Sam Rockwell stars as a sexaholic with mother issues in Choke, directed by Clark Gregg and based on the bestselling novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Rockwell's character Victor also has a habit of choking in restaurants in order to get strangers to save him – strangers who wind up feeling as though they're responsible for his life and will send him money when he needs it. Victor's a strange guy and a very interesting character for Rockwell to climb into.
At the Los Angeles press junket for the Fox Searchlight film, Rockwell explained how he approached the character. "You do maybe a little research and watch a documentary. Then you read the book. Then I have my own references. Clark and I talked about Harold and Maude as a tone, and The Fisher King was talked about. I go to my acting coach and we work on the material. You reference things like the mother and son, like The Glass Menagerie or Hamlet even," said Rockwell. "Then I'm always constantly referring to my 1970s cinematic encyclopedia which is movies like Five Easy Pieces or Harold and Maude where you have antiheroes, or Tom Jones with Albert Finney… Alfie. So you have these antiheroes, a Casanova or somebody. Five Easy Pieces is a real template for this guy I think."
Rockwell went as far as to attend five or six sex addict meetings to prepare for playing Victor. And even though Choke doesn't hold back on the sex scenes, Rockwell admitted he actually finds kissing scenes more difficult. "I think that's true. Well, the sex scenes are fake. You aren't really having sex. When you're kissing, you're really kissing so I think that kind of says it all. Sex scenes are just kind of silly. You've got these women coming in for a day. You just want to make them feel comfortable. It's a weird job so you try to tell a joke and keep it relaxed," explained Rockwell.
And speaking of comfort levels, Choke's subject matter has actually caused some theater owners to feel so uncomfortable they've refused to show the movie, a decision Rockwell's absolutely fine with. "That’s cool. I like that. That means we did something right. It's a romantic comedy. It's just a couple of breasteses. We showed the ass. I show my ass. That movie's so tame compared to the book."
Anjelica Huston plays Rockwell's mom, Kelly Macdonald is a woman he's so interested in he doesn't want to spoil things by having sex, and Brad William Henke plays his co-worker and best friend. Rockwell had worked with Macdonald before (on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) but hadn't previously worked with either Henke or Huston. Rockwell credits writer/director/actor Clark Gregg with determining the three would have the right chemistry to pull off their parts. "I think Clark was really smart about the casting process and Mary Vernieu who cast Bad Santa, some Mike Judge movies, she's a great casting director. When you're casting a movie, an actor/director, Clark's very smart about casting, not unlike George Clooney is good with finding [actors]. When an actor casts, he's looking at it from, 'Who do I want to act with? I want to act with somebody who has training, who has experience…' You could tell. Actors have a vocabulary with each other, just like I would think writers do too. It's like you know this person's the real deal. It's no coincidence. Clark's looking for the best people for the job so he finds Brad [William Henke], Kelly [Macdonald]. We're all really serious about acting, I think. We've done the same kind of training, so it's a work aesthetic I think too, with me and Brad," said Rockwell.
As for what drew him to Choke in the first place, Rockwell says he always looks for roles that move him. "I think that's what it really comes down to," offered Rockwell. "If you identify and you're moved by the character, if you think it's going to be fun to wake up at five in the morning and do that, then you take the job."
One movie Rockwell almost didn't do that he now holds in high regard is Galaxy Quest. "I love that movie. That's a great movie," said Rockwell. "Almost didn't do that movie actually. I was supposed to do an independent film, do a lead in an independent film and it didn't [go]. Galaxy Quest was just a great script. It was a fluke and then at the time it came out, we thought it was going to be like Ghostbusters and then it didn't do well at the box office but then it caught on later. It has a sort of cult following and we all thought it was the bees knees at the time, but then nobody saw the movie at the get go. It was really cool when it got a little bit of a following."
Up next for Rockwell is a basketball movie he describes as Hoosiers meets Half Nelson. "I play a basketball coach to a girls high school basketball team and it's kind of your basic sort of Bad News Bears kind of movie, but with a little more of a bite to it. It's dramatic. It's more like Half Nelson or Affliction, but it also has this sort of sports formula through-line, but there's some other stuff going on in there."
