Aside from releasing 2 separate albums under the JOA moniker in 2011, his first novel, The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self Defense, was published last September by Featherproof Books.  The 376-page work zips back and forth between a handful of people’s lives, many of which are family members in the fictional town of Stone Claw Grove, Michigan.  The characters deal with addiction and aging, struggle with responsibility, and give up on brighter dreams in an attempt to settle for whatever they already have currently.  Throughout it all, strippers strip, fights break out in bars, and singers cover all of the karaoke classics.

I recently had the opportunity to conduct an interview with Mr. Kinsella and to discover more about his venture into literature and his overall approach to the creation process.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much work and time it takes to create a novel.  How long did it take for you to write The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self Defense?  Were you working on it while working on music?  While touring?

It was kind of at the center of everything for me for about 2 and a half years.  I participated in the Captain Jazz reunion shows, so I could have money to hunker down and revise it without having to work for a while.  So, I had the first draft done by the time we started planning those.  And then the last year was very carefully scheduled so that I’d spend 3 weeks in solitude working very long days on the book and then have two or three weeks away from it while we went out on tour.

People seem to have a time of day when they work better, are you more of a Morning writer, or more of a Night writer?

I’m 100% a morning writer.  If I start writing by 8 or 8:30 at the latest, then I can keep it up well into the night.  But if, for any reason I can’t start until 9:15, then the whole day is blown for me and I can’t write more than half an hour.  I don’t know what it is, but I can’t do ANYTHING else before starting to write or I’m totally thrown off.

You’ve said that when you write a novel, you just write small scenes, and then tie them all together, which I think is noticeable in the book.  The book’s narrative is also in a scrambled timeline.  Did you write the sections in the order that they appear in the book, or did you do a lot of rearranging?

It was re-arranged over and over and over and over and over.  It’s not a particularly dynamic plot and there’s a lot of sprawling information, so basically the entire trick to hopefully keep people turning the page was all about what information gets revealed when, like a mystery.

All of the scenes are tied to the funeral of the characters’ grandmother.  Had you planned this, or did you come up with it as a means of tying together the different scenes you had written?

I don’t know.  I think that was decided pretty early on in the whole thing taking shape.  But I had characters emerging and a couple hundred pages written before I had anything like a shape.

Do you revise your writing a lot?

Yes.  No hyperbole grand enough.  Revising my writing = basically my entire life?  I don’t even know where the words come from before they are being revised.  I write first drafts as fast as possible, attempting to write faster than I can think.  Then I throw 98% of everything away and the process becomes mostly like sculpting.

I read that you completed your MFA in Creative Writing.  I’m curious, do you feel like that helped you at all in your writing?  What is the process for an MFA in Creative Writing?  Did you enjoy it?

It helped very much.  The process is a lot of getting pointed towards good stuff to read and talking about its mechanics.  I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, but I’m not really one to enjoy things.  And enjoyment hardly seems like a relevant criteria to consider one’s education in terms of.

I also read in a Youtube comment that you were doing some teaching.  Do you enjoy that?

I’m an adjunct lecturer on Popular Culture for The City Colleges of Chicago.  I like the students and I like talking about ideas with them – keeps me sharp.  When I’m away from it, it feels meaningful at times and, when I’m in the middle of it, I’m occasionally cursing it.

The image of a karaoke machine in a strip club was such a strange one for me to try to put together in my mind, is that something you’d seen before?

No, but I’ve certainly thought a lot about the tensions between vulnerability / performance that karaoke and erotic dancing certainly have in common.  The connection is a bit ham-fisted, hardly even a connection as much as degrees of the same thing.

One of my favorite scenes in the book is when one character listens to a karaoke performance of Under Pressure, and develops a richer understanding of the song’s meaning after examining the lyrics more closely.  This was especially interesting, because I really like that song, but I had never paid close attention to the lyrics myself.  Has this happened to you personally?  Has karaoke ever put a song into a new context that changed how you felt about that song?

I don’t know.  There’s this way that karaoke happens in Japan that is a lot different than how we experience it here.  Here it is very rare to see anyone do it without some degree of ironic detachment.  But in my experience, in Japan it seems like people get together and sing each other songs to express to each other with complete sincerity how they are feeling and what they are thinking.  It’s not even coded, just a 1:1 ratio that they do completely shamelessly.  That’s a little hard for us as Americans to even imagine seeing as we mostly conduct all of our interpersonal relationships in codes.

Also, I’m dying to know: In the novel one of the characters is always eating something called a “marshmallow bar.”  What is a marshmallow bar?  I was imagining it’s like a Rice Krispy Treat, or something.

Yeah, I guess so.  There’s that whole realm of bars that are sorta candy bars and sorta granola bars.  I guess they’re somewhere in that continuum.

The book’s cover has a very used-book look to it: a faded yellow-ish color, spots, and water stains, and, on the corner of the first page, it looks like someone wrote the price in pencil, as used book stores often do.  I really appreciated this aesthetic, are you a used book enthusiast?

I don’t know.  I’m not an enthusiast in the sense that I pay attention to buying particular editions or collecting in any sense like that.  I read a lot and I make very little money, so it’s only practical.  In regards to my own book being designed to look like that, that was mostly inspired by wanting to acknowledge that the themes of my book were well-tread and inherited.

What is the coolest used bookstore you’ve ever been to? Have you ever been to Powell’s in Portland?

Yeah, Powells is great, usually the first place we drive to when we pull into Portland.  It’s funny that no one that works there would ever recognize me as just one more guy that walks around it once or twice a year, but every time I return I get excited because I recognize some employees and it makes me feel a little bit at home.  Myopic is the neighborhood used bookstore that i’ve frequented for years.

I’ve seen some mention of a second book you’ve been working on.  Can you spare some details?

I wrote the first draft years ago, before writing the Karaoke one.  I’ve been revising it for the last 6 months, but am missing this week’s deadlines badly, blah.  Bums me out.  I’m really close to being done and sending it out to try to find a publisher.  It’s much simpler – one narrator, one timeline.  It takes place in combination of a couple already defined fictional worlds.

I also saw that your band Joan of Arc performed a live score to a Charlie Chaplin film.  How did that go? Are you a big fan of Charlie Chaplin?

I am not particularly a fan of Chaplin, we (Joan of Arc) were just commissioned to score that specific film.  Of his films I have seen, that specific one is a bit underwhelming, but we played around with speeding it up and slowing it down and I think that made it a different and hopefully engaging thing.  I’m excited about what we ended up making, but the creative problem solving regarding the specifics of the situation had us considering canceling up until the day before it happened.  So it was very stressful, but forced us into a new way of playing which was ultimately good.

I read that you’ve done some film directing.  Are there any other non-music or non-writing projects in the works?

Joan of arc is existing these days in two parallel ways – #1 the backing band for my friend who has started writing songs for the first time in her mid-thirties and is amazing and #2 as the musical component of an experimental theater / performance art piece based on the poems of Charles Reznikoff.  So these are two very different approaches that keep us busy and engaged in two very different ways that inform each other.  But also, neither of these depend on us and our tastes to motivate how they should develop.  So it’s a good and interesting way to be a band for now.

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The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self Defense is avalailable now from Featherproof books.
[Click here for free "mini-book"/excerpt.]

You can also pick up the latest Joan of Arc record, Life Like from Polyvinyl records.

Also released in 2011, is Joan of Arc’s Oh Brother; essentially a 4-song/4-sided album, showcasing Kinsella‘s varied collaborations with such artists as Zac Hill (Hella, Death Grips, Marnie Stern) and Robert A. Lowe (Lichens, Singer, 90 Day Men).  Oh Brother is available through Joyful Noise.

Neil Michael Hagerty is an American guitarist/singer/songwriter/producer who first captured the imagination of the underground music community as a guitarist/contributing songwriter in Jon Spencer‘s pre-Blues Explosion avant punk band, Pussy Garlore.  Following their break up, Hagerty and then-girlfriend, Jennifer Herrema formed the band that he is the most well known for, Royal Trux.  This new project applied Ornette Coleman‘s musical philosophy of harmolodics to a trashy rock and roll sound equally influenced by the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and Velvet Underground.  The duo released 4 albums and countless singles as the flagship band for the fledgling Drag City Records (their “Hero Zero” single was the very first release for the label) before signing a 3 album deal with Virgin Records, as part of the nineties “indie/alternative rock” corporate signing frenzy.  After their second major label album, Sweet Sixteen, was critically trashed and underperformed at record stores, the Trux were dropped from Virgin and returned to Drag City for 3 albums, two eps, and a singles compilation.  Some time in 2000, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema split up and the Royal Trux ended.

In 2001, Drag City published a Hagerty-penned comic book called, The Adventures of Royal Trux – Vol 1 #10 that hints at some of the reasons for Royal Trux‘s split.  This was followed by three albums released under Hagerty‘s own name – Neil Michael Hagerty (2001), Plays That Good Old Rock and Roll (2002), and Neil Michael Hagerty & The Howling Hex (2003).

In 2004, Hagerty started releasing records under the moniker of “The Howling Hex“, with 2005‘s All Night Fox becoming a personal favorite of mine.  The most recent Howling Hex release, Victory Chimp, is actually a highly ambitious 4xCD (3hr 19 min) audio book version of a 157 page sci-fi paperback that Hagerty originally published in 1997, during his Royal Trux days.  The story centers around a chimp master of the multiverse “rattling the cages of freedom.” It’s also one of the fucking weirdest recordings I’ve ever heard in my life.  Seriously nutty stuff…

Along with releasing this newer Howling Hex material, Drag City recently took all of the Royal Trux albums out of print and has been reissuing them -one at a time- on gatefold vinyl, over the past few years.  Another reissue (maybe Accelerator?) is due out in November.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Hagerty some questions about his bands, Victory Chimp, comic books, baked beans, and where the music industry is today.  Some of these questions may dig a little deep, but pretty much every other Hagerty interview that I’ve found on the internet seems to ask the same questions: “You used to do drugs, huh?” “Why did Pussy Galore cover a whole Rolling Stones album?“, “What was David Briggs like?” etc.  That information’s been covered.  Hopefully there’s something new in here for the hardcore NMH fans and something worthwhile for anyone discovering his work for the first time.

Enjoy.

BP: What made you decide to do a 4 cd audio album of a book that’s been out of print for almost a decade?

NMH: The time seemed right to look back at the 80s, personally and ‘at large’– and I have been feeling weird about having that book out there floating around without any context other than it was by some guy in an indie band from the 90s.  I wanted to put the book into an easy to consume version using sound to flesh it out.

One thing that I love about the Victory Chimp album is that there’s all of the music, halves of songs, and weird sounds going on.  You can listen to it while working, without paying attention to the narrative.  What  made you decide to construct it this way?

I just wanted it to be useful.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Is Victory Chimp supposed to take place in the same creative universe as the Adventures of Royal Trux comic book?  I guess that what I’m really asking is if there is only one Victory Chimp in the multiverse.

Yes, I like the idea of a “universe” that you can keep going back to, telling stories different there (ie, Discworld, Dr. Who)– someday I hope to see FanFic of it.  There’s only one VC in any multiverse, but probably many in the universe of multiple multiverses.

So, he’s kind of like Uatu the watcher?

Like Uatu confronted by fundamentalist Christians, like he can’t maintain his aloofness because they’re always trying to convert him.  One of the main inspirations for VC was this book called “Scop” by Barry Malzberg about a guy from the future who keeps trying to go back and stop the Kennedy assassination, but screws it up each time and makes things worse.

I have always thought that it was cool how the Royal Trux comic book was split into chapters; kind of like early issues of Fantastic Four.  Did you read many Marvel comics growing up?

Heh, you caught me.  I loved Marvel in the 70s when I was a little kid: The Avengers, Daredevil and Iron Man.

[^ click  to enlarge ^]Were you a fan of the Hostess ads where Spiderman or The Thing or Hulk or whoever would stop criminals with fruit pies and cupcakes?  I have noticed that Hero Zero uses similar crime fighting tactics.

Yes!!  I wanted the story to be completely set in the universe of an old Marvel comic.

It was a big surprise to me when you released Rogue Moon on Golden Lab records, after pretty much releasing all of your albums on Drag City since Royal Trux (besides the two albums on virgin, obviously…)  What made you decide to work with another label all of a sudden?  You must have had offers from other labels before, right?

The Golden Lab guy just contacted me cold and, after sort of going back and forth with him for a couple years, we ended up putting that out with him.  One of the reasons was he was from Manchester, UK (that’s a big deal to me)– and the band was really scattered around the country, so doing a record in pieces like that, based on the book (which could help me prepare for doing Victory Chimp,) was a good way to work.  And most of all, since it was on this little label, we could get it out without too much attention.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What’s the appeal of manchester, uk?  Are you a fan of a lot of the bands from there like The Fall and all the Factory Records bands, or just the city in general?   Mostly I’m asking, because it doesn’t seem to show in your discography.  You seem to have such an American sound.

I’m a fan of all those bands 70s-90s, just how they developed in that environment, the industrial history of the place, that mood, or my fantasy of it, etc.

The live tracks on the Neil Michael Hagerty and the Howling Hex double lp are some of my favorite recordings in your career.  Have you ever thought of doing a live album?  If not, why?

I think I will do that someday, like all my favorite songs redone live.

Had you always intended on Weird War being a one album thing?  Or, at least, as far as your involvement with the band?  Was it weird when Scene Creamers went back to using the “Weird War” band name?

I didn’t really know, I enjoyed collaborating with Ian (Svenonius) and Michelle (Mae), but it seemed like we held it together just long enough to do the record.  After that, there might have been trouble.  Since doing that band was their idea, I was ok with them using the name again.

What made you switch from using your own name to “Howling Hex”?

I wanted to add more H’s to the name, so it was like Davy Allen and the Arrows, but with H’s.  It also reminded me of the Joe Walsh solo/Barnstorm non-distinction, just a great tradition of muddled communication.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What happened to the ladies from All Night Fox?  I loved their singing.  I thought that I had heard one of them singing on Rogue Moon and Victory Chimp, but maybe I’m wrong.

Alas, they all moved on.  Rogue Moon had a new person named Evrim, but she went to Portland.  C’est la vie.

Why didn’t All Night Fox ever come out on vinyl?

Timing, really.  Drag City didn’t want to do it at that moment, since sales were slow or something.  Hopefully they will put all of the non-vinyl out someday.

Not sure if you’re into Facebook or not, but there’s an “I bet i can find 500 people who would buy All night Fox on vinyl” group.”  I guess that’s not really a question, but thought I should mention it.

Drag City better get off their asses.

One last “all night fox” related question (sorry, it’s one of my favorite albums ever…).  When it came out i was blown away by the use of reverb on all of the vocals.  It seemed so new at the time.  Now it seems like half of the lo-fi/indie/etc. bands in the world are putting a ton of reveb on every single instrument, vocal track, etc.  What do you think about this?  I don’t know if this is All Night Fox inspired, but it still seems like you predicted a musical trend by half of a decade.  Do you listen to much new music these days?

I listen to all new music I can, but I try to mix my impressions of it with my own musical comfort zone, not to chase anything and all that.

I’ve noticed that baked beans are a reoccurring lyrical theme on the Howling Hex albums.  Are they one of your favorite foods?  I’ve recently gotten into cooking them at home.  Have you ever tried making them?  Any recipe tips?

No, I haven’t cooked them, don’t eat them much.  To me it was just funny that a population of humans might one day crown a can of baked beans as their king.

Why did you decide to go for the multiple song writer approach on Howling Hex XI / Monster Bird?  I guess you did the same thing on Rogue Moon.  Is the upcoming Howling Hex album going to be the same way?

The new Hex record is like Earth Junk– in fact, that’s probably going to be the template for the new band.  Earlier there was that phase of the group approach, songwriting and arranging all shared.  I just try to make something each time out that is at least interesting, and changing around the process is one way I do that.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Who’s in the new line up of Howling Hex?  When you say it’s like Earth Junk, does that also mean there will be no drums?  Any plans to tour in support of the new album?  I can’t remember you coming to the Portland/Seattle area since 2006, so it would be a nice treat.

I think there’s gonna be a new, new lineup so we’ll see.  I’m going to move to a new city and go from there.  And yes, there’s no drums on the next record, just sort of ended up that way like Earth Junk did– so I’ve been consistent.

Any chance of re-releasing the Royal Trux fan club cassettes as part of the Royal Trux reissue campaign that Drag City has been doing the past few years?

I don’t think DDC will do it.  In fact, I don’t know who has the masters of those cassettes– really, if anyone has a copy they should just re-issue it.

Another drag city reissue related question: why are Singles, Live, Unreleased, Accelerator, Veterans of Disorder, and Pound for Pound currently out of print?  I know that they used to be on iTunes, but Drag City took them off  of there when the reissue campaign started.  Why not just keep the albums in print if they’re being reissued on the same label?  It seems weird that the only people making money off of these records at the moment are weirdos on ebay.

What Drag City do I try not to pay attention to very much.  I think they’re feeling their way through this ‘era’– trying to figure out what a label does nowadays.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Around 2005, there was talk of Drag City releasing a Royal Trux dvd with What is Royal Trux?, Live in Cleveland, and a few music videos on it.  Whatever happened with that release?  Is it something that could still happen?

That must have come from Jennifer (Herrema), I can’t recall hearing about that.

I remember reading an interview with Royal Trux in Wire Magazine where you mentioned that you usually play on the albums that you produce, but there weren’t any of your guitar solos on Bill Callahan’s Woke On a Whaleheart album.  Why not?

Heh.  ALL of the guitar solos are me– but it’s a secret.

Are you still doing production work for other musicians?  I haven’t heard of anything since the Bill Callahan album.

Haven’t done much since working with Bill.  I did some stuff with that singer Evrim, but just mixing etc.

Are there any artists that you would want to work with?  Sometimes when I listen to Marnie Stern, I think about how it would sound cool with NMH production.  It’s the same thing with Wooden Wand.  There was a Danielson interview on Pitchfork a few months ago where he said that if he could work with any artist that it would be you.  Do you get solicited by other musicians often?

It comes and goes, but I have been living down near the border in New Mexico for a long time, so I am kind of out of it.  I’m going to move back to the city this year, so I can be a part of civilization again.

One last question, it seems like besides you and David Berman, all the original Drag City artists seem to be going in a more commercial friendly direction.  Bill Callahan is recording really clean sounding records with John Congleton, Will Oldham is playing folk and blue grass festivals and also making really clean records, Stephen Malkmus is chasing the 90′s nostalgia money… but, since the release of the Neil michael Hagerty and the Howling Hex double lp, you have seemed to go in a weirder and weirder direction.  Have there been any ATP offers for you to do something like a concert tour of Accelerator live or any pressure for you to make a straight forward rock and roll record?   Or do you just try to ignore what’s going on in the music industry right now?

There are some explanations for this. First: in Royal Trux and, to a lesser extent, Pussy Galore I did all the things I wanted to do in ROCK…jets, roadies, expensive equipment, wimmins, death, money, drugs, 6 month recording schedules, hockey arenas, transatlantic fame– whatever it might be, I feel like I did it and so that’s done.  Second: I truly dislike Americana, white blues, metal, country music, ukuleles etc– I think it is all unpleasant.  So I don’t really want to get involved with any of that bullshit again.  The first three solo records I did, I tried to round all the bases and do really synthetic coverage of various styles that people seem to consider classic, meaningful, soulful or real; to satirize them in a self-destructive way.  So, now I’m done with that and I can just play what I hear and earn about as much money as you’d get in a semi-decent job.  I’ve gotten a lot of offers for Royal Trux reunions, or even for Hex to play at festivals or other similar things, but I’d never do it.  I’d like a band to stay broken up for a change and also, I really hate those big festivals which seem to be the main direction things are going in, big conglomerated events.  I really like a small nightclub vibe most of all.

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LINKS:

peep out the following NMH-related links…

Howling Hex official website
Howling Hex Drag City artist page
Royal Trux Drag City artist page
Royal Trux Domino Records artist page

The Writer:

Benjamin Parrish lives in Portland, Oregon where he pets cats, eats pizza, draws comics, listens to records, grills up BBQ, and runs the cassette label Dog Daze Tapes.

To check out more of Ben’s illustration & comic work… visit his Tumblr Site NOW!

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