Fight Club Movie

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 that the film is generating can either help or impair a film's ultimate box-office performance. No one in Hollywood doubts that 20th Century Fox's "Fight Club," starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, will have a strong opening this weekend--estimates range from $14 million to $17 million.

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 that the film is generating can either help or impair a film's ultimate box-office performance. No one in Hollywood doubts that 20th Century Fox's "Fight Club," starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, will have a strong opening this weekend--estimates range from $14 million to $17 million.

Another waiter has just served me another free meal because I'm "that guy." I'm the guy who wrote that book. The "Fight Club" book. Because there's a scene in the book where a loyal waiter, a member of the fight club cult, serves the narrator free food. Where now in the movie, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter get free food. Then a magazine editor, another magazine editor, calls me, angry and ranting because he wants to send a writer to the underground fight club in his area.

Another waiter has just served me another free meal because I'm "that guy." I'm the guy who wrote that book. The "Fight Club" book. Because there's a scene in the book where a loyal waiter, a member of the fight club cult, serves the narrator free food. Where now in the movie, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter get free food. Then a magazine editor, another magazine editor, calls me, angry and ranting because he wants to send a writer to the underground fight club in his area.

Stranger Than Fiction True Stories Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday: 234 pp., $23.95 * Chuck Palahniuk's six novels, including "Choke," "Lullaby" and "Fight Club," share themes of isolation, addiction and nihilism. His characters often yearn for companionship, no matter how dysfunctional or damaging. In the introduction to his latest book, "Stranger Than Fiction," Palahniuk writes: "If you haven't already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people."

When actor/writer Clark Gregg first read "Choke" more than seven years ago, he felt such an immediate connection to the material that he became determined to make it his directorial debut. Written by the cult novelist Chuck Palahniuk, the book had all the shock and subversion one might expect from the author of "Fight Club," but Gregg also connected to an underlying sweetness in the pages that caught him by surprise.

Valata Jenkins-Monroe contributed to Barack Obama's campaign and made a few phone calls on his behalf, but she doesn't consider herself a fanatic, not even with Obama posters, T-shirts, buttons, mugs, coasters and vases in her home -- along with a photo of her 28-year-old daughter taken with the president-elect.