07/11/2023
David Fincher once told Empire magazine he hid Starbucks cups “everywhere, in every shot” of his 1999 adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the coffee chain.
“When I first moved to LA in 1984, you could not get a good cup of coffee in Los Angeles to save your life. I mean, it was really pathetic,” he said.
“Then Starbucks came out, and it was such a great idea: good coffee. And when it became successful there were, like two or three on every block. It’s too much of a good thing. But they read the script, they knew what we were doing, and they were kind of ready to poke a little fun at themselves.”
He added: “I don’t have anything personal against Starbucks. I think they’re trying to do a good thing. They’re just too successful.”
A Tumblr blog has collated several of the movie’s frames in which a Starbucks cup can be seen.
