film: commentary
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WORDS WITH CHUCK:
My interview
with Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and the upcoming Choke
John: With
Survivor, I've heard Marilyn Manson's name, and Trent Reznor's name,
are these related?
Chuck:
Yeah! That's the really sweet side of this. Last spring I get this call from
Nothing Records saying, "Trent Reznor would really like to meet you, He's
going to be touring through Portland, we'd like to know how many tickets and
backstage passes you want". Trent wasn't going to come down to the "meet and
greet" until I said, "Well we are going to just leave" and they said who are
you, and I said Chuck Palahniuk, and their eyes just go BOING! And they go,
"Mr. Palahniuk, could you just wait just one moment." And then they go running
off and come back a few minutes later and they're like, "Please, Trent would
like to see you" or "Manson would love to see you", its just amazing! Its
like your name just becomes "abracadabra", some sort of a magic word.
But Trent was very cool, he was just amazing. We just stood there, exactly where we met without taking a step, and just talked for like 3 hours. He really wants to score Survivor, which I think would be awesome. And Manson had asked about scoring it too, but I said I sort of talked to Trent about this, and Manson said that's cool, but he'd really like to read it for the audio book. He's got that really growly, gravely voice.
John: So what
do you think about the two of them, their personalities?
Chuck:
It's sort of heartbreaking, after talking to him (Manson), its like his whole
act is a way of beating himself up before other people can beat him up. If
he's the one that makes himself look disgusting and despicable, then when
the world says he looks disgusting he can say, "Duh, I made myself look this
way." In a way, he's beating the world to the punch.
And in a way that's really smart, but it sort of breaks my heart, that this is what he expects from the world, so this is what he's giving to the world. He's writing a book now, he wants to do a movie, so, he's only 33. His dad was a workaholic, and he too has that, his mind never shuts off sort of thing. Where he's working constantly, or thinking. When he's not painting he's writing, when he's not writing he's playing music…
John: Yeah,
so you guys hang out?
Chuck:
A little bit. He has been on tour so much this winter, but not since he was
in Portland in January.
John: And
Survivor is still in the works…
Chuck:
Yeah, they got a screenplay that they seem to be happy with. I haven't seen
it, but with the writers and directors strike coming up this year, not a whole
lot is going to get done, so I'm not holding my breath. I want to work on
the two books that I want to come out next year, I've got Choke, I've
got this HBO TV series thing I'm working on…
John: With
Jim Uhls?
Chuck:
Yeah, exactly.
John: That
should be exciting. You said that HBO already seems like they are guiding
you. I hope that doesn't happen.
Chuck:
If it does happen too much I think we are all just going to drop out of it.
Its actually not really HBO that's guiding us, it's the producers, who are
these people that produced all of Quentin Tarantino's movies, and they seem
to have a real sort of preconceived idea of what they want. Whether or not
we can give that to them, is the issue.
John: What
types of films do you like?
Chuck:
It's a joke between all my friends I love an unhappy ending, that I hate happy
endings. My friends are like "Oh, you'll love this one Chuck, everyone dies
at the end." Of course, Se7en was great, because it ended on such a
dark note. And Alien3. I really, really loved, because it ended on
such a dark note…
John: Well,
yeah, they killed the star…
Chuck:
Yeah! Redemptive! But we don't see a lot of those movies, so I like very few
movies anymore.
John: Did
you like The Game?
Chuck:
Yes, I did. It was a sort of a real choke-up moment ending, because it was
that same sort of character decides to take the existential leap, only Sigourney
Weaver doesn't die at the end she just falls through a glass window.
John: Did
you see American Psycho?
Chuck:
I loved American Psycho! I sat through it twice, and then I called
a bunch of friends and said come down here and sit through it with me. I was
overwhelmed at the end, the second time I saw it I was like weeping, there
were tears coming down my cheeks because it had such a poignant wonderful
dead end…
John: Funny
as hell too! I thought it was hilarious.
Chuck:
Oh, and the little inside things I really enjoyed. Did you read the book?
John: No.
Nope.
Chuck:
The very end, where the camera's coming in on his face, and he's doing the
voiceover monologue, behind him there's a door, and on that door is a little
sign that says, "this is not an exit". That's the last line of the book. There's
all these little jokes throughout the whole movie that are sort of weird jokes
about the movie version of Bright Lights, Big City, which starred Michael
J. Fox, from Jay McInerney's book. So just seeing all of that stuff just cracked
me up.
I sort of liked American Beauty, but I thought that the mechanics of it really showed. Any movie that starts out as "This is the last day of my life", like could we have a more obvious setup.
John: Spacey
and Annette Bening were really good in it.
Chuck:
I thought Annette Bening was incredible!
Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, it's more of an 80's nostalgia thing, but it cracked me up so many times. In a way, it reminded me of Porky's. It was like a young, newer version of those movies, which at the time really cracked me up. I'm not a real highbrow movie guy.
Wings of the Dove. With Helena Bonham Carter. And it ended with an equivalent scene to American Psycho. At the end she fucks the guy after talking him into falling in love with a woman who is very rich and is about to die. And she realizes at the end that she has lost him, because he has actually fallen in love with this dead woman, and he's never going to be with her again, and its right in the middle of fucking him that she gets that "oh my god he doesn't love me anymore, I've lost him" And there's that hideous, cold recognition at the end, and here she is naked, getting banged and she realizes, its over. So that I loved, of course.
So there you have it. My days with Chuck. I haven't met many famous people (so far), but Chuck is really someone I could seriously hang out with. He's down to earth, dark humored, right to the point, and genuinely nice. Just a normal guy with a real talent for writing things that are so true and in your face, they make you sit back and take another good look at yourself and your life. The guy even came over to my house and partied with a bunch of us for a little while, how cool is that?! Now go and buy Choke. And look for Chuck's mug in almost every big-time entertainment magazine on the rack these days. I wish Chuck the best in the future, and hopefully he keeps me in mind when they are adapting his other novels to film!
Check out these
links for more information on Fight Club, Choke and author Chuck Palahniuk:
Chuck Palahniuk:
A Writer's Cult
Choke: The Official Book
Site
Official
Fight Club Film Site
Visit John Lyons' personal site.
Put Chuck Palahniuk's books on your summer reading list:
