Fight Club turns 20: Recalling when Rosie O'Donnell spoiled the massive twist on her talk show

The Hollywood Reporter

O'Donnell saw an early screening of the David Fincher-directed Brad Pitt-Edward Norton film and hated its themes and violence. So she decided to spoil the twist on her hit daytime talk show The Rosie O'Donnell Show. "That was the largest (spoiler) of its kind pre-social media," says Richard Greene, author of Spoiler Alert! (It’s a Book About the Philosophy of Spoilers). "It’s not just something she shouldn’t have spoiled then, it is something you can’t spoil today." On the 2000 DVD commentary track for Fight Club, Pitt said of Rosie's spoiler: "I guess that is OK she hated it. She was saying this movie disturbed me, she could not sleep for nights. It hit a nerve. It struck some nerve whether she wanted to look at it or not. But the deal was, she gave away the ending on national television. That's just unforgivable."