Early last month, multi-Oscar-nominated actor, Edward Norton was invited to the Northwest as part of the 2010 Seattle International Film Festival.  Beginning on June 3rd, with American History X, and ending on the 5th, with Spike Lee‘s 25th Hour, SIFF helped to celebrate the actor’s illustrious career by screening some of his most successful work.  Norton was on hand to provide short personal introductions to each of the films, but the most substantial portion of the tribute took place on June 4th at the Egyptian Theatre and included the festival honoring him with their trademark Golden Space Needle award.  The festivities at the Egyptian also featured a live interview with the actor and a screening of his latest project, Leaves of Grass.  I was there for the events and, for an artist who’s managed to build a career off of his ability to shift characters effortlessly, often within the same role, I can safely say that Norton only exposed one of his faces that night.

The Egyptian Theatre

Seattle, Wa

June 4, 2010

The evening started with a slide-show of sorts, showcasing dramatic scenes from each one of Norton‘s movies.  The biggest applause was delivered for the 1996 film Primal Fear, that provided him with his breakout role as an altar boy on trial for murdering a priest.  Through various twists, his character was able to avoid incarceration by fooling his own lawyer, played by the “master thespian” Richard Gere.  Apart from an educational ESL film, this was only his first professional movie role, but it allowed the young actor to truly display his range early.  The other greatest crowd noise greeted Fight Club, the 1999 generation defining film of which Edward claimed “didnt do much at the box office but has since gone into the world and formed its own, deeper connection with an audience“.  This movie epitomizes the term cult film.

After coming out and accepting his award, Mr. Norton provided the introduction to the film screening that night.  Leaves of grass was directed by Tim Blake Nelson and features Edward Norton performing double duty, acting simultaneously as twin brothers.  One of the brothers is a clean-cut perfectionist with big city smarts, who has gained prominence as a philosophical thinker and professor.  Through a lot of effort, he has managed to lose his accent and is only visiting his twin after being swindled by a crossbow murder hoax.  The other brother is the owner of a seriously sophisticated pot growing operation located in the deep south of Oklahoma.  These two have interactions so seamless and natural that I quickly forgot that they were being played by the same guy.  Although those transitions were aided by one of the brothers having long hair, tattoos and whatnot, while the other was much closer to the very clean-cut Edward Norton we all know and love, his work was still impressive.  About halfway through, the film segues into what has become a somewhat typical Nortonian darkness, where carnage, duplicity, and duality show their strange and shadowy faces.  Overall, I found “Leaves” to contain plenty of splendid acting and to be a movie with genuine heart.

After the film, the man of the evening returned to the stage to be interviewed by local critic, Tom Tangney. Edward Norton was reluctant to reveal even one iota of information, as far as his personal history was concerned.  Slightly chagrined by this, Tangney inexplicably countered with, “Well you know, with celebrities, everyone wants to know everything about you.. ha ha ha“   To which Mr. Norton then replied, “That in no way compels me to answer these questions“.   He stated that, although he didn’t want to go quite as far as Bob Dylan‘s quote of ” just because you like what i do, doesn’t mean I owe you anything” he feels that knowing the personal information and/or history of an actor can in no way improve on a movie watchers experience.  He went on to further explain that such information can actually be counter-productive to the viewer, as they will start to see them through THAT prism, rendering a performance as less of a “blank” canvas.  This early exchange launched into what became an extensive interview with the Academy Award nominated actor.

Throughout the conversation, I was surprised to learn that Mr. Norton is ivy league educated (he went to yale), and has a degree in history.  The interview lasted for nearly two and a half hours, with the actor waxing at length about various preparations and anecdotes as an actor, regarding each of his movies.  He spoke very slowly,  kind of stammering through, sometimes rambling, but always answering questions and countering the interviewer’s points in the end.  By my estimation, the reason that he is one of the more successful and respected actors of his generation is due to his incredible attention to detail.  He also exhibits a very cerebral approach to the craft, often eschewing the notion of instincts as the most “legitimate” form of acting.  He approaches everything both clinically [from the outside in] and emotionall  [from the inside out].  These are just some of the concepts that he philosophized over during the night’s sit-down.  He actually came across as a little nervous or uncomfortable about being there at first, but seemed to eventually relax.   Whether it was an act or not, the “lost boy in the woods” thing clearly won people over in the end, myself included.

Edward Norton, the very rich, very well put together man who’s face is familiar to so many of us, came off as down to earth as anyone that I’ve ever come across.  This is probably part of his appeal.  Like Jimmy Stewart before him, Norton is an “every man” figure who just happens to be an incredibly gifted actor and is seemingly grounded in craft, as opposed to fame.  As he exited stage right, a few folks moved in for a couple of autographs.  He still looked nervous and, after about one and a half minutes of that noise, he was gone, disappearing into the shadows of the Egyptian Theatre.  I heard about him introducing Fight Club at a midnight showing later that night, but Ive seen that movie too many times and I had to get on home.  Fortunately, we were able to locate the following video footage of the introduction posted below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The following audio was taken from Tagney‘s blog “Behind the Screens” featured on MyNorthwest.com and contains sound bites from a follow up conversation that the critic held with Norton the day after the event.

INTERVIEW MP3

All photos above were generously provided by photographer Casey Broadwater.  Please check out more of his images at CaseyBroadwater.com.  View more from this specific photo set, by linking to his Flickr account through HERE.

When the film version of Fight Club was released, it seemed as if any and every pseudo-trendy movie-goer that I spoke with tried to shove their praises of it down my throat.  There were better films released that year (see: “Magnolia“) and Brad Pitt isn’t a name that bumps a film up on my priority list, but I did eventually see it and found it to be worth a recommendation, especially for a Hollywood film.  It definitely lived up to it’s hype much better than “The Blair Witch Project” and “Eyes Wide Shut”, but I didn’t find it to be as cutting edge and revolutionary as many had hailed it to be.  You have to remember that 1999 was the year of “The Sixth Sense” and “The Matrix” or, in other more elaborate words, the year of solid concepts that could have been delivered more effectively outside of Hollywood but were still more than enough to blow Joe Average Consumer’s mind right through the back of their skull.  Regardless of what your feelings about “The Matrix” may be, the quality could have been greatly enhanced without the talents of Ted Theodore Logan in the leading role.  The concept may have been incredibly interesting and foreign to those of you who are isolated and/or have never had a hallucinogenic experience but, for those of us who have experienced the wonders of what linoleum floor patterning has to offer, a methodically constructed false society is an old philosophy and 2: Johnny Utah is a bad trip waiting to happen.  “Fight Club” was a better film and that somehow left me with an ironically diminished interest in the literary source of the script.  What I mean to say is that the glossy, cut-corner Hollywood execution of a film with such a cerebral basis as “The Matrix“, reeked of a commercial takeover while “Fight Club” appeared to be trying to going “balls out” just to fall short of what I would have considered amazing.   I knew that “The Matrix” was 40 milligrams of intellect diluted in a spoonful of Hollywood Rocky Road from the beginning but, “Fight Club” was just good enough for me to assume there would be nothing more to discover from reading the novel that spawned it.

I thought that the elaborate set up of the “twist” was more satisfying than that of “The Sixth Sense“, but not by much.  Whether it was done subconsciously or out of sheer laziness, “Fight Club’s” casting director created some potholes that effected my theatrical carriage ride.  I know that this “twist” is what made the film for many viewers and gave them a little special secret to hold close to themselves but, in my opinion, there were too many obvious and unsurprising things about the movie.  For example, Helena Bonham Carter plays the mysterious and emotional weird girl while Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durdan is the same fly by the seat of his pants, rebel heart throb that he’s been playing since he dated Carol Seaver on “Growing Pains“.  The main thing that really fucked the twist, and in turn the core of the film, was the type-casting of Edward Norton who, just a few years earlier, made his big breakthrough in “Primal Fear“as a character dealing with a dual personality disorder.  Certain aspects like these dulled the sheen for me and, without the added interest of experimentation to excuse any possible flat points (see: “Julian Donkey Boy“/”Being John Malkovich“), it wasn’t quite spring-loaded with enough umph to embed itself very deep into my mind after the credits rolled.  This, at least, is how I used to feel but, earlier this year, I realized that I had never really given that adaptation enough credit and learned to appreciate it for what had been done right.  When I saw the, soon to be released, motion picture “CHOKE“, during an advanced screening in June, It became evident how much worse “Fight Club” really could have been.

I’ll admit that I never really wanted to like Chuck Palahniuk but, that desire was never actually fueled by the writer or his work at all.  There were always situations like the uninvited girl who showed up to the New Years party and kept turning off the Fela Kuti to put Dave Mathews on.  I lived with a writer/book collector who she kept asking, “Have you heard of Chuck Pa-lay-nook?  He’s con-tro-ver-see-uhl!“  Grant would reply by correcting Chuck’s name and stating that he had never read his work but had met him and that he seemed pretty cool.  Then she would say, “You should read some.  His name is… Chuck… um…Play-haw-neek, and he’s con-tro-ver-see-uhl!  What’s this book?!”  “It’s Tom Robbins.” “Oh, is he con-tro-ver-see-uhl?  Chuck Plow-hoot-nick, is con-tro-ver-see-uhl!“  That meeting ended with Grant blatantly spitting a mouth full of wine on her pant leg while she obliviously continued to ramble, and with me putting my copy of Palahniuk’s “Survivor” even further on the back burner.  It was a good year and a half later when I grabbed that book in a rush out the door and began to read it on a bus trip.  The minute that I read the part where the main character created a false crisis hotline to encourage people to commit suicide, I was hooked.  I knew that he had me and that I was becoming the last thing that I had wanted… a fan.

“SNUFF” Book Tour

After thanking my little brother for the novel and admitting that I had trusted his recommendation so much that i waited three years before reading it, he gave me a copy of the book CHOKE.  It sucked me in within the first few pages but, since i was already reading “Ham on Rye” (Bukowski) and 2 other books, I had to put this one aside before I delved too deep.  I thought about it from time to time but, not until learning that CHOKE had been adapted into a film which would be playing at the Seattle International Film Festival, did I finally get down to reading it last May.  I can’t remember the last time I read a book that fast and within a days time I had already torn through it.  I put it down satisfied and immediately jumped on line to check the showtime for Harmony Korine’s film “Mister Lonely” (highly recommended).  When I got to the film page, however, I noticed an announcement in the corner for a Chuck Palahniuk appearance at town hall and it was schedule to  start in about an hour.

As we entered the front door there was a merch table run by the UW bookstore.  I went over to sift through the books and I noticed some bookmarks advertising CHOKE the movie.  When I picked one up, a string of anal beads that were connected to them swung down like a pendulum.  On closer look, the bookmark read, “For your book or your bum and not for small children“.  Palahuniuk was doing the tour for his novel, “Snuff” about a woman breaking the group sex record, so I picked up a copy of that, grabbed my novelty ass toy, and headed upstairs to an immense autograph line.

To get in line, it was necessary to have obtained a special slip of paper by purchasing the book weeks earlier, so I took a seat in one of the pew-like benches of the auditorium and opened my own book.  To my surprise, my copy was already signed and stamped by Palahniuk, anyway.  The benefits of the line were that you could shake his hand, get a more personalized inscription, and even take a picture with the author holding a sexy latex blow-up doll.  The wait was incredibly long but Chuck waited until every body with a slip had a chance to meet him.  The scheduled start time had long passed and he was still signing books but Leonard Cohen was playing and I appreciated how accomodating he was being.  He cleary appreciates his readers and Palahniuk has even been known to respond to fan letters by sending elaborate packages, complete with hand written letters and miscellaneous magic store-style novelty items.

Palahniuk was formally introduced to the stage to with applause as he stepped up to the microphone.  He said something to the effect of, “There are a lot of beautiful, important, and touching stories” and then swiftly let us know that we wouldn’t be hearing any of those stories that night.  He explained that he wrote a special short story for the tour by saying, “I figured you’re gonna make the effort to be here then you should get something that the rest of the world is not getting.  Something that will only exist as a told story.“  He laid out the nights format which would consist of the story, playing games, and the answering of some questions before he would, “Go back to the misery that is signing books“.  Palahniuk had a book called “Knockernstiff” (Donald Ray Pollack) which he recommended and had planned to distribute to the winners of the games.  The first way that you could win a book would be to answer a question.  The second way was to blow up a blow up doll the fastest.  He went over to a large cardboard box and began to throw un-inflated male and female rubber sex dolls into the audience.  Each doll had the writer’s signature written across its body in marker.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6VMy1eOwh4

Palahniuk sat down but, before reading his story, he spoke about watching footage of Billy Idol dissecting his own music.  When Idol explained that all of his songs start at full intensity and maintain it until an abrupt ending, the author realized that it was the same formula for the ideal short story that he had envisioned and that he had always been trying to write a punk song.  The story he read was called “Loser” and it was definitely a highlight of the evening.  It was about a frat boy hopeful during rush week who takes a tab of “Hello Kitty acid” and gets called up on “The Price is Right“.  The story was well written but from the first person perspective of a guy who isn’t all that well read or spoken.  The visuals used to describe an acid trip swallowed up in so much commotion and intensity were solid and, by the time the character reached the “Showcase Showdown“, I almost had visuals of my own.  I’ve been on the CBS Studios lot sober and I can tell you first hand that it’s an absurd and confusing site to begin with.  I don’t know if I would ever want to try and pull in the mental reigns in a situation with that many people wearing that many giant price/name tags.  The story ended abruptly.

The interview was conducted by Warren Etheridge of Seattle’s, “The Warren Report“.  Right from the beginning, Warren took the conversation into uncomfortable territory by simply trying too hard.  He wasn’t having a conversation with Palahniuk as much as he was trying to impress some persona that unfairly surrounds the author, based on his writing.  It was like Etheridge felt it necessary to establish a bad-boy image for himself in front of the audience.  The same thing occurred when I saw John Waters speak but on a smaller scale.  Waters addressed these misguided assumptions by telling a story about a girl yanking out a tampon and asking him to sign it while, Palahniuk had a tale about a guy showing him a stack of Polaroids taken of men who had died jacking off in video booths.  These situations of metaphorical house-cats bringing in the dead mouse to please their owners have left both men with permanent, unshakable images scarring their minds.  By this point in the night, it was already clear that Palahniuk was actually the intelligent, creative, and compassionate artist who had  only started writing because he “couldn’t find the kind of books that (he) wanted to read“.  Oblivious pandering like that in an interview drives me nuts because it’s borderline patronizing, even when it’s coming from a place of nervousness or well meaning.  It’s like a mom getting all “street” on you and speaking ebonics because she thinks that it’s “hep” and had heard on Dateline NBC that the “funkiest” kids all talk like that .  Etheridge pulled out a flask and was cramming as much unprovoked profanity and off-color statements as he could into the conversation.  “Hey guys, you didn’t know your old man was this cool, right?!  You didn’t know that I could still get down, huh?  It is ‘get down’ right?  Isn’t that how you kids say it… ‘gettin’ down’?”

Palahniuk fielded the question about how he researched a book about “gang bangs” with answers like, “The way Hemmingway would have done it” and mentioned that he sprayed Stetson cologne inside all of the book tour copies of “Snuff“.  He was full of humorous anecdotes but balanced them with an equal number of well thought out, detailed descriptions, enlightening theories, and useful information.  It was clear that Palahniuk was sincerely drawn into the research and that retrieving and sharing this knowledge are what truly make him continue in the field.  At one point, he even admits that “writing is the last of (his) priorities“.  He also admits to having his back waxed for the book and seems to be able find other innovative and interesting ways to gather information.  When Chuck needed to hunker down and come up with fictional porn titles, he recruited his friends and turned the brainstorming into a party game of sorts.  He said that it had became such a joyful obsession that he would receive phone-calls at all hours with suggestions like “Chitty Chitty Gang Bang“.  My favorite research method that he utilizes is the one where he makes outlandish statements to someone that are completely devoid of fact.  When it goes right, he claims that people will get so agitated that they will actually bring him a stack of evidence just to prove him wrong and, in turn, end up doing the leg work for him.  Apparently, an incidence of sex is defined by “Any protuberance in any orifice” and, while facts like that are interesting, they would become worthless trivia questions in the hands of a less talented author.  Pahlahniuk states that he is always fascinated and inspired by working “with an unresolved area of the culture” and that he wanted to explore areas of sexuality and woman empowerment with his novel.

One of the most enthralling observations uttered by Palahniuk that night was about egotism.  He brought attention to the fact that we are all guilty of consistently judging others based on our own personal determination of ethics or social acceptability.  His theory is that comments like, “What a sellout” or, “Oh, I’d never wear my hair like that” are simply methods to reaffirm that our own personal realities and perceptions are the correct versions.  It’s a captivating topic to explore and one that deals with the very epoxy that fuses one’s “sanity” together.  There was just  enough time for 2 audience questions that night.  I knew that I wouldn’t get called on but I had hoped that there would be a question stimulating enough to evoke a theory like the last one.  Nope! Some kid got to ask Chuck if he would ever write a book strictly devoted to the “drug culture”.  It was like getting 3 wishes and blowing one on a packet of discontinued Kool-Aid.  Palahniuk responded very respectfully that he would not and then shared the video trailer for “Choke” with us before ending the evening with more autographs.

CONTINUE TO FILM REVIEW>>

“CHOKE” The Movie

I’d like to begin this review by letting everyone know that it contains what some would refer to as “SPOILERS“.  If you have already read CHOKE and are simply curious about how well one of your favorite novels was adapted into a film, I will be addressing those issues in detail.  Since the creative liberties taken through its transition into cinema are so vast and affect the overall result so much, I wouldn’t know how to approach this review without referring to them with specifics.  If you have not read the book CHOKE yet, I would suggest that you do so before or, rather, instead of seeing the film.   It’s a great novel and masterfully composed.  You, of course, are welcome to continue either way, but know this: I am here to spoil the movie, the movie spoils the book and, although my intention would never be to ruin the book, it may happen indirectly if you are persistent about reading past this paragraph.

I had reservations about the film based on the casting and from what I saw in the trailer but I was still genuinely excited about seeing the film.  I was so excited that I arrived at the Egyptian Theatre on Capitol Hill hours before show time.  The tickets were already all accounted for and some creepy mother fucker tried to scalp some to me.  “How much are tickets anyway?” I asked him.  “How much are MY tickets?” he asked.  “Fuck off, you pedophile looking bastard.“  I got the inside scoop that there was a specific number of tickets held for V.I.P. ticket holders and more would open up to the public if they failed to arrive.  I came back an hour before show time and stood in line, holding spots for my girlfriend and little sister while rain sprinkled down on me.  About 10-15 minutes before the movie started, they released some tickets and we funneled into the theater looking for any open seats that we could find in the packed house.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMZ3Mi1vT-w&feature=pyv

I had planned to pace this review and put more thought into it’s structure than the film itself had but, I’ve already waited 3 months to write this so I’m just gonna say it:  “THIS MOVIE IS ABSOLUTE SHIT!”  It was fucking horrible.  Sorry, but I needed to finally get that off my chest.  Whooo… I actually feel a lot better.  I tried to like it, I really did try but it was soooo bad.  I knew that it would be difficult to adjust to director, Clark Gregg’s interpretation of the story and characters.  I tried to account for that in my mind, but there aren’t enough excuses to exonerate Gregg for his merciless rape of this magnificent novel.

The movie began with the speech about the “legends” of sexual disaster from chapter 2.  This monologue was taken straight from the text and, for those who haven’t read the book, it’s all about the different urban legends of doctors removing household objects from some guys ass or the lady having her dog lick peanut butter off of her snatch, etc. etc. The main character, Victor Mancini, has a sex addiction and is explaining that these aforementioned sexual perverts are, not only real, but that he comes in contact with them regularly.  I thought that was a nice place to start the film but they lost me almost immediately after wards.  Here, let’s dissect some of the characters and the storyline a bit further.  It really is a tangled disaster but I will try to locate a good place to start.

Palahniuk’s book starts with Victor as a young child traveling with his eccentric and neglectful mother.  The introduction warns the reader that they are wasting their time reading about the “stupid little boy” and helps to establish Mancini’s self hatred and source of his addictive personality.  Victor’s mother, Ida, is a former political activist that was regularly on the run from the law and transfers her paranoia to her son.  She randomly reappears in his life to kidnap him from whoever his current foster parents are at the time.  Victor’s best friend is a fellow sex addict names Denny who has a masturbation problem.  He works with Victor at a Colonial Williamsburg-style tourist attraction acting in historical reenactments. The novel and it’s characters are dark and complex.  It’s brilliance stems from it’s moral ambiguity and multi-dimensional characters.  The film is far from that- did I mention that it was “fucking horrible?!”

Sam Rockwell portrays Victor as a super slick bad ass.  Palahniuk’s Victor slept with a lot of women but it wasn’t because he was supposed to be like Fonzi; it was because he had emotional and abandonment issues from his upbringing.  Rockwell’s character seems all too proud of himself in the film and becomes the kind of character that is only appealing to assholes and the type of dipshit fratboys that Palahniuk takes subtle jabs at.  In this film, Victor is a guy with a smug attitude that gets a lot of pussy and acts like he has it all figured out.  The character in the book, on the other hand, is constantly aware that he doesn’t have shit figured out and is deeply resentful of his mother for creating his relationship barriers.  There’s a quote from the book that reads, “The magic of sex is its acquisition without the burdon of possessions.  No matter how many women you take home, there’s never a storage problem.“  I have a feeling that comments like these were misinterpreted by Gregg.  The same things that represent Mancini’s contemplative nature and struggle to redefine his course in life are translated into little more than bragging and opportunities to measure his cock on the big screen.

The character of Ida Mancini was a huge disappointment.  Clark Gregg actually mananged to take the Oscar winning, Hollywood royalty of Anjelica Huston and found a way to make it look like she had spent her carrer doing Malox ads.  The adjustment of her character and it’s involvement in the film is perhaps, the most confusing.  In the book, Ida is mostly bedridden and confined to a hospital but, in the film, she doesn’t seem to have any physical limitations whatsoever.  Her mental deterioration is a bi-product of her physical illness but the film plays this off as mere senility.  It’s true that the memory loss is still a key point in the book but the omitance of her physical condition wounds the storyline severely.  Ida never recognizes her son when he visits her, instead Victor usually has to pretend to be whoever she believes him to be at the time, which is usually one of her old lawyers.  This is the same in the book but is written much more complex.  He cannot shake his yearning for his mother’s acceptance and, although it pains Victor to make these visits, he’s willing to do so for a couple of reasons: 1) He feels obligated to continue taking care of her and 2) He’ll gladly accept any approval that he can get, regardless of who his mother’s intended target is.  When Ida begins to refer to Victor in their conversations, he has the added benefit of eavesdropping as someone else.  The film doesn’t set up the backstory at all before introducing Ida into the picture; Victor arrives at the hospital pretending to be someone else and they go from there.  This would be fine except that the entire concept of his mom and her neglectfully nomadic lifestyle is never addressed until deep into the film.  Nothing is segued and, without ever forming these foundations in the storyline, I don’t know how anyone that hasn’t read the book could even follow it.  By ignoring the fact that his mother is dying, it doesn’t make any sense when she is so horrendously ill at the end of the movie.  There was no build up.  On a smaller note, there is a great part in the novel where Ida takes a young Victor to a ZOO at midnight to “liberate the animals“  Instead of releasing the beasts, however, she liberates the animals by feeding them LSD.  I was pleased to see that Gregg worked this portion into the film, until Huston actually did release the animals.  This is, perhaps, less important but works as a prime example of how much this guy “just doesn’t get it“.

Dr. Paige Marshall is played by Kelly Macdonald from “No Country For Old Men“.  [Here comes another spoiler folks] Paige is a lunatic patient at the hospital who wears a doctor’s jacket and has Victor fooled until the end of the book.  She spends a lot of time with Ida and tries to convince Victor that his mother is an amazing woman that should be appreciated for the efforts that she has made in the name of revolution.  Due to Ida’s deteriorating health, Paige offers to have sex with Victor in an attempt to work some experimental stem cell magic and return Ida to her original condition.  Gregg decided to use his screenplay to rewrite their relationship and fuck that plot point in the ass.  He has Victor confused by his deepening love for Paige which, in turn, makes it difficult for him to fuck a broad for the first time.  Basically, it’s typical Hollywood shit.  You may be thinking, “Hey, in the novel he has trouble sleeping with her too!“  That’s true my friend.  You are right about that, but in the original story he’s questioning things a lot deeper.  Victor is fighting over his feelings about saving his mom because he’s finally found control in their relationship and he realizes that he likes keeping his mom in that weak state because someone finally needs him.  Victor’s fucked up and hates himself.  Most of his actions are born from his mangled personal identity and can’t be adequately explained away by some romantic Hollywood storyline.

Victor’s best friend Denny is played by Brad William Henke.  Denny is a pretty small guy in the book and Henke is a large oafish bastard who staggers over Sam Rockwell in the film.  Denny spends much of the first half of the book with his head locked in the stocks for slipping out of his colonial role at work.  With his hands restrained, he reduces his daily masturbation count and begins to get locked down on purpose.   What I like about Palahniuk’s characters are their drastic transformations.  Denny operates like a sidekick to Victor’s more dominant personality but, as the book progresses and Denny begins to find himself, there is a shift.  The same is true in “Survivor” and, by the time I was halfway through that book, I felt like I was reading about a completely different person.  The characters in the film version of CHOKE are incredibly static by comparison.  Denny is crashing at Victor’s place and begins spending time alone in reflection.  He begins collecting small boulders and dragging them home each day just because he needs anything to redirect his focus from sex.  Through his strenuous work Denny’s physique is altered in the book and he becomes both physically and mentally healthier.  The basement and house begin to fill with rocks and eventually Denny transfers the rocks to an empty lot.  He forms a relationship with a stripper that he meets dancing at a club and, after he is fired from his job, they start spending their free time building a structure in the lot.  He doesn’t know what will come of it but likes the idea of creation.  Jaded by his life, Victor tries to sabotage the venture by contacting the media but, ultimately starts helping them and winds up promoting the project on television himself.  In the film they don’t explain any of this in detail.  One minute Denny is bringing a rock home in a baby carriage and then, far later in the film, they show Victor as an advocate on the news, but they never reference iit again or explain what’s going on at all.  This film is so fragmented and misguided that it’s ridiculous.  You can give someone a piece of crust and a pepperoni and they may even like it, but it’s not a fucking pizza.

“Who the fuck is Clark Gregg?” you may ask.  He’s an actor who plays Julia Louise Dreyfus‘ ex-husband on “The New Adventures of Old Christine” and has no other directing credits to his name.  There is an uptight background character named Lord High Charlie in CHOKE that regulates the historical authenticity of their jobs and is the one responsible for placing Denny is the stocks.  Gregg decided to expand the role of this worthless character for the film and gave him a love story all his own.  Keep in mind that he also decided to give himself the role.  He has transformed a darkly comic and intellectual novel into a light quirky comedy with absolutely no continuity.  He tends to focus on the miniscule, irrelevant aspects of the book and completely abandons everything that gave it its proper structure.  The book is called CHOKE because Victor’s fondest childhood memory is of him choking in a restaurant and being saved by his mother.  He pretends to choke in restaurants to con strangers into “saving” him.  They feel like heroes and regularly send him cards with money to check up on his status and make sure that he’s doing alright.  He then uses that money to pay for his mother’s hospital fees.  After appearing on television, a huge crowd of people show up that recognize him as the man they saved.  They begin talking and, in realizing that they’ve all been scammed, start throwing stones at him and destroy what he and Denny have built.  He is exposed and it acts as one more situation that forces him to move forward.  NONE OF THIS HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE! I’m serious; none of it!  That resolution doesn’t occur.  In fact, they barely address the choking at all.  Gregg tears the story apart and reconstructs it as a simple love story about a guy who wants to know who his real dad is.  This couldn’t vary more from the intention of the book and the liberties that he took give a huge middle finger to the core and soul of the whole storyline.

Most of you may think that my love for the book hindered my experience with the film but I think that it actually worked as a benefit, if anything.  Without reading the novel, I’m not even sure how anyone can follow the disjointed catastrophe that is CHOKE the Movie.  The cinematography and acting lent about as much subtlety to the film as a Jr. High play.  There was a real cinematic story handed to this guy and wrapped with a fucking bow but he found a way to destroy it.  The story of Victor fighting to take ownership of his current state in life and moving beyond his issues was a great story to begin with and something amazing could have come from it.  “Citizen Kane” was an introspective triumph that slowly exposed flaws of the main character.  Much like Orson Wells, Palahniuk forced his readers to question societal roles and, more importantly, themselves.  I viewed the novel as a drama that had some really smart comic aspects woven into it but, the film was just a poor dumbed-down comedy pandering to mainstream America.  I am shocked by the positive publicity that it is receiving and it feels like people are afraid not to support the film.  The Sundance Film Festival awarded CHOKE with a “Special Jury Prize” for a dramatic ensemble cast but all that does is make Sundance lose credibility.  There were reports that Radiohead loved the film and decided to score it after discovering that Palahniuk listened to the album “Pablo Honey” religiously while writing the novel.  That’s untrue; they only donated the song “Reckoner” to the end credits and the actual score couldn’t have been cornier if it was cranked out of a jack-in-the-box.  I’ve never seen this much advertisement behind a film labeled as “independent” and every piece of hype that can be found is being worked into the marketing campaign.  Palahniuk even makes a small non-speaking cameo as a plane passenger.  They need to place his face on this project to show his involvement, but this guys pumping out a book a year at this point so, his involvement has to be limited.  I still highly recommend his literary catalog and hope that his endorsement doesn’t turn on him.  It’s important to understand how many obstacles have prevented his films from being produced in the past.  “Survivor’s” production was halted after 9-11 due to having a subplot involving a high-jacking, and there must be great relief for the author to finally have a project follow through to the end.  As for Clark Gregg, I think that he should have just went all out and put a food fight in the film, complete with a wacky pie to the face.  I don’t think he’s a completely inept director but I hope that he’ll focus more on his strengths and stick to realms where he can truly shine.  Preferably something along the lines of “Homeward Bound“.  I think this guy could really have a promising future in dog and cat adventure films.

-Dead C