The unsolicited script sent to Edward Norton on a landmine: “They called the bomb squad in”
There are plenty of ways for an aspiring screenwriter to get their work in front of Hollywood’s movers and shakers, and while sending a script to Edward Norton may well be one of them, attaching it to a landmine wasn’t the wisest creative flourish to gain the actor and filmmaker’s attention.
Making it as a scriptwriter in the cutthroat world of cinema is no easy task, nor is there a bulletproof method of getting noticed. Some scribes toil away for years before catching their big break, others hit big with their first screenplay, while plenty never get noticed despite their best efforts.
Presumably, the person who opted to use ordinance as their preferred delivery method assumed it would at least make an impression on Norton, who also happens to be an experienced and accomplished screenwriter in addition to his day job as a three-time Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actor.
He performed uncredited rewrites on Salma Hayek’s Frida and Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk, as well as scripting and directing his second feature-length effort from behind the camera, Motherless Brooklyn. However, none of those projects had come to fruition when the landmine incident happened, with Norton instead in the midst of shooting David Fincher’s cult classic, Fight Club.
In fairness, it does, at the very least, suit the film’s anarchic and anti-establishment tone for a script to be sent in the post with an explosive as part of the package, but the sender didn’t quite think things through when the safety precautions ensured nobody associated with Fight Club—or anyone at all, for that matter—actually got a chance to read the thing.
“A guy once tried to send a script to use while we were making Fight Club, and he sent it in a landmine,” Norton shared with Movies. “So they made everybody go back a distance, they called the bomb squad in, and they opened this landmine, and there was a script in it, saying, ‘Please pass this onto Edward Norton and the guys.'”
By ‘the guys’, the questionable delivery method was earmarked for Fincher and Brad Pitt, too, only for the best-case scenario of the situation blowing up in everyone’s face to arise when Norton admitted he “never got to see the script because they took it as evidence.”
Quite why anybody would stumble upon a landmine as the perfect way to ensure a pair of powerhouse performers and an acclaimed auteur would be left with no other choice but to peruse their words remains entirely up for debate, but it was all for nothing when the bomb squad swiftly dealt with the unusual package and left completely unseen by anyone.
