film: commentary
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WORDS WITH CHUCK:
My interview
with Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and the upcoming Choke
John:
Well, I guess the first thing I would probably ask is, at your age [Chuck
laughs], having only four books published…what do you think about having
a conference in recognition of your work? That's got to be some major
pressure, huh?
Chuck:
I'd be a lot more comfortable with this if it was like ten years down
the line, because at this point I'm just wondering what I have to offer.
So, I am a little taken back by it, but what the hell, you know? If you're
going to go to the trouble, I should meet you halfway.
John:
I can't even imagine what you're feeling, because all of these people are
like "Hey, it's the Fight Club guy"…it's nuts!
Chuck: In a way, it's a chance to be with people and to be with people in
a sort of inquiry, looking into something, and people examining something
says a lot more about themselves then about the thing they are examining.
So I think I'm going to be fascinated watching what people get out of "the
thing" because it will say so much more about them than it will about Fight
Club.
John: Were
you happy with Fincher and Uhl's interpretations, and how much input did you
have during the process?
Chuck:
I think they did an incredible job, Jim (Uhl) had done a version of the screenplay
without any voiceover, that was just action and dialogue, and when David (Fincher)
read it, it wasn't very funny, and David said it was just an action movie
at this point and he told Jim to go back to the book and to lift dialogue
out as parts of the voiceover and that's what made it suddenly funny. And
what Jim came up with at the point was terrific. I did not have a lot of input.
I didn't want to have a lot of input. I just wanted to be writing another
book. Because I don't know shit about movies, how am I supposed to help?
John: Did
they ever come to you and ask you about your opinion on anything along the
way?
Chuck: They asked me to come to a bunch of meetings, and I did, and listen
to the ideas they were throwing around. I didn't really contribute very much,
because I wanted to see what they were going to do with it. To tell the truth
I was bored of it, and so I really didn't want to go back there and work on
that old thing. With David it was a lot more fun, but still, I wanted to see
what David was going to do with it, I didn't want to try and control David,
as if somebody can control David Fincher, it's like trying to control Godzilla.
[Chuck and I laugh.]
John: He (Director
David Fincher) likes to have control of everything, huh? He likes it his way?
Chuck:
Definitely! Forty-five takes of everything, yeah.
John: Well,
I gotta say, at least from his stuff so far, it's working. You know, whatever
he's doing.
Chuck:
Yeah, it's funny, at one point I came on to the set and there was a big cake
and it said "Congratulations on your One-thousandth roll of film" and I was
like "Oh my gosh, you've shot one thousand rolls of film?" and David goes
"You know, most features shoot one hundred rolls of film…well, actually its
not one-thousand because we've been shooting with the B-camera too, its closer
to fifteen-hundred rolls." And I was just dumbfounded that that much film
had gone into it. I was told that they hired one person specifically, whose
job it was afterwards to go through and destroy all the footage of Brad (Pitt)
naked. That was their job. [We both laugh.]
It was so funny how many weird little inside things happened around that stuff. You know the penis at the end, which is not in the Japanese version. Even in the Japanese version the dildo on Marla's dresser, that's digitally blurred, because you cant show that apparently, according to their censors. You can't have male frontal nudity. There are all these different versions of the movie around the world. But the big rule about the shot at the end was it had to have black pubic hair, so nobody could say it was Brad's. That was like this big rule.
Did I tell you the story about the fat harness?
John: No…
Chuck:
It weighs like ninety pounds and Planet Hollywood wanted it as an exhibit,
but David says that Meatloaf sweated in it so heavily, that it's just rank.
So there's no way that the health department would ever let it be in a restaurant.
So they're trying to get Planet Hollywood to take what they called the "Big
Bob Doll", when he's dead at the end -- that's actually a big doll -- but
David said they could only take it if they served guacamole out of the head.
John: So what
do you think of Fincher, as a person?
Chuck:
He is the most driven person I have ever been around. Driven, and he just
dwarfs everybody mentally. He is thinking so far ahead of other people that
you are like a puppy, scampering, trying to keep up with all his references
and jokes and thoughts. It's just a scramble to try and keep up with him in
conversation.
John: I think
that you and him would get along pretty good, because you seem like you have
tons of information and thoughts pouring out… in your books also, there is
oftentimes no real ending to one thought before you go into another one…
Chuck:
Yeah, but in my books you're seeing the distillation of two years of thoughts,
plus the thoughts of all my friends, plus the thoughts of all the people in
the gym who talk to me, you're seeing the thoughts of a lot of people in one
place. But with David, it is all just David-generated and it's so constant.
There's one night when they are shooting air into Edward Norton's mouth…
John: Oh yeah,
I saw that one the DVD…
Chuck:
…yeah, and making him gag and cry, Ceán Chaffin, David's partner, she was
in another part of the soundstage, and it is like 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning,
and she has all these technicians around her, it was like this little pep-rally…she
goes "Everyone, all of us together, we can kill David Fincher, and finish
this movie…tonight!" And there really was a feeling of that, because it was
towards the end of the shoot in December, and they ended up going back and
re-shooting a whole bunch of stuff. So it was almost a year of shooting…
