“You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.”
Author Chuck Palahniuk came up with the idea for the story after getting beaten up on a camping trip by some people who’d refused to turn down their loud radio in a neighboring campsite. The Tyler Durden character (Brad Pitt) is based on Palahniuk’s brief encounter with a real life person named Tyler Lovelly he was seated next to on a plane, years before he started the book. It wasn’t until he was two thirds of the way through writing the story that he came up with the seminal idea that Tyler and Narrator (Joe in the book) were going to be the same person. He realized they were both acting together as one person and so he chose to finish the story that way. The Project Mayhem idea is based on the Portland Cacophony Society. An actual group Palahniuk used to participate with, dedicated to huge pranks. Almost every major city in the world now has one. Edward Norton lost 20 pounds to play the Narrator after having beefed-up for his prior role as a Neo-Nazi skinhead in American History X (1998). Norton did this by running, taking vitamins and ignoring the on-set catering. Fox Studio execs originally wanted an actress with a bigger name to play Marla Singer and considered casting Reese Witherspoon, Courtney Love and Winona Ryder before going with Helena Bonham Carter. In the short scene when the Brad Pitt and Edward Norton characters are drunk and hitting golf balls at night, the actors really were drunk. Director David Fincher shot over 1,500 reels of film, more than three times the typical amount.
