Fox hits with 'Fight' admist controversy

The one sure thing that David Fincher's $68 million movie "Fight Club'' has going for it, or against it, is controversy.

According to movie marketing experts, the free publicity the film is generating can either help or impair a film's ultimate box-office performance.

But many said the movie will face an uphill battle sustaining itself in the marketplace and appealing to people beyond its core audience of 18 to 30-year-old males due to its graphically violent content.

Despite some critics praising the film as a groundbreaking masterpiece, "Fight Club'' is being released at a sensitive time with violence in entertainment a major flash point in Washington.

Fox naturally chose not to play up the violence in its marketing materials, which some competitors regard as misleading advertising. Instead the company is focusing on the film's cinematic achievements, its originality and larger themes.

Courtesy of 20th Century Fox Is Fincher's film too violent? Pitt, Norton and 20th Century Fox don't think so.

"Audiences are saying, 'give us something original,'" says Fox marketing chief Bob Harper. "This is not a movie that's been made five other times. It's unique, distinct and intelligent and the biggest marketing tool in its post-opening will be that it's something riveting and important to talk about.''

Fox executives are hoping audiences will look below the surface and connect to the film's satirical, existential themes and overarching comment on the modern world and the dehumanizing influences of such things as consumerism.

"I think the movie is very, very intense in its ideas and the way they're presented, and people mistake that for violence,'' says Laura Ziskin, who as head of the studio's movie label Fox 2000 was the executive who bought and developed Chuck Palahniuk's book on which the movie is based.

With a script by first-timer Jim Uhls, "Fight Club'' stars Norton as an alienated white-collar drone stuck in a meaningless job at a big company. He befriends a freaky, charismatic loner (Pitt) who lives in a dilapidated mansion where he makes strange soap.

The two begin an underground fight club, where disaffected men like themselves take out their pent-up aggressions by beating each other up bare-fisted as a way of emancipating themselves from the numbness of contemporary life.

Fox's movie chairman Bill Mechanic says boxing classics such as "Raging Bull'' and "Rocky,'' and certainly many war films, are much more graphic than "Fight Club,'' which he notes, "I don't see as a violent movie.''

Mechanic says the fact that Ziskin was the one who championed and developed the movie indicates that "Fight Club'' won't turn away most women as some people are speculating.

"I'm interested in what it has to say about men and society at large,'' says Ziskin, "And, why we have all these (material) things and still feel numb and can't sleep at night.''

Still, Fox executives are well aware that their unconventional movie - which was co-financed by Arnon Milchan's New Regency Prods. - won't appeal to everyone. Those who have seen it tend to either love or hate this film. The New Yorker critic David Denby called it "a fascist rhapsody posing as a metaphor of liberation,'' while Rolling Stone reviewer Peter Travers called it "groundbreaking.''

Mechanic said, "It's an Us Vs. Them movie. It's certainly not a middle-of-the-road movie ... we didn't make it for everyone.''

Mechanic remains convinced the film could do enough business to make it a hit.

"We didn't make it as a non-commercial movie. The fact that we made it at the price we did, we had the inherent belief that it would attract a big enough audiences to turn a profit,'' said the Fox chairman.

The film's success will ultimately depend on word of mouth. If the movie doesn't satisfy enough of the audience, no degree of controversy or publicity will help.

Mechanic readily admits that "Fight Club'' was a big, expensive risk for Fox, but at the same time he's proud that "it's one of the more interesting movies'' to be made during "a kind of adventurous period at the studios,'' which lately have backed such movies as "American Beauty'' and "Three Kings.''

The fact that "Fight Club'' was made at all is credited to the late Fox executive Raymond Bongiovanni, who headed the New York office of Fox 2000, and sent the book to Ziskin and her then top executive Kevin McCormick (now at Warner Bros.) in the fall of 1995.

"Raymond called us one morning and said he had been up all night reading this book and we should read it,'' said Ziskin, recalling how 36 hours later she was sitting "on the edge of my bed in the middle of the night reading dialogue out loud to (her screenwriter husband) Alvin (Sargent), thinking `this is amazing.'

A week later when Fox optioned the book for $10,000, Ziskin admits, "Quite honestly, I didn't know how we'd make the movie, but I did think at the very least that underground fighting was a commercial idea.''

10-20-99