‘Fight Club’: Courtney Love Says Brad Pitt Fired Her When She Rejected His Kurt Cobain Film Idea

You’ve probably heard many of the legends around David Fincher’s “Fight Club,” which include casting. It’s been reported in the past that Fincher considered Winona Ryder Janeane Garofalo, and the studio really wanted Reese Witherspoon. ’90s rocker Courtney Love, from the grunge band Hole, was also apparently considered too. However, in a new interview on the Marc Maron podcast, Love, who rarely grants interviews these days, claimed she was actually cast in the Marla Singer lead role— that eventually went to Helen Bonham Carter— but was fired because she pissed off Brad Pitt.

READ MORE: David Fincher Talks About Paul Thomas Anderson Wishing Cancer On Him After Seeing’ Fight Club’: “I Get It”

Love, who was coming off the acclaimed performance in “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” and was engaged to “Fight Club” co-star Edward Norton at the time, said she was terrified of Fincher, and Fincher was terrified of her, but they met, hit it off, and he cast her in the role. Fincher eventually cast her.

But in the middle of this process, Love said she got a call from Brad Pitt and director Gus Van Sant. They proposed making a Kurt Cobain film, with Pitt set to star. But Love said she went “went nuclear” on the phone with Pitt for even bringing up the idea (too soon), and she shut the whole thing down. Then Love claims she got a call from Norton, who told her she had been fired because Pitt was angry. “I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt,” Love said. “I don’t do Faust. Who the fuck do you think are?” she told Pitt.

Norton had to break the news to her first. “He starts sobbing,” she told Maron, “and he was like, ‘I don’t have the power!’” From there, she got a call from Fincher, who also confirmed that she was out, according to the singer.

“I don’t know if I trust you, and I don’t know that your movies are for profit. They’re really good social justice movies,” Love said she told Pitt. “But if you don’t get me, you kind of don’t get Kurt, and I don’t feel like you do, Brad.”

Love said that Pitt’s been after a Kurt Cobain movie for ages. “My friend Cameron Crowe [told me] Brad Pitt was put on this earth to stalk you for Kurt, which has been going on since ’96,” she said.

Van Sant clearly went on to make that movie anyway, with Michael Pitt (unrelated to Brad) in 2005’s indie “Last Days,” which was obviously inspired by Kurt Cobain. Still, he got around it by never stating that specifically anywhere in the movie.

Love also claimed that Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company had been trying to get a Cobain biopic made as recently as 2020. The rocker/singer/actress admitted she has changed her tune in recent years and is ok with making a Kurt Cobain film now that time has passed. But it won’t be with Pitt or Plan B, and she named dropped Warner Bros. chiefs as Michael DeLuca and Pam Abdy as the pair she would make the film with. Whether that’s official or just an idea is unclear, but it’s evident, based on the conversation, that she’s no longer vehemently against the idea. 

It should be noted that filmmaker Oren Moverman (“Time Out of Mind”) came close to making a Kurt Cobain film in the early 2000s, wrote a screenplay, and even had the singer/actress on board at one point. But he said it was “deeply unconventional,” the studio passed on it, and Love was “heartbroken” when he left the project (read that whole interview here).

Regardless, It’s a pretty wild conversation with Love, so you should listen to the whole thing yourself below.