Interview by ...
Mr Showbiz.com

OK, should people go out in the lobby and start punching each other after seeing Fight Club?

Pitt: I'm going to say yes to that? Of course not.

Norton: What did you take out of it?

This is not a therapy session.

Pitt: The movie is so dense and loaded with so many ideas and ideology. I just want people to have their own interpretation to take out; I don't want to give it to them.

Brad, you've still got scars on the knuckles of your right hand.

Pitt: That's just because Edward and I, we can't give it up. We fiddled around this morning.

How did this change from when David Fincher first gave you a script? The book is quite different.

Pitt: I don't feel so. [Looks at Norton.] Do you feel that?

Norton: I think it's very true to the spirit of the book; there's very little [dialogue] in the film that's not verbatim out of the novel. The ending I think is kind of amplified [into] a more cinematic ending, and in some ways I think it's more shifted toward the redemptive. There's a definite pulling back from Tyler, and [there's] the defeat of Tyler, and everything Tyler is going through.

Pitt: Finding your own autonomy.

Norton: Yeah. I think that in the film [my character] has accomplished something, like [you have at] the end of The Graduate. You don't know what he's accomplished, exactly — but you do have a sense he's reached some middle ground between his old self and this side of himself he's been battling.

Who are the people in this generation who are so confused?

Norton: [Coughs.] I don't know if I want to put a simple label on the whole thing but I do think a lot of why I responded — and all of us responded — to the book was [that] it was one of the first things I read [where] I thought, in a more substantive and complicated way, "This is on the pulse of the energy I feel in my generation." Much more than I had felt with these baby boomer-created, Reality Bites visions of us as these reductive, aimless, angst-ridden slackers. I felt Fight Club really, in a way that none of [that] stuff did, probed into the despair and paralysis that people feel in the face of having inherited this value system out of advertising.

There were so many things in the book! All of my first encounters with Brad and Fincher, and everything where we're just sitting and reading [and saying], "I love this!" Reading the kind of aphorisms out of the book that you feel you could just whack out and put on a big banner. It was the first thing I'd ever read that I felt could be like what The Graduate was for that generation, or what Rebel Without a Cause was [for its generation] — something that really rooted around in the dynamics of these frustrations.

Pitt: We talked a lot about how we were the first generation raised on television, and what that means is a bombardment of advertising, which then is a selling of a lifestyle. There's no sense of direction. Our ideals were if you can work yourself up to a place where you can drive this car, and drink this brand of beer, and have this kind of woman, you'll [have] some kind of spiritual happiness.

But you've got all that Brad! Aren't you spiritually happy?

Pitt: See, no one wants to hear that from me. Money is freedom, no question. I do wish everyone had that freedom, because it's a distraction. But [that's] what you do learn — and that's why you look at so many who, once they've made it, check out or don't carry on. And then what do you do? You're stuck with yourself. You realize these [material] things aren't going to add up.

Do you ever feel the rage these guys feel? Guys who don't have an outlet?

Pitt: It's not so much [that]. The book, in my interpretation, isn't about getting out aggression or putting aggression on someone else — >Norton: I agree.

Pitt: It's [about how] we've become spectators. That you watch television, and you'll order the wardrobe that the cast is wearing. QVC, it's a little frightening, people just getting accustomed to sitting on the couch and watching other people live a life, and not getting to participate in it.

Norton: I totally agree with that. I think it's a very important distinction. First, I think it's important to make the distinction of what the characters suggest and what the film suggests. Because what Tyler is proposing, one half of the dialectic in the film, by the end of the film, the other character has pulled back [from that] and the film kind of leaves it in your lap to decide. Whatever Tyler's espousing [in the way of revolutionary violence] is not to be confused with the message of the film. It leaves it open to you to figure it out. Like my character says, "How far do you want to go with this?"

Even Tyler is not espousing violence directed outward, against other people, as a form of redemptive gesture. The fights in Fight Club are —

Pitt: He doesn't say, "I want to hit you as hard as I can." The first thing he says is, "Hit me."

Norton: Yeah, it's "Hit me." It's, "I want to have real experiences, and I don't want to die without having real experiences in my life."

Pitt: I don't want to sit around watching other people do it. I don't want to be a spectator. I want to get in the ring myself.

Norton: The aggression, the radicalism in Fight Club, is very much directed inward. I think it's metaphorical; it's the fight against your own impulse to get cocooned in things, which is why the guys, at the end of the fights, they get up and hug each other and thank each other for the experience. Because it's the gesture that's helping them strip away the —

Pitt: The fears —

Norton: The fears of pain, and the reliance on material signifiers of their self-worth.

What do you do when you're feeling so pent-up? What can you do?

Norton: People can do all kinds of different things.

Pitt: Yeah, I wouldn't say there's one form of release.

Do you do kick-boxing or martial arts?

Pitt: No, not myself.

Do you ski?

Pitt: Sure.

Drive cars fast or something?

Pitt: I love traffic because it's this great form — as long as guns aren't involved — of getting out your frustrations. You can yell at someone, and someone can yell back and get something out. Or you can see someone who wants to get in the lane, and let them in the lane, and feel like a nice guy.

Norton: I've never heard anybody equate the L.A. freeways with Traffic as Wellness Center.

Pitt: There's a code that goes on there, it's pretty funny.

In real life, how long does it take you to get in character to do a fight scene like that?

Pitt: The fight scene is more physical, so we had a fight coordinator working with us. The first stuff [the audience sees in the film], of course, is more free form — it's not supposed to have any style.

Norton: In the parking lot, it was pretty loose.

Pitt: Then once we got inside, it was coordinated pretty well.

Mentally, how long does it take you?

Pitt: I don't know of any preparation. You kind of just get in.

Norton: The intense fighting has to be very well choreographed. As a result, I think one of the strange ironies of film [is that] the violence in film that seems [to be] the most intense and brutal is actually the kind of film acting that's the least emotionally connected.

Pitt: It's harder to get geared up for a love scene.

Norton: I get more of an emotional rush for when we're arguing in the car, or Brad's burning my hand, something like that. Technically, [with] fight scenes you have to repeat them in very small fragments, over and over.

Why is it harder to "gear up" for love scenes? Do you mean with respect to the emotionally charged scenes involving your character and Ed's?

Pitt: I was just kidding.

You guys are friends now. Did you ever get to the point in the movie where you were, I don't want to hit him today?

Pitt: Actually, I liked our love scene better.

Norton: It felt that way.

The film felt like it was leading up to something breaking between the two of you that way. Did you guys talk about that?

Pitt: Not really.

Norton: Not so much in the specific romantic sense, but we did …

Pitt: Oh, I do love you.

The homoerotic content?

Pitt: Other people have said that. I never saw it that way. My interpretation is that when he says, "We're a generation of men raised by women, and I'm wondering if another woman is the answer," I always took that [to mean], "Listen, right now we have to figure out ourselves, because we're a mess." Before we can take responsibility [for] another person, and then a family, that's something we'll get to later. That was always my interpretation — more [that] than homoerotic.

Norton: And also to break away from perceived ideas of how the pattern of our lives is supposed to go. That's what I always felt that scene was about. A person saying, "Well, I did this because my father told me to and then I asked him what to do next and then I asked him what to do next after that." I realized none of these things had anything to do with me.

Pitt: [It's like asking], "What was I prepared for?"

When Helena Bonham Carter is troubled and comes to the house where you both live and asks what's going on, you look to Tyler behind the door and he tells you, "This conversation is over." It's like you're submissive to Tyler.

Norton: I love the way that's edited and put together because it's where the film really enters this surrealness. But my thought is, talking to Fincher about it, [that] in the character of the narrator there is this juncture in the phone booth where he has the choice: He can move towards her or Tyler. Moving towards her, in a way she's like his female animus, she's exactly the same as he is on a certain level. He can move toward her and have a connection. Or he can go towards this more seductive, negativist approach.

Pitt: The unknown —

Norton: Or someone who is essentially saying, "Let's try something else, don't go towards what you know already." So he moves towards that.

Pitt: I never took it as negative.

Norton: I don't mean negative in the sense of bad, exactly. Let's contend —

Pitt: A positive Tony Robbins.

Norton: Yeah. Let's contend with what we've been sold on. I think the scene that's really interesting for me is in the car where they fight, because what's revealed there is in essence that this narrator hasn't been so [committed] to the philosophy the way that Tyler has been committed to it. For [the narrator], it's been really the satisfaction of having a personal relationship, the connection with somebody. In that is the root of his jealousy when Helena comes into the picture. In the car, what's really being said is, "I thought this was our thing. Why did you leave me out?" From his end, it's a relationship fight. Tyler's saying, "This is not about our relationship, and if that's why you've been in this, you've got a big surprise coming."

Pitt: Don't get encumbered with these personal fights.

Norton: Yeah, don't make this about you and me, because it's much more about what's being explored here. And that's a much more emotional hurt for the narrator. At that point, they start to split because after that he's more concerned with [the revolutionary movement].

Do you guys feel you've got things figured out now? That now that you're in your 30s, you're past that questioning phase?

Norton: We're both gurus.

Pitt: We are. Deepak [Chopra, author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success]. I feel certainly wiser with my own personal direction, my own personal ideology. But I think we'll always [be] going through that. Right?

Norton: I think what I liked about the film [is] that it touches on something that is going on with our own generation in our 20s; we've kind of had our midlife crisis in our 20s.

"Wait until your midlife," is all I can say.

Norton: But we have had [a midlife crisis] in essence, and the film is in a lot of ways about figuring out what you don't like, starting to name the things that make you unhappy.

Pitt: Defining them.

Did you feel old in your 20s?

Norton: It's not about feeling old or not. For me personally, going through your 20s is hopefully going through a lot of experiences that will let you identify what it is you like or don't like. You stop receiving your ideas about what you should like, or not, from other sources so much.

Pitt: I remember as I turned 30 I said, "I have no more excuses for myself. I've got to figure these things out."

How important is this, Brad, career-wise? What does this movie mean afterMeet Joe Black?

Pitt: I don't know about career-wise. I'm not [keeping track] and that's everyone else's discussion. I'll just continue following what I'm interested in. If it works, it works, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. This one, [after] Fincher gave me the book, I was particularly excited about. This just defined things for me that I'd never been able to clarify.

So it's not a calculated thing like, "I want to get back to that dark zone where I had such a big hit [with 1995's Seven, also directed by Fincher]?"

Pitt: No, it's what more interesting for me personally.

Do you think Meet Joe Black was misunderstood and will some day be seen the way you wanted it, and the way you approached it?

Pitt: No. I still think there's lovely things in there. It's what it is.

Norton: It's got the best car hit in the world in it [a scene in which Pitt's character is killed, which enables Death to assume his body].

Pitt: I don't think [actors] deserve to be eviscerated [for making critically or commercially unsuccessful films]. But it comes with the territory. It's all right with me.

"Comes with the territory." Does that mean as a Hollywood star you're going to take your shots, and people are going to go through phases with you?

Pitt: Yeah, fine. So be it. One thing I learned, it's not personal.

Speaking of personal, you don't want to discuss your personal life, I understand —

Pitt: No, not really.

Norton: I have to say "No" for Brad on that.

Pitt: Edward, ah, will be handling all my personal questions.

But do you believe in marriage?

Norton: I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to turn this discussion back to the film.

Pitt: Of course I do. But you have to figure out your major malfunctions first before you take [that] on.

Does it take guys longer? Or do girls have to figure this out too?

Pitt: No, that I couldn't tell you — I'm a guy. We grow up with these other ideals, which the movie lightly touches on. It just says love conquers all, and two become one, and all that shit. It just didn't turn out to be true.

Two will never become one?

Pitt: No. Only if they lose themselves completely. Two become two.

Getting back to the film, there's all this talk about its violent content. How do you both react to that?

Norton: It's from a lot of people who haven't seen the movie. That seems like lazy journalism to me.

But wasn't it pulled from a summer release, supposedly because of the violent content?

Norton: That's nonsense.

Pitt: That's Fincher the perfectionist.

Norton: He wasn't close to being finished cutting the movie.

Pitt: And let me tell you something, [Fincher's perfectionism] shows in the final cut.

What about the ratings board? Did you have to go in with him and argue for a scene?

Norton: Not at all.

Pitt: He had to trim some things down —

Norton: It's standard fare.

Pitt: But we didn't lose any content. The question is, "Do you lose a [thematic] point of the film?"

Norton: There's not one major scene that's not in the film because of violent content. Not one.

Are you worried about copycat violence?

Pitt: What is copycat violence with this film?

Blowing up centralized credit card buildings.

Norton: This is no arsonist handbook. There is no instruction on how to make a bomb. I've got to say, that kind of stuff comes from people looking for easy copy, and catching a buzz on a movie they haven't even seen. When everybody in the critical community calls for more sophisticated films and more eclectic films to come out of the studio system, and then they get one and don't grant it a more sophisticated eye, then the onus is on the critical community.

To examine this movie and really listen to what it says — there is nothing [in it] to suggest violence against other people as a means to an end. But surely you see where people would say that.

Norton: Certainly. But if people didn't make art that critiqued the dysfunctions in society because they were worried about copycat things, Nabokov would never have written Lolita. The Beatles would never have made that record.

Pitt: Scorsese wouldn't have made Taxi Driver.

Norton: Yeah! Dr. Strangelove. Every movie that's ever been called dangerous or radical is now a cultural hallmark of generational energy. It's much more disturbing and dangerous to me that a cultural medium as potent as film should not look in a complicated way at the ways we are unhealthy. That is living in serious denial as a culture. "Let's not make anything disturbing!"

Pitt: Let's keep things bright and shiny and happy! Touched by an Angel.

Are you two guesting on that show soon?

Norton: We're going on together.

Pitt: Remember, the Nazis started burning books in 1937. There's an amazing monument there to mark this occasion, so it doesn't happen again. Instead of some fascist symbol, they have just a square cutout, and you look down and it's glass, and you walk over it, and it's an empty room with empty bookshelves. It's really beautiful.

Brad, do you know what you're going to do next?

Pitt: A little thing in Guy Ritchie's movie, the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels guy. I think it's going to be called Sleep House. It's the same template. It's an ensemble, so it'll only be a couple of weeks [filming] for me.

When you did that W photo spread last August, a series of black-and-white, semi-nude shots, Francesco Scavullo was quoted as saying, "When I shot Brad he didn't want to look gay. Now he looks so S&M." Did you do that to court the gay audience for Fight Club?

Pitt: [Laughs.] No, no. That whole thing was you're supposed to do these things to sell the movie, and I don't know how to do that. But if we've got to do these things, let's make some art, and find something interesting about it. What? I'm going to sit here and look winsome again?

Notes : The movie Brad Pitt is talking about by the end of the interview, the one he called Sleep house was actually called Snatch, it was released on January, 19 2001 ; also starring Benicio Del Toroand Dennis Farina.