David Fincher finally responds to Paul Thomas Anderson wishing testicular cancer on him
Aux Features David Fincher
Bringing up Fight Club at a party of college-educated liberals is an easy way to spark some insufferable discourse, especially if acclaimed filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is in the room. Back in 2000, long before it was trendy to hate Fight Club, the Boogie Nights director spit absolute venom about David Fincher’s satire during a Rolling Stone interview.
“I saw 30 minutes of it only because our trailer is playing in front of it,” Anderson said at the time, going on to note his issue stemmed from the film’s depiction of a testicular cancer support group. “And I would love to go on railing about the movie, but I’m just going to pretend as if I haven’t seen it. It’s just unbearable. I wish David Fincher testicular cancer, for all of his jokes about it, I wish him testicular fucking cancer.”
Now, 20 years later, Fincher was asked to respond to the jab in a new interview with the magazine. His response, cooled by time, is about as diplomatic as it gets. “Look, I’ve been through cancer with somebody that I love, and I can understand if somebody thought… I didn’t think that we were making fun of cancer survivors or victims,” he said. “I thought what Chuck [Palahniuk, on whose book the film was based] was doing was talking about a therapeutic environment that could be infiltrated or abused. We were talking about empathy vampirism.”
He continued, “Cancer’s rough. It’s a fucking horrible thing. As far as Paul’s quote, I get it. If you’re in a rough emotional state and you’ve just been through something major…My dad died, and it certainly made me feel different about death and suffering.” After a pause, he added, “And my dad probably liked Fight Club even less than Paul did.”
Anderson would likely be a lot more gracious these days. John Krasinski, after all, has a whole story about Anderson urging him to never publicly shit on another’s work. “If it wasn’t for you, that’s fine, but in our business, we’ve all got to support each other,” Anderson reportedly told Krasinski. We’ve all gotta learn sometime.
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116 Comments
Given that testicular cancer is a major plot point in Fight Club, I can’t imagine that PTA had never seen it when he made that crack.Also, they’re both awesome directors & this is stupid.
“I saw 30 minutes of it only because our trailer is playing in front of it,”
He saw the first 30 minutes of it – which is where all the testicular cancer stuff is. And hey, I love both and Magnolia is a masterpiece as far as I’m concerned (as is Fight Club). But let’s not forget how young PTA was when he made it (he’d have been 29 when he did this interview) – the BTS documentary shows how emotional and snappy he could be. We all say stupid shit in our 20s. Watching him mellow out and still manage to produce films at the level (if not style) of Magnolia has been awesome.
Heh, fair points.
Who knows, maybe if he’d have stuck with it he’d have said “Yeah, wasn’t keen on the testicular cancer stuff. Thought Fincher was a prick to include that. But that Pixies needle drop at the end? Fuuuuuuck!”
We all say stupid shit in our 20sEh . . . I think there’s a hard cutoff for that excuse at 25. “Kids will be kids” has to fuckin’ end at some point.
That goes well with my “Anyone who considers themselves still part of a subculture after the age of 23 is an idiot”.
No! Never!
It shouldn’t end. People say (and do) stupid things throughout their lives, and should continue to get better. I hope if I make it to my seventies, I’ll be able to look back with my friends and say: “yeah, but we all say stupid shit in our 60s!”
Also PTA was literally in the middle of a cancer care when he was writing and directing Magnolia which adds important context to his views back then (the DVD documentary on Magnolia makes this clear).
Anderson was so emotionally unstable that he scared Fiona Apple away…there’s gotta be an award for that.
It’s like when Tarantino and Alan Ball were feuding over Ball’s loudass birds. Like, I like both of your work now pls be friends.
I think Paul Thomas Anderson and Paul W.S. Anderson should fight to the death. Also, we should find a similarly named foe for David Fincher. And then the winners of both fights should fight each other. There can be, in Highlander fashion, only one.
Yep.Only one.Wes Anderson.
Wes Anderson could fight them, too, but he’d have to be able to use a protractor so his punches would all be evenly spaced.
David Lyncher?
Nah. Too antebellum.
William Fichtner?
Fincher’s most obvious and comparable opponent would be Christopher Nolan.
Fight, fight, fight…
No.Christopher Nolan only fights his own inflated sense of self.And we all lose.
FTW!
Only One. One. Alone. Solo. Just The One. Followed by four sequels of increasingly degrees of terrible, and an TV series for late-night drunks to fall asleep in front of. And some sort of cartoon version.
They’ll need to specify that you can’t choose a second to take your place, though, or Jovovich is going to murder Thomas Anderson.Fun fact: Firefox wants to autocorrect Jovovich to “clavicord.”
David Koechner?
“There can only be One-derson.”
Erie’s own…
Also, we should find a similarly named foe for David Fincher.
Hampton Fancher?
Phoebe Bridgers vs. Phoebe Waller-Bridge undercard.
I think Hampton Fancher is getting on in years.
I think a 14-year-old David Fincher breathed a sigh of relief when his death match partner, Peter Finch, passed away back in ‘77.If you want a real There Can Only Be One, Michael Douglas should have to fight Michael Keaton.
I always have to look up which one is Maya Rudolph’s longtime partner. P.T. Anderson *not* P.W.S. Anderson is Maya Rudolph’s longtime partner.
Although Maya would be great in an Event Horizon reboot.
Now I’m imagining Maya Rudolph and Mila Jovovich fighting as champions on their respective partners’ behalf.
I also think the initials W.S. should fight it out. You only get one initial Paul Anderson! One!
A classy response from Fincher. But clearly Anderson saw Fight Club because testicular cancer is in the damn plot!
PTA was a very cocky, extremely talented, 30 year old asshole/cokehead at that time, clearly.
Also literally in the middle of a cancer scare so y’know it’s pretty understandable.
I’d wager his cancer scare had more to do with his reaction than anything else.
I understand.
21 year old me: Yeah. Fight Club for the win or get the fuck out!42 year old me (and father of 3 sons): Narrator needs to get into therapy, stop projecting and grow up already.
41 year old me here reminding 42 year old you that the narrator projecting is the point of the entire movie.
Well aware of that.
My point was that the whole premise becomes flawed, at best, when viewed as a sober middle-aged guy and not as a snot-nosed barely adult guy.Though, it’s good to have seen it as a well adjusted 21 yr old with a positive father role model as it instills/instilled in me a desire to not let my sons ‘lose their way’.
Not really. The obsessions with collecting cultural necessities hasn’t changed its just the type and cost of those necessities that’s different. The Narrator’s distaste for his hollow bourgeois bullshit life is correct his solution is of course fucked up but Fincher is savvy enough to show private property damage (remember the film makes clear the credit card buildings will have no human casualties) isn’t the problem is the fanaticism that genuinely a problem.
the whole premise becomes flawed, at best, when viewed as a sober middle-aged guy and not as a snot-nosed barely adult guy
I dunno, I feel like “empty unchecked ennui, an unearned superiority complex, and suck-it-up masculine projection lead to senseless violence, especially when it’s reinforced by other vulnerable men who are too scared to tackle their real issues” is still pretty relevant.The movie does struggle with how and when to shift tone, but it’s hardly the only film in this particular subgenre to suffer from that, and I definitely think it has a better idea of where it’s going than, say, American Beauty.
I like to play a game where I see how far I can get into a conversation with someone about Fight Club without them saying “BUT THAT’S THE EXACT POINT.”It’s usually one sentence.
Interesting how you managed to miss the point in different ways at different times of your life.
There’s a teenage version of myself that idolized Travis Bickle, and I can’t believe I didn’t turnout (to my knowledge) to be a toxic asshole.
I didn’t idolize Bickle, but as a very alienated teenager I certainly understood him.
I definitely remember freshman year of college in the 90s going to other dude’s dorm rooms and a common poster was among the cinephile set was Travis Bickle, probably tied for second most popular with Scarface and right behind the inescapable Reservoir Dogs wall art. Feels like I plowed through a number of “important” movies in my teens and 20s but was too young/stupid to actually “get it” until I was older and wiser.
One of these days he’s going to get idolizized.
Another 1999 movie that hits differently twenty years later when you’re the father of a teenage girl is American Beauty.
Interesting observation. As the father of a teenage daughter now, maybe it would be worth revisiting that film. Except that would require me watching it again, and fuck that noise.
Yeah see AB is an awful bullshit movie bit Fight Club is hugely different.
I remember back in 99 when my parents went to go see American Beauty and after they got back home my Dad hugged my sister and I and told us how much he loved us and was emotional in a way he rarely is. I still don’t really understand what is was about the movie that got to him, I’ve never asked. I just know it must’ve been something to do with having daughters around that age, because he just put our brother to bed like it was a normal night, but took my sister and I aside for this (what was to him I think) meaningful moment.
Yeah, that movie hasn’t aged well, and not just because it stars Kevin Spacey.
As the father of a soon-to-be teenage girl, I am sensing that almost every movie ever hits differently when you’re the father of a teenage girl.
I would imagine so. What’s your 21 years later take on American Pie? 😉
Fight Club is kind of a mess, thematically. The climax is the narrator blowing his own face off to rid himself of Durden, so the simplest reading is that the movie rejects Durden’s approach to life.
But I’ve found that most of the people who really like Fight Club don’t see it that way, and it’s not entirely their fault. After two hours of lovingly depicting violence and how cathartic it is and long diatribes on the sissification of the American male that go completely unchallenged, some weak nods toward empathy and compassion at the very end don’t really land.
10/15/99: 29 year old me sees Fight Club opening day and thinks it is the best fucking movie ever. 1/15/21: 50 year old me watched it a couple of months ago, still thinks it’s great, but now views it as a comedy.
Ya see, this guy gets it
42 year old me (and father of 3 sons): Narrator needs to get into therapy, stop projecting and grow up already.
That kind of the point of the film and novel though, isn’t it? It’s not like it’s subtle satire or anything.
I’m about the same age (but female and childfree) and I still really enjoy it. But it wasn’t a religion for me as it seems like it was for some other people? Also the book wasn’t nearly as good which is always strange.
Reading the book later really made me appreciate the film as an adaptation. For example what they chose to excise — all good decisions.
I did like his ‘pissing on the Blarney stone ‘ bit though . ( which is something I can confirm has happened quite often in real life)
I remember an article by Roger Ebert where he describes how much he loved La Dolce Vita as a young reviewer for its depiction of a glamorous, decadent Rome life. But when he rewatched it years later he realised it was a withering attack on the emptiness and vanity of that glamour.That’s how I feel about many takes on Fight Club. On first viewing, it appears to be a disruptive, nihilistic film that takes a hammer to social conformity. Later viewers realise The Narrator is a pathological mess and wonder why they were supposed to identify with him at all. At this point, many become angry at the film. But the next level of understanding is to realise that you were never supposed to find The Narrator or Tyler Durden sympathetic characters. They wallow in misogyny, narcissistic anti-consumerism (that is, they were rebelling not because of the social and moral problems of consumerism, but because mass-produced goods didn’t make them feel special enough), and violence as the only way to resolve negative emotions. The film is the story of The Narrator’s slow realisation that his solutions are even worse than the original problems and the terrifying recognition that hundreds, maybe thousands, of rudderless young idiots would happily march along with him. He ends up blowing out part of his brain to force a change. If anyone identifies with that, it’s on the viewer not the film.And finally, it really helps once you realise the film is, as The_King_Ordered_It says, a comedy. You’re not meant to think what’s happening on screen is cool. You’re meant to see just how pathetic people can be while thinking themselves cool. And that applies just as much to ourselves, the viewers. For all its many flaws, the brilliance of Fight Club is it makes the audience complicit in satirising itself.
Young ( teens to mid twenties) people thought Tyler Dunden was the hero who gets whats wrong with the world twenty years ago are the same as teenagers today seeing Rick Sanchez* as the right thinking ‘hero’ in Rick and Morty.Hindsight is twenty twenty.*( or Joker, that works too)
Yep. I fail to understand how anyone can see Rick as a role model given the series openly dissects his personality flaws on multiple occasions. And yet people do…
That’s, at a minimum, the entire point of the pickle Rick episode. It’s like Vonnegut’s MO of telling you exactly the theme/purpose of a book. The therapist’s speech at the end it clear and undeniably explicit on the matter.
Its a bit like Starship Troopers, in that two people could possibly watch it and depending on their age and experiences come out thinking they’d seen two VERY different movies .
I like some Paul Thomas Anderson movies, but zero Fincher movies. Still, Wes Anderson should mediate any potential drama between these two, as a sort of intermediary, if you will.
Because you like half of his movies?
yes
Damn, PTA is nowhere near as smart as I thought he was.
He’s nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.
No one is anywhere near as smart as they think they are.
Tell that to all the real estate agents and stock brokers.
And anti-vaxxers…
Yes; this single, 20-year-old comment about a movie that was wildly underrated in its time proves his lackluster intelligence.
I was a tween when Fight Club came out, and I watched it with two gen Xers. It absolutely blew our minds. There is plenty to dislike about it as a film and even more to question about the way it celebrates nihilism. It is still on a short of movies for me from that time; along with Trainspotting and The Big Lebowski that try to explore emptiness and purposelessness and succeed.
It literally doesn’t celebrate nihilism though the only true moment of nihism is when the narrator mutilates Angel Face and movie and even the reactions of the characters make it clear he’s gone off the deep end and it isn’t celebrated
“Cancer: The Hardest Eight of All,” a PSA from PTA.
Fight Club has aged more poorly than possibly any film in recent history, but in that regard I honestly feel a little sorry for both Fincher and Palahniuk: it’s only in cold hindsight that we see that the sort of people that the novel is mercilessly mocking would also be exactly the sort to miss that they were being mocked and take the story as an explicit instruction manual.Oh well, the soundtrack still slaps.
Except it’s not. The characters in the movie are treated with absolutely withering disdain. I think it’s hard sometimes hard to see that when the three leads are such charismatic actors, but in no way whatsoever is Fincher filming it as an “explicit instruction manual”.
You can’t argue that at least half of the movie’s most ardent fans didn’t take it that way.
Nice unfalsifiable argument you’ve created there. Please provide some evidence that “at least half of the movie’s most ardent fans” didn’t interpret the movie that way. I keep hearing this bullshit narrative but I sure as hell haven’t encountered it with those “ardent” fans you speak of.
That’s… kinda exactly what I said?
My apologies. I misread the comment.
The problem isn’t that he filmed it as an explicit instruction manual. The problem is that some people saw it as such despite his intentions.
The double irony is that’s basically the plot of the story. Mindless idiots following a cult because they think it’ll make them cool even though the leader of the cult despises them and doesn’t really give a shit about them.
Mindless cult followers with a leader who doesn’t give a shit about them? That sounds awfully familiar for some reason.
“You can tell it has aged poorly because many people have misinterpreted it” seems like a non sequitur of an argument to me.
The popular response is something that sits outside the movie itself. It does not make the film less successful as cinema. In fact, you could argue that it’s more successful if people can appreciate it in completely different ways, and draw diametrically opposite takeaways from it.I mean, I suppose it makes it less successful as agitprop, but I don’t think that’s ever what it aspired to be. And as for groups misappropriating its catchphrases (“snowflake,” for example) and imagery—well, what are you gonna do? From “Born in the USA” to The Matrix’s “red pill,” that’s always a risk. Again, external to the movie itself.
So I would disagree that it has aged poorly. It’s very much a portrait of its time—a sort of fin de siècle, “End of History,” Gen-X nihilism—but that’s OK, there are plenty of great movies that are time capsules of the 60s, 70s, etc. And while some aspects appeared to become much less relevant with 9/11, the War on Terror and the Great Recession, others seem ever-more prescient: for example, the role that pranks and trolling serve as a way to draw recruits into terrorist activity.The basic thesis—that people need a sense of purpose and meaningful connections with other people, and that if they cannot find that in their everyday life and mainstream society, the search for it can send them down some very dangerous paths—is as relevant as ever, in my opinion.
Funny how directors that take different approaches in their focus on toxic masculinity – which is basically the focus of all of their movies – can point finger at how the other person is doing it wrong.
I’ll still go to bat for Fight Club. It’s just there’s a few too many people that don’t get it’s a satire.
It has been a long time since I’ve seen it, admittedly, but even as someone who was a teenager when it came out – my friends and I were all edgy, weird punk/goth kids and we still got what was going on. I think most people actually did, it’s just the obnoxious folks who are the loudest. I recall it being a pretty good film with a better soundtrack.
Odd, as a 25 year old seeing Fight Club in the theater I enjoyed it but certainly didn’t come away idolizing the whole idea of catharsis through beating one’s brains out. Thankfully I didn’t have the misfortune to come across any Tyler Durden disciples in the real world. 22 years later this is reminding me of all the psychopaths who think Rick Sanchez is a role model.
Wow, Fincher’s response is a masterclass in emotional intelligence. I guess I’m so used to today’s endless, vapid Twitter bitchslaps that I wasn’t expecting it.With that said, Fight Club is essentially the RATM of modern films: beloved by oblivious Conservative Gen-X douchelords everywhere, even though it’s against everything they stand for. It sorts of ruins it for everyone else.In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fight Club is Paul Ryan’s favorite film.
Wow, Fincher’s response is a masterclass in emotional intelligence. I guess I’m so used to today’s endless, vapid Twitter bitchslaps that I wasn’t expecting it.He would almost have to possess this kind of emotional intelligence to make movies that are so fucking mean. The oblivious assholes can’t land a gutpunch quite like he does. Anyway, Fincher’s interviews always make him seem like a smart, humane guy. For whatever reason, it’s the well-adjusted guys who make the serial killer movies. Makes you wonder about the motherfuckers who direct socially responsible drama.
Well, if you want a film to reflect the tone of a director’s life, you should read up on Pasolini’s “Salo,” then read how he died. (I would not suggest actually watching “Salo,” however.)
Fun fact about Paul Ryan. I don’t know his favourite movie, but his favourite novel was Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s deranged proto-neoliberal rant about how psychopaths should run the world and be adulated for their worst actions. He was forced to recant his love of the novel, not because of any realisation about the horror of its message, but because his evangelical base complained that Ayn Rand was an atheist and therefore could not have written a book worth admiring.
I mean, there are problems with *Atlas Shrugged* for sure, but that’s not really a fair characterization of what the book is about.It’s odd, really, how later social context poisons how people think about works of art. You realize that the people who like something are a certain type of dbag and that pushes you to label the thing itself. Irrespective of whether it actually is that thing.
I know I squished a very long book into a very short summary, but I think it’s fair to the novel. After all, its great shining heroes are extremely wealthy industrialists who sabotage their own industries rather than follow laws they don’t like, and who celebrate the failure of national infrastructure as the signal to return to power as godlike rulers of the US. And yes, I know that Rand made her antagonists so cartoonishly evil or stupid that the Galtian rebellion against their strawman laws is meant to look good, but it’s not enough to forget that her major sympathetic characters include a pirate who plunders relief ships because in his view helping other nations during a disaster is a form of stealing from your own people — and not all people of course, but specifically the wealthy elite, to whom the pirate personally donates gold bars to make up for any income tax they might have paid!
The main issue with your interpretation is that the Galtian revolutionaries are not really seeking to “return to power as godlike rulers”. They just fuck off to some reverse hippie commune in the mountains.The entire novel is a long form expression of “fuckit, imma take my toys and go home.” Which, again, has its problems but isn’t quite the way it is discussed or viewed today.
The hippie-commune of Galt’s Gulch was just a waiting phase for society to self-destruct so the “heroes” could then rebuild America in their righteous image. This is the last paragraph of the book:“The road is cleared,” said Galt. “We are going back to the world.” He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar.I know, that final clause looks like something only a parodist would write.
Jesus hated “Atlas Shrugged.”
Paul Ryan’s favorite film is a tiny dog unsuccessfully trying to fuck a larger one.
Punch-Drunk Love is the only PTA movie I’ve seen. It was okay. I love Fincher’s Fight Club.
PTA isn’t for everyone, but I put There Will Be Blood and The Master among the best movies ever made. I also understand why other people wouldn’t share that view. The Master in particular is a slow build and has a very prickly skin. But if you enjoy that Barry Lyndon/1973 Solaris sensibility, it’s a goddamn masterwork.
I nearly walked out of The Master I found it so dull and off putting besides Hoffman, but pretty much all his other movies are gold. Phantom Thread is a real masterwork.
I think Inherent Vice gets overlooked because it’s too weird and rambling for non-Anderson fans, but also way too much unapologetic fun for most Anderson fans…
Haha yeah I forget that’s even him cause of that very reason
20 years ago we still made these jokes, and called people “cross dressers”, and Judd Apatow did extended scenes where the characters called each other gayer and gayer.No big deal. Different today than yesterday. Now we don’t curse cancer on people we know, but we still curse it on people on social media. Hopefully 20 years from now that will change too.
Your opinion is not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
I would have been a dick and said that’s a shame he said that because I loved Event Horizon and the Resident Evil movies are good mindless fun.
Umm…just wanted to point out that you’re talking about Fight Club.
I’ve always loved Fight Club as the black comedy it is. I was surprised to hear later on how many people took it at face value but with more than 20 years hindsight I really shouldn’t have.
Fight Club is one of those “dorm room poster” movies (see also: Scarface, The Wolf of Wall Street, Resevoir Dogs, probably Joker) that alpha bros love because, on a surface level, they seem to make bad behavior/criminality/toxic masculinity seem cool or edgy or transgressive (even if a more thoughtful analysis reveals more nuance. I suppose it’s a corollary of that quote about how war movies inherently make war look exciting (can’t remember the exact quote): with charismatic actors and a talented director, this kind of shitty behavoir looks enticing and alluring to young men.