Despite
the fact that I haven’t made any crappy kids comedies and despite the fact
that I don’t have a semi-permanent, yet marketable scowl attached to my face, I
feel a lot like Ice Cube today. I had a breakfast with no hog. I saw the
police, and they rolled right past me. Hell, I’ll probably get a Fat Burger
later today. Basically, today is a good day for all of those reasons. But
unlike Cube’s joint, I have some additional reasons to rejoice because today
brings answers to two questions I’ve had for the longest time: 1)When will
Chuck Palahniuk get another adaptation of his books into production? and 2)
When the hell is somebody gonna wake up and give Sam Rockwell another leading
role?
Choke was the first Palahniuk book to
explode from the jump. Building on the clout of the film version of Fight
Club, Chuck racked up his first New York Times bestseller with this
story of another damaged protagonist who depends upon an extended con involving
choking to get by. Universal actually snapped up the rights last August, but
the project’s just been sitting around for a bit. Now, according to Chuck’s
official fansite, he’s broken the news that Choke is not only fully
greenlit, but is scheduled to go into production this June. Instead of another
flashy visual stylist like David Fincher at the helm, Clark Gregg has been
tapped to direct. Gregg’s acted all over TV and film, and you’re probably
especially familiar with him if you’ve watched any fairly recent David Mamet
flicks like State and Main or Spartan. But here, he’s not just
directing, but handling screenplay chores as well.
Best of
all, Sam Rockwell’s set to star as Victor, the aforementioned damaged protagonist.
I can’t think of a better fit for Palahniuk’s odd sensibilities, and damn it’ll
be good to see him back on the bigscreen, although he’ll first appear this fall
in the long-delayed and even longer-titled The Assassination of Jesse James by The
Coward Robert Ford: The Far Side of the World or as I like to refer to it when talking amongst friends, TAJJTCRFTFSTWQWERTYUIOP.