Not hard to swallow ... Sam Rockwell (right) and Brad William Henke in Choke
This tantalising, somewhat x-rated promo has been around for a little while now, but what with the fact that it keeps getting pulled from YouTube, while the version on the official website seems to be impossible to access, we haven't felt the time was quite right to draw your attention to it.
I was lucky enough to catch a preview of Choke earlier this week, which was followed by a Q&A with author Chuck Palahniuk. The man who created Tyler Durden told the audience that he felt first-time writer-director Clark Gregg's movie was a superior work to his original tome, which he himself describes as a loose sequel to Fight Club.
Choke returns to the world of support groups, but this time the central protagonist is sex addict Vincent Mancini (a career-defining turn from Sam Rockwell) who doesn't seem to be trying very hard to rid himself of his terrible affliction. Mancini, who works as a colonial theme park tour guide, has a former wild-child mother (Angelica Huston) in a mental institution who always thinks he's someone else when he visits.
He also discovers part-way through the film that he may actually be the literal son of God. Oh, and he maintains a bizarre scam which involves sticking too much food down his throat at restaurants so that fellow guests are forced to administer the Heimlich manoeuvre (hence the title). He then taps his rescuers for cash to pay his mum's expensive bills.
I think Choke is going to appeal hugely to fans of Fight Club and Palahniuk's books when it hits screens here on November 21. It is to Fight Club what Roger Avary's excellent Rules of Attraction was to American Psycho: lighter in tone but with similar sensibilities and a refreshing switch in style. Have a look at the trailer and let us know what you think.
