Fight Club is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays the unnamed narrator, who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a "fight club" with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Pitt), and becomes embroiled in a relationship with a mysterious woman, Marla Singer (Bonham Carter). Palahniuk's novel was optioned by Fox 2000 Pictures producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Jim Uhls to write the film adaptation. Fincher was selected because of his enthusiasm for the story. He developed the script with Uhls and sought screenwriting advice from the cast and others in the film industry. It was filmed in and around Los Angeles from July to December 1998. He and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967), with a theme of conflict between Generation X and the value system of advertising. Studio executives did not like the film, and they restructured Fincher's intended marketing campaign to try to reduce anticipated losses. Fight Club failed to meet the studio's expectations at the box office, and received polarized reactions from critics. It was ranked as one of the most controversial and talked-about films of 1990s. The film later found commercial success with its home video release, establishing Fight Club as a cult classic and causing media to revisit the film. In 2009, on the tenth anniversary of the film's release, The New York Times dubbed it the "defining cult movie of our time." Plot The Narrator (who is not named in the movie) is a chronic insomniac who is unfulfilled both by his job as an automobile recall specialist and the material wealth it affords him. As a substitute for therapy, he attends support groups for problems he doesn't really have, such as alcoholism and cancer. Another impostor, Marla Singer, begins attending the same groups. Her presence is taken by the Narrator as a constant reminder of his dishonesty, interfering with the therapeutic effect he's after. He confronts Marla, and proposes they divide group attendance, to which she grudgingly agrees. On a flight home from a business trip, the Narrator meets Tyler Durden, a soap salesman, who tells him he is trapped by consumerism. The Narrator's apartment and all of his belongings are destroyed by an explosion, so