Stephen King has become very well known for his recommendations on Twitter as of late and he’s now revealed that he watched Fight Club for the first time only recently, but followed it up by explaining the pretty good reason he had for missing it the first time around.
For those unfamiliar, the film stars Edward Norton as the story’s unnamed narrator (referred to in the script and sometimes external media as Jack), an insomniac stumbling through an unfulfilled existence who meets a charismatic soap salesman named Tyler Durden and becomes pulled in by the latter’s nihilistic philosophies. The pair begin a series of underground fighting meetups for young men to express their dissatisfaction with their lives, which start to snowball into an anarchist revolution.
King briefly recounted the circumstances that led to him being unable to see it upon its release in late 1999, saying:
Continuing my project to see 60 movies I've seldom or never seen, between 1961 and 2021:
LITTLE VOICE (1998)
FIGHT CLUB (1999)
UNDER SUSPICION (2000)
Given the reputation of FIGHT CLUB, an explanation of why I'd never seen it is probably worth another tweet.— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 6, 2021
In June of 1999 I suffered serious injuries when struck by a van. FIGHT CLUB was released in October. I never made it to a movie theater until at least December. If someone sent me a VHS of FIGHT CLUB, I was too stoned on pain meds to remember it.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 6, 2021
Yes, the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club. But after 22 years, I feel the statute of limitations applies.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 6, 2021
The “serious injuries” he references consisted of major lacerations, a collapsed lung and multiple bone fractures, so it’s not surprising that the amount of painkillers he needed to function left him too out of it to recall much. He didn’t mention why it took him another 20 years to get around to David Fincher’s second-best directorial effort, but perhaps as such a ridiculously prolific writer, he had more pressing things to concern himself with.
Published in 1996, the source novel of the same name came at the tail end of multiple works that explored the disaffected nature of Generation X and the culture of consumerism fostered upon them by their parents, a perspective the movie emphasizes as much as its titular violence. It’s also one of the few times where an adaptation drastically alters the ending of a story for the better.
The multiple tens of thousands of films that exist make it unfeasible for everyone to take in all of them, even for us professional nerds who earn a living off it. As such, when someone admits to not having seen a famous offering, instead of ridiculing them for it, perhaps be jealous of them for being, like King with Fight Club, able to enjoy it for the first time.