He goes into homes at estate sales to steal drugs out of medicine cabinets, becomes the leader of some cult, etc. Standard Palahniuk territory.

Don’t recall the father angle.

http://www.amazon.com/Period-Dennis-Cooper/dp/0802137830/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214420485&sr=1-6

maybe no 3000 years after the fact i’ll give him a try.ha ha…

yeah want to chocke and medicine sounds like it could be neat. yep i said neat. oh lord…

I personally am ambivalent about Mr. P. I actually like his style a lot, it’s terse, very condensed, witty, and crude to the point where it sometime even feels insightful (though it might not be), and is, at the very least, funny, very funny even from time to time (my style could stand being a bit terser, I know).

However (I’m not sure if it’s due to the success of Fight Club or just because he doesn’t know how else to end a story), he has a propensity for ending with a usually quite unnecessary twist. In Fight Club, the twist works, it even adds to the themes of the story and puts it in a different light. However, in Choke it’s utterly pointless, in Invisible Monsters it’s both crassly sensationalist and obvious basically from the beginning and….hm, it turns out that’s all I’ve read of him. If it feels like a formula after just three books, that’s not a good sign, is it?

Still, I look forward to the movie, especially after your recommendation, Craig. And I definitely look forward to the rest of the LAFF coverage!

Miranda, your kind words allow me to overlook your scorn of a certain best movie of the year from 2007. :) If you like Sam Rockwell and if the trailer made you laugh, Choke might be right up your alley. It not Fight Club, it’s definitely its own thing, but damnit it made me laugh.

As for the rest of you. I have no attachment to Mr. P whatsoever and had very modest expectations of Choke. Rockwell was great. I laughed.

Evan, if you’re feeling prudish, you could probably take a pass on this one, though I have to say it sounds worse on paper than it plays on screen (I was rooting for it to be filthier, but then sometimes I actually embarrass myself…that’s another story). Victor is a degenerate, but he actually wants to get better. And he tries.

Joel. From what Hedwig said about the book, it sounds like the movie is definitely a bit different…at least in terms of focus maybe. Whether that’s for better or for worse, I can’t say. I can only say I liked the movie. Not a festival favorite or anything, but entertaining.

Nick. Those are some kind words. On one hand they make me think you need to read more festival coverage :). But on the other hand I think “The dude is complimenting you. Shut up and take it!” I’ll go with the latter. Thanks.

I could see Palahniuk fans reacting that way – he engenders an extreme reaction. Either you get him (as in really get him) or you are ambivalent, or at the worst deeply offended.

Palahniuk is from Portland and he used to do readings where people (fanboys) would literally go into convulsions, faint, and generally freak out in his presence. Kinda bizarre.

I admit I’m not that interested in Choke. Palahniuk (had to copy and paste that from your article) is an acquired taste that I have never quite acquired, even with my obsessive love of Fight Club. I think I’ve started at least 3 of his books but never finished one, so I’m with Joel, there. I do like Rockwell, but the self-destructive mish-mash of amoral behavior that appears to constitute the plot is just not my cup of tea. I think I might be a bit of a prude in that respect.

And I definitely understand the festival review skews. Seeing so many movies at once, perspective is sometimes lost. You can go from a terrible movie into a mediocre movie that actually looks like a Best Picture nomination in comparison. The opposite can also be true. I found that I wasn’t totally blown away by The Edge of Heaven because I had just seen Dry Season, but I probably would have had a very different reaction to Heaven had I seen it alone outside of the festival.

That being said, I think most of the festival movies I saw still hold up, like OSS.

Back to Choke, I think my expectations are fairly low for this even though I consider Fight Club one of top 25 movies of the 90’s. As you said, they’re not the same, so why expect them to be.

Rockwell is a wonderful, interesting actor-a true character actor, who has a habit of stealing the screen from whoever else happens to be inhabiting it with him. That’s enough to see CHOKE for me (one of the books I read of his, can’t remember much.)

Rockwell is one of the most interestingly idiosyncratic, subtly overpowering actors out there right now.

So “Choke” is awesome? Thought so, but I am very, very glad you said so :) 2/7/08, can’t wait.

I love the fact that you put this in your review with little or no sarcasm. Too true, by the way. I just want to point out that I like Sam Rockwell, but I’m a little uncertain about him carrying this film although he was great in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

From reading your review Craig, it almost sounds like the movie may diverge from the film a bit, which might make it work better for me. We shall see.

I’ll have to think of something worthy to bestow on you…

I was a big fan fan of FIGHT CLUB. But I must admit that I’ve never read any of Chuck Palahniuk’s books.

I saw a trailer recently for Choke and actually laughed out loud several times. Sam Rockwell is rather cool.

He is playing a scumbag (that much was clear) but there’s an enormous difference between portraying a charming fascinating scumbag (as in a character that you can’t look away from onscreen, rather like a car wreck) and…just a normal garden variety scumbag.

Otherwise it’s just like watching scumbags off screen. The vast majority of scumbags in reality don’t usually have a lot of positive traits (even to be used as manipulation) and you wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.

But I do worship the ground ANJELICA HUSTON walks on. Plus, even though I found NCFOM the MOST OVERRATED FILM of this entire new century, I do look forward to seeing what KELLY MacDONALD has up her sleeve since her most excellent performance as Carla Jean.

Looks rough but rather intriguing.

So we shall see…

As to MELANCHOLY, that looks like a real find. It’s great that they are both planned for release in the fall/winter.

I love that comment in the lead-in about ignoring the hype, and then saying and “and here’s more hype.” Good one!!!! Another passionate report.

Be right back in about six or seven hours!

Medicine for Melancholy sounds really interesting though. I’m curious enough to see it now.