Tag Archives: fightclub

The Ferris Bueller-Fight Club Connection

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Best. Metafilter Thread. Ever. A simple theory is mentioned, and then it keeps getting expanding, over and over, in the comments. They’re all worth reading, but I’ve reproduced the most amazing bits here.

My favorite thought-piece about Ferris Bueller is the “Fight Club” theory, in which Ferris Bueller, the person, is just a figment of Cameron’s imagination, like Tyler Durden, and Sloane is the girl Cameron secretly loves.

One day while he’s lying sick in bed, Cameron lets “Ferris” steal his father’s car and take the day off, and as Cameron wanders around the city, all of his interactions with Ferris and Sloane, and all the impossible hijinks, are all just played out in his head. This is part of the reason why the “three” characters can see so much of Chicago in less than one day — Cameron is alone, just imagining it all.

Then the base theory gets expanded:

Yeah, that makes the most sense. Ferris’s family is in reality Cameron’s family. He thinks he’s sick and alone, but the Ferris persona convinces him to go out and be Ferris. Everyone knows him as Ferris; he’s the only one who thinks of himself as the pitiful Cameron. He does actually sneak out, his sister does hate him for breaking free from the rules, Rooney does want to catch him and punish him. Nobody seems to care or even think about Cameron’s absence. Sloan is the only one that sees both of his personalities.

A reply to critics pointing out moments where Ferris interacts with other people:

I’m pretty sure we’ve entered the realm of Lynchian dream logic, and attempts to perfectly explain it are missing the point.

And further details on the Cameron/Sloane relationship:

I stumbled on the notion when I realized that Cameron and Sloane seem to inhabit a different universe than Cameron and Ferris, or Ferris and Sloane. It’s those two who are shyly and sweetly stumbling into a relationship, and “Ferris” is the thing between them. During the parade scene, for example, Ferris vanishes, leaving the two to have an understated and genuine conversation. Then Ferris erupts from a crowd of girls on a parade float, screaming out what Cameron cannot. He is the sausage king of Chicago, Cameron’s frustrated adolescent libido made manifest in the form of a short dude with a vest.

And the frosting on the cake is this brilliant summary of the Terminator movies, including a jab at the upcoming fourth movie.

The Terminator is Death. It can’t be defeated, only postponed.

In the first movie, the Terminator comes to kill Sarah Connor before she can reproduce- the only way for a part of her to avoid Death. The Terminator is defeated only after Sarah Connor is impregnated.

In Terminator 2, Death returns for Sarah Connor’s offspring, despite her best efforts to protect him. John must accept his own mortality by sacrificing his own protection from Death, bringing John into adulthood.

In Terminator 3, John Connor teams up with a potential mate, but realizes that he cannot defeat Death, and embraces it instead. It’s the least popular movie because it rejects the wish-fulfillment endings of the first two and embraces the reality that the future is set: everyone will die eventually.

In Terminator: Salvation, McG has Batman fight Transformers.

Rant: One Paragraph Review

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Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

Rant is the newest book by Chuck Palahniuk, the Portland author who wrote Fight Club. The full title is Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey, and it really feels like you’re watching a documentary. The style is an interesting change of pace, and made for some fun reading, but the story itself was disappointing. The characters being interviewed for the book tell the story in chronological order, but they constantly reference things that happen in the future, which makes the plotline feel more complicated than it is – which would be forgivable if the plot twist wasn’t so lame. The twist in Fight Club really pulled the rug out from under me, and for weeks after seeing the movie, my friends and I would remember little moments and go “Oh! It was all there if you knew what to look for!” But the twist in Rant is so far outside the realm of what you could imagine that it’s not a twist so much as a bit of Deus ex Machina to resolve and/or cause some of the stranger parts of the story. In the end, you’re left with a bizarre story about a character that you can’t relate to, and don’t really care about. Oh, and also? Chuck Palahniuk has a really gross sense of humor. All that stuff from Fight Club about peeing in soup and stuff is apparently a running theme.

CAP Alert

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CAP Alert

Hold on to your hang-ups, iiiit’s… CAP Alert!! Watch in amazement as those wacky fundamentalists review movies such as: The Matrix! Fight Club! (Remember that the trapped wolf will attack the one trying to free it!!) And, horror of horrors: SOUTH PARK!!

It doesn’t end there: Spawn! Ghost Dog! Down By Law! This site puts the “fun” in fundamentalism. I especially like the little “W.I.S.D.O.M.” bar-graph of each movie’s heathen content.

With Enough Soap You Could Blow Up The Whole World

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Lately, when I sit in front of my computer, and I’m bored, I’ve been grabbing my copy of Fight Club and flipping through it. Even after two readings and seeing the movie four times, it still amazes me.

A layer of something thick and clear is collecting on top of the tallow in the fridge.

The tallow, I say, it’s separating.

“Don’t worry,” Tyler says. “The clear layer on top is glycerin. You can mix the glycerin back in when you make soap. Or, you can skim the glycerin off.”

Tyler licks his lips and turns my hands palm-down on his thigh, on the gummy flannel lap of his bathrobe.

“You can mix the glycerin with nitric acid to make nitroglycerin,” Tyler says.

I breathe with my mouth open and say, nitroglycerin.

Tyler licks his lips wet and shining and kisses the back of my hand.

“You can mix the nitroglycerin with sodium nitrate and sawdust to make dynamite,” Tyler says.

The kiss shines wet on the back of my white hand.

Dynamite, I say, and sit back on my heels.

Tyler pries the lid off the can of lye. “You can blow up bridges,” Tyler says.

“You can mix the nitroglycerin with more nitric acid and paraffin and make gelatin explosives,” Tyler says.

“You could blow up a building easy,” Tyler says.

Tyler tilts the can of lye an inch above the shining wet kiss on the back of my hand.

“This is a chemical burn,” Tyler says, “and it will hurt worse than you’ve ever been burned. Worse than a hundred cigarettes.”

The kiss shines on the back of my hand.

“You’ll have a scar,” Tyler says.

“With enough soap,” Tyler says, “you could blow up the whole world. Now remember your promise.”

And Tyler pours the lye.

Tyler said, picture yourself planting radishes

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Tyler said, picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes one the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course.

You’ll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We’ll paint the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what’s left of mankind will retreat to the empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night.

Imagine, Tyler said, stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you’ll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty carpool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles.

– Fight Club