Favorite Movie and Book welcomes Jack Brightside - Fight Club and his book, The Warlock of Westland

 About Your Favorite Movie: Fight Club (1999)

My favorite movie of all time is “Fight Club.” It was supposed to be a serious film about late-stage capitalism, but twenty years later it has become a commentary on toxic masculinity. The film is about an unnamed narrator (Edward Norton), sometimes called ‘Jack’ in fan circles, who suffers from crippling existentialism as a result of his dead-end corporate job and monotonous lifestyle. A chance meeting with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), fills the narrator with new purpose in life. The narrator quits his job, moves in with sexy Tyler Durden, and opens underground “fight clubs” with his new friend. The narrator and Brad Pitt eventually recruit other white men into an alt-right/left (it is unclear) movement to sabotage capitalist infrastructure by destroying everyone’s credit records. 

This movie was made before “incel culture” became mainstream, before we had a name for the ‘alt-right” or “alt-left” and understood how toxic masculinity in internet subcultures led to extremism. This movie was ahead of its time in the worst kind of way. To best appreciate this film, root against the main characters while you watch it. Imagine that the director, David Fincher, endeavored to make the narrator and Tyler Durden as unlikable as possible. It might have been edgy in 1999 but in 2021 Tyler Durden’s anti-capitalist rants read like cries for help from a narcissist with zero self-insight. The relationship between him and the narrator is perfectly homoerotic, and their rants about feeling emasculated because of capitalism feel a lot like some kind of repression cycle. 

He has this line about relationships like, “we are a generation of men raised by women, I’m not sure another woman is what we need.” Like, I don’t know, Tyler. Do all men feel emasculated or just you and your roommate? Do you feel more emasculated around each other? Do you feel especially emasculated when he knocks on your bedroom door, mid-coitus, looks directly into your eyes and asks you a question? Does it make you feel like a man when you guys smash car windows together? Are your hyper-masculine activities just you compensating for a sexual attraction to your roommate that you are ashamed of? Do you want to talk about your feelings? 

At the end of the movie we discover that the narrator has been hallucinating Tyler Durden the whole movie. Possibly, Tyler was created just to satisfy his repressed sexual desires.

 

About the Book:

“The Warlock of Westland” is a male/male contemporary paranormal romance about two immortal warlocks who have to work together to catch a ghost in their town.

Sam is an immortal warlock whose life revolves around a failing hardware store in rural Southern Connecticut. His self-imposed isolation is interrupted when the Warlock Council assigns him to help an evil warlock living in his village. The desperate warlock happens to be Sam’s ex-boyfriend from two thousand years ago, Cailte the Cruel.

Cailte hasn’t used that name since the iron age. Now he’s Kevin MacCormack, a recently unemployed stockbroker. Kevin spends his days bewitching the villagers and making potholes for fun. The last thing he needs is a good warlock like Sam cramping his style.

The warlocks must work together to track a dangerous ghost that Kevin accidentally released in Westland. Meanwhile, Sam has fallen in love with Kevin all over again. He’s ready to do anything to make it work, including tolerating Kevin’s self-serving magic. Kevin isn’t as sure that it’s meant to be. Sam’s small-town charm starts to grow on Kevin just as they realize the ghost's devastating power.

About the Author: 

Jack Brightside writes male/male romance for people who read too much fanfiction. Her writing career started with psychoanalyzing fictional characters on the internet, but now she spends more time writing her own characters. She likes writing millennial character tropes into historical and paranormal settings. Her stories are easy to read, steamy and always have a happy ending. Jack’s other hobbies include World War One reenactment and watercolor painting, but not at the same time.

 

Answer these questions:

Red, White or Blue? Red!

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter? Summer!

Cake or Pie? Cake!

Coffee, Tea, or Champagne? Tea! I quit coffee this Fall because I had developed a tolerance. Now a single cup of black tea is enough to have me bouncing off the walls for hours.

Country music or Michael Buble? Ugh, Michael. I saw him live and it changed my life.

Pencil or Pen? Pen! Pen, all the way, for both writing and drawing.

 

Find The Warlock of Westland at: Amazon

Find Jack Brightside at: Facebook