Courtney Love appeared on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast this week, and she served up some long-brewing tea — like, since the late ’90s. 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, a part for which Janeane Garofalo has also said she was considered. According to Garofalo, she had the role before Edward Norton got Love, then his fiancée, to replace her. According to Love, she’d had the role since before the film was green-lit. But then Brad Pitt nixed the idea. His reason, according to Love? 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 she was out.
Love says 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 still been trying to get a Cobain biopic off the ground as recently as 2020. She later clarified the story in an Instagram post, explaining that one reason she decided to let the tea spill on Maron was to call Pitt in and get him to let go of resentment surrounding the Covain movie idea. “I’m sure Helena Bonham Carter was utterly meant to be Marla Singer and I do not bear her or Edward Norton or David Fincher or Art Linson — all people whose work & genius I respect immensely — any ill will,†she wrote. Sounds like this story rivals Babylon in epic scale (and running time).
This story has been updated.