Fight Club (1999) / Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon

0:00 In 1999, director David Fincher and star Edward Norton gave the world a fatalistic gut punch that still holds power. In 2026, we try a whiskey that hopefully doesn't make us run headlong into traffic. The. Film is Fight Club. Brad seriously, so many people run into traffic in this movie it's kind of insane. It's Whiskey is 4 Roses Small Batch. And we'll review them both. This is the Film and Whiskey podcast. Welcome to the Film and Whiskey podcast, where each week we review a classic movie and a glass of whiskey. I'm Bob Book.

0:59 I am Bob's fat and saggy tits. Yeah, yeah, you are. And Brad, this week is the reason this podcast was created. Episodes like this, because, you know, I come on here every week, I give my spiel. I say we're reviewing a classic movie. Let's be honest, nobody needs Bob and Brad to review movies that have already been established as classics. Sure, but every now and then we get takes so spicy, so muy. Caliente, Brad. You know I don't speak Spanish. We single handedly revive the conversations around these movies, Brad. And I'm going to continue to add my spicy takes to the the pile, to the the burning heap of a film that we're talking about today, Brad, because we're looking.

1:48 At 19. 99's Fight Club, a movie that if you ever listened to our first episode on you know I notoriously, it's a. Real eternal sunshine. Am I right it? Really is man, the the eternal sunshine in question is the hatred that burns within my heart towards this film. Man, I can't wait to talk about this with you. So folks, listen, usually we don't come on here and just crap all over movies. And in fact, especially when Brad and I have a difference of opinion, at least I try to kind of tamper down when I'm lower on a movie than Brad is. Brad just forges ahead, does not care about my feelings at all. This is one of those times where like. We're on the Internet, what's the point of just being tampered down, holding it back? Just let it all out, man.

2:35 Dude, just today I was, I shared a real from our Pulp Fiction episode and it was like, it was a clip of me talking about how I think Tarantino's best movies are the ones where he's kind of a big softie and he has empathy for his characters. And I listed a few examples of the movies that I really like by Tarantino and then a few examples of the movies that I don't think do that well. And like the first comment was some dude being like, you didn't even list Jackie Brown, which is the best example of what you're arguing for. And therefore this is a bad take. And I'm just like, you're right, guy on Internet. Like, I'm sorry that I didn't list every movie Tarantino's made in this clip and then categorize them for you.

3:19 I I apologize that I only gave you the framework for that, you know. Yeah, but but that's the best example, Bob. So you clearly don't know what you're talking. About and you didn't list it now what I'm really excited for is the the takes and the clips that are going to come out of this episode. Like I said, I try not to crap on movies a lot, but I know that this is a movie that Brad likes quite a bit and thinks is a very good movie, but it's not like near and dear to his cell heart. You know, like. I, I wasn't watching this when I was like, hey, the, the nostalgia's not there, you know? Not quite the family Christmas tradition that it was in. Apparently some other people's I mean houses. Well, we were talking about Pulp Fiction. You said you saw that when you were like 12. Yeah, probably 13. I was like a freshman maybe.

4:01 Bob, that's not good. That's not good for the soul, no. It's the perfect time to see Pulp Fiction. Just seeing big names. Folks, if this is your first time joining us on film and Whiskey, we talk about movies, we talk about whiskey. This season, we are going back to the movies that we reviewed back in Season 1. This is season #10 of the show. We've been doing this for almost 7 years now, releasing episodes every single week. And you know, you go back to season #1 and you realize we've come a long way since then. And I thought it would be fun to spend our 10th season revisiting and kind of replacing those those old episodes with the older, wiser versions of ourselves. Brad. And so I do.

4:41 Dragged my feet going back to this movie. I think is is the point I'll make here. Please go ahead. I was just saying I do have a lot more Gray hair than when we started so. And you used to have no hair. So yeah, that's we've come a long way. As I said, Brad, both signs of wisdom. We were going to record this episode at the end of November 2025. And it. Is I dragged my feet. I dragged my feet about watching it and then we had other episodes to record. Brad, it's been over a month since you watched this movie. I assume you did some level of refreshing yourself via YouTube clips. Nothing really. I I wanted to and then it was time to record and I was like, well.

5:25 Here we are. We're flying blind today, folks. Yeah, which is going to make for a really fun episode. And I guess let's just go ahead and kick off the fun now with our first segment of the day, which we call Brad explains. Brad's going to give us the movie plot with only 60 seconds taken on the clock, so let's go ahead and do your take with this little segment that we call Brad explains. Brad Explains is the part of the show where Brad breaks down the plot of the film that he's just seen often for the first time. Now Brad, this is AI want to use the word notorious again? But a famous example of the twist ending and one of the earliest examples of a true twist ending in movies.

6:07 One that reframed the whole film. One that inspired countless RE watches back when you can only get a movie like this on VHS or an early DVD copy. And so this movie's popularity really took off in the early 2000s in dorm rooms across America. This is like one of the movies that if you're an 18 year old man coming into manhood. Wow. This is this is what movies are supposed to be. This is why you need to watch this on YouTube. Then you get to see the the quotation marks that Bob puts in when he says the word man. Yeah, You know, I mean, listen, this is all, this is a movie all about manhood, Brad, and it appeals to 18 year olds. And I think that there's a reason for that. But I say all that to say, we do. Brad explains, and Brad gets a chance to tell you everything that happens in this movie.

6:56 So they're going to be spoilers galore throughout this review or this synopsis of Fight Club. Brad, you have 60. Brad, you have 60 seconds to explain the plot of this movie, which I will say, and we'll get to this two hours and 20 minutes long. It's a little bit too long. It's a long. It's a long movie, Yeah. And you only get one minute to break it down. The floor is yours, Sir. 60 seconds and go. Fight Club is a film that follows the narrator does not have a name in the film who is a run-of-the-mill just trying to find his way through life. Single guy in his 30s that works as a insurance adjuster. I don't know.

7:44 He goes and checks things out, but as he travels across the country a lot, he develops insomnia and this insomnia leads him to go to support groups in order to fake like he has these bad things. And as he cries with these people, it gives him release and he's a lot of sleep. He meets another faker named Marla Singer and she kind of ruins things for him and he goes back to not sleeping. Eventually he meets a man on his travels named Brad Pitt, and Brad Pitt teaches him all sorts of stuff about fighting for the life and like capitalism is bad and and all these things. And so he starts a cult and he's going to blow up a bunch of credit card companies. And then it turns out that Brad Pitt was not real the whole time.

8:31 He was a ghost, just like The Sixth Sense. He. Was not a ghost. Let's know. Listen, I know this is your segment, but let's pump the brakes here a little. Bit Edward Norton was dead the whole time. Man, I do think that there's a million directions we can go based on Brad Can. I tell one quick story in my research for two facts in a falsehood, apparently Rosie O'Donnell. Do you know a story about her and Fight Club? So Rosie O'Donnell started. I'm not going to go there like 3 or 4 days before the movie came out. She had seen an advance screening on like Monday. It's coming out on Friday and I'm like Wednesday on the View or whatever show she was on back in the 90s goes on and tells her audience across the whole country. This movie like terrorized me.

9:25 I can't sleep at night and it's because Brad Pitt isn't real the whole movie. He's a figment of Edward Norton's imagination and you shouldn't go see it. It's a terrible movie 2 days before it came out. Well, first of all, don't do that. But also, like anytime, anytime a figure goes on TV and says like this is filth, you should never see it, guess what movie is going to be #1 that weekend, What are you doing? The the Streisand effect. 100% dude. All right, let's jump into talking about the movie. You mentioned The 6th Sense. I think that's a good comparison point. And there I, I think part of the way I want to talk about this movie is by comparing it to a lot of other movies 'cause that kind of helps me understand personally where it succeeds and where it doesn't.

10:15 Cause I've seen some of this stuff done better elsewhere. And some of that comes down to like maybe Fight Club was the first to do it and we've just gotten better at it since then, you know? But The Sixth Sense, the other big twist ending movie of 1999, unless you really want to count The Blair Witch Project, which we don't really know what happens at the end of that movie, but I've. Never. I've never seen The Blair Witch Project. Oh man, you'd have. Fun. That was like the first shaky Cam movie, right? Yep. Yeah. All right, man, let's dive in. Where do you think we should start with Fight Club? I think man, Fight Club has so many, just so much going on. I, I think let's just stick with the formula, Bob.

10:56 Let's start with performances. That's where we like to start. We like to talk about the actors, actresses. Can we talk about the fact that I think Helena Bonham Carter is the best actress of the last like 50 years? I see, I don't disagree with you in that she's a great actress, but like she for a long time she only either did like Jane Austen adaptations or she was Bellatrix Lestrange. Like those are the 2. And I think part of that comes from being married to Tim Burton for as long as she was, which is just if you look at pictures of Tim Burton, they like clearly modeled some of Helena Bonham Carter's characters after Tim Burton's look. Like she has the the Bob Dylan weird bird's nest haircut and all that.

11:42 Like it's very weird. But I don't like her as much here as I do in Harry Potter. And I think that's because she leans into the hamminess a lot more in Harry Potter. And I think that you can hear her accent slipping through the American accent a lot in this movie. And, and so like, it's, it's a performance worth talking about. It's also kind of a nothing character. Even though she's like this, she's this presented as this live wire kind of girl. She essentially only exists for the plot to keep her at arm's length because of the twist at the end of the movie. If Edward Norton even remotely mentions the word Tyler to her any earlier in the course of the movie, the whole thing falls apart.

12:29 So that their entire relationship has to exist on the basis of miscommunication and, and just involves her getting mad and storming out and you being as an audience member, like, I don't understand what's going on here, you know? And so I think it affects her the most because of that. I see for me, though, that that's what gives the end of the movie like the punch when she finally is like, like really brought into the whole picture. I think her reaction at the very end of things is just so, so good because you you've only seen her being the angry person. And when she finally, when you finally get to see her care about Edward Norton and be like, oh, yeah, no, I I care about you.

13:12 That's why we're still in this weird relationship and I keep coming back. That's the moment for me that her character like clicks. Even though you're right, you you don't barely get to see her through the whole movie. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. So The funny thing about this movie is, like, the cast of characters is enormous, but there's really only like, there's such a separation between the top three people and then maybe Meatloaf and Jared Leto and then everybody else. And so like, we've hit Helena Bonham Carter, and it's like, all right, I guess it's on to Brad Norton. Brad Norton. Brad who? Brad Norton. Brad Norton. Who's who's Jared Leto's in this? Yeah, he's the blonde guy that Edward Norton beats. Really.

13:57 Why didn't anybody do that in real life? I was going to say really living out the wish fulfillment of most people of just like man, wouldn't it be nice, you know? 100% dude, I had no idea that that was Jared Leto. I until this moment didn't know I'd seen a Jared Leto film. This is the first. You know, and, and credit to Jared Leto for leaning into the fact that he he is one of the more punchable people in Hollywood. Yeah, because the year after this, he's an American Psycho and he plays a an even bigger douche in that movie who gets like, killed with an axe. So it's like, you know, he he he's understood the assignment, kind of, Yeah.

14:42 I. I appreciate that American Psycho's been on that list where I like, I feel like it's a, it's a very popular YouTube short movie that like you get clips 'cause they talks about like, I don't know the world that he lives in. And then it shows him, like, killing people and you're like, OK, cool, YouTube. I'll have to get around to watching Jared Leto get punched in that movie. That sounds great. Yeah. So American Psycho is another one of those movies that I have on my list of like comparison points because so there's 5 or 6 movies in a one year span from 99 to 2000 that deal with this sort of like corporate white collar, white male dissatisfaction.

15:22 And we've watched quite a few of them for this podcast. So obviously Fight Club, American Psycho, American Beauty is right there. That's 99 Office Space for a more comedic take on it. We have to watch Office Space soon. I think it's one of the best comedies ever written. We'll get around to it for sure. It's a great one. And then you've got The Matrix and you've got Being John Malkovich as kind of like an outlier, not white collar, but more of just like weird dissatisfaction stuff. And I think American Psycho for me is a good comparison point because it also doesn't quite nail what it's going for. It really wants to be a satire. And for the people that it works for, it works really well.

16:03 I can never get on that movie's wavelength. And I feel like that's kind of where I'm at with Fight Club even still after this viewing. And I think that that's that's a good framework then to go into talking about our two main performances from Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. And I think we should have the longer conversation about Edward Norton because he he was, I don't want to say top of the world at this point, but he really bursts on the scene in 96 in this movie, Primal Fear, which is also a twist ending movie. He gets nominated for an Oscar for that movie and then not. Only have I ever seen primal fear. I've never heard of Primal Fear. So you've heard of it today, baby. That's right. After Primal Fear, he starts doing like he gets nominated again in 98 for American History X. That movie is another like very controversial film. He's doing rounders with Matt Damon. He's trying to do like more Hollywood commercial stuff. And then he lands this movie and by the end of the decade, he's really established himself as like, oh, this is maybe the next guy.

17:04 And I feel like he built a bit of a reputation in the 2000s for being an A hole and Hollywood didn't use him as much. And he's kicked around quite a bit. But man, I just I wish we had gotten more Ed Norton over the last 15 ish years because he is such a good actor and I think that because the Brad Pitt stuff in this movie is the iconic imagery of the movie, people forget how good Ed Norton is in this movie. He is like unbelievably good in this movie. Dude, for me, it's the reason I keep wanting to come back to this film. I I think Edward Norton has he's captured that sense of on we about the American corporate life in a way that I don't think other movies do. Like Kevin Spacey has too much snarkiness to believe that he's like really just depressed and like, I don't know, rundown by the American corporate world.

18:06 Whereas Edward Norton, I mean the the famous like shot of him at the copier and like the copier light is going across. His face. And he's just like, you know, like there, it's perfect. He he does such a good job with it. Yeah, And I think that he's able to kind of move between modes of like, likeability as well, like, because I think that the beginning part of this movie is, is like insufferable. And I'll, I'll get around to this eventually. I, I just, because I'm not sure as an audience member yet whether this really is like my protagonist. And he just sounds like a whiny little punk who's, like, mad about having this privileged life. It's like, oh, F this guy.

18:48 Now, he captures that sort of, like, ennui and morose thing very well, but he's also, like, just punchable enough. And so then when he meets Brad Pitt and he actually gets punched, you're like, yeah. But then he also is like, he can be sweet and he can be likeable. And then he takes his shirt off and you realize, like, he's not quite as jacked as Brad Pitt, but this dude's in very good shape. And like I, I think that he could fit into so many different molds. And I guess the only thing I can really think to compare it to is a couple years later when we get Tobey Maguire as spider man and he's trying to do kind of like I can. I can be a sarcastic a hole to Uncle Ben. I'm also really sweet.

19:29 I am also kind of jacked. But Tobey Maguire always felt more boyish. And I feel like Edward Norton had that sense of like, I'm a grown up and I can be kind of a Dick. And, and it worked for whether he wanted to be a hero or a villain, he brought that, that layer of nuance to it. And it works because Brad Pit is opposite of him. Like he has just enough of AI don't mean this word in a bad way at all. Just it's the way he presents it. He has just enough of a feminized kind of like he just like kind of is reserved. That. Brad Pitt. Edward Norton is yes.

20:11 Edward Norton OK, OK, that Brad Pitt being this like hyper masculine, like argumentative, just points out your flaws. It just makes for such a great contrast to watch Edward Norton change throughout the movie. And by the end of the film, when he's trapped in this cult of his own creation, you feel him finally starting to wake up and fight in the way that Tyler has always wanted him to wake up and fight, even if it's fighting against his own creation. I I think it's such a good transformation throughout the course of the film. Yeah. And I think it makes the last half hour of this movie by far the best part of the film.

20:53 Like, yeah, from from the time even before the reveal that he is Tyler, when he like, gets on the plane and starts kind of trying to reach race Tyler's footsteps, it becomes such a much more interesting movie plot wise. Because before that, it's this weird effed up domestic drama where he's in a house with these two other people, but none of them are ever in the same room together. And it's not really going anywhere. And it really tests your patience for not just like, what's the plot of this movie, but also like, what are we trying to communicate here? Like, what's, you know what I mean? Like what's this about? And I think that part of the reason that it really is buoyed at the end of the film is because Edward Norton so good at playing like desperate, like I, I really have a, a sense of conscious now. I want to stop this thing from happening. I'm out of breath.

21:42 I'm running around like he plays that, that sort of like frantic, nervous energy really, really well. Yeah, and they also do. I think this gets to more the writing, but it's it almost becomes a little bit of like a horror thriller at the end of the movie when he's he's in the detective's office and he's confessing everything and the detective is like, all right, I'm going to go take care of things. And the moment one of the guys in the room goes, I think it's honorable what you're doing, Sir. And and you realize that they're in Project Mayhem. Yep. It it feel you feel trapped the way Edward Norton is trapped. And you have no doubt that they are about to do what they are threatening to do that like the whole movie, like builds to that point. And it's like a fuse is about to hit the bomb. And I, I think it's just such great, great writing. All right, let's talk about Brad Pitt a little bit. Brad Pitt is such an interesting actor to talk about because he is like, and I think I've mentioned this before, he he's such a weird actor.

22:48 Like every time you think of how like an actor would deliver this line, Brad Pitt chooses the complete opposite of that all the time. And it's not the same thing as like, I think Nicolas Cage also chooses the opposite of what a normal actor would do. But it's not, it's not that. But like Pitt Mumbles a lot. Pitt kind of mashes words up together and says his lines too quickly sometimes. But because he's so magnetic and so good looking and so physically intimidating in this movie, you're like, OK, spout your dumb philosophy. Like I I'll listen to whatever you have to say in whatever weird mumbly voice you want to say it. I don't.

23:29 I don't know what to make of the performance, Brad. Like, it's just he is. He is there to be Brad Pitt. And him being in this movie is a commentary by Brad Pitt on being Brad Pitt to the point where, like at the end of the film, he's just like, hey, Adam Thornton, I'm who you want to be. I'm better looking than you. I screw better than you. I'm in better shape than you. I am every man's dream and for for Brad Pitt to kind of lean into that and also like lean into the effed upness of that. I think is is more interesting in a lot of ways than the actual performance on the screen. That's that's really interesting. What What do you think it is about Brad point in this point of his career that makes this such a big capital C choice for him?

24:18 Well, I mean, like, so you know, he works with Fincher in 95 on 7 and he was a big name already, obviously, like and he had done legends of the fall, but he was still like this very pretty kind of like, sure, this you know, I'm women are crushing on him, right? And then 7 happens and it's like, Oh, this guy really wants to be edgier. And it reminds me a lot of like when DiCaprio does the departed and it's like, Oh, this is a different kind of DiCaprio and his choices over the next few years are like, am I this pretty tabloid guy? Am I going to start dating actresses from friends? Am I gonna be in movies like 7 Years in Tibet, which is actually like on the Billboard of one of in the background of one of the scenes in this movie?

25:00 Really. So like, yeah. Or am I gonna take all that image that I've built up for myself and kind of turn it on its head and critique the consumerism that, like, my own stardom feeds into? And I think that that's really, I mean, it really is a commentary on his own stardom. And at the end of the day, it just made him more popular and more consumer friendly for being a sexy masculine Brad Pitt kind of guy. I want to hear your thoughts though, like what do you actually think of the performance? Especially because season 1 and now season 10 have been very Brad Pitt heavy. So I think we have a better sense of like, you know, like we and just in the past couple years we've done Moneyball, we've done Tree of Life, we've done this movie. I'm sure there's two or three others Inglourious Basterds we had just had this season, you know, and that's Pitt 10-15 years removed from this movie.

25:56 So a more mature actor I think too. Where do you land on him performance wise in Fight Club? I mean, it's Pitt at his most unrestrained from what we've seen him. Like when I think about Pit and Tree of Life and Moneyball, he is a very, he plays very restrained characters, right? And obviously Tree of Life is him with bouts of exploding because he has his anger. But for the most part, he's a 1950s dad that made it through World War 2. And when you see him in Fight Club, compared to those and even Inglorious Basterds, like, yeah, he's a little bit unhinged, but he's like the control point for all of these really unhinged soldiers, right?

26:40 I think when you have him in Fight Club, you have him fully let loose, unhinged, like psychotic. And I think it's a fascinating performance because of that, because we don't really see him do that in other movies. Now, I haven't seen a lot of early Brad Pitt, so I don't know if this is like more normal for him in the 90s. But to see him going absolutely ham and yelling at people and screaming and making sex note like recordings of sex sounds to be played with Helena Bonham Carter, like this is him going full out. What? What would it be like if I chewed not just the scenery, but the lighting and the sound and everything that I possibly can chew? Yeah.

27:28 And I freaking love it, dude. I like I think that yes, Edward Norton is the key to this movie, but I think Brad Pitt's the linchpin, like his psychotic energy is what draws you in, is what keeps it from being boring. So I'm with you. Like the whole purpose of Edward Norton is to say this is I like the word you used morose. He like he is just this like dead doldrums of life. And Brad Pitt is that driving energy that's supposed to shake him loose. And he, he nails that, absolutely nails it. Right. So this is only our third Fincher movie that we've talked about on the podcast. We did this, we've done we've done the social network and we've done Zodiac. So very different movies.

28:14 Very much so yeah. And I think that like this one, definitely, I have huge issues with how long and how repetitive and how I just redundant a lot of this movie is. But it definitely in terms of like how many cuts and how many edits happen over the course of this movie. It is by far the most fast-paced editing wise. And I think this is the first time in Fincher's movie career where you see him start to get into some of these things where he's making montages. And it'll start with like they're filming ATV report and then they'll do like this quick whip pan around and you'll see the people on the couch watching the TV report or whatever. And he uses those kind of very precise camera movements from here on out in his career.

28:59 You see it a ton in The Social Network, a little bit in Zodiac. Fincher's a weird dude, man. He, he loves to make movies about like the darkest impulses of humanity. He just seems like he, he loves to get grimy with stuff, but he also has like a really sick sense of humor. And Fincher's kind of right now, like, yeah, you know, persona, like persona non grata in a lot of places right now because he's like gotten in bed with Netflix and he's just kind of like making whatever Netflix wants him to do now, which gets me a lot of points in my like, I think David Fincher's kind of a hack hot take that I want to introduce someday.

29:39 He's not a hack. He's technically brilliant. But I just, I struggle with Fincher because I don't know. I don't know how deep he goes, like as a person and as a film maker because so many of his movies seem to be geared towards like the shit you would find deep and the shit you would find sickly funny at 21 years old. And I don't really know how much we go beyond. Even when he tries to do that in like Benjamin Button and like I just, it doesn't feel authentic. You don't like Benjamin Button? It's OK, Yeah, Fight Club is Fight Club for to me is like the the apex of that too, where it's like, what do you have to offer me, man?

30:24 Is this like, are you hinting at anything deeper than this or is this just you like having fun, bro. And out with Brad Pitt making a movie for 20 year olds, which is cool. But I also don't know that that puts you on like my pedestal of great film makers. Yeah, I, I mean, for me, this Fight Club never made me think of Venture as a top five, top 10 greatest directors of all time. Like it. It definitely feels like a movie that I, it depends on your reading. It's one of those movies. It's kind of like 500 Days of Summer. Like either 500 Days of Summer is written by somebody who understands that Joseph Gordon Levitt is not actually that mature and he's kind of the bad guy in the movie. Or it's written by somebody who is so immature that he doesn't realize that, and he's trying to make Summer the villain, but isn't because she's not the villain, right? Like it's one of those two things. And it feels the same here.

31:25 Like, either David Fincher is like growing out and things, Project Mayhem is actually kind of cool, and the whole fighting is like, like, yeah, we need to fight to become real men. Or it's a guy who's making it as a commentary on that to say, hey, like, like this is what unrestrained unhealthy masculinity looks like when it is only reactive. And I like, I think for me, that's why I like this movie is because there is some nuance between those two positions. But at the end of the day, this this movie is not a promotion of what happens in the film. At least I don't I don't think it is. I agree with that.

32:10 And I so I'm, I'm, I'm texting you at the midway point of this movie or not even midway. I'm like, I've been watching this for six hours now and it tells me it's an hour into it. Bob, you had a .5. What are you doing? It was a real slog, man, and until I got to that last half hour. And I have a lot of thoughts on how to unpack, you know, what the actual point of this movie is and people's response to it and whether people got the point of this movie and who that falls on. Is it the artist's responsibility to make sure the audience understands what they're going for or is it completely on the audience? And I think that that's, I mean, that's art, right? We can unpack that I think in the second-half of the episode, because you mentioned 500 Days of Summer, a movie that we just talked about.

32:58 And that I actually think might be the best lens through which to compare to this movie. So Brad, if it's OK with you, let's hit pause here. Let's go drink some whiskey so that we can get ourselves ready and fueled up to talk about Fight Club some more in the second-half. What do you say, dude? I'm ready. Let's do it all. Right. So today we are checking out Four Roses small batch. Now Brad, I feel like it's been, first of all, it's been a minute since we've tried some 4 Roses. I think we had some high quality well aged ones from our friend Zach Johnston a while back, but it's nice to kind of return to the basics here now. 4 Roses small batch is not the most basic of the basic 4 Roses.

33:45 That would just be the one that's called 4 Roses. Yellow label, colloquially 4 roses for those of you who are not super familiar with the distillery is famous. It it it has an almost film bro like following Brad because they make 10 different recipes of bourbon inside the walls of four Roses and they combine them in various different combinations to make some really good bourbon. And so Yellow Label is their cheapest 1 and it is just a blend of all 10 recipes put together. And it's. Like now the one that we have. Right now $28.00 per bottle. Cheap $20 bottle of whiskey. The one we have right now is just like one step up from that and it is four select recipes and these recipes basically are varied between 5 different yeast strains that they use and a high rye mash bill and a low rye mash bill.

34:36 So that's how you get your 10 recipes. This one is a combination of four of those recipes. For those of you who know and care about these sorts of things, it's OBSKOESKOBSO and OESO. And this is where, Brad, I realized that I love whiskey. I don't love whiskey this much. Yeah. I mean, like, I'm not hunting down specific yeast strains to try. I just like a good. Product. Yeah. I just want to drink normal bourbon that I don't have to think about too much, you know? I mean, no hate to the people who are hunting down specific yeast strains. I just like, that's a level of bourbon nerd dumb that I have not achieved even like 7 years into this podcast.

35:22 Yeah. Yeah. All right, So Small Batch is small batches bottled at 90 proof. So it's a step up from Yellow Label, which is bottled at 80 proof and and it commands a higher price point because of that, but still in this affordable range. Kind of sits next to Elijah Craig on the shelf. And, you know, that Bob Book loves his $35 range of bourbon. I feel like that's where you can show up to the party with the bottle and people know that you weren't on the bottom shelf, that you put a a little bit of thought into it, you know? I, I had a friend text me, I don't know, a month ago saying that he was going to like drink whiskey with a group of like, like whisk capital W whiskey guys. And he's like, what should I, what kind of bourbon should I bring?

36:03 And I was like, what's your budget? He's like $30.00. I was like Cooper's Craft 100. That's it, man. But if you'd had an extra 5 to $8 to spend, I, I mean, I don't, I don't want to spoil the whole review, but I think 4 roses would be in the mix. I think so too. I'm excited to dive back into this. I have not had this in a really long time. Brad, you've tried it already, so why don't you give your nosing notes while I stick my nose in this glass here? Yeah, this is a very traditional bourbon nose. It to me. It is a little bit corn heavy, but not like overly sweet. It has a little bit of that corn syrupiness.

36:46 There's caramel, there's vanilla. For me, the the uniqueness finds itself with a little bit of citrus, like a really light citrus note that's going on. But overall this is just a straight line. Really nice bourbon nose. I'm going to give it a 7 out of 10. I'm getting kind of a weird note on this that I've only gotten a couple times. It's not the predominant note, but it keeps throwing me off every time I stick my nose close to it. And there's like just a slight hint of like oniony, like everything bagel seasoning going. OK, I don't know why, but underneath the weird onion note that I'm getting, there's a lot of sourdough bread it, but it doesn't smell like yeasty. It doesn't smell youthful or, or too young. It just has like a nice baked sourdough kind of thing going on.

37:32 And there are some nice like almost eggnogy notes. Like I get a lot of like custardy vanilla notes on this. I like it a lot, except for the fact that I keep thinking of like like an Arby's beef and cheddar where you get the little onions on the top of the bun. Can I give one quick hot take before we move on 'cause I, I was just talking about this with somebody yesterday. I think that eggnog is better without alcohol in it. 100% I prefer a non alcoholic nog. Yeah, I mean partially because like I grew up with the non alcoholic nog and like now I've put bourbon in it a few Times Now. I will say if you do, if you heat it up and do like some espresso in it and do like an eggnog latte, I can get down with that dude.

38:21 That is freaking Kahlua. Yeah, OK. Maybe a little Kahlua in with it. There's something about just. Bourbon it. It thins it down too much and it puts it in this weird, like snotty consistency that you don't want, you know what I mean? You don't want like baby drool consistency for your. Hey, but this 4 roses small batch 7.5 on the nose, Brad, yes. The palette for the Four Roses, it is Carmely, there is peanuts, the vanilla is there. The for me, the citrus turned into a little bit of like a summer fruit kind of melon kind of vibe. Really pleasant, refreshing bourbon that I'm going to give a 7 1/2 to on the palate.

39:04 Yeah, this is man. Caramel's a great note and it sounds like very plain and simple, but I feel like a lot of times we bring up Carmely notes and what we really mean is like brown sugar or Maple or vanilla 'cause we just kind of lump the sweet notes together sometimes. This is the first one I've had in a while. It reminds me of like a Werther's Original. There's just a ton of caramel here mixed with like quite a bit of spice. This is black pepper heavy for me. I do get some of those kind of Melanie notes that you're getting as well. It tips a little bit bitter towards the back of the palate for me, but I think I'm going to Ding it more on the finish than I am on the taste. This is significantly better than I remember it being. I think I'm going to come all the way up to an 8 out of 10 on the palate here. Yeah, I'm kind of with you on the finish. It it doesn't quite sour for me.

39:49 It just kind of dissipates a little bit. There's pepper, there's oak, the caramel sticks around. It returns to its kind of base corn flavor. But overall it's a medium length finish that's got a nice Kentucky hug. I'll give it a 7 out of 10 here. Yeah, I think for me, like I said, it tips bitter, it gets a little more herbal and it gets some of that like barrel char in a bad way, like the the bitterness of the barrel char. I think this is just a 6 1/2 for me on the finish, but I don't think that it's rocky enough to really Ding it here on the balance. Overall, I think this is a pretty well balanced whiskey. I'm going to stick it a 7.5. Yeah, I'm at a 7.5 as well for balance.

40:31 It's a pleasant experience. There's nothing incredibly complex about it, but there's some good flavors mixed in with your classics to make it a relatively well balanced whiskey. And for value in the state of Ohio, you're going to spend about $37 on this bottle of whiskey. So it, you know, it's 3699, you're going to walk out the door at 40 after tax. I don't think that that's a bad value. I, I, it's not quite like there, I'll give it a 6 1/2 out of 10. I, I think it's a decent value. I think there's other stuff in that 35 to $40 range I might recommend before it. But overall, I don't think this is unfairly priced.

41:14 Yeah, I think the market has just risen on stuff like this. When when we first started the podcast, I think we did small batch and we did single barrel somewhere around the same time. And I remember at the time for Roses single barrel was like one of the cheapest good single barrels you could get. It was around 38 to $40. And so now that's risen in price and this has kind of come up to take its place. If this was $25 or $27.00, I would say that's right in line with what you're getting because this is a right down the middle. There is nothing, no real peaks and also no real valleys. But because of that, I'm just like, you know, $37 when we started the podcast is what we would pay for like Eagle Rear.

41:59 And I think Eagle Rear is better than this now. Like what can you get for $37 now? Elijah Craig I think I would still say is better than this. I think I would say like Cooper's Craft 100 for seven or $8 less is better than this. So I'm going to come down to a six out of 10 on the value here, Brad, and that's going to bring me out to a 35.5 out of 50. Where are you at on this one? I'm coming to a 35.5 out of 50 and I will say that $30 in 2019 based on inflation. You know what it's worth today, Bob? 38 dollars $38.02.

42:42 Wow. So inflation, inflation wise, it feels. Right in line. It's right in line with where it's at, so I don't know if that changes your score at all, but. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where, like, you and I talk about like, the burger and fries, lunch should still only cost $10. Like there's no reason I should spend more than 10 American dollars on a burger and fries. That's kind of where I'm at with this. Like this is a $30 bottle of whiskey. I don't care what's happened with inflation, it should still be $30. And that's why we are coming out to a 71 out of 100 on this or a 35.5 out of 50 on average. I will give this a mild thumbs up. Like if if this is your bag, if you like 4 roses, I think this is a good baseline.

43:29 Yellow label's not my favorite. So I would say like make this the baseline version of that and then scale up from there. Yeah, I I mean, I think this is a really pleasant experience. It's a little bit peanutty if you enjoy that like nutty flavor. The corn is there, the caramel, it's very vanilla. Y It's a good pleasant bourbon experience that you know for the mid, upper mid 30s you're, you're getting a decent bourbon. Yeah, I think there's really only one thing left to say, Brad, and that is I am Jack's inflated whiskey price. Rule #1 Don't talk about Four Roses. Talk about inflation. All right, man, let's get back into talking about Fight Club.

44:10 What do you say? Let's get to it. All right, everybody. That was 4 Roses Small Batch, A respectable whiskey at the price point it was. It was a good experience, Bob. I was trying to think of something clever to start with. I am Jax, whatever. And if we were really clever, we would have, we would have done Jack Daniels so we could say I am Jax. You know, I was going to say. Your version, Jax Thorny something you gotta love that roses. Because of roses. Because of roses. Yeah. Yeah, Well, you. Know it's been a little thorny for you this season, Bob. It's our game. 2 facts and a falsehood, Brad.

44:52 Is going to try to stump you Bob 2 are right and what is wrong? 2 facts and a falsehood. 2 Facts and a Falsehood is the part of the show where Brad presents me with three items as fact about the making of this movie, one of which is a complete lie. Now, Brad, I know only the barest semblance of the facts about the movie Fight Club. I know about the author Chuck Polonic and like I remember having some friends in high school that were really into reading his books because it was the edgy thing to do at the time. I've never read any of his. No, I was gonna say, you've not read Fight Club. No, I've not read anything written by him. And it's not like I'm crusading against him. It's just never happened.

45:36 So I think that there's a lot of opportunity. I actually read I read Fight Club after I saw the movie. Partially. Partially because it's literally like 104 pages. It it like it's. More of a short, I wouldn't call it a short story, but it's not like a 300 page novel. It's a pretty quick read. I don't there's like a few differences. Most everything stayed the same. I do remember in the last like 4 pages of their book there being like a line that like really stuck with me for a long time but now I can't remember it so you know. Thanks a lot, Chuck. Come on, I said. I said all that to say, there's a lot of different areas where you can get me today because I just don't know a lot. So, Brad, hit me with your two facts and a falsehood. All right, I, I love my themes.

46:24 A lot of times my themes come from the fact that like as I'm reading, there's a bunch of facts that weirdly have the same thing. This one, there's a bunch of facts that like we're like around 55 minutes in parentheses and then the fact. So that's, that's our theme today, Bob Around 55 minute. Fact #1 around 55 minutes. The line. It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do Anything. Was originally written as a longer monologue explaining Tyler's philosophy. Fincher director David Fincher explained in the DVD commentary that he cut it down to a single sentence after realizing the message was more unsettling when delivered without explanation. Fact #2 Around one hour and 9 minutes. Bob wears a shirt during his fights, despite 1 of the 8 rules being you're not allowed to wear shirts or shoes during fights. This is because Tyler Durden fights Bob's man boobs to be too gross behind the scenes, though this was also because Meatloaf's fat suit had to be hidden.

47:29 Fashion #3 At around an hour and 15 minutes. When a Fight Club member sprays the priest with a hose, the camera briefly shakes. This happens because the cameraman could not keep himself from laughing. I think 2 is true, and I could go either way on Yeah, I could go either way on three because there's so many like jittery camera things added to this movie, which are again, like, oh, you're you're so edgy and cool. You hate this movie, Bob. I can just feel it in your soul.

48:12 So #1 is kind of like the obvious candidate here for a falsehood, but it's just. It's also not like the sexy 1 to pick. Yeah, and we know you, Bob. You like picking the sexy ones? I sure do. I sure do Brad. I'll go with #1 because AI don't remember what it was and B3 sounds like it could be innocuous enough to be true. I do think 2 is true for sure. So it's either one or three. I'll take one, Brad. Man, with that convincing inner dialogue being explained to us, Bob, I have to tell you that you are correct. Number 1 is a falsehood. I was so. Worried you were going to be like actually 2 is the falsehood and you're so wrong. Those are my favorite 2 facts in the falsehood. When you immediately dismiss my falsehood, you're like, Oh yeah, obviously that one's true and then you like spend 5 minutes debating which of the true ones is false. I it's I just get to sit here and. Be like, all right, man.

49:10 So I'm riding high off of a victory here. It's about the only good thing to come out of Fight Club. No, here's the thing. I want to come in and like, I want to have my Last Jedi thing like you did. I want to have my tome written and my logic in place for why this movie is incoherent and I think ultimately irresponsible and dangerous. And I still kind of think those things. But I also think the last half hour of this movie is pretty easy to follow and pretty easy to to use as an interpretive lens for the rest of the movie. Yeah. And if you're watching the movie closely, especially because once you know the twist, you you do you rewatch the movie really closely all through the movie.

49:58 Like Edward Norton's character says at one point he's like, I'm a 30 year old boy. I don't want this or that, you know? And then you've got like Tyler Durden growing out and being like, we're a generation of men who were raised by women. Do you really think we need another woman in the mix? And, and once you understand that Tyler Durden literally only exists as the worst impulses of a narrator who needs to grow up, it, it makes a lot more click. I do still think that the bulk of the movie is keeping the twist at Bay, but by keeping the twist at Bay, it's also keeping the point of the movie at Bay for a really long time.

50:43 And So what people remember from the movie, like there's some cool imagery at the end and the Pixies needle drop and the buildings blowing up, It's really cool. But what people remember from the movie are like the fight scenes and Brad Pitt shirtless and Brad Pitt with his cool red leather jacket saying cool, manly sounding machismo bullshit philosophy. And so I do think that there's an element of like, I, I think this movie is perfectly clear about what it actually thinks. And also it's a little bit irresponsible in the way that it's structured and the way that it's written, because it was so easily misinterpreted by a whole generation of angry young males who hold its incorrect philosophy in high esteem. Yeah, I mean to me the the thought I had coming out of it was and you'll know the director that said this, you can't make a true anti war movie, right.

51:42 Who? Who said that, Bob? I think it was Truffaut that said. Yeah, Truffaut, and like that. Like that is what I walked away from with this. I also feel like this is the classic example of a person who gets the the analysis right and the prescription wrong. Right. Like the analysis is right. Corporate America sucks the soul out of humanity, especially men in a lot of ways. And the prescription of like fight and fuck is basically the prescription. And like, that's not the right prescription to become a healthy man.

52:25 I, I think that there is a lot of great things that you can do to become a healthy man. And some of it involves fighting for something and some of it involves being honorable towards women and pursuing them in a healthy way. Right? Like, I, I think that it's OK to say that masculinity involves some of those things, but when you present the unhealthy exclusively and at the end of the film, you say, bad, I'm going to slap you on the wrist. It's like, yeah, no, I, I think that Fincher is a little bit irresponsible with what he's presenting. Well, and also because like you go the whole movie thinking that they're railing against consumerism and whatever, but then the final kind of reveal of the movie is basically, you know, the narrator character waking up to the fact that like, I, I mean, I am an insane person, but also I need to grow up. It's it's a very largely writ satire of a coming of age story. And Fincher has called this a coming of age story. Like if you even if you go to the Wikipedia, it says he calls it a coming of age story, but for people in their 30s. And I think that's a really funny way of talking about it because then you do have this site, this kind of quarter life crisis, like what am I putting my money, my time, my effort into?

53:45 Where am I going in my job? That's all folded in. So yes, that's there. But the ultimate point of this movie is like a guy learns how to not be scared to be in a relationship. This is a movie about like a guy finally becoming ready to not be selfish and and be a good boyfriend. And in that respect, it really is very similar to 500 Days of Summer, another movie that we kind of struggle with. Because when you watch that movie as a young, impressionable teenager to early 20s person, you're on Tom's side for a lot of that movie. And you don't realize that the movie is telling you throughout its entire course that Tom is in the wrong and Tom is super immature. And it's on Tom to get over this paradigm that he's concocted for himself.

54:32 And this movie does the same thing. But because it does it in this kind of like fantastical, weird, schizophrenic, violent way, I think it does kind of dabble with being irresponsible. And I think the irresponsibility for me comes in like how much weight is given to that reveal at the end where everything throughout this movie, nothing is subtle about this movie. It I mean, it punches you in the face repeatedly. And yet even after that twist and the the sort of reframing of Edward Norton's character, I don't think they do enough to like underline it in red pen, enough for the people in the audience who are too young and impressionable and immature to understand what they're trying to go for. And it's weird.

55:17 I I don't usually call for film makers to be less subtle, but I think a movie like this kind of demands it when it's like you front loaded it with all this other stuff and got the incel Bros on your side. And if you're going to try to tell them that what this movie is actually about is like growing up, then you can't just end it the way you did without underlining that a bit more. Well and and the way he ends it. I agree. I think the ending is him growing up but the ending is like he becomes masculine by shooting himself. Like, he literally kills the dark version of himself by putting a gun in his mouth, pointing it to the side and kind of shooting a hole through, like the side of his mouth and throat.

56:01 Yeah. And And it's it's this wildly violent way of becoming a man. And so even in. Like it's very 1990s too. Like I, I don't think we can divorce ourselves for there was a great documentary a couple years ago about Woodstock 99 when they tried to revive Woodstock at the end of the 90s and all the music acts that they booked were like new metal bands. So it was like Limp Bizkit and corn. And I don't know if you remember this. I remember from when I was a kid, like people, like, I'm pretty sure people died like they burned everything down. It was like a giant riot. And it was like the undoing of what Woodstock in the 60s was supposed to. Because there was just this innate unspoken anger among predominantly white teenagers at the end of the 90s that led to things like Columbine. And everybody was blaming media for these violent impulses. And there's just something there that's like, I watch The Matrix now and I'm like, damn, there's a lot of guns in this. Like we really were obsessed with guns as a culture, you know?

57:04 And and Fight Club is Fight Club is still a popular movie, but it definitely does feel like a relic of early millennial or Gen. X kind of generation and the way they expressed their anger. And they worship violence in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah, which is interesting because like, you hear Gen. Xers especially talk about their childhood and they're like, yeah, no, we were violent and our playgrounds could kill us and things like that. And then they ended up worshipping it. And I feel like millennials are kind of where that starts to shift. And, and for sure, I, I don't know, as far as Fight Club goes, I actually, I, I disagree on the subtlety part. I don't think he needs to be less subtle about the ending.

57:48 I like. I think Fincher made the movie he wanted to make. I I will place the blame on the audience. Yeah. If this if this style of life is attractive to somebody, that says more about them than it does about David Fincher and that. And that's not to like, say they're bad people or anything, but there's reasons why a violent brotherhood cult community is attractive to some people. Elements of our society have created this pocket of a dearth of brotherhood and friendship and adventure and like challenging men to strive after something in a healthy way. And when you have a void of something that is necessary to the human soul, it will get filled with something and it gets filled with things like Fight Club. And so I, I think Fincher is actually putting his finger on the pulse of something very key to what it means to be a human being, to be a man.

58:56 And like I said, the the prescription within the movie that he kind of judges is not good, but he never gives a healthy prescription. He just kind of says, like, yeah, starting a cult that blows up buildings is bad. Like that's pretty clear by the end of the film. But he never. Well, that's my point, because I think that what he's doing is he's he takes the end of the movie and he just says like it was never about any of that stuff. I was saying earlier. It was never about the Fight Club. It was never like the prescription is part of a completely illusory paradigm, right. But to your point, he never like builds out what the actual solution is. And the way the movie ends, just from a plot device standpoint is like Edward Norton's tried to turn himself in. That didn't work out.

59:44 He can't keep the buildings from being blown up. And you know that the he escaped from the police station, so the police are going to be chasing him. So now he's like a fugitive terrorist leader who had an enlightening moment. But you don't know, like, is he going to disband the terrorist organization or is Marla going to become the Bonnie to his Clyde? Like it it you don't know. And again like. I hate being the guy that's begging for like, spell it out for me, David Fincher. But when you're releasing. A movie, 10 more minutes of back story Is. Is that what you need, Bob? When you're releasing a movie into an environment of people who are clamoring for something to latch onto with their anger or to explain their anger or to fuel their anger, I think you do have to, as a, as a film maker, ask yourself, like, what if this gets misinterpreted?

1:00:37 What kind of harm could this do? It's a conversation we had about a movie like Joker that I think is equally misinterpreted like this movie. And I I thought a lot about like the Wolf of Wall Street, which is a really good movie that I still think it glorifies its lifestyle in order to satirize it. But to your point, like you can't make an anti war movie at some point the glorification is the the end of the thing. You can't make an anti Wall Street movie Bob. You sure can't, dude. Do you know why, Bob? Because when you're on wall. Street, you got jacked to the tents.

1:01:18 All right, dude, we've talked a lot about this movie. I think it's time for us to pick a movie to pair it up with, and that means it's time for our final segment of the day. Let's make it a double. We're near the end of the episode, so thanks listening to the film and Whiskey show. Let's pair another film with this one, even if it's struggling. It's the final segment of the day. Now let's make it a double. Make it a Double is the part of the show where we pick a movie to pair up with this one to make the perfect double feature. Brad, I do think any of the movies I've mentioned that Wolf of Wall Street is a is a really good one because it captures like I think where both the film makers kind of got things wrong and also is very glorifying of what it says it's going to satirize. I'm gonna go kind of a little bit more. Let's watch another movie.

1:02:01 The scene where he's like tracking Tyler around the country and trying to figure out who is this elusive guy that I know really well. My friend is really similar to the great movie The Third Man, which we've talked about on the show and never watched. And it is one of the best movies ever made. So if you could bottle up just that scene and it becomes like the first hour of this mystery movie of I'm chasing around Vienna post war trying to find my friend who people said is dead but who may or may not actually be like a secret underground mobster. Freaking fantastic. The third man. OK, When did the third man come out?

1:02:42 47 maybe. OK. Yeah, yeah, I'm ready, man. Let's do it. We're going to do it. I think for me, I am going to go with the coming of age. My brain is disappearing on me. I'm going to go with the coming of age idea and say I'm going to go with The Graduate. I think that there's a weird, I have seen The Graduate. I did not love The Graduate. Not my favorite movie. I think though, that there's this, there's this sense of like existential drift. There's a lot of sexual confusion and what it means to be a man, and there's a lot of anger that you get to see Dustin Hoffman work through throughout the film and you know, the kind of the rebellion and the malaise and all this stuff going on.

1:03:28 I think there's a weird amount of correlation between Fight Club and the Graduate. Obviously The Graduate being for 9, you know the 1960s what you get in the 1990s with Fight Club. Well, I know that they actually approached the screenwriter of The Graduate to adapt Fight Club. Like they wanted him to write the script because they found so many themes. They're like, this guy totally gets it. It's a movie about malaise. And he was like, absolutely not, go find somebody else to rate this movie. So. I did not have. That dude, yeah, I think two really good movies you could play this up with. Also, Bob, I I think that whatever goal you had setting out to do this podcast, yeah, I think you accomplished it. If if I'm referencing a movie from 3035 years before, not even knowing that that was a direct reference. Like we've, we've made it, dude.

1:04:20 We. We have arrived, my friend. All right, Brad, I, I feel better. I, I still think this movie is irresponsible. I don't think it's inept anymore. And I'm looking through like a lot of the notes I took on this movie, especially towards the beginning. Let me read this. I thought I wrote this quite well. This, this still holds true. I had a big problem with the first like 10-15 minutes of the movie where he's kind of an unreliable narrator and random stuff is happening and you don't understand how it all adds up. And I said that the intro to the character works thematically. It is a scattered mishmash of his thoughts and impressions of the world, his consumerism, his dissatisfaction with his corporate life, his insomnia. It is a schizophrenic depiction of what you come to learn is burgeoning schizophrenia, but it doesn't work as a narrative hook because it's not presented as a descent into schizophrenia. It's presented as a reliable narrator and his introduction to his world, and you have no idea what's going on or what's important.

1:05:25 And I'd still think that, like as I move into final scores, the last half hour of this movie is really, really good. Yeah, the. First hour and 40 minutes were a real struggle for me, man. And last time we watched this movie, I want to say I gave it a three or a 2 1/2 out of 10. Really. Low dude. I still think by and large this movie does not work OK, but I respect the swing of it a little more this time. It's a swing and a miss, but it was a hell of a swing. I'm going to come out to a I'm going to come out to a 5 out of 10 on this movie, bro. OK. That's a little bit of a movement, Bob. I'm proud of you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I mean I still think that Fight Club technically is really well made.

1:06:10 I like everything you just read. I'm with you 100% except for on how it made me feel like. And whether you like it or not, Fincher does not treat the audience well in this movie. Like he, he doesn't make you feel good for thinking that Edward Norton is a reliable narrator. And I'm like, like, that's interesting to me. That is not the norm when it comes to filmmaking. And so I'm, I'm interested in things like that. I think that it makes for a better movie. And when you add in some of the great performances on top of that, we didn't even talk about like the lighting of this movie and how I I think he really does a masterful job of using color in the film there. There's so much of this that I think it's technically really well made.

1:07:01 And on top of that, you have a really interesting story that is not taken down a notch once you know the twist. Like, you know, and obviously if it's spoiled for you, that is the worst ruining. But like, once you've seen the movie, you come back to it and you're like, yeah, this is still a compelling film, even knowing the huge twist. It's why I still like 6 Sixth Sense a lot. It's why I still like this movie a lot. It's not a perfect movie. I, I don't think it's like a nine, 9 1/2 out of 10. I might have given it a nine in season 1. I think I'll give it an 8 1/2 this time. I, I think that Fincher does a great job overall. And you, you kind of have to reconcile with the fact that a lot of audience members who like this movie like it for a lot of reasons that might not be healthy. Yeah.

1:07:55 And and that's hard. And I don't want to hold that against the the actual product of the movie 'cause it's possible that this is like a 10 out of 10 movie that people still misread and is very dangerous that way. I just think that there are actual problems with the film itself and not least of which, Brad, You know, you bring up The 6th Sense again when you rewatch The 6th Sense with the twist in mind, you start to poke holes in it a little bit and, like, it's kind of cutesy and it's kind of gimmicky. How like, oh, Bruce Willis never touches anybody or, like, sure is never actually in the room, never says anything to the mom. We never. And it's like, oh, that's a gimmick. Yeah. But crucially, The 6th Sense still works because of the other stuff. Like that final scene with Haley Joel Osment and the mom in the car is like, that's why I watched The 6th Sense. I don't care about the gimmick anymore. Yeah.

1:08:41 And I feel like all those little gimmicky things that happened in The Sixth Sense happened twice as often in Fight Club, and the movie relies on them. Like you, you come in here a lot with a criticism that, like nobody in this movie behaves like a human being. Sure. Edward Norton's motivations throughout this movie are like, what? What is he doing and why? And it kind of works as a satire 'cause it's very like blown out of proportion. Like, why is he living in this dilapidated house for months on end? Why is he doing any of this? Why is he putting up with Darla or Marla? Sorry. And I'm like. Darla from the Little Rascals. From the Little Rascals, Dear Darla.

1:09:24 Anyway, all that to say I I do wonder if people forgive a lot in this movie because they think it's cool to go back and watch the twist happen again, but like the movie just does not hold together for me as well as other twisty movies do. Because it it relies so much on the twist. Yeah, and like, you can't the the characters don't behave like real people because they have to behave specific ways to make the twist happen. See, I, I think it's great because there's, there's the moments where Brad Pitt is screaming at Bob, the fat guy who Edward Norton actually really likes. And then Edward Norton goes out and grabs his bag. He's like, Bob, come on, man, come on. And then to look back and be like, Bob, just experienced Edward Norton do both of those things. I, I love that.

1:10:11 I think that's so funny. Oh, man, All right, guys, we're coming out to a 6.75 out of 10 on Fight Club on average, which I know is the perfect score for us, Brad, because I'm not satisfied with that score and I know that you're not either. So that's like it's a great dude take talking point. I'm even just thinking about the way they twist Bob's death. Like what? Great writing, dude. When when, when? Edward Norton is like, no, what the hell are you talking about? He's not a. Nameless. No, he has a name. He. Has A and then they immediately in death we have his. Name His name was Robert Paulson all. Right. Stop waxing poetic. We want to know what you think about Fight Club. Whose team are you on here, me or Brad? Let us know on any of our social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube at Film Whiskey. We also want to know if Bob and I were to start a Fight Club, who would win?

1:11:11 I mean, I I've got the boobs for it so. Yeah, you would win in the in the testicular cancer group, Bob. No thanks so much Brad. What a weird quote to pull from this episode. Also I will say maybe my favorite line of the whole movie is just when he's like sulking and his voice over goes this chick Marlo Singer did not have testicular cancer. So funny dude. Oh man. If you want to join the conversation, we are on discord every single day. We've got a great server full of people that are awesome and we talk about whiskey and movies and other stuff. If you want to join, you can find a link to our server at the end of every single one of our show notes. We'll be back next week with another one of our Season 1 classics to talk about.

1:12:01 Probably not one featuring testicular cancer and man boobs, but you never know folks. So join us next week. But until then, I'm Bob Book, I'm Brad G and we'll see you next time.