CHOKE? THAT WOULD IMPLY I WAS SHOCKED…
There was a time when buying cult books was a more involved process than going to the section of a record shop with that title, and choosing from the top sellers by Hunter S. Thompson, William Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski. Independent bookshops could be found off the beaten track, and the people working there were often committed to…well, something other than just making money for Borders.
I mention this having seen Choke, an adaptation of a Chuck Palahniuk novel. And something has happened, either to Chuck or to the world at large, since David Fincher’s searing 1999 version of his Fight Club hit the screen. Where Fight Club was raw and provocative and bulging with dangerous ideas, Choke seems pretty much like its trailer presents it, a knockabout comedy for audiences who’ve enjoyed Pineapple Express and the life and works of Kevin Smith (like it or not, they come as a package deal).
Now, I do enjoy a lot of American comedies, but I can’t help thinking Choke aspired to being more than that. Whether the problem is in Palahniuk’s source material, its translation to the screen, or wider issues, I’m not quite sure. After all, a story about a guy who attends a group for sex addicts, has a warped Anjelica Huston for a mother, and fakes choking incidents in restaurants so he can get emotional and sometimes financial support from the people who rescue him, should be kind of disturbing, shouldn’t it?
The fact that this all plays well enough as comedy is what’s truly disturbing. YouTube has created a culture that not only watches car crashes, but rewatches them and sends them to its friends. People kill themselves online and are egged on by viewers, or jump off buildings after being taunted by a waiting crowd recording what happens on their phones, to reference two recent news stories.
Now, I am fully aware that this is a partial picture, and that there are plenty of fine things coming out of our new digital age. Collaborative endeavours are being realised that wouldn’t have been possible without computing, and even computers at rest can contribute to the search for cancer cures and so forth through distributed software. All well and good. But is it possible too that exposure to a myriad shocking images has numbed us to the power of something more shocking still: the radical concept?
Maybe writer-director Clark Gregg intended for mainstream success in his take on Choke. Or maybe, norms have changed so much that what would have had shock value a decade ago now just gets a cynical response. It’s hard to rage against the machine when you depend on the same machine to get your product out to the consumer, after all. And when that rage itself has been commodified, become just another brand value, where is there for the would-be radical creator to turn?
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MIKE DONALD said,
November 28, 2008 @ 10:50 am
Hiya Adrian,
Aren’t you the lucky one, what are the chances of you bumping into the script analyst that did Choke, and who told them when they rewrote it that they had ruined the ending! Had they stuck to the original script then they would/should have ended up with a brilliant film, which by turns, shocked, laughed and cried it’s way to the box office top earners.
However far be it for me to point out the inadequacies of the film making system…oh alright then…events organised with risible panelists, badly lit, appalling sound incoherent and hubris stuffed speakers waffling on about the bleedin’ obvious and basically saying that they want you, the film maker to put all the money, time effort and audience building into your project…and then, maybe they will lift their expense soaked arses from the designer couch and allow you to let them provide you with an established income stream by licensing the blockbuster series they were too stupid to commission in it’s nascent form! So that’s the commissioning lady sorted.
British Film council speaker, a rambling stream of consciousness about tagging film clips so we could find them easier and how to control the tracking and paying for of your digital outpourings…and a rant as to why the UK is not addressing te problem whereas Europe appears to have it sorted…Mmmm, lets think about that. Maybe what we need is a public funded body that deals with film industry and gets millions of lottery players money to finance up and coming film makers backing such epics as “Sex Lives Of The Potato men” What? You missed that one, quick rush to Amazon, you might just be able to get a copy, but be quick it’s achieved cult status (Means it made no money!) Anyway, maybe they could set up a department to finesse the metatag and cataloging of film clips for the British Film Industry.
As I chatted with the dazed audience from the great event called MONEY put on by SHOW AND TELL at the Westbourne Park studio complex it became obvious that they were all bewildered by why they had paid for an incoherent event where all of the panelists said that they had no answers but only questions? The man from Spice Factory was wildly enthusiastic over a genius that had made a bad film for £9000 and parlayed it into £120,000 in sales, this seemed to greatly excite him, despite the fact that he had made over fifty films of much higher budget, including of course KILLER TONGUE…pardon? You haven’t? Off to Amazon you go, where have you been to miss out on the vanguard of British films, you’ll be telling me you missed Elizebeth Hurley in BEYOND BEDLAM which also stars Craig Fairgrass (or is is Brass?)who in one shot walks all the way down a long corridor, turns round and then walks all the way back down the corridor…classic cinema! Anyway, as you can guess Mr Spice was very keen that once again you do all the work and produce a film for peanuts which can’t fail to make money as it cost so little!
So the general feeling of all the salaried and fully financed panel was that you should be out there, as Aretha Franklyn said, “Doing it for yourselves” All in all it was the best £25 I’d spent for a long time, I only wish I’d filmed it…but wait, I almost forgot, somebody was filming it. A nice guy making a documentary about what made the British Film industry unique…Oh Dear, and he wanted to interview me, hear my views. I promised to see him when I’d finished networking, but alas by the time I’d heard how upset everyone was with the event it was the bewitching hour and he’d packed his gear up and was slinking off. Lucky really, because at the end of the day, what really makes the British Film industry unique is the long suffering population of audiences that just want to try and do something decent, well funded and commercially entertaining, but are thwarted by the colossal arrogance of the people that have blagged their way into positions within organisations of power who seem hell bent on dismantling any patches of creativity they come across, by insisting everyone self funds, whilst wasting the real money on ill thought out schemes and films.
As a last polemic blast, is there any rational to a public funded body insisting on getting an Executive Producer credit on you film for providing you with your own money back?
I will no doubt continue this rant with you off board Adrian, suffice to say it was a pleasure to meet you.
Till then,
Good luck with the writing projects,
Mike