Clarke Gregg

USA | 2008 | 89mins | 35mm | Colour

Actor-turned-director Clark Gregg shows he is as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it with Choke, a wickedly colourful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks. Adapted from the cult Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same name, Victor Mancini is a sex-addicted, medical school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida, in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical re-enactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park.

At night Victor runs an ingenious scam whereby he deliberately chokes in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny and his mother’s beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall, to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.

Winner Special Jury Prize – Sundance Film Festival, 2008