‘Fight Club’ Author Chuck Palahniuk Says China’s Censored Ending Is Actually Truer to His Vision
“The irony is that the way the Chinese have changed it is they’ve aligned the ending almost exactly with the ending of the book, as opposed to Fincher’s ending, which was the more spectacular visual ending,” he said. “So in a way, the Chinese brought the movie back to the book a little bit.”
The author also said that he saw the irony in the angry response from many Americans to China’s actions, given that his books are banned in many locations across the U.S.
“What I find really interesting is that my books are heavily banned throughout the U.S.,” he said. “The Texas prison system refuses to carry my books in their libraries. A lot of public schools and most private schools refuse to carry my books. But it’s only an issue once China changes the end of a movie? I’ve been putting up with book banning for a long time.”
He also said that having his work revised in ways he can’t control is nothing new to him.
“A lot of my overseas publishers have edited the novel so the novel ends the way the movie ends,” he said. “So I’ve been dealing with this kind of revision for like 25 years.”
If you’ve never read it, Fight Club the novel is damn near a shooting script for the film aside from the end and I think the scene with threatened castration is more directly against the narrator when he starts asking questions and takes place on a parked bus? Anyway, most authors would kill for that kind of fidelity in screen adaptation