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Choke Premieres Tonight At Sundance!
Tonight's the night, folks. It's been eight years since Fight Club graced our screens and started a cult following that had a big influence on the history of this website. And now, tonight, in Park City, Utah, Clark Greg's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's fourth novel Choke, premieres to a sold out crowd. Chuck will be in attendance and will be doing a Q&A after the event. He emailed me the February Workshop Essay last night, along with this message:
So, guys, if any of you reading this are there, and you see Chuck floating around, definitely be a sport and go give him a pat on the back. I can imagine how nervous it must be, seeing something you birthed be shown to you for the first time, with possibly 300 other people.
Some of us out there have already seen Choke though. Here's a review that FJ found off Aint It Cool News. It's the first review we've seen (though expect a ton more), and, while the guy hated the book, he had a lot of good to say about the movie:
[quote]The most surprising thing about Choke is that I didn't hate it. I don’t want to blaspheme, but I do hate the novel written by Chuck Palahnuick. Having said that, I have to say that I love Sam Rockwell. I could watch him drink coffee, find it interesting, and then probably laugh, so when I see him fake-choking on food in restaurants so a stranger can save him and feel better about their lives and help take care of him with money and gifts I am very entertained. When our protagonist travels carelessly from mother obsessed scenes to the sex addicts anonymous meetings he goes to to meet women and women at, I struggle a little bit as it’s just not sold as well as it was in Fight Club (let’s face it, it’s pretty much the same thing). I always enjoy watching Sam Rockwell though. But, in the last third of the movie, I struggle as the movie attempts to convince me that Victor Mancini (Rockwell), is the son of Jesus Christ and a healer of the sick. As this prosperous and dysfunctional story becomes the center of the movie, and demands that you believe this in order to proceed along with the movie I am forced to slap my forehead in agony. The thing is thought I do believe people are going to like this movie. I do on some level.
Rarely can it be said that the film is better than the book. In this case it is. But, I just didn’t like the book all that much to start with, so that’s a testament to the director about how deftly he adapted and then cast the film.
The relationship between Kelly MacDonald's character is a very charming one (it reminds me of what the relationship between Marla Singer and the nameless narrator of Fight Club), this one actually works though.
Overall, I would suggest seeing this if you have a dark sense of humor. You might find it as preposterous as I did, but you'll certainly enjoy yourself.[/quote]
I'll start a separate news thread for all future reviews we'll be seeing, and people can post their reviews in the Comments section.
Copyright 2008 - A Writers Cult, LLC
I'm very very excited for tonight's premiere!!
I did my first Sundance flick yesterday and it was awesome, despite my car crapping out on the way up there. Saw a great documentary about Hunter S. Thompson called Gonzo that I enjoyed a lot.
But tonight is a whole different thing. Tonight is the reason I signed up for the opportunity to buy Sundance tickets in the first place. Tonight is a chance to see one of my favorite books of all time played out on a screen in front of me.
Hey guys,
I've got a contact over at Sundance right now. I think the screening is happening as I type this, but he's already got pictures he took from his Blackberry. The quality is sort of shite, but nevertheless, it's cool to see the action as it's going down.
Check it:
Wow.
I don't know what else to say.....
I wasn't really sure what to expect going into it, I didn't want to set the bar too high before seeing the film, only to be disappointed. Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed at all. I probably had a silly grin on my face throughout the whole film, but I didn't care. I'm really quite speechless actually, I wish I had more to say about it, but I'm still trying to process everything. A lot of thoughts regarding this movie are going through my head right now....
I'll be more than willing to answer questions, if people want to ask them. I feel very fortunate to have been able to attend this screening tonight and I wish I could've taken all my friends with me.
How Was Denny??!!
How did they play the flashback to when he was a little kid? Did the movie seem to short?
For being the least recognizable name in the primary cast, I think Brad William Henke did a really good job as Denny. He had good comedic timing and was a little creepy with how well he handled(no pun intended) Denny's chronic Pavlovian masturbation. There's a scene, the one where he shows up on Victor's porch with a rock wrapped like a baby, that I thought was hilarious.
The flashbacks happened like so: The screen would go white accompanied with a little sound effect type thing(not a cheesy sci fi sounding one) and they had Angelica Huston with a dark wig(or probably her real hair) and a young boy playing young Victor. At the end of the flashback, the same thing happened. White screen, little sound effect, back to current time movie. They played out a scene at the mall, they went to the zoo to let the animals out, they were driving the bus and Ida was spray-painting young Victor's shadow on the map as the cops showed up.... Oh and the choking scene at a diner.
Before seeing the film, when I found it was only 89 minutes long, I was really worried it would be too short and they wouldn't fit everything in. I really think, if they had the budget, they could've put a few more things in. That being said, it had more in it than I thought they could've put in given the alloted time. Clark Gregg mentioned after the film that they had at least one more scene filmed, but didn't have the production value to put a quality version of it in the finished product. He didn't really elaborate on whether or not there was MORE filmed though.
Hey Rob, I just saw it a couple hours ago, and I pretty much agree with most of what you said. the dude who played denny was great, I was a little disappointed in paige and ida, and sam rockwell was amazing. I loved the rape scene, the anal bead scene, and all the colonial scenes, but the one disappointment i had was the limitations of the sets - obviously very low budget and sparce, but i don't think that took away much from the film. A credit to the movie is that i couldn't really tell if there was anything missing from the book, and the two scenes i noticed that he added were both seemless. Also, I was worried about the 89 minutes but it actually worked very well. I spotted Chuck's cameo, but i'm not sure how many people picked up on it.
more importantly, was there a lot of titties and boobies in the movie?