Great Scene: "Fight Club"

One of the most effective ways to begin a script is to start at the ending. And one of the best scenes that opens with the ending is in the movie Fight Club. Adapted for the screen by Jim Uhls from a novel by the notable writer Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club is a head-spinning and dark satire on contemporary society. Here is the opening scene:

SCREEN BLACK

JACK (V.O.)
People were always asking me, did I know Tyler Durden.

FADE IN:

INT. SOCIAL ROOM - TOP FLOOR OF HIGH-RISE - NIGHT

TYLER has the barrel of a HANDGUN lodged in JACK'S MOUTH.  They
struggle intensely.

They are both around 30; Tyler is blond, handsome, eyes burning with
frightening intensity; and JACK, brunette, is appealing in a dry sort
of way.  They are both sweating and disheveled; Jack seems to be losing
his will to fight.

TYLER
We won't really die.  We'll be immortal.

JACK
oor -- ee-ee --uh -- aa-i --

JACK (V.O.)
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.

Jack tongues the barrel to the side of his mouth.

JACK (still distorted)
You're thinking of vampires.

Jack tries to get the gun.  Tyler keeps control.

JACK (V.O.)
With my tongue, I can feel the silencer holes drilled into the barrel
of the gun.  Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases.  I
totally forgot about Tyler's whole murder-suicide thing for a second
and I wondered how clean the gun barrel was.

Tyler checks his watch.

TYLER
Three minutes.

Jack turns so that he can see down -- 71 STORIES.

JACK (V.O.)
The building we're standing in won't be here in three minutes.  You take a
98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add three times as
much sulfuric in a bathtub full of ice.  Then, glycerin drop-by-drop.
Nitroglycerin.  I know this because Tyler knows this.

Jack manages to SHOVE Tyler away.  Then, he leaps onto him and they
fall onto a table, then roll off onto the floor.  The gun falls and
slides.  They wrestle with each other, then dash for the gun.  Tyler
gets there first and grabs the gun.  DURING THE ABOVE:

JACK (V.O.)
The Demolitions Committee of Project Mayhem wrapped the foundation
columns of this building with blasting gelatin.  The primary charge
will blow the base charge, and this spot Tyler and I are standing on
will be a point in the sky.

Tyler drags Jack back to the glass wall and forces him to look out at
the city skyline.

TYLER
This is our world now.  Two minutes.

JACK (V.O.)
Two minutes to go and I'm wondering how I got here.

MOVE IN ON JACK'S FACE.

SLOWLY PULL BACK from Jack's face.  It's pressed against TWO LARGE
BREASTS that belong to ... BOB, a big moose of a man, around 35 years
old.  Jack is engulfed by Bob's arms in an embrace.  Bob weeps openly.
His shoulders inhale themselves up in a long draw, then drop, drop,
drop in jerking sobs.  Jack gives Bob some squeezes in return, but his
face is stone.

JACK (V.O.)
Bob had bitch tits.

The movie begins with some guy named Tyler with a gun shoved in some guy named Jack's mouth. Then we learn of an imminent explosion, apparently some sort of terrorist event. And the two guys who know about this impending violence - and seemingly involved in its execution - are chatting inanely about immortality and vampires.

Two minutes to go and I'm wondering how I got here. That is precisely what opening a story at the ending does: It plants that question, so that whatever happens, for the rest of the entire story until it catches up with the ending, the reader is wondering the same thing: How does he get there? And that's one big reason why this is a great scene.

Unfortunately there is no video available online of this opening scene - at least that I can find, maybe an intrepid GITS reader can locate it and send me a link. But here is the movie's trailer:



A few other movies that begin with the ending: Sunset Blvd., Memento, and The Usual Suspects. I'm sure you can add others to the list. Comments await you.

And I know we've got to have a lot of huge fans of Fight Club. Why? Because the movie is currently ranked #17 out of the IMDB top 250 movies (as voted by The People). Fans of the movie, please tell us why you love this movie.

For those who'd like to download the script, go here to myPDFscripts.com to get access to the 2/16/1998 draft of the script.

UPDATE: In comments, Camden Carr mentions the book "Rebels on the Backlot," one chapter of which covers director David Fincher's efforts to bring Fight Club to life. That book is available to read online here.