There are a number of advantages in seeing a great movie when it is first released. First and foremost there is generally the chance to watch in a theater, meaning that you get the big screen experience and excellent sound, but there is also the zeitgeist factor to keep in mind: the excitement of watching a film that everybody else is watching, creating a special moment to discuss and analyze it at length. As time passes, those options and opportunities diminish – which in turn can diminish demand and a sense of immediacy.
This is a line of thinking that can ultimately explain why it is that famed author Stephen King only wound up very recently watching director David Fincher's 1999 cult classic Fight Club... but on top of that, he also has a very good reason for missing the feature during its initial theatrical run. After all, at that time he was in the process of recovering from a notorious accident, and, according to him, he wouldn't have been able to remember it even if he had seen it.
Stephen King made a New Years Resolution at the start of 2021 to take a look back at the last 60 years and watch movies he's either never seen before or seldom seen, and he recently hit the late 90s/turn of the millennium. This led him to watch Mark Herman's 1998 musical Little Voice, and the Stephen Hopkins-directed Gene Hackman/Morgan Freeman thriller Under Suspicion from 2000 – but it was his first viewing of Fight Club that he knew would catch followers' attention. Check out his original Twitter post below:
As Stephen King explained in a follow-up Tweet, the year Fight Club came to theaters was a terrifically scary one for the Master of Horror. It was in June 1999 that the actor was involved in a horrible accident in Maine, as he was hit by a minivan while out for a walk. He sustained multiple injuries, including a broken hip among other fractured bones, and he required multiple surgeries and a weeks-long stay in hospital. Needless to say, four months later he wasn't exactly in a condition to head to his local theater and check out the critically acclaimed David Fincher adaptation of author Chuck Palahniuk's novel:
While he never actually provided his opinion on the film, Stephen King followed up his Tweets with a fun response to a fan saying that he had broken the first (and second) rule of Fight Club by posting about it – to which the author explained his thoughts regarding a pop culture statute of limitations:
Some might argue that the rules of Fight Club are not meant to be broken regardless of how much time has gone by... but one notable individual in the author's corner here is none other than Edward Norton himself. The actor, who stars in the movie as the unnamed protagonist/narrator, responded to the social media posts and explained that if anyone can be excused from the rules, it's Stephen King:
It's been wonderful in the past few months to read Stephen King's thoughts on a number of classic films – including the nostalgic magic of Hairspray, the gritty and thrilling Reservoir Dogs, and the powerful Boyz N The Hood – and it's exciting to know that he still has 20 more years of movies to surf through before he completes his New Years Resolution. We're continuing to follow along as he provides semi-regular updates, so stay tuned to find out what's next on the author's epic watchlist.
