Courtney Love Says Brad Pitt Got Her Fired from Fight Club

Courtney Love appeared on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast this week, and she served up some long-brewing tea. Like since the late 90’s. Love and Maron got to talking about Fight Club, a book she thinks she may have introduced to director David Fincher. Love was at one point cast as Marla Singer, something that Janeane Garofalo has also discussed. According to Garofaloshe had the role before Edward Norton had his then-fiancée Love replace her. According to Love, she’d had the role since before the film was greenlit. But then Brad Pitt nixed the idea. His reason? Her refusal to let Pitt do a Kurt Cobain biopic.

Per Love, Pitt and Gus Van Sant were talking to her about doing a more X-rated version of Brokeback Mountain. But talks broke down when Pitt commandeered a meeting to pitch Love on his Cobain movie. “I went nuclear,” Love said. “I don’t do Faust. Who the fuck do you think are?” Love said that after the meeting, Pitt got Love booted from Fight Club. Norton was the one who broke the news. “He starts sobbing,” she told Maron, “and he was like, ‘I don’t have the power!’” She then got a call from Fincher, who confirmed that she was out.

Love says that Brad Pitt did not let go of the Cobain movie idea. She said Cameron Crowe told her “Brad Pitt was put on this Earth to stalk you for Kurt, which has been going on since 1996.” According to Love, Plan B had been trying to get a Cobain biopic off the ground as recently as 2020. Sounds like this story rivals Babylon in epic scale, and runtime.