Fight Club is a 1999 thriller about an insomniac office worker, looking for a way to change his life, crossing paths with a devil-may-care soap maker and forming an underground fight club that evolves into something much, much more.
Hate your job? Boss keeping you down? Or maybe your just another average Joe whose life never lived up to the promises of being millionaires, rock stars or movie gods. At Lou’s Tavern they have found a new way of dealing with these little disappointments … but we didn’t tell you.
Shot on location at the northeast corner of Figueroa Street & Harry Bridges Blvd in Wilmington, California (Not Delaware), this former nude bar is located across the road from the docks of the port of Los Angeles harbor. It was rented by David Fincher’s production after the bar had closed its doors, put up their own neon signs on the outside while keeping the “Topless” banner behind the bar left by the previous occupants.
In Fight Club, the pseudo-cult / support group is born in the parking lot of Lou’s Tavern where a seemingly spontaneous fight between Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and our unnamed narrator (Edward Norton) taps into a primal connection between them. It soon attracts the attention of America’s “forgotten children,” who are soon finding an outlet for their disappointments in life, reclaiming their masculinity by beating the hell out of each other in bare knuckle brawls.
This alternative support group style was born out of writer Chuck Palahunik‘s own random fight on a camping trip and his co-workers avoiding asking what had happened. The event inspired him to put Fight Club on paper as a seven page short story, which appeared in the compilation Pursuit of Happiness released in 1995. Palahunik then expanded the short into a full-length novel released the following year with the original short becoming chapter six. Palahunik drew further inspiration from an unnamed radical co-worker who he claims used to constantly talk about revolution and anarchistic plots.
Either way, Lou’s Tavern is a key part in the genesis of Fight Club. Not only is it the location were Tyler and the Narrator choose to meet after the Narrator returns home to find his apartment a smoking ruin, it’s also where they have their first spontaneous fight in the car park. This makes it the perfect spot. After you go to the bar, trying to escape your problems, either for a drink or a fight, the latter soon becomes the unconventional ‘religion’ its members have been seeking.
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A real grim bar, Lou’s Tavern from the outset really tells us who their clientele are as they blast Tom Waits on the junkbox, the fuzzy strains of Goin’ Out West perfectly scoring the long tracking shot of the group members heading to the basement. This isn’t a hipster bar but from its location in an industrial district its a bar for average working Joes who want to grab a beer after work. More importantly, it’s for those who view themselves reduced to insignificant cogs in the machine and the sort of guys who find empowerment though this group.
Starting in the car park, while their numbers are still small, things eventually go underground…literally as the members increase. It’s also this first evolution for the club that marks the start of its mystique, even with its basic setup now out of the public eye. New members have to know someone on in the inside with exclusivity, breeding loyalty amongst its members, more so when its numbers have likely been refused membership to other areas of their life, no doubt due to lacking the correct social status.
The move into the basement beneath Lou’s also marks an evolution in the group structure, especially as it’s here where Fight Club first gets its rules now so firmly ingrained in pop culture. New members are sworn not to talk about the club, not once but twice to reinforce the club’s secrecy, yet despite this, new members find their way in begging the question if this was expected, especially when Rule 8 dictates that all new members have to fight on their first night, reinforcing their compliance to the group.
THE RULES OF FIGHT CLUB
1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.
2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about FIGHT CLUB.
3rd RULE: If someone says “stop” or goes limp, taps out the fight is over.
4th RULE: Only two guys to a fight.
5th RULE: One fight at a time.
6th RULE: No shirts, no shoes.
7th RULE: Fights will go on as long as they have to.
8th RULE: If this is your first night at FIGHT CLUB, you HAVE to fight.
The grimy basement is functional to a fault. Only the pillars are padded, with bare concrete floors and walls, stray strips of cardboard breaking up the lighting. It’s almost symbolic of what the club stands for as here the members break themselves down to their most primal of instincts. Who you are in the real world doesn’t matter. All that does is the fight.
The basement also serves as a template for the franchise of Fight Clubs that spring up across the states. All the while Project Mayhem has still to reveal its end game and the Narrator begins senses of twinge of déjà vu as he discovers these while chasing after Tyler. Each one of these clubs is identified by the dried blood pools and stank of stale sweat, each one seemingly in a location that at least visually is comparable to the original basement.
So how to do we define Fight Club? Is it an alternative religion or is it an extreme form of self-help as members attempt to connect with loss masculinity? Certainly, the club follows rules for conduct while Tyler doles out sermons for its members to carry into their lives and these locations conjure up visions of an occult.
Even when Fight Club evolves into Project Mayhem, Tyler’s followers now forming a cult of mischief and mayhem targeting the corporate world, the Fight Club still remains in the basement as Project Mayhem and its members relocate to the dilapidated shared home / squat of Tyler and the Narrator. So important is it to the members of Fight Club that they not lose their underground hall, Tyler goes to grotesque lengths in order to keep this space. He even confronts Lou, the bar’s owner, in one of the more disturbing scenes of the film. In many ways, this highlights Tyler’s troubling mindset, not to mention his connection to the Narrator. This is given more weight when they are both responsible for acts of violence, which disgust their fellow members yet at the same time re-establishes their place at the top of the pyramid. Note the Narrator’s brutalization of Angel Face (Jared Leto), which initially can be seen as an act of jealousy for the attention he receives from Tyler.
While the majority of the revolution may come from house, it’s really the basement of Lou’s Place that the soul of Fight Club and everything which follows can be found. It’s here where they find their followers, maintain their social order and reinforce the belief system that fuels the group. While this location might no longer exist, having been razed shortly after filming, through the film it remains one of those magical movie loactions you wish you could have visited before it was knocked down.