So I just finished watching Fight Club for what has to be more than the hundredth time, and it does not feel old at all. In fact I saw things this time that I had not seen before. For example, Tyler Durden pops up in the group photo while the narrator is sitting on the edge of the bed at the hotel. How did I miss that!?
I also finished the book for a third time yesterday. Fight Club is a great example of a book and the movie that is based on it being amazingly awesome. Not one time do I think, "that was better in the book." I can note the differences between the two, but never in a way that puts one over the other. The biggest difference between the two is normally noted as the ending, as the book has an entirely different ending from the one in the movie, but I think it has more to do with the book being darker (yes, darker) than the movie. The book is darker, more violent, and definitely a little more disturbing. I like both equally, but it is easier to watch the movie. Mostly because it only takes a couple of hours to finish the movie.
In the movie there are two scenes that really called out to me tonight. The first is the scene where Tyler Durden gets beat by the bar owner, Lou. He starts the scene by wandering through the crowd of fighters and talking about how much of their lives had been wasted. Wasted by marketing, by careers, by themselves. It reminded me of why I left the "career" I was in. I am still in love with the idea of selling books, as I love everything about books. But I could not ignore why I was selling them, and the worth of my job became painfully transparent. I want what I do to matter. I want to matter.
The other scene is the human sacrifice scene. Raymond K. Hessel finds himself on his knees with Tyler Durden's gun pressed to his head and is forced to look at his life, forced to throw out the reasons that are stopping him from being where, and who, he wants to be. He is given a choice; be who he wants to be, regardless of how hard it is, or die. Raymond chooses to live. The question is whether or not it takes a gun to our head to do this. Or maybe a better question would be whether or not we realize that the gun was pressed against our head and we did not choose at all.
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what's up Dick. I think the most influential scene in fight club is when Lou is beating up Tyler. That part has really spoken to me. It was first brought to my attention by my friend Kailan, Kailan is an emo guy and he is pretty screwed up. He under stood the whole concept of being free because of lose. His girlfriend broke up with him (and cheated on him with multiple guys) and in the process he took a serious downward spiral. It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything. The way I saw this scene was changed by what I saw in Kailan. When Tyler said you don't know where I've been; I saw that as Lou had no idea what Tyler had lost or how free he was to make his decisions. Tyler was enlightened, he KNEW that one day he was going to die and he had visited that state; that glorious realization of what you are, that unspoken place that you go and are forever changed.Tyler embodies that space, that state of being. That place has the ability to drive men to unspeakable acts. You don't know where I've been Lou, You don't know what I've seen. I don't think that you could ever let go like that Lou. Lou was scared by that place; he saw the chaos in Tyler's eyes and trembled. Acceptance of that place is modern western man's greatest achievement. If this were our primary goal in life we would see; our eyes would be opened. I swear to God man, today I went to see my girlfriend 50 miles north of my location. We are taking on of those "breaks". Long story short we went to Starbucks and the girl behind the counter laughed at my T-shirt and and made a small talk comment about it and then, when I started to tell her the very short sentence about how I got it and what it meant to me, she glazed over and stopped paying attention to me. That fucking bitch was trying to make small talk with me with that fake fucking face that she puts on for her JOB. My girlfriend used to work at starbuck's and told me that that is how they train their employees. OOO ooo I was enraged. People just want to go about their stupid little lives and have a two second conversation and pretend to be interested in their pointless little stories. Man fuck corperate america, fuck money, and fuck that little cocksucking ass-slave that worked behind that fucking starbucks. You know that place don't you Dick I know it and before my little dipshit girlfriend put me this little hiatus, I did'nt realize just how far that cuntbag had put me into that place. I have lost everything I am fucking Tyler Durdon
L
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