In the 1999 film “Fight Club,” Edward Norton plays an insomniac who teams up with a shady soap maker, played by Brad Pitt, to start an underground fight club where power, love, and money are all at stake. The movie, which also stars Helena Bonham Carter, became a cult classic, but it wasn’t a hit at the box office right off the bat, as Norton explained to People TV (via Yahoo! Entertainment): “I think there was a reluctance on the part of some of the people who were actually marketing it, to embrace the idea that it was funny, and honestly I think they felt indicted by it.”
Speaking to GQ, Norton opened up about the cast. “[Director David] Fincher one time said that it was a film about a serious subject made by deeply unserious people, which is sort of true,” he noted. “There were a lot of funny people in that movie, and there was a fun, dark sensibility of sticking a fork in things.”
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When “Fight Club” premiered at the Venice Film Festival, it didn’t get the reaction the film’s stars were hoping for, according to Brian Raftery’s book, “Best. Movie. Year. Ever.,” per The Ringer. When the audience heard Bonham Carter’s line, “I haven’t been f***d like that since grade school,” Norton recalled, “It got booed. It wasn’t playing well at all. Brad turns and looks at me and says, ‘That’s the best movie I’m ever gonna be in.’ He was so happy.”
