Q&A: Choke Star Sam Rockwell
Q&A: Choke Director Clark Gregg
Q&A: Choke Author Chuck Palahniuk

PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 9/25/08)

Though his book Fight Club was attaining cult status among college-age nihilists and armchair subversives since its publication in 1996, it wasn't until David Fincher's big-screen adaptation in 1999 that Chuck Palahniuk crashed into pop culture consciousness like Meat Loaf's fake man-boobs flopping in the face of society. Since then, directors and stars have been circling his novels for adaptation with little to no luck; his 2000 novel Survivor has been in limbo almost as long as it's been in print, mostly because the idea of adapting a novel about a man on a plane with a suicide mission lost its attractiveness (and bankability) after 9/11. Invisible Monsters is still a big question mark, though Rant has been optioned by an anonymous producer, and there's Internet buzz about a possible Lullaby flick as well.

So then, Choke is the second hot Palahniuk property to hit the screen, and instead of Fincher's grainy, dark world of bruised faces and exploding buildings, director and writer Clark Gregg offers us a brightly colored world of sex addict meetings, a colonial theme park, fine restaurants, and a clinic for the old and/or insane. Gregg's vision of Choke takes the book's themes — sex addiction, loneliness, mother-son relationships, identity, and yes, choking for profit and sympathy — and turns them into.... a romantic comedy. Yes, it's a romantic comedy with anal beads as a sort of deus ex machina, but a rom-com nonetheless. And it works.

Sam Rockwell's Victor Mancini is still as sleazy and sad as the version Palahniuk originally penned, but Rockwell brings out a certain sympathy in the audience, perhaps because his narrative voice is much less intrusive and purposefully off-putting as it is in the novel. However, the supporting cast and Gregg's ability to more fully flesh them out is what makes Choke work on an emotional level. The best example of this is Paige Marshall, Victor's pseudo-love interest who is played by Kelly Macdonald (No Country for Old Men). Her character is far more three-dimensional thanks to Gregg's script and to the work of Macdonald, who helps make Paige as sweet as she is totally batshit crazy. As Palahniuk told me in our interview, "I'm just not very good at making sympathetic, vulnerable characters. It's much easier to sort of make them crazy." The same goes for Victor's messed-up mom Ida, played by Anjelica Huston, whose performance better illustrates that beneath Ida's incredibly screwed-up exterior, she has a great deal of love for her son.

While Palahniuk fanatics might have beef with some of the changes Gregg made, they're not huge changes and, with the exception of skimping on the subplot about Victor's best friend Denny (Brad William Henke), they make the world of Choke work better on the screen. While the movie will definitely not be to everyone's taste, black-hearted romantics will find Choke easy to swallow.

— Jenni Miller