Clark Gregg puts “Choke” on film

Liz Buckley / Editor in Chief / The USD Vista

First-time director Clark Gregg knew that he was taking a risk when he decided to turn Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk, into a feature film. Although he was contending with the classic Fight Club and adapting a beloved author with a cult of passionate fans, Gregg says that he simply wanted to see the movie enough to work on it for five years. I had the chance to catch up with Gregg on the third floor of the Hard Rock Hotel downtown for a half hour.

The Vista: Could you tell me about the process of turning a book into a movie?

Clark Gregg: Turning a book into a movie is kind of like turning a fish into a duck. And I really struggled because there were so many things I knew I didn’t want to get rid of. A lot of what was tricky was cutting down to the core of the story that would work as a movie.

V: Did you talk to Palahniuk while writing the screenplay?

CG: I had one big conversation with him in the beginning where I told him that I thought that part of it was a romantic comedy and he said, “Yep, that’s it. Go write. Don’t be too faithful to the book. He really was smart; he kept a hands-off approach.

V: So you viewed Choke as a romantic comedy?

CG: Well I viewed it as a lot of things. But to me the central story is about a guy who is choosing to live in the persona of a nihilistic, sex-addicted bad boy, in this permanent, dysfunctional orbit around his crazy mother, and he’s in a stasis, frozen in time, which is metaphorically represented by living the same day over and over again in the colonial village. And it’s about meeting someone that makes him want to have sex in a way that is intimate and having to do all the really scary and difficult things that’s required to achieve that.
V: What was it like transitioning from being an actor for 20 years to directing a movie?

CG: You know being a first-time director; I think it’s a little bit like being a virgin. You know everybody’s talking about it and says it’s the greatest thing that you can do, and at the same time you haven’t done it and you don’t know what it’s going to be like. And until you know, Oh that’s what it is! you can’t relax.

V: Could you share a funny anecdote from production?

CG: During the shooting Sam Rockwell had a cassette Walkman on his head every day. It was a little bit like Jack Nicholson in The Shining I was scared to listen to what the hell he had on there, “kill Clark, kill Clark,” you know. And I finally got him to take it off and what he had on there was Chuck Palahniuk reading the book on tape.

V: Did Palahniuk ever visit the set?

CG: He came to New Jersey and hung out in the mental hospital while we were shooting and everyone was like, that’s him, oh no, I hope he doesn’t hate it. But he’s the opposite of what you would imagine, from his very tough, hard-hitting books, he’s this gentle, really nurturing guy and he liked what we were doing and he made everyone feel good.

V: What is your relationship like with him?

CG: I love him. He’s my hero. He’s been hugely supportive. He came to the first screening in Sundance and he had never seen the movie.

V: You must have been so nervous.

CG: I was the color of a sheet. And all anyone had told me about the script was that it was very dark and not funny. Publicists in LA refused to represent it because they found it offensive. I thought it was going to be the shortest directing career in the history of film. But it played, and there’s enough twisted people out there that they thought it was funny too.

V: Well it really made for a great movie. I was impressed.

Choke is in select theaters tomorrow, Sept. 26.