Chuck Palahniuk's Sad Choke Contest
"Want to go see Choke this weekend and have your name in Chuck's next book?" Um, as what? A snuff film victim? A gangbang participant? This is super-graphic Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk we're talking about. He's taking the grassroots (read: hopeless) approach to finding viewers for his new movie: "all you have to do is get as many people as you possibly can to go see Choke this weekend" and get your name in a future book. Why? Because a bunch of big movies are coming out at once, and they're desperate.
"Is this for real? You damn well bet it is. Clark Gregg and I got on the phone yesterday and decided that we needed to hit the ball out of the park this weekend with the box office numbers on CHOKE. You see, Hollywood does math a lot differently than you and I do. And we are, right now, in one of the most crowded seasons for the movie market. Last weekend, CHOKE opened against an $80 million dollar movie produced by Stephen Speilberg [sic] on a night when most of America was watching Barack Obama debate John McCain on almost every news channel on TV. And this weekend, CHOKE enters its second weekend on the three days when, according to Variety, "A whopping seven wide releases" hit the theaters, making it one of the worst bottlenecks for new releases in recent memory."
Whoa there! That is some bigshot Hollywood movie-lingo exec-speak that nobody cares about or understands!
We need everyone reading this post right now to go see CHOKE this weekend. But before you do, we need you to email this post to everyone you know. Contact everyone in your address book. Everyone you work with. All of your family and extended family. Everyone on your MySpace page. Your Facebook page. EVERYONE!!! If you've already seen it, go see it again. If it's more than 50 miles away from where you live, leave enough time for the drive. If it's out of state, make it your day. The person who gets the most people to go, gets a character named after them in Chuck's next book. Yes, this is for real. Clark and I spoke to Chuck on the phone yesterday, and he's completely on board with this.
Well, that's comforting. Fine, here's the contest. Go, make it your day.