Bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk burst onto Hollywood’s radar when his psychological novel, Fight Club, was adapted into a major motion picture directed by David Fincher; the resulting film became every American male’s aggro-fantasy (“The first rule of fight club is, you don’t talk about fight club.”) This month, the Palahniuk touch returns to cinemas via Choke, a raunchy and delightfully vulgar adaptation of his novel about a sex addict (Sam Rockwell) who cons people using the Heimlich maneuver.
Chuck Palahniuk took time to share his Five Favorite Films with RT. The results were morbid, to say the least. In no particular order, here are Chuck’s five favorites!
Ruth Gordon was so much more than Garson Kanin‘s beard. With music by Cat Stevens… as a motorcycle cop… this movie satisfies on so many levels. Death and sex have never been so beautifully linked together. This film is Love Story for the rest of us.
Once again, we see sex and death wed like chocolate and peanut butter. Jane Fonda looks like the angel of bitter, angry suicide girls before such girls were ever born. Bruce Dern plays the psycho hillbilly we loved him playing in ‘The Big Valley’ on television. Gig Young claws his way to the bottom of the bottom-feeders, winning the Oscar just before his own real-life suicide. Here’s my favorite “date movie” of all time.
Do I really need to explain this? Except for the weird disco typeface spelling out “nostromo” on everyone’s uniform, this film seems timeless.
Again, everybody dies. That is such the best, most-great formula for a true masterpiece film. A classic film should leave you thinking, “How in the hell did this idea ever get financing?” The director, Brad Anderson, does more with his small budget than most movies do with huge, fat mountains of cash. The moment the credits start to roll, I want to watch the whole story over again.
Everybody ends up dead or insane-slash-arrested. Nancy Olson is dismissed to wed Jack Webb — the real off-screen horror ending. Every performance is outlandish, as big as anything on any Mexican soap opera. The dead monkey. Buster Keaton. The fun never ends. The best noir comedy, ever.
But wait, there’s more! We’ve got an exclusive clip from Choke for our RT readers, featuring Sam Rockwell as Victor and Anjelica Huston as his deranged mother, Ida.
Click to check out the latest reviews, images, and trailers from Choke.
