This is one filthy trailer. Thrown off-guard by just how much nudity, language, and sexual situations are involved with this movie - or at least in how much they are using that to sell the movie. To young teenage boys or adolescent men? Hard to say. But, I’m not sure this makes me want to see the movie any more or less than previously.
I was under the impression the movie was about something more than the main character’s sex addiction, but now I’m not so sure. MORE »
Choke finally gets a trailer courtesy of the Fox Searchlight, the studio that snatched up the rights to this film back at Sundance. The flick stars Sam Rockwell and is based upon the novel by Chuck Palahniuk.
The story follows a con artist (Rockwell) who pretends to gag at upscale restaurants so he can latch onto his Heimlich saviors and bleed them dry. He offsets this with working as a Colonial “re-enactor” to fund treatment for his mentally handicapped mom (Angelica Huston). In between, he finds time to immerse himself in therapy and unhealthy sexual relationships.
So you’re typical Palahniuk subject matter. Hopefully, Choke is marginally successful so that other Palahniuk books (cough Survivor, Lullabye, perhaps Invisible Monsters cough) make it onto the big screen.
By James Furbush | February 1st, 2008 | 11:16 am PST
Collider has scored four clips from the upcoming flick Choke. Based-upon a Chuck Palahniuk novel and starring Sam Rockwell, Choke was bought up by Fox Searchlight for a cool $5 million at Sundance and gets an August 1, 2008 release date. Given Fox Searchlight’s recent track record for successful small movies (Juno, Little Miss Sunshine to name two) this is a good thing for Palahniuk and movie fans.
It will initially come out in limited release and then hopefully blow up large. The picture is directed by Clark Gregg. That’s him on the left below and Rockwell is on the right.
Choke is the story of Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida, in an expensive private mental hospital by working days as a historical reenactor. At night he runs a scam where he deliberately chokes in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. When, in a rare lucid moment, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor must enlist the aid of his best friend, Denny, a recovering chronic masturbator, and his mother’s beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall, to solve this mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.
By James Furbush | January 21st, 2008 | 10:13 am PST
Portland-based writer Chuck Palahniuk isn’t exactly a cult author. He’s pretty popular and well-known thanks of course to the exceptional adaptation of his first novel Fight Club. But he’s had a steady output of novels since that book, unfortunately none of them have seen the silver screen.
That all changes with the adaptation of Choke. Directed by Clark Gregg and starring Sam Rockwell as a sex-addicted Revolutionary War Reenactor, who chokes in restaurants to con people out of money. So you know, the usual territory mined by the darkly comic Palahniuk.
The movie is being screened at Sundance, which is happening right now as I type. Not the screening but the festival.
And if that’s not enough, after the jump listen to author Chuck Palahniuk discuss the movie adaptation of his novel Choke.MORE »
It’s unfathomable after the success of David Fincher’s Fight Club that there has not been a single Chuck Pahalniuk book adapted for the screen since.
Several have been in development including Survivors, Invisible Monsters and Lullabye but it looks like the darkly satirical romantic comedy Choke will hit the screens next. Pahalniuk has quite a cult following and his book readings have become something of a legend over the past decade.
Sam Rockwell has signed on to star in the adaptation, along with Angelica Huston. The film is being written and directed by actor Clark Gregg. Gregg stars in the CBS sitcom The Old Adventures of New Christine, which seems like an odd choice to adapt the material, but he claims he’s been in love with the book ever since it’s publication in 2001.Principle photography begins this week in New Jersey and the film will also star actress Kelly MacDonald (Trainspotting) and actor Brad Henke (In the Valley of Elah).
“Choke” is a black comedy that follows Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex addict who works as a Colonial War re-enactor and runs a con scheme that involves deliberately choking in restaurants and attaching himself parasitically to his rescuers, all to fund his mother’s (Huston) care at a private mental hospital.
He is forced to address his intimacy issues when he falls in love with his mother’s doctor and discovers that he is unable to perform with the one woman he actually likes.
With bated breath, this one will hopefully be every bit as worthy and deranged as Fight Club was. A taste of author Chuck Palahniuk’s readings.
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