirred vitriolic ire when it came out 10 years ago and today inspires obsessive, often worshipful scrutiny in both lowbrow and highbrow quarters, is surely the defining cult movie of our time.
In his memoir Art Linson, a producer of the film, describes the aftermath of the first screening at the 20th Century Fox lot: ashen-faced executives imagining their higher-ups (including Rupert Murdoch) “flopping around like acid-crazed carp wondering how such a thing could even have happened.”
The nervousness over screen violence was at a renewed high in the wake of the shootings at Columbine High School, and this must have seemed like the worst possible time to release a film in which an army of alienated men, led by Brad Pitt’s charismatic Tyler Durden, an übermensch in a red leather jacket, engage in bare-knuckle brawls, antisocial vandalism and outright revolutionary terrorism. When “Fight Club” opened in October 1999 after much defensive maneuvering from the studio (which delayed the release and struggled to find a marketing hook), the pundits eagerly took aim.
“The critical reaction was polarized,” said Edward Norton, who plays the film’s nameless narrator, “but the negative half of that was as vituperative as anything I’ve ever been a part of.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It's really the Second rule of Fight Club...see my tagline for the real First Rule...
Zodiac was a good movie. The wife is a bit of a true crime buff so it was must see for us. Sadly it flopped because it was really good, well done all the way around.
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