Fight Club with Katie Nguyen

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 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, 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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? 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 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,

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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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? 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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,

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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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

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, 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

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 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 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. 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.

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 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, 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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,

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. 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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,

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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.

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 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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,

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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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

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

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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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.

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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

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, and get some merch at public dot com, slash the bachtel Cast and our Matreon. Don't forget about that dollars a month. Patreon dot com slash Bachtel Cast to bonus

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