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| Chuck Palahniuk |
Sundance to “‘Choke’ on Chuck’s latest
No one can accuse gay author Chuck Palahniuk of lacking originality.
His novel “Fight Club” explored the hyper-masculine world of underground fighting from the viewpoint of a mentally ill participant. His novel “Choke” centers around a sex addict who fakes choking accidents for cash so that he can pay his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother’s nursing-home bills.
Now “Choke” is following “Fight Club” to film, at the hands of first-time filmmaker Clark Gregg. Gregg, a well-known character actor (in the “Oh, hey, it’s that guy” vein) directs Sam Rockwell (“The Assassination of Jesse James”) in the lead and Angelica Huston as the mom.
The movie premieres early in 2008 at the Sundance Film Festival with a planned theatrical release shortly after. That means Palahniuk’s obsessive fan base still has time to re-read the book.
Tom Ford to enter movie business with “‘A Single Man’
It seems like everything Tom Ford touches turns to gold.
He revitalized the Gucci empire before leaving to explore other creative avenues, and his fragrance lines are hot sellers (thanks, in no small part, to those provocative, clothes-free promotional photo shoots that always accompany his new commercial ventures).
So what’s stopping him from entering the movie business? Not much, if the official rumors that involve him circling Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, “A Single Man”, are true.
Reports are that Ford wants to make his debut feature based on the story, about a day in the life of a gay man in Los Angeles during the era just before the gay liberation movement caught fire. If nothing else, the designer will know how to make it all “pop” visually. And in movies, that’s half the battle.
“‘Island Calling’ explores gay homicides from 2001
When Fiji Red Cross Director-General John Scott and his partner, Greg Scrivener, were brutally murdered in 2001, their killer was found innocent by reason of insanity but not before the deceased pair were falsely described by investigators and the media as being drug-using pedophiles.
And now the story is the subject of a documentary titled “An Island Calling,” directed by New Zealand filmmaker Annie Goldson, who’s also been awarded a grant from the Sundance Institute to continue the project.
No word on a release date, but the sure-to-be-thoughtful approach to unpleasant subject matter is tailor-made for the film-festival circuit, with a final home on enlightened cable TV. Keep watch.
Dan Savage’s “‘Kid’ to sing and dance
On today’s Broadway, it helps to be a movie before you’re a musical just look at “Young Frankenstein,” “Legally Blonde,” “Xanadu” and countless others but some song-and-dance extravaganzas are coming from more unlikely sources.
Take Dan Savage’s “The Kid,” the gay sex columnist’s funny and moving tale of adopting a child with his partner. The successful memoir is currently being adapted into a musical piece for an upcoming New York City production.
Acclaimed Great White Way director Scott Elliott, who has brought successful revivals of “The Women” and “The Threepenny Opera” to the boards in recent years, has signed on to guide things, so hopes are high.
Will books by David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs learn to sing next? Stranger things have happened.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 7, 2007