Choke (The Movie)

I watched the Fight Club movie before reading the book, which turned out to be perfect since while the book was very good, the movie was extraordinary.

That said, my expectations for the Choke movie weren't very high. It's been years since I read Choke, and I always remember it as being my least favorite Chuck Palahniuk book I had read to that point (it along with Fight Club, Survivor, and Invisible Monsters).

Even with my low expectations, I was disappointed with the movie.

In the movie, the three main story lines - the sex addiction stuff, the mother stuff, the colonial times stuff, and the choking stuff were all out of proportion (although it's been so long since I've read it, it might be like this in the book for all I know), with way too much of the sex addiction stuff, slightly too much of the mother & hospital stuff, about the right amount of Denny & colonial times stuff, and not nearly enough of the choking stuff. It's pretty ridiculous to relegate the thing that gives the book its title to the D story with only 3 scenes. This would be like if Fight Club had only included 3 brief scenes of the fighting. I guess maybe they thought the choking scenes were too similar to include more? Even worse than that, thoguh, was the decision to exclude the big payoff of the choking stuff, the "stoning" scene, which was probably my favorite part of the book, where all the people who saved Victor find out it was a con. This stoning scene was included in the deleted scenes section of the DVD in 2 versions, a regular and extended version.

I think the movie would definitely have been better if it was 10-15 minutes longer, keeping everything in it, and adding 2-3 more choking scenes, and a version of the extended stoning scene, but instead of Denny telling Victor that the crowd had figured it out, we see the crowd figure it out, perhaps between a few of the people from the choking scenes in the movie.

In a conversation on the DVD between Palahniuk and the director, Palahniuk mentions that he gave the director permission to do whatever he wanted, as long as he inclcuded the stoning scene scene and also the hypnosis part. It's been so long since I've read the book that I had no memory of the hypnosis part, so I had to look it up. It's chapter 20 of the book, and I didn't think it was that great. Also, I have no idea how they'd film it and get the point across. It's kind of hard to tell if Palahniuk was joking about him wanting those 2 parts kept in, but if he was serious than the director most certainly should have followed his wishes. And serious or not, Palahniuk was definitely right that they should have included the stoning scene.

Rant

The past couple years I haven't been reading as many books as I used to or would like to.

Having more free time than I usually do, this weekend I read Rant: An Oral History Of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk.

For a while he was probably my favorite author.

Fight Club was great.

Survivor was even better.

Invisible Monsters was also very good.

Choke, I thought, was awful. (Although the upcoming movie does look pretty good.)

Lullaby was a little bit better, but still not good.

Diary, I remember almost nothing about.

Haunted, that one was like 2 books, one that started good but got worse as it went along, the other the opposite, starting bad but getting better, and ending up pretty good.

Somewhere in the middle of those there were the 2 non-fiction books, Fugitives And Refugees, which was very interesting, and Stranger Than Fiction, which was decent.

Based on my lower opinion of his last 4 fiction books, I didn't tear into Rant as soon as I got my hands on it.

I just checked, and it was released over a year ago.

So how does Rant compare to the rest of the books by Palahniuk?

Well, two days ago, I would have said Survivor was my favorite Palahniuk book.

Today, that's no longer true.

It's been probably 8 years since I read Survivor, and I'm sure my memories of it have been altered with time, with enhanced memories of the great parts and diminished recollection of the not so great parts.

Rant, I can say with it completely fresh in mind and unaltered by memory, was fantastic. The first 20 pages or so were confusing, but then it becomes a real page turner for 100 pages or so. It slows down considerably with a couple chapters that change everything. After those chapters it picks up again straight through the end. About 1/4 of the way through I thought figured out one big part of the twist, and about 1/2 way through I was certain of it, although I didn't have a clue about the mechanism. I was pretty close about the big idea, but nowhere close in the details or scope. Anyway, I'll have to read it again before too long to see everything I missed, and also try to figure out a few things I'm still unsure about.

After finishing it, I looked it up on Amazon to see what kind of reviews it got there, and they were mixed, leaning slightly to the positive side. Here's an excerpt from one of the reviews, which I thought was hilarious:

"This was the first Chuck Palahniuk book I read.
I read it in audio format, which I think really added to the book because you get to hear all the different voices."
--K. W. Bennink

Anyway, I think I'll read Snuff next weekend. From the synopsis and (spoiler-free) reviews I've read it doesn't sound too great, but we'll see.

eta: From wikipedia:

During his "Rant 2007" tour, Palahniuk has indicated that he will continue to write two more books based on Rant, to be released tentatively in 2011 and 2013 but also stated that he will be writing other books in between, with his next to be titled Snuff. [3]

Hell yeah!