Trailer Blogger

Click to watch the Choke trailer at Zuguide.com

In Choke, the second of Chuck Palahniuk’s novels to be adapted into a film (the first was Fight Club), Sam Rockwell plays Victor, a sex addict who works as a re-enactor at a colonial theme park.  After a long day at ye olde office, Sam likes to cut off his oxygen supply by shoving huge chunks of steak down his throat, partly for the attention and partly to leech cash off the men and women who save his life. Besides covering the tab for his own deviant interests, Sam also has to pay for Anjelica Houston’s hospital care because she’s his mother and she has Alzheimer’s. Given the going rate for a mediocre, unmotivated, partially historically accurate colonial townsperson, it’s reasonable to assume that Rockwell has preparing for the Heimlich Maneuver down pat.

Rockwell kicks off the Choke trailer by advising a stripper that she should have a mole on her thigh looked at by a doctor. After learning the stripper’s stage name (Cherry Daiquiri), we see that Rockwell likes to attend sex addiction support groups more for the social aspects than for receiving any type of help. There are a few random hookups, and then Rockwell goes to the hospital where he meets Kelly Macdonald, his mother’s new doctor. Even though Houston doesn’t recognize him (she calls him Frank), the visit to the hospital proves to be an important one for Rockwell. After demonstrating his technique for eating a porterhouse in a single bite for his friend Brad William Henke, Rockwell realizes that he’s attracted to Macdonald on a deeper level than he’s used to and can’t jump straight to sex like usual. Forced out of his comfort zone, Rockwell and Henke head back to the strip club, where they find Cherry Daiquiri has changed her hair color in order to stave off skin cancer.  My favorite part of the trailer comes when Rockwell is cheered on by a bunch of senior citizens as he bashes a walker against a set of lockers in a hospital locker room. Choke opens September 26, 2008. Check out the Choke trailer at Zuguide.com.