Today, Fight Club is a certified cult classic but when the David Fincher film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, it didn’t open to much fanfare.
Based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club documents an unnamed insomniac (played by Edward Norton) forming an underground brawling group with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt).
As the pair begin to enlist other men to their cause, their relationship starts to falter as Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) attracts the attention of Tyler.
A decade after its release, The New York Times dubbed Fight Club as the ‘defining cult movie of our time’ but when the Fincher premiered at the Venice Film Festival, it was a totally different story.
In September 1999, Pitt, Norton and Bonham Carter attended the event where they learnt that not everyone was impressed with their project.
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In an extract from Best. Movie. Year. Ever. by Brian Raftery, Pitt recalled the reaction to the Fight Club premiere.
“It gets to one of Helena’s scandalous lines—‘I haven’t been f***ed like that since grade school!’—and literally the guy running the festival got up and left,” he said, via The Ringer.
“Edward and I were still the only ones laughing. You could hear two idiots up in the balcony cackling through the whole thing.”
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Meanwhile, Norton reminisced: “It got booed. It wasn’t playing well at all.”
According to the Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery actor, his co-star turned to him and issued a nine-word statement.
“Brad turns and looks at me, says: ‘That’s the best movie I’m ever gonna be in.’ He was so happy.”
Norton also spoke out the event in an episode of Marc Maron's WTF Podcast in 2019, saying as per news.au: "I remember him (Brad Pitt) giving me this funny look and he said, ‘How do you think this is going to go?’"
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The star said he felt it was 'going to go very badly' - to which Pitt agreed.
“I remember we went to this thing at some film festival and people booed it. Some people walked out.” Norton said.
However, the two weren't bothered by it, and Norton said he agreed with Pitt's statement, adding: "I think so too!"
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"We were hugging each other, kind of like weepy. We were really happy.” he continued.
Following its premiere in Venice, the 20th Century Studios project opened in theatres on October 15, 1999, and earned a reported $101.2 million at the box office.
But whether Fight Club remains Pitt’s ‘best movie’ remains to be seen.
According to the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, critics believe his greatest performance is his portrayal of Samuel Bass in 12 Years A Slave.
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2011’s Moneyball has placed second on the list, with True Romance and Inglorious Basterds ranking third and fourth, respectively.
Topics: Film and TV, Brad Pitt, Celebrity
Ella Scott